The US and Chinese defense chiefs are holding a rare in-person meeting Friday as the two powers navigate a contentious security landscape across the Asia-Pacific and a range of frictions between them from China’s intimidation of Taiwan to American’s strengthening alliances in the region.

The meeting, between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s Minister of National Defense Adm. Dong Jun, is the first face-to-face talks between the two defense chiefs and Austin’s first such discussions with a Chinese counterpart since late 2022.

The meeting, on the sidelines of an annual defense conference in Singapore, takes place against a fraught regional backdrop. Beijing – which wields the world’s largest navy – continues to aggressively assert disputed territorial claims in the East and South China Seas, while decrying Washington’s efforts to strengthen security ties with key allies like Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

China earlier this month staged major war games around Taiwan following the inauguration of the island’s new democratically elected president. China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy as its own, despite never having controlled it.

Its Coast Guard in recent weeks has also fired water cannons and sought to counter Philippine vessels operating in disputed areas of the South China Sea, stoking already heightened tensions with a US treaty ally in the region.

Beijing has also lashed out at what it sees as provocative moves between the US and its allies, with its Defense Ministry spokesperson on Thursday condemning the deployment of an American missile system during military drills in the Philippines last month.

Austin is expected to raise concerns with Dong about China’s support for Russia, US officials said ahead of the meeting. Washington in recent weeks has said dual-use exports from China are bolstering Russia’s defense industrial base as it wages war in Ukraine, with US officials warning Beijing against providing Russia with any lethal equipment.

Talks between Austin and Dong are not expected to see substantive progress towards resolving many entrenched issues between them.

At the core of those contentions is that China does not want to see America exercise its military power in Asia – a region where the US it has deep, historic security ties and seeks to maintain open waterways and deter North Korean aggression, but where China is widely viewed as wanting to establish its dominance.

But their meeting is seen by international observers as a positive step toward enhancing dialogue that could help to avoid miscommunication or military mishap veering toward conflict.

Severed ties

The face-to-face follows a call last month between Austin and Dong, who was appointed to his post in late December. The call marked Austin’s first at-length conversation with a Chinese counterpart since November 2022.

Beijing had largely suspended high-level military communications following a visit in August of that year from then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which sparked Beijing’s ire.

The silence coincided with a period of significant tensions between the two powers, which included high-profile incidents such as a Chinese spy balloon traversing across the continental US and what the US described as an increase in “coercive and risky” behavior by Chinese pilots against US aircraft over the East and South China Seas.

US efforts to re-engage appeared further complicated by the appointment in early 2023 of China’s previous Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who had been sanctioned by the US in 2018 over China’s purchase of Russian weapons.

Austin and Li had a brief exchange during last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, but no formal talks, with Beijing repeatedly suggesting that the US defense secretary won’t get a meeting with Li unless the sanctions were revoked.

Efforts to stabilize that communication hit another complication after Li abruptly vanished from the public eye last August amid a personnel shake-up in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s military ranks.

Li was formally removed from his post without explanation in October and replaced by Dong, a former naval commander, some two months later. 
 
In China, the defense minister is a largely ceremonial role, serving as the public face of military diplomacy with other countries, while command power resides within the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Central Military Commission led by Xi.

Xi and US President Joe Biden had vowed to restore high-level military talks during a summit outside San Francisco in November, seen by both sides as a key step in stabilizing fractious relations.

Several weeks later, US and Chinese top generals spoke in a video call, paving the way for this week’s in-person meeting between the defense chiefs.

As Donald Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of a felony on Thursday, the historic verdict sparked huge interest – and a fair amount of schadenfreude – in China.

As a rising authoritarian superpower, China has long sought to project its political system as superior to American democracy.

But while Trump’s trial has been a boon for that narrative, it’s also offered a potential window into something unimaginable and dangerous to the ruling Chinese Communist Party — an elected leader held accountable by independent courts and prosecutors, convicted by a jury of his peers.

For months, Chinese propagandists have attempted to use Trump’s indictments to strengthen Beijing’s narrative of a United States in decline, citing the months-long legal battle as a prime example of the polarization and dysfunction of American politics.

And as China woke up Friday to the news of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, the country’s heavily censored social media lit up.

On Weibo, China’s X-like platform, the verdict became the top trending topic, racking up more than 120 million views by the afternoon.

“Trump’s supporters, hurry up and mobilize, storm the Capitol,” said a top comment under a news brief by state news agency Xinhua.

Another said: “Comrade Nation Builder Trump should not be fighting alone.”

On the Chinese internet, the former US president earned the nickname of Chuan Jianguo, or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” during his time in office – a quip to suggest his isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda were actually helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

Some nationalist influencers gleefully mocked the verdict. “It seems that in 2024, a civil war in America is not just a dream!” said one such blogger with 4 million followers.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China’s most assertive leader in decades, the country’s social media platforms have become increasingly dominated by anti-American, nationalistic voices.

“Although he is guilty, he can still run for president. A ‘criminal’ can become president – this is the ridiculous aspect of Western-style democracy,” said another.

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times, also weighed in.

“Naturally, Chinese people are watching the spectacle with amusement,” he said on Weibo. “Here’s what everyone is most concerned about: First, will Trump actually go to jail? Second, can he still run for president?”

But analysts say Trump’s conviction could be a tricky topic for Chinese state propagandists to navigate.

“On the one hand, it highlights a rotting and fracturing American democracy. On the other hand, it highlights that a former top leader can be arrested, put on trial, judged by jury of peers and convicted, for relatively small acts of corruption,” wrote Bill Bishop, a China watcher and author of the Sinocism newsletter.

China’s judicial system remains tightly beholden to the ruling Communist Party, according to legal observers, and has a conviction rate of around 99%.

The timing of the conviction also added to the sensitivity, coming just days before the 35th anniversary of Beijing’s bloody crackdown of the pro-democracy Tiananmen movement in 1989, according to Bishop.

So far, Chinese state media outlets have yet to publish the kind of blistering commentaries that previously appeared alongside news coverage of Trump’s legal entanglements.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said China’s state media is unlikely to play up the coverage in the days ahead.

“They don’t want to attack Donald Trump because if he becomes the president, they know the consequences. Instead, they’re likely to use it to showcase the problems of the US system,” said Wu, a former reporter in China.

“They need to be really careful about that.”

The first US commercial flight to Haiti in months made a bleak roundtrip on Thursday morning, returning with the bodies of a young American couple who were killed by a gang in Port-au-Prince last week.

The remains of Davy and Natalie Lloyd were accompanied in the flight by US Ambassador to Haiti Dennis Hankins and US security agents, according to a source with knowledge of the operation. After flying from Haiti to Miami, they will be sent onward to their families.

“This morning, the remains of Davy and Natalie Lloyd safely took off on a flight back to the United States — there will be a series of layovers, and they will safely reach Neosho, Missouri tomorrow afternoon,” read a statement posted by their families on the X account of Natalie’s father, Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker, requesting privacy during the transfer.

“We are praising the Lord for his hand of protection over this nightmare. Funeral services will be early next week, with more details to come tomorrow,” it also said.

The State Department confirmed on Thursday afternoon that both bodies had arrived in the United States.

Their return follows a week of extraordinary negotiation between the US government and Haitian authorities, local organizations and even gang leaders, sources say – all in a city crippled by the criminal groups that have shut off the import of vital humanitarian supplies, destroyed medical facilities and blocked key roads.

“We will continue to work around the clock until the remains are returned back to the United States,” the spokesperson added.

This month’s reopening of Toussaint Louverture International Airport – a former target for coordinated gang attacks – marks an important step in connecting Haiti’s capital city to the rest of the world, after months of violence in the gang-ravaged Caribbean nation. Local carrier Sunrise resumed flights earlier in May.

But the progress has been overshadowed by last week’s killing of three missionaries – the Lloyds and Haitian mission director Jude Montis – in a high-profile incident that attracted the close attention of US officials and the White House.

The three were attacked in the early evening at the Missions in Haiti church and orphanage compound in Port-au-Prince’s Lizon neighborhood, in what began as an armed robbery by one gang that left their compound rampaged and their supplies and aid stolen.

A second gang later arrived on the scene and came under fire, precipitating a deadly retribution against mission staff, according to Davy Lloyd’s father and Missions in Haiti founder David Lloyd, who was on the phone with his son that evening.

US officials mobilize to recover bodies

In the frantic hours following the attack, staffers from the office of Missouri US Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri US Sen. Josh Hawley and the US National Security Council reached out to the State Department and US Embassy in Haiti.

“Since their murder we’ve been working closely with Sen. Hawley’s office, State Department, and airlines to bring them home to their families,” he added. “I want to thank everyone who is helping in these efforts.”

Natalie Lloyd’s mother, Naomi Baker, is a staffer in Burlison’s office and her father, Ben Baker, is a state representative in Missouri.

After the shock of the deaths, it became clear early on Friday morning that Davy and Natalie’s bodies needed to be recovered urgently – an operation that would be carefully orchestrated by the US government, according to multiple sources.

There was no time to spare.

On a phone call with multiple gang leaders, Vitel’homme Innocent – a gang leader whose armed group Kraze Baryé was not involved in the attacks but controls an area around the US embassy – asserted a claim to the bodies of the two Americans.

He added, “It was a sad story when I learned that a Haitian and two Americans who came to serve the population died in a terrible situation.”

Innocent himself is the subject of a $2 million bounty for alleged kidnappings of American citizens, which he disputes, saying he hopes to defend himself one day.

Emergency vehicles were soon allowed to continue onward to the charred site where they found the three bodies.

Farewell to the bodies

Missions in Haiti director Jude Montis, 45, was laid to rest in Port-au-Prince this week. Local press showed large crowds gathered outside the church where his funeral services were held, and a mournful band in the procession could later be seen following his hearse down the street.

But the bodies of the Lloyds have been waiting to travel back to Missouri until now.

Natalie’s father Ben Baker described the continuing hurdles to bring back his daughter and son-in-law on his Facebook page, in a message signed by Baker’s spokesperson Cassidy Anderson.

“Currently, we are working to retrieve the bodies of Natalie and Davy. We have to obtain a waiver that will allow their bodies to be transported without being fully embalmed due to the lack of facilities that provide that service in Haiti. After that, we have to find an airline that will be willing to do the transport. Prayers that this will all go smoothly,” it read.

Waiting for news of the bodies’ safe return has strained the nerves of family and supporters with Hawley over the weekend releasing a public letter demanding that the Biden administration assure their security.

“Natalie and Davy’s bodies will need to be transported to the final point of departure, and until that time, there are major risks. The situation on the ground in Port-au-Prince remains anarchic,” he warned.

But Thursday morning, the bodies of Davy and Natalie Lloyd finally began their long journey home.

Like many victims of sexual abuse, it took years for Santiago to acknowledge that he was raped as a teenager.

Four decades on, he is still waiting for a measure of justice to address his claims against Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a secretive Roman Catholic society founded in Peru that has been mired in scandal since its layman founder Luis Fernando Figari and other senior members were accused of sexually abusing numerous adult and minor recruits.

Santiago says that he was sexually abused by Figari at least three times in the 1970s, when he turned 17. He recalled Figari leading him to a room and raping him, saying it was “the only way to correctly see his aura.”

He doesn’t clearly remember other incidents. “It is difficult to count because your brain starts to block things, I have tried, but there are some memories that are blocked,” he said.

Santiago is among the dozens of reported victims who have been waiting eagerly for the Vatican to reveal its findings about the SCV allegations, after a months-long investigation.

SCV has already admitted that sexual, physical and psychological abuse took place. In 2017, it removed Figari from the group and published a two-part report by international experts that found that more than a dozen men and three women alleged being sexually abused by SCV members when they were young adults.

In the report’s preface, SCV asked for “forgiveness from each person that has been hurt by a member or a former member of the Sodalitium,” and said the organization was “committed to a process of self-examination and of change.”

Now the case has moved into the hands of church authorities in Vatican City, whom victims hope will be able to take serious measures including disbanding the entire organization.

As part of the ongoing investigation, the Vatican sent letters to several SCV members in February giving them 45 days to respond to allegations of abuse, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Vatican top abuse investigators, Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, made a surprise visit to Lima in July 2023, interviewing victims including Santiago and SCV representatives, among others.

For now, it is unclear when the investigation results will be delivered, or in what form. But in August last year, Pope Francis confirmed to reporters, “We are working on this. We are trying to bring the situation to light.”

Decades of ‘impunity’

An explosive 2015 book by journalists Salinas and Paola Ugaz revealed 30 anonymous testimonies from SCV victims including Santiago’s, shocking conservative Peruvian society but only resulting in failed leadership reforms and an ongoing court case against the group that has largely gone nowhere.

In the book, titled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers,” former SCV members detailed that once the recruits reached the legal age, 18, they were encouraged to leave home and cut ties with family and friends.

Teenagers who were recruited were brainwashed “to become a kind of zombie, a robot, a fanatic, where there is a syncretism that mixes the Catholic religion with fascist ideas – Spanish fascism,” according to Salinas, who says he himself was physically and psychologically abused at the Sodalitium when he was a teenager.

Figari was seen as a charismatic figure, but he was also described by former and current members as “vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist, and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation of SCV members,” the 2017 SCV report found.

It added that Figari committed “multiple acts of sodomy of a minor male and a young adult male,” filmed young recruits “in their underwear or bathing suits,” and directed them to perform sex acts on each other and himself, all under the justification of it being part of their spiritual formation.

Figari denied all the allegations publicly for the first time in 2016. “I’m innocent, totally innocent. I come here to tell the truth because the authorities have not allowed me to speak,” Figari told reporters in Rome.

Military training and alleged sexual abuse

At the age of 15, Figari told him he had great mental powers and offered to train him in ancient techniques, Santiago said. Part of this training involved Santiago only wearing underwear and sitting on Figari’s leg, he said. On another occasion, Figari made Santiago and another minor sit in the lotus position and asked them to touch each other, including their genitals, Santiago said.

Years later, Santiago first reported his abuse to SCV members and filed a complaint against Figari at Lima’s Archdiocesan Tribunal in 2011. He did not get an official response or follow up, he said.

According to the 2017 SCV report, Figari also imposed military training, gleaned from movies he watched, on the young recruits: Young boys were ordered to swim “in cold ocean waters for several hours at a time” late at night or very early in the morning, run long distances in severe weather and sleep on floors or stairs.

He eventually joined SCV’s team as community leader 10 years later but said he regrets potentially playing a part in the psychological abuse of other young recruits. “After making my complaint I thought: “How many people I have also affected?,” he said, adding that he has since “called many people to ask for forgiveness.”

SCV declined to be interviewed for this article, saying they are fully cooperating with the Vatican’s inquiry and highlighted a private audience between its General Superior Jose David Correa and Pope Francis on December 1, when they shared “updated information about the organization.”

The search for justice

According to Salinas and other victims, the steps toward accountability taken by SCV so far are not enough. They want to see the perpetrators formally punished and the organization dissolved.

The Peruvian legal system so far has not led to any resolution. A criminal case in Peru against Figari and other SCV members was dropped by Peru’s prosecutor’s office in 2017, with prosecutors saying none of the alleged sexual abuse victims had come forward and that the alleged crimes fell outside the statute of limitations. A separate case on allegations of kidnapping, serious psychological injuries, and illicit association to commit a crime, is still working its way through the justice system.

His clients demand “this organization to stop and (that) harm does not continue to be caused to new children, teenagers or young people in Peru and in other several countries where it has expanded,” he said. “Sodalitium is still active.”

Salinas, who has written to Pope Francis about the case, is pinning his hopes for justice on the Vatican’s investigation.

The Vatican has the power to dissolve SCV – a measure that Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto has already called for. Pope Francis could also order sweeping reforms of the group, including the expulsion of members and special measures that must be followed.

And the Pope recently changed the church’s Code of Canon Law in 2021 to make lay people who hold an office in the church accountable for abuse, which would appear to apply to Figari, who is not a cleric. Church penalties for him could include fines, removal from all offices and expulsion from SCV.

For the victims, it’s about being heard and recognized after so many years.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Anyone affected by sexual violence can reach out to the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org to receive support via confidential online chat.

This is a historic and pivotal year for democracy across the globe. Around 70 countries – from the United States to South Africa, via Mexico and Taiwan – will hold elections in 2024.

After India’s huge and ongoing six-week ballot, however, the biggest election in terms of voter numbers will happen next week, when 373 million Europeans can go to the polls and elect 720 members of the next European Parliament.

Once the votes have been tallied from across the 27-nation bloc, it is widely expected that the results will show a significant shift to the right, which could have major implications for the political direction of the European Union at a time when it is battling multiple crises, many of them global.

From the war in Ukraine to coping with mass migration, the rise of China to the threat of climate change, it’s hard to see how a bloc of diverse countries could possibly speak with one voice.

Of course, differences in opinion among the member states is nothing new. EU politics has always relied on awkward alliances between countries and political ideologies that represent vastly different electorates.

The EU’s political center has undeniably moved to the right over the past two decades, however.

The European Parliament is the place where this is most visible at an EU level. Most of the lawmakers (known as MEPs) belong to a political party in their own country. Once they enter the European Parliament in the Belgian capital of Brussels, they sit in loose, multinational political groupings that broadly have similar political interests.

These groupings then form even looser coalitions, which usually results with a majority grouping of centrists from the center-left, center-right and liberals somewhere in the middle.

The rightward shift of the political center in this coalition has been gradual. In 1994, the main socialist group S&D had the most MEPs. In 1999, it was overtaken by the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).

The EPP, best explained as conservatives in the mold of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been the dominant force in EU politics ever since.

While the EPP has been able to lead a mainstream centrist coalition with the left and liberals at a European level, MEPs are still beholden to domestic politics happening back in their own countries.

For example, it’s not easy for a conservative to work with a liberal on a pan-EU policy that would share the burden of asylum seekers if voters back home are becoming attracted to loud, anti-immigration populists. The louder the domestic noise – and the greater the risk of losing their own seat in parliament – the trickier cross-party politics at a Brussels level becomes.

The anticipated influx of lawmakers into groups to the EPP’s right will certainly complicate matters.

While the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) groups are expected to finish fourth and fifth respectively in terms of seat numbers, their combined tally, which could be upwards of 140, according to the Politico Poll of Polls, will be hard for the EPP to ignore. The EPP is currently predicted to win 165 seats to 143 for the socialist S&D.

ECR and ID are typical of European Parliament parties in that they are home to a pretty broad group of conservatives.

The ECR, for example, was founded by former British Prime Minister David Cameron who campaigned against Brexit. Its current chair is Italian PM Georgia Meloni, who garnered lots of attention during the 2022 Italian election for her opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, promises to curb migration and general anti-globalist rhetoric.

However, since Meloni’s election, she has been seen as considerably more moderate and has supported many key EU initiatives, including support for Ukraine. She has also resisted allowing authoritarian Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to join the ECR after he left the EPP.

Hungary has been the most pro-Russia EU voice since the start of the war. Whether or not it was deliberate on Meloni’s part, resistance to Orban has made working with her and the ECR more palatable to the Brussels establishment, including EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

ID, too, has sought to moderate its image. It recently expelled the German far-right AfD party from its ranks after one of its most senior MEPs told an Italian newspaper that he didn’t see all members of the SS, the notorious Nazi paramilitary group, automatically as criminals.

There is quite a wide range in opinion from the moderate wing of the ERC to the fringes of ID, but political currents and the desire for influence can result in some odd bedfellows, especially in the opaque and fluid world of European politics.

It is unlikely that the EPP would be willing to work directly with ID any time soon, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be important. History has shown us repeatedly that it’s possible to influence policy from outside the tent. Suppose that parties associated with ID start putting center-right politicians under pressure in their own countries. You might find the center adopts their policy ideas – as has previously happened in France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

And there are more than enough hot topics in Europe now for the right to get its teeth stuck into. Migration, climate change, border security, military spending, rule of law – all of these have been flashpoints in pan-Europe politics for a long time and are not going away any time soon. And it is ultimately the newly-elected Parliament that vets and approves the make-up of the European Commission – the EU’s executive body.

It’s worth noting that support for Ukraine is expected to be safe for the time being, with the pro-Kremlin groups appearing very isolated. But almost everything else will be handled on a case-by-case basis if the numbers work out that way. And the more MEPs elected that are to the right of the EPP, the more their influence could grow over time.

Five years is a long time in politics, and that is how long this Parliament will last. In that time, France will hold an election that Marine Le Pen, who is affiliated with ID, might win with her National Rally party. Geert Wilders, also ID, is soon expected to form a government in the Netherlands after emerging as the biggest party in their November elections. In other words, the domestic politics in member states could shift even further to the right, which naturally changes calculations in Brussels.

The European Parliament can often seem like looks like a boring, bureaucratic blob, tediously grinding its way through process. But the EU is an increasingly geopolitical player – able to impose sanctions on Russian and Chinese political figures, provide funds to Ukraine and use its economic heft as the world’s largest trading bloc in diplomacy. If its political center is indeed shifting to the right, its influence will inevitably have meaningful and perhaps far-reaching consequences for people living beyond Europe’s borders.

Early results from South Africa’s election suggest the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party could lose its majority for the first time in 30 years.

With results in from 22% of polling stations at 4 p.m. local time, support for the ANC stood at 43.5%.

The official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), had 24.7% of the vote, while the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – a splinter party of the ANC – had 8.9%, data from the country’s electoral commission showed.

