Dozens of people have been killed and multiple others injured in an overnight Israeli airstrike on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza, according to hospital and government authorities in the Palestinian enclave.

The school, run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), was housing displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp at the time of the strike, the Gaza government media office said.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had taken “many measures” to minimize the danger in advance of the strike, including aerial surveillance and the use of “additional precise intelligence.”

The attack came after the IDF ramped up ground and air assaults in the center of the strip on Tuesday amid a deepening humanitarian crisis there. Palestinians in central Gaza have reported that the intensity and frequency of Israeli strikes in the last week have felt like the beginning of the war.

Gaza authorities said the dead and injured continue to be brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which is operating at three times its clinical capacity, “signaling a real disaster that will lead to a greater increase in the number of martyrs,” the Gaza media office said.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has supported Al-Aqsa hospital, said Wednesday it had taken in more than 70 people who had been killed, and more than 300 injured, in just 48 hours, amid an escalation in bombing and ground fighting.

Karin Huster, an MSF nurse, said in the group’s statement: “We have seen hospitals being bombed. We have seen refugee camps being bombed. We have seen humanitarian warehouses being bombed. The situation is apocalyptic.”

The latest attack also came as American, Egyptian and Qatari officials met in Doha to revive negotiations on a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The meetings follow a three-phase proposal — characterized as an Israeli plan — laid out by US President Joe Biden that would pair a release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire” in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said the country’s military offensive in Gaza would not be halted for any resumption of ceasefire and hostage release talks with Hamas.

“We are in a process of continuous engagement to wear down the enemy. Any negotiations with the terrorist organization Hamas will only be conducted under fire,” Gallant said in a recorded video statement.

A man has died after falling from a 1,981 foot (604-meter-high) cliff in Norway that featured in a “Mission Impossible” film.

Preikestolen, known in English as “Pulpit Rock” is a cliff in southwestern Norway overlooking the Lysefjord. It is one of Norway’s most famous mountain hikes and sees more than 300,000 visitors a year, according to the country’s official tourism website.

Nina Thommesen, police attorney for the Sør-Vest politidistrikt, confirmed that a man in his 40s had died on Monday. She said the man was traveling alone and was found with his phone and ID. He has not yet been officially identified, but the police say they are “reasonably certain” of his identity.

Two witnesses were questioned on Monday, including one who saw the incident happen. He explained that the man slipped and fell.

Although it is “the most iconic natural landmark in Norway,” according to the non-profit which manages the site, Preikestolen grew in fame when it was featured in the sixth “Mission Impossible” film, starring Tom Cruise.

It was used as a filming location – doubling for Kashmir – in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” for an action sequence at the end of the 2018 film, where the film’s two central characters fall off the cliff.

For the premiere of the film, 2,000 people hiked 4 kilometres (2.4 miles) to the cliff to see it projected by lasers at night. Cruise praised the premiere, calling it “the most impossible screening” of the film.

The film was expected to have a positive impact on the area and local tourism, according to the Preikestolen non-profit, who work to preserve the area and keep it safe for visitors.

At least four people were killed and more than 20 others injured when a passenger train collided with a freight train in the Czech Republic on Wednesday night, authorities said.

Rescue operations have ended and authorities will investigate what caused the crash in the city of Pardubice, police said Thursday.

About 380 people were traveling aboard the passenger train, the Fire Rescue Service said. It was traveling overnight from Prague to the city of Chop in western Ukraine, according to operator RegioJet’s website.

The freight train was carrying calcium carbide – a hazardous industrial chemical – although the first two wagons were empty, so no leak occurred, the fire department said.

Footage after the crash on news website idnes.cz showed at least one carriage off the track, while police showed a line of emergency service vehicles and a helicopter in a post on X, Reuters reported.

This story has been updated with additional information.

Roman Gorilyk is now little more than a skeleton. His ribs and collarbones are sticking out, his belly is sunken, his shoulder and hip joints clearly visible under his pale skin.

Gorilyk’s extreme emaciation appears to be the result of the two years he spent in Russian captivity. The former checkpoint guard at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine was detained by Russian troops in March 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He was finally released on Friday, one of 75 Ukrainians exchanged for 75 Russian prisoners of war.

The Ukrainian authorities released several photographs of Gorilyk, 40, on Wednesday to show the toll they say Russian captivity has taken on him.

“The condition of Roman and other Ukrainian prisoners of war evokes horror and associations with the darkest pages of human history – Nazi concentration death camps,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian government body, said in a statement posted on Telegram alongside the photos.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the prisoners returned to Ukraine in a “horrifying” state. “The torture by starvation is monstrous, the beatings and violence are sophisticated,” he said in a statement posted on X, accusing Russia of ignoring international human rights agreements.

“There are no Geneva Conventions anymore… Russia again thinks it can avoid being held accountable for massive war crimes,” he said.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the set of international laws that regulate armed conflict, prisoners of war must be treated humanely and with dignity, and must be provided with basic daily food rations that are “sufficient in quantity, quality and variety to keep prisoners of war in good health and to prevent loss of weight or the development of nutritional deficiencies.”

The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Gorilyk was among 169 guards who were taken by the invading Russian forces and transported to Russia via Belarus. It said that 89 of these people are still being held captive, and that Moscow is using them in exchange for Russian servicemen captured in battle.

American John Poulos was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 42 years in prison by a Colombian court, after he was found guilty of aggravated femicide in the killing of a young Colombian DJ named Valentