Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July effectively spiked a draft hostage and ceasefire deal by introducing a raft of new, 11th-hour demands, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth citing a document it obtained.

The report lends credence to charges often leveled at the prime minister – most notably by hostage families – of purposefully prolonging the war and torpedoing deals for his political benefit. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition have pledged to bring down the government should he end the war.

According to the newspaper, at least three of six hostages found dead in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend were due for release as part of the May draft agreement – Carmel Gat, Aden Yerushalmi, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

A senior Israeli official on Wednesday said the new report was “misinformed, misleading and hampers the chance of achieving the release of hostages.”

But separately, an Israeli source familiar with the talks said Netanyahu’s demands were to blame for the deaths of the hostages over the weekend.

The Hostages Families Forum said this weekend that “the finding of the bodies yesterday is a direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”

The ‘Netanyahu Outline’

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that rather than accepting that proposal, the Israeli negotiators submitted new demands, making changes to the proposals they themselves had originally made.

The new demands were nicknamed the “Netanyahu Outline,” the newspaper reported.

Hamas at the time said that Netanyahu had “returned to the strategy of procrastination, evasion, and avoiding reaching an agreement by setting new conditions and demands.”

Bergman, writing in Hebrew, wrote in Tuesday’s report that among the new demands was that Israeli forces continue to occupy the Egypt-Gaza border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and maintain a 1.4-kilometer perimeter in Gaza along the Israeli border. The newspaper posted maps reportedly from the late-July Israeli response. The original May 27 proposal, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, offered an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“Things are very tense. Very much up in the air,” the source said.

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, met on Monday with officials from Qatar, which is mediating a deal, but there are “no meetings this week and nothing planned,” the source said.

In its report on Tuesday, Yedioth said Israeli negotiators in July insisted as part of their new demands on specific guarantees that Palestinian civilians allowed to return to northern Gaza would not bring weapons with them.

Netanyahu’s team, also for the first time, submitted a list of 40 hostages it wanted released as part of a first phase of a potential agreement, the paper reported. It added that the move was controversial because the Israeli negotiators were themselves determining whom they considered to be “sick,” and thus eligible for release, rather than leaving it vague.

Finally, the newspaper reported that the new Israeli demands said a specific group of long-term Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for female Israeli soldiers be sent “abroad” after their release, rather than – as the previous agreement reportedly stated – “abroad or into Gaza.”

Nearly 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse across hundreds of Ireland’s religious-run schools have been documented in a new report, marking the latest grim revelations to emerge from the country’s historic Church-State entanglement.

The report, released Tuesday, documented 2,395 allegations of historical child sexual abuse, involving 884 alleged abusers in 308 schools across the country.

Most of the allegations were reported from the records of 42 religious orders that currently run or previously ran schools in Ireland. The scope of the allegations ranges from 1927-2013. More than half the men accused – which include teachers and priests – have died, it said.

Ireland’s Minister for Education Norma Foley said Tuesday that the level of abuse detailed in the report was “truly shocking – and so is the number of alleged abusers.”

She called the report a “harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse.”

More than 140 survivors provided harrowing testimony for the report, describing being molested, stripped naked, raped and drugged in “an atmosphere of terror and silence.”

Their abuse was often “accompanied by ferocious violence,” the 700-page report said.

Most of the survivors interviewed for the report are men now in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Some said it was the first time they‘d spoken about the abuse and its impact on them, with many saying that their childhood “stopped the day the abuse started.”

Some survivors said the abuse was “so pervasive” that it could not have gone unnoticed by senior leadership within the religious orders that were running the schools. They added that they believed some of those leaders not only ignored the abuse but facilitated and participated in it.

Others said that they believed there had been a “cover-up” in the schools or by the religious order, and “collusion” between the State and Church.

“Many participants said that they felt that the power of the Catholic Church permeated their lives in every way and, for the majority, they felt there was no one they could tell, including their parents,” the report said.

The Catholic Church has been deeply entwined with the Irish state for much of its history. Although a referendum in the 1970s drastically reduced the Church’s political sway, it remained pervasive in many aspects of civil society. Today, nearly 90% of schools in Ireland remain Catholic, even though the percentage of the population that identifies as such is much lower.

Lifelong impact

As adults, survivors detailed a litany of difficulties stemming from the abuse, including failed relationships, mental and physical health problems and addiction issues. Some said that the abuse made them decide not to have children. Others who did said it impacted their parenting.

Many survivors said that they had moved away from family and friends to avoid memories of childhood trauma and described feeling alienated from religious services. Some avoided attending a parent’s funeral or other family event because they said they could not enter a church as a result of the abuse.

A government-mandated investigation into sexual abuse at religious-run boarding and day-schools was first launched after Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ aired a documentary in 2022 that highlighted systemic sexual abuse at Blackrock College, a prestigious private school in Dublin.

The report found that the abuse was spread across public and private schools, including 17 special education schools – which recorded 590 allegations involving 190 alleged abusers.

Foley said on Tuesday that the Irish government would begin a process of establishing a commission to further investigate the abuse and that a redress scheme would be established.

She said that religious orders have a “moral obligation” to contribute to any future redress scheme.

Meanwhile, those religious orders have not committed to contribute to the Mother and Baby Homes redress scheme, which opened for applications earlier this year.

The 2021 Mother and Baby Homes report found that 9,000 babies and children died in 18 of Ireland’s mother and baby homes – church-run institutions where unmarried women were sent to deliver their babies in secret, often against their will – over eight decades.

The religious congregations who ran Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – workhouses where thousands of women and girls lived and worked without pay for years in “harsh and physically demanding” situations – have also declined to contribute to a State redress scheme set up in 2013 to compensate the survivors of those institutions.

The blaze that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower in London was caused by “decades of failure” by the UK government and the construction industry that allowed the 24-storey building to be wrapped in flammable cladding, a seven-year public inquiry has found.

The fire began in the early hours of June 14, 2017, sparked by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. What could have been a small house fire instead turned into Britain’s deadliest blaze since the Blitz, after the flames leapt to flammable insulation and cladding, which had been added to the tower during a major renovation the previous year.

In a 1,700 page report spanning seven volumes, Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the inquiry, said the “systematic dishonesty” of the firms that made and sold the cladding and insulation had led to the blaze.

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupied,” Moore-Bick said.

The report concluded that the fire was “the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry,” he said.

Grenfell United, which represents the survivors and bereaved families of those killed in the blaze, said the report marked “a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change,” but “justice has not been delivered.”

“The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe,” it said in a statement. “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.”

The inquiry had taken “longer than we hoped,” Moore-Bick said in a press conference, in part because it “unveiled many more matters of concern than we had previously expected.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his thoughts are “wholly with those bereaved by, and survivors of, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the residents in the immediate community,” according to PA.

He said the new Labour government will “carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The blaze that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower in London was caused by “decades of failure” by the UK government and the construction industry that allowed the 24-storey building to be wrapped in flammable cladding, a seven-year public inquiry has found.

The fire began in the early hours of June 14, 2017, sparked by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. What could have been a small house fire instead turned into Britain’s deadliest blaze since the Blitz, after the flames leapt to flammable insulation and cladding, which had been added to the tower during a major renovation the previous year.

In a 1,700 page report spanning seven volumes, Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the inquiry, said the “systematic dishonesty” of the firms that made and sold the cladding and insulation had led to the blaze.

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupied,” Moore-Bick said.

The report concluded that the fire was “the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry,” he said.

Grenfell United, which represents the survivors and bereaved families of those killed in the blaze, said the report marked “a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change,” but “justice has not been delivered.”

“The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe,” it said in a statement. “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.”

The inquiry had taken “longer than we hoped,” Moore-Bick said in a press conference, in part because it “unveiled many more matters of concern than we had previously expected.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his thoughts are “wholly with those bereaved by, and survivors of, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the residents in the immediate community,” according to PA.

He said the new Labour government will “carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tendered his resignation ahead of an expected major cabinet reshuffle as a fresh wave of Russian missiles overnight killed at least seven people, including a child.

Kuleba is the latest high-profile member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet to resign as Russia’s invasion grinds on, and his decision comes ahead of an expected visit by the president to the US this month.

As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Kuleba has been a prominent fixture in Zelensky’s administration and one of the most public-facing, especially overseas.

Ukraine’s parliament will consider the foreign minister’s resignation at one of its plenary meetings soon, speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Telegram.

Davyd Arakhamia, the majority leader of Ukraine’s parliament, said Tuesday that there would be major changes expected in the cabinet this week.

“As promised, a major government reset can be expected this week. More than 50% of the Cabinet of Ministers’ staff will be changed,” Arakhamia said on Telegram, adding that new members would be appointed imminently.

Among those who have resigned was the Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin, who was in charge of weapons production. He is expected to assume another defense role, Reuters reported.

The resignations also include the justice, environment and reintegration ministers.

In his nightly address Tuesday, Zelensky said the coming fall will be “extremely important for Ukraine” and as such “our state institutions must be set up so that Ukraine achieves all the results we need.”

“To do this, we need to strengthen some areas of the government… I am also counting on a slightly different weight for certain areas of our foreign and domestic policy,” he said.

Missiles hit Lviv

The expected reshuffle came as Russian missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian cities.

Lviv’s mayor Andriy Sadovyi confirmed the deaths and said residential buildings were damaged in the attack.

Earlier, the head of the city’s regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi said among the dead is a 14-year-old girl and that at least 25 people were injured in the attack. A 15-month-old child suffered “moderate” injuries and four other children have minor injuries, he said.

Lviv, in Ukraine’s far west, is generally considered one of the safer places in the country and many people from eastern regions relocated there to seek safety.

The day before, a Russian strike against a military educational facility in central Ukraine killed 51 people and injured more than 200 others, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office, in one of the deadliest single attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“Ordinary residential buildings in the city, schools, and medical facilities were damaged,” Zelensky said of the Lviv attack in a Telegram post Wednesday.

Five people were also injured in Russian attacks in the central city of Kryvyi Rih after a hotel building was destroyed, according to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration Serhiy Lysak. It came just over a week after Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack aimed at energy infrastructure across the country, in which two were killed in an attack on a hotel in Kryvyi Rih.

“Each of our partners in the world who help Ukraine with air defense is a real defender of life,” Zelenksy said, appealing for more support for its air defenses. “And anyone who convinces partners to give Ukraine more range in order to respond to terror justly is working to prevent such Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities. Terror must be stopped.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A series of smiling Instagram photos of diplomats wearing purple and enjoying cupcakes has caused a spat between Iran and Australia, with the Australian ambassador summoned to explain the “disrespectful” behavior.

The Australian Embassy in Tehran posted photos on Monday to mark Wear It Purple Day, an annual celebration of LGBTQIA+ youth founded in Australia.

“Today, and every day, we’re dedicated to creating a supportive environment, where everyone, especially LGBTQIA+ youth, can feel proud to be themselves,” the caption read.

The post drew swift condemnation from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which deemed it “disrespectful and contrary to Iranian and Islamic cultural norms,” according to state news agency IRNA.

Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, which considers same-sex relations a breach of Islamic values, punishable under the country’s Sharia-based law.

“The official Instagram page of the Australian Embassy in Tehran has promoted homosexuality in a derogatory post,” IRNA reported.

Australian ambassador Ian McConville responded by saying the embassy “had no intention of offending the Iranian people,” according to IRNA.

The bi-lingual post on the official Australia In Iran Instagram account has drawn thousands of likes and comments, including from the German Embassy Tehran which responded with three purple heart emojis.

Asked about the diplomatic spat in an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, government minister Murray Watt said he was “concerned” about Iran’s reaction to a message he said was in keeping with his own country’s values.

“We support all Australians, regardless of their sexual orientation, their gender, their race, and I am concerned to see this reaction from the Iranian government to the activities of the Australian embassy,” Watt told the ABC.

“We’re very proud about the fact that our embassies promote Australian values internationally and I’m very concerned to see an overseas government seemingly take action against an Australian embassy that is upholding Australian values,” he said.

According to Amesty International, LGBTQIA+ people suffer “systemic discrimination and violence in Iran,” where the punishment for consensual same-sex relations ranges from flogging to the death penalty.

Iranian authorities have sentenced rights advocates to death over posts on social media.

In 2021 prominent Iranian LGBTQIA+ campaigners Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani and Elham Chobdar were arrested and later sentenced to death for alleged crimes including “corruption on earth” and “promoting homosexuality” over social media, according to the US government and Amnesty International.