The respected research group CSIR modeled the ANC winning less than 45% of the national poll as of mid-morning on Thursday.

Officials of the Independent Electoral Commission have stressed that the official tally could take several days and some larger voting wards could take more time to be tallied.

In past elections, results from rural areas – where the ANC has major strongholds – have come in later, boosting results for the party.

Once all the votes are counted, if the ANC remains below 50% it will be forced to enter a coalition with one or more parties. Depending on how low its support dips, it may need to form a deal with one of the larger opposition parties such as the DA or EFF to remain in power.

Another ANC splinter party, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK), led by former President Jacob Zuma appears to be on course to do well in KwaZulu-Natal, the eastern coastal province where Durban is located. At 10am local time, it had 42.3% of the votes there compared to 20.1% for the ANC.

Zuma – a fierce critic of current ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – was forced to resign as leader in 2018 and served a brief stint in jail in 2021 for contempt of court. The 82-year-old was barred from running for parliament last week after the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that five years must have elapsed since the completion of his sentence. However, his face remained on the ballot.

South Africa’s electoral commission has seven days to declare the final results by law. However, they are usually announced sooner than that. This year, the commission has set Sunday, June 2, as the final results day.

If the ANC does lose its majority, it will have 14 days once the final results are declared to form a new government before a new parliament must convene to elect the nation’s president.

Catherine, Princess of Wales, will not be returning to royal duties with an appearance at the Colonel’s Review, a military parade in London in early June, as she continues her treatment for cancer.

The ceremonial display on June 8 is the traditional dress rehearsal for the King’s official birthday parade known as Trooping the Colour, which takes place a week later on June 15.

It is not yet clear if Kate will also miss that annual military spectacle – a highlight of the royal calendar full of pomp and pageantry – at Horse Guards Parade in the British capital.

It had been widely hoped that the popular 42-year-old royal might oversee proceedings at the run-through in her capacity as Colonel of the Irish Guards. The regiment will be trooping its colour – presenting its regimental flags – at this year’s ceremony.

Lt. Gen. James Bucknall will step in to take the salute in Kate’s absence. The former Commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps has been to every Sovereign’s Birthday Parade since 2009 when he was appointed Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, having served as a Coldstream Guards Officer for more than 45 years.

The Princess of Wales has not carried out any public engagements since December and had been expected to return to official duties after Easter. However, in March, she revealed her cancer diagnosis and that she had started chemotherapy.

There had also been speculation over whether King Charles would participate in next month’s Trooping the Colour as he continues his own cancer treatment. However, Buckingham Palace has now confirmed his attendance.

In a slight change from last year, the 75-year-old monarch will inspect troops from a carriage rather than on horseback. He will conduct the review in an Ascot Landau carriage seated alongside his wife, Queen Camilla.

The adjustment reflects previous guidance from the royal household that each engagement involving the King would be reviewed, with adaptations made based on doctors’ recommendations.

Charles announced his own cancer battle in February but recently resumed public-facing royal engagements as he continues his treatment.

The Trooping the Colour celebration usually sees members of the royal family gather on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave to crowds after the parade.

As Australian women push for action on domestic violence – a problem described by the country’s prime minister as a “national crisis” – one state has appointed a special official charged with improving men’s behavior.

Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan announced Wednesday that state MP Tim Richardson would serve as the inaugural Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change – the first position of its kind in the country.

Richardson said he would focus on the influence the internet and social media have on male attitudes towards women, and on building respectful relationships. It would not be “easy work, but it is important,” he added.

“We must make Victoria a safer place for women and children and work to end the tragedy of deaths of Victorian women at the hands of men,” Richardson wrote on X.

Gender-based violence is plaguing Australia – 31 women have been killed across the country so far this year, according to the Counting Dead Women project. Last year, 64 women were murdered, the group said.

Last weekend, a woman and her daughter were shot dead in Perth, Western Australia, by a man who was allegedly trying to find his ex-partner and daughter. In a statement, the man’s daughter said that, “when my father couldn’t find us he murdered her best friend and her best friend’s daughter.”

The country was rattled by multiple violent incidents in April, including when five women were killed by a man armed with a knife at a shopping center in the suburb of Bondi in Sydney. Police said CCTV footage showed it was “obvious” the man targeted women. In another violent incident, a 28-year-old mother was allegedly murdered by her partner, who was already facing charges of raping and stalking her but had been released on bail.