Both advocates were released on bail in 2023, and Sedighi-Hamadani fled Iran for an “undisclosed country” the next year. Chobdar was re-arrested in 2024 and remains in detention, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The banging on the door started just after sunrise, when law student Iftekhar Alam was still sleeping in his fifth-floor apartment.

Around half a dozen armed police officers pushed inside, shouting obscenities and telling him he had wronged the nation of Bangladesh.

“Where is your phone? Where is your laptop?” the officers shouted as they pointed their guns at him and searched his apartment, Alam said. “They were like crazy, really crazy.”

“They put me in the black glass car, and right away, they handcuffed me. They blindfolded me,” he said.

Alam believes he was taken to Aynaghor, known in Bangladesh as the “House of Mirrors” – a notorious detention center at the headquarters of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) in the capital Dhaka.

Human rights groups say hundreds of people were tortured there during the 15-year rule of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned in August after weeks of protest.

After Hasina fled the country by helicopter, some of the political prisoners detained in Bangladesh’s shadowy prison system have been freed and have started to reveal what took place there.

‘My life will end here’

Alam, 23, had been part of anti-government protests since they began in early July, and was close friends with one of the main protest leaders.

The protests started as student-led demonstrations against government job quotas, then later exploded into a nationwide movement to expel Hasina after she ordered a deadly crackdown, killing hundreds of people in Bangladesh’s worst political violence in decades.

During the interrogations, Alam said he was pressured to reveal the locations of the protest leaders. His captors threatened to “vanish” and kill him if he didn’t.

In detention, he says security personnel tortured him for hours – they beat him all over his body with metal pipes until they broke bones in his foot, then forced him to walk around in circles over and over, making him vomit from the pain.

They also extinguished cigarettes on his hands and feet, screaming at him that he would be punished further if he cried out in pain – calling it a “game,” he said.

Alam said his interrogators told him that the next phase was electric shocks and waterboarding – and gave him a “sample” of the electric shock on the back of his neck as a warning.

“There is no escaping from this, and my life will end here, and no one will know,” he said, reflecting on his mindset during those hours.

Rights groups say he’s far from the only victim.

During Hasina’s rule, detainees were subjected to torture at a network of other secret centres across the country, run by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and the Detective Branch of the police, according to Odhikar, a Bangladeshi human rights organization.

The RAB – a joint taskforce composed of the police, military and border guards – was sanctioned by the United States in 2021 for its alleged involvement in “serious human rights abuse.”

Odhikar estimates that 709 people were forcibly disappeared under Hasina’s rule. Some were later released, sentenced or found dead – 155 are still missing.

“Bangladeshi law enforcement agencies and security forces systematically committed enforced disappearances” mostly targeting “academics, journalists, dissenting voices, and political activists” which created a “climate of fear in the country,” Okhikar said in a statement on August 29.

International rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also published multiple reports documenting disappearances and torture by police and other security forces during Hasina’s rule.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohammed Yunus – who is leading the new interim government – has announced the creation of a commission to investigate the “disappeared” people, and has invited a UN fact-finding team to Bangladesh to independently probe alleged atrocities committed during the recent protests.

“The issue of enforced disappearances has a long and painful history in Bangladesh,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“The UN Human Rights Office looks forward to supporting the Interim Government and people of Bangladesh at this pivotal moment to revitalise democracy, seek accountability and reconciliation, and advance human rights for all the people in Bangladesh.”

Hours after Hasina fled and her government collapsed – and within 24 hours of his capture – Alam said he was released.

His captors dropped him on a quiet road before dawn, threatening to shoot him if he opened his eyes as they drove away.

Nearly one month after his release, Alam has had the plaster cast on his foot removed, and he is now moving around on crutches.

But he says the mental scars will take much longer to heal.

“It was like (a) nightmare,” he said.

Targeting protest leaders

Nusrat Tabassum – one of the most senior women coordinating the protest – was also pursued by the authorities.

“(It was a) very traumatic time for me,” Tabassum said. “They broke three doors. They took me with them, and oh my god, the physical torture, that was miserable.”