“This role gives me some semblance of hope that the focus is shifting away from this being a women’s problem to solve and instead is a men’s issue that we can take leadership for,” he said.

However, not all Australians had a positive reaction to the news. Jane Hume of the opposition Liberal Party, who represents Victoria in the national Senate, questioned the efficacy of the appointment.

“It does sound to me like a little bit of window dressing around a really important issue that involves genuine cultural change,” she told Sky News.

Within hours of announcing the position, Richardson took to X, writing:  “Some pretty hectic reactions here to an important role and Australian first. It will be about modelling positive role models for boys and men and ensuring we break away from gendered based stereotypes and building respectful relationships. As boys and men we need to lead this.”

While the new Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change now exists at a state level, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also announced in May a rapid review into the prevention of domestic violence after calling the problem a “national crisis.”

“We recognize that governments need to act, but we also recognize that this is an issue for the whole of society. Women should not be responsible for ending violence against women,” he said at the time.

It’s unclear exactly what the image is. A series of tents? Truck beds against a rust orange background? Multicolored rectangles?

Mountains are visible in the background, and in the foreground are the following words: “All Eyes on Rafah” —  a reference to the southernmost Gazan city that became the center of war coverage this week, after an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in the city, on what had been labeled a safe zone, killed dozens of already displaced Palestinians.

In the wake of the attack, the aforementioned image has seemingly been everywhere. Likely created using artificial intelligence, the graphic — which is not an actual picture from Rafah or the war in Gaza — has been shared more than 46 million times on Instagram alone.

It’s become so ubiquitous, comedian Tim Dillon noted it’s been shared like “it’s a new show on NBC.”

But the picture’s popularity has raised questions and critiques on the passivity of the act. Eyes being on Rafah has not stopped the violence, wrote scientist Ayesha Khan on Instagram. Simply posting an ambiguous graphic is performative, Khan and others have noted.

Still, the post’s momentum has continued. Here’s where the phrase comes from, where the graphic originated and what it could signal.

Where did ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ come from?

The phrase “All Eyes on Rafah” has been appearing in various graphics and images associated with the war in Gaza for months and is not necessarily tied to this specific viral image.

It likely originated from comments made in February by Rik Peeperkorn, who leads the World Health Organization’s office in the West Bank and in Gaza.

At the time, more than 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, many of whom had been fleeing from the north and the center parts of Gaza, were crammed into the southernmost city of Rafah, which was also undergoing a wave of Israeli airstrikes — attempts to “hit Hamas terrorists in the area,” an IDF spokesperson said.

“All eyes” were on Rafah, Peeperkorn said, a phrase which then became widely used by activists and made its way into graphics, like the one currently going viral.

What makes this image so popular?

There are a few aspects of this image that may have contributed to its popularity, noted Faiza Hirji, an associate professor at Ontario’s McMaster University who studies race, religion and media.

Also, the way the image is being shared on Instagram — with a handy “add yours” feature that allows users to easily repost the image onto their own personal stories — only aids in its viral success. The easier it is to share, the more likely it is that people will do so.

Still, there’s been some criticism of the image. To understand the graphic, the user would need to have some sense of what is actually happening in Rafah and would therefore know that the image being shared does not actually depict the violence and the scale of destruction taking place. For some, this could make the graphic more appealing, while others have argued that the image takes away from what is actually occurring on the ground.

“I think for some people, this also causes a kind of discomfort,” Hirji said. “Because you’re directing everyone’s gaze to an image that doesn’t really show the horror of what happens in conflict zones.”

What does ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ mean?

Others have pointed out that the image does not actually include the words “Palestine” or “Gaza” — names that have been widely politicized even before October 7.

“Rafah does not have the immediate name recognition for people who haven’t been paying attention,” said writer Heben Nigatu on X. “Are people Googling Rafah? Sharing without looking it up?”

Everybody likely has differing motivations behind sharing an image. For some, sharing the image might be a call for others to investigate what’s happening in the region, and in Rafah specifically, Hirji said. Reposting the image could be a way to say to an audience: “Don’t look away. You can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”

Other interpretations are less charitable. Take for instance the argument that the graphic is a performative gesture, an image that can’t be bothered to show the reality in Gaza with a vaguely political statement stamped atop — not dissimilar to the black squares posted on social media during the racial reckoning of 2020.