Tabassum says she was badly beaten during five days in detention from July 28 to August 1. She re-joined the protests the day after her release.

The 23-year-old political science student attends the prestigious Dhaka University, which became a central gathering point for the protests in July and early August.

On the university’s manicured campus sits Curzon Hall, a British colonial-era building surrounded by palm trees that offers an oasis away from the chaotic streets of the capital.

As Tabassum walks through the building’s historic arches, it’s clear that her bravery has turned her into a poster child for the movement.

Fellow female students occasionally stop her to take selfies and ask about her time in detention.

“Our reunion will be at Aynaghor,” one shouts at her as she walks past – a sign of how many of the students spent time at detention centers. “Aynaghor” or “House of Mirrors” has morphed into a catch-all term for the various places political prisoners were held.

Tabassum says she was beaten for more than four hours, covering her in bruises, filling her mouth with cuts, and bursting her ear drum.

“Without (a) hearing aid, I can’t listen in my right ear,” Tabassum said. “Two teeth (became) loose because of the beating.”

During her detention, she was forced to make a joint confession with five other student leaders which was broadcast on television.

“They forced us to make a video statement that we stopped our protest, and there will be no more movement,” she said.

Making that video was “more traumatic” than the beatings, she said, because she feared the people of Bangladesh would feel betrayed.

“That was the most sad thing,” she said.

Bangladesh 2.0

Tabassum said that when word spread that Hasina had resigned her post, ending her authoritarian grip on the country, protesters felt their sacrifice had been worth it.

“I cried a lot after I heard the news,” she said. “It was like I lived for that moment my whole life.”

As she continues her recovery, Tabassum says she’s struggling with memory loss, and has trouble recalling events that occurred even before the beating.

But she is determined to help shape the new country – or “Bangladesh 2.0”, as people here call it.

Protest art and murals now line the streets of Dhaka with striking pop art-style designs and slogans such as “long live resistance,” “let your dreams fly,” and “this is new Bangladesh, made by Gen Z.”

The streets are alive with renewed optimism and civic pride – with micro-protests popping up across Bangladeshi cities, as interest groups try to make their voices heard during the reform process.

Previously, many people were too afraid to protest on the streets for fear of arrest or being “disappeared” under the time of Hasina.

But now even families are on the street, campaigning for the release of victims caught in Bangladesh’s shadowy detention system.

There’s cautious optimism that the country will change under new leadership, but some remain wary, as instability pervades every sector of society.

Yunus, the interim leader, has asked the public for patience as his team tries to address “mountain-like challenges” after “15 years of fascist rule.”

The students who brought him to power believe that he will uphold the country’s best interests.

Yunus has “guardian vibes,” Tabassum said.

“He cares about us, he cares about my country,” she said. “We like to keep our trust in him.”

But she acknowledges that “post revolution reformation is very hard.”

“My country is sick,” she said. “But our people, we (will) stand together.”

Delegations from dozens of African countries are gathering in Beijing for a three-day summit set to see China showcase itself as a lead partner for the continent, despite slowing lending for its development – and as it faces rising frictions with the West.

A procession of African leaders have arrived in the Chinese capital in recent days, greeted at the airport by honor guards and dance troupes with images flashed across state media, while Chinese officials have touted the gathering as the largest diplomatic event they’ve hosted in recent years.

The fanfare comes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has much to signal to his visiting counterparts, and the world, as the summit gets underway Wednesday.

It is the first such gathering between Chinese and African leaders in the capital since 2018 and arrives at a critical juncture in ties between Beijing and a continent that’s home to its only overseas military base and where it has been the driving economic foreign power.

In recent decades, free flowing Chinese funding has driven the construction of highways, rail lines and power plants across Africa. The financing has filled funding gaps and expanded China’s political influence, but also generated criticism it was saddling countries with unsustainable debt.

Now, in the face of these concerns and its own economic slowdown, Xi and his officials will be likely pitching a new tune – what they posit as sustainable “small yet beautiful” investments and more collaboration on the green technologies in which China leads the world in producing.

This week will be Beijing’s most high-profile chance to telegraph that vision, as it seeks to point the direction forward for ties with a continent whose political backing is only growing more important amid Beijing’s rising frictions with Washington – and for Xi’s aim to position China as a champion of the Global South and alternative leader to the US.

How these changes play out for African leaders remains another question. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa bluntly called on China to “narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade” during a bilateral meeting with Xi on Monday.

‘Critical questions’

A number of leaders are arriving for the three-yearly Forum on China and Africa Cooperation from countries grappling with heavy international debt, including from Chinese loans, and seek more investment and trade to boost their economies.

They will likely probe whether a 2021 pledge from Xi to import products worth $300 billion from Africa by next year will be achieved. They’re also likely to press for ways to ensure growing trade is not merely an exchange of African raw materials for Chinese manufactured goods.

“Critical questions are going to be asked –  and so African countries and their Chinese partners are going to be hard pressed to provide answers,” said Paul Nantulya, a senior China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

When it comes to investment, even before the pandemic, China had already been reducing funding for the big-scale infrastructure projects that saw the world’s second largest economy become Africa’s largest bilateral creditor over recent decades.

Chinese lending to African government or state-linked borrowers cratered during the pandemic, reaching a low of roughly $1 billion in 2022, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. The data showed a modest recovery to $4.6 billion in 2023, a far cry from a peak of more than $28.8 billion in 2016.

Some African leaders holding talks in Beijing are facing steep challenges repaying debt from China and other lenders.

Kenya, whose president, William Ruto, is in Beijing this week, was rocked by protests earlier this summer over a finance bill introduced by the government to rein in public debt. That debt includes nearly $6 billion owed to China and more than $20 billion payable to multilateral banks, according to an April government statement.

Analysts say China is not the main cause of African debt distress in most cases, making up a comparatively small portion of the continent’s overall public debt. But the influx of Chinese loans increased the debt burden, and observers suggest China has moved too slowly or been inflexible in cases when it comes to helping countries that are heavily indebted to it get relief.

Beijing has defended its lending practices and its efforts to ease debt repayment but is unlikely to make debt relief a major theme of the multilateral summit, where it will focus on trade measures and promoting what it says is a shift to “small yet beautiful” investments.

The term, referring to projects with smaller budgets and environmental or social impact, has emerged as a key buzzword as Xi’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). That’s as the infrastructure drive for the developing world transitions to a new phase following a decade of growth – that saw some projects slammed for environmental costs or poor labor standards and others stalled.

“There will be fewer projects but a greater spotlight on them. In an ironic way, I think this will lead to a more sustainable path,” said Bhaso Ndzendze, an associate professor of politics and international relations at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

But “the African side is keen to accept almost anything that China has to offer,” he continued, pointing to limited alternative avenues of support.

Beijing is also expected to push to make Africa’s market a destination for its prolific production of green tech like solar panels and electric vehicles.

The move may be welcomed by African nations grappling with power shortages and climate threat, but also comes as such Chinese goods face hefty tariffs in the US, Europe and Canada, as those markets move to block what they see as a flood of unfairly subsidized products.

Competition with the West

Past gatherings of the twenty-four-year-old forum have included big promises of financing and boosting bilateral trade. Beijing will now be keenly aware that its commitments face competition.

In recent years, the US and its European partners have launched their own efforts to fund infrastructure in Africa, widely seen to be driven by their concern over China’s expansive footprint in the region – and its access to African critical minerals key for the fabrication of green tech.

“Now (China) has competition on the street … so that also might trigger them to keep the momentum going on infrastructure, because they don’t want to cede that space to the US,” said Ammar A. Malik, a faculty affiliate in public policy at William & Mary, who monitors China’s overseas spending.

Xi is also expected to use the gathering to project to the rest of the world the idea of solidarity between China’s view on the world and that of countries across Africa – a sign to Washington that despite pressure from the US and its allies, Beijing has numerous friends.

Visiting leaders are likely to continue to endorse Xi’s cornerstone rhetoric around building a global “community with a shared future,” a vision he sees as unlike the one that’s been unfairly dominated by the West. Attendees could also express a unified opinion on global issues like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

The forum has, in recent years, expanded beyond economic cooperation into areas like peace and security, alongside China’s own growing security interests in the region, where its companies’ sprawling mining operations have been subject to criminal attacks.