But unlike debates about racism in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, for many people in the West the war in Gaza is not happening close to home. This could make it difficult for people to feel empowered, Hirji said, in terms of their direct ability to affect the war’s outcome.

“I think that many people are powerless and feel that powerlessness,” she said. “Some of it may be performative, but maybe they feel that the only action they can really take at this time is to at least raise awareness. And so this notion of ‘All Eyes on Rafah,’ if it can be a bit informative or educational, then perhaps there’s a sense that this is the action they can take.”

And still, there are worries of “slacktivism,” the notion that all we need to do to change the world is share a single infographic enough times.

“We need far more than performative rallies and symbolic protests that don’t aim to disrupt anything,” wrote Khan. “Bearing witness is still a passive act. And we shouldn’t coddle ourselves pretending like a post a day … is substantial.”

The phrase itself — keeping “eyes on” a place — inherently prioritizes the audience rather than Rafah, creating a distance between the viewers and the victims. And still, Hirji said, even amid calls to not look away, the world often does so anyway.

“It’s important, you could say, that if nothing else, we acknowledge our complicity, or we acknowledge our inaction,” Hirji said. “That’s one interpretation.”

But there’s another interpretation, too, which could be that audiences are setting themselves up as watchers to this trauma, Hirji noted, becoming both indifferent and inactive. History and research of past conflicts in parts of the Middle East or the Global South speak for itself, Hirji said — “often so much of what we do is we watch, we judge, we comment,” even while not knowing enough about the places we are watching or commenting on.

“And is that also a point that some people are trying to make by having this call out? To say: So we’re watching it, now what?” Hirji said. “What happens after watching?”

A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted Wednesday for the fifth time since December, spewing massive lava flows that threaten to cut off the town of Grindavík and prompting the evacuation of the world-famous Blue Lagoon.

Dramatic video and images from the scene showed fountains of red-hot lava shooting into the air along a 3.4-kilometer (two-mile) fissure near Mount Hagafell on the Reykjanes Peninsula.

Iceland’s Meteorological Office said in a statement that “the first estimate of scientists is that the start of this eruption is more vigorous than in previous eruptions in the area.”

The eruption began around 1 p.m. local time on Wednesday following an earthquake at the Sundhnúks crater, Iceland’s public broadcaster RUV reported. The Met Office had earlier warned that a volcanic eruption was likely following “intense seismic activity” at the crater and a build-up of magma in its underground reservoir.

Lava flows have cut off two out of three roads leading to the fishing town of Grindavík, and were steadily moving along a defensive barrier built to save the town and key infrastructure from being destroyed, according to the Met Office.

“Lava is flowing outside the defense walls at Grindavík in several places, and lava is also starting to flow outside the walls at Svartsengi,” Víðir Reynisson from Iceland’s Civil Defense told RUV.

He warned that Grindavík is at risk of becoming completely cut off, though he added that the defense barriers were holding.

“The houses in the west and farthest part of the town would have gone under the lava if it weren’t for the defensive walls, but they are still standing and defending,” Reynisson reportedly said.

Grindavík, a town of about 3,000 people, was mostly evacuated before a previous eruption in December. Residents and responders who remain in the town have been urged to leave while they still can, though police told RUV that three residents are refusing to evacuate.

Electricity to Grindavík was cut on Wednesday as a protective measure as lava flows closed in on high-voltage lines and hot and cold pipes in the ground, Kristinn Harðarsonar, production manager at energy company HS Orka, told RUV.

“Most of the high-voltage lines are gone, the pylons are badly damaged and some are on fire,” the Civil Defense’s Reynisson later said.

Benedikt Ófeigsson from Iceland’s Met Office told RUV that the beginning of this eruption was more powerful than previously due to more accumulated magma in the chamber.

“It’s a lot more lava flow than we’ve seen before,” he reportedly said. “This is reflected in today’s massive lava flows.”

Iceland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on X that there was no disruption to international or domestic flights.

But for the third time in just over two months, the country’s famous geothermal spa and tourist hotspot the Blue Lagoon was evacuated, according to its operations manager.

Just under an hour’s drive from Iceland’s capital and largest city Reykjavik, the Blue Lagoon is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. The site is part of southwest Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula — a thick finger of land pointing west into the North Atlantic Ocean from Reykjavik.

Iceland is one of the most active volcanic areas on the planet. Rather than having a central volcano, the Reykjanes Peninsula is dominated by a rift valley, with lava fields and cones.