“China-Africa relations is going back to the basics in the sense that it started as a political relationship,” said Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigeria-based policy analyst at the consultancy Development Reimagined.

Eguegu pointed to current Chinese Communist Party-funded initiatives to fund training for African political parties as well as African port calls from the People’s Liberation Army navy and joint military drills as part of a “ramping up of engagement in the political-security dimension.”

“China is preparing its diplomatic relationships across the world for a world that is expressing geopolitical tensions,” he said.

Uganda’s main opposition leader Bobi Wine has been “seriously injured” in a confrontation with police, his party the National Unity Platform (NUP) said Tuesday.

The NUP said in a post on social media that Wine was shot in the leg in an attempt on his life, just outside the capital Kampala. Local police said however that the injury was caused when the popstar-turned-politician “stumbled while getting into a vehicle.”

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was the main opposition frontrunner in the presidential elections in January 2021 and lost to President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni claimed at the time that he had been re-elected for a sixth term despite widespread allegations of fraud and intimidation.

The NUP said in a post on ‘X’ that Wine was in Bulindo to meet a lawyer when “the police and military … surrounded our vehicles and started firing live bullets, teargas canisters and other projectiles.”

According to the NUP, Wine “was clearly targeted” and shot in the leg.

“Security operatives have made an attempt on the life of President Bobi Wine,” the NUP claimed on ‘X’.

Images posted on his own ‘X’ account show Wine bleeding and lying in a hospital bed, with a bleeding injury on his shin. A statement on his account said he is being treated by doctors after the shooting.

“During the ensuing altercation, it is alleged that he sustained injuries. Police officers on site claim he stumbled while getting into his vehicle, causing the injury, whereas Hon. Kyagulanyi and his team assert that he was shot,” the police statement said, adding that an investigation is being conducted.

A man is on trial accused of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife, as well as encouraging dozens of other men to rape her in their home while she was unconscious, court documents show.

The alleged victim, Gisèle, 72, appeared in a courtroom in Avignon, France, on Monday for the opening of the trial, sunglasses on, her daughter and two sons by her side.

For the next four months, she will come face to face with her accused abusers, most of whom are complete strangers to her.

He faces nine charges including several counts of rape with aggravating circumstances, the drugging of a victim to commit rape, and the sharing of images related to those assaults.

Prosecutors were able to put together a case because Dominique documented a number of the alleged assaults on camera.

Held in pre-trial detention since 2020, courtroom sketches show the defendant entered the courtroom in a black t-shirt and sat facing his wife.

“He recognizes that he’s done what he has done,” his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro told journalists in court on Monday. “There was not an ounce of contestation during the whole investigation.”

In the dock, the men accused of taking part in these rapes sat with their heads down.

Police have identified at least 92 sexual assaults committed by 72 men, with ages ranging from 26 to 74, court documents show.

Fifty were identified, and most have been charged with either aggravated or attempted rape and are standing trial alongside Gisèle’s husband.

The ordeal lasted almost ten years, the first alleged assaults dating back to 2011.

The crimes came to light in 2020 when Dominique was caught filming under women’s skirts in a shopping center.

After police seized his phone and computer, they say they found evidence of the rapes. An investigation was opened and the wife was made aware of the abuse she had endured for almost ten years.

Court documents show that Dominique has told investigators that the other men were all aware his wife had been drugged without her knowledge, something a number of the other defendants deny.

Throughout the trial, Gisèle will see and hear what was done to her.

On Tuesday, she sat through a reading of the horrific acts she was subjected to, as well as the arguments from each of the defendants’ lawyers.

Last Friday ahead of the trial, another one of her lawyers, Antoine Arebalo-Camus told reporters “she had no idea what had been inflicted on her, so she has no memory of the rapes she suffered for 10 years.”

Gisèle’s daughter says her mother sought medical advice for the memory loss and extreme fatigue she was experiencing as a side effect of the drugs.

Speaking to French media in several interviews, she said that her mother “saw doctors, she saw neurologists,” and that the medical profession failed to detect the problem.

The daughter has now started an awareness campaign called “M’endors Pas,” meaning “Don’t put me to sleep” on drug-facilitated sexual assault.

The trial began on September 2 in the southern French town of Avignon, and a verdict is due on December 20 this year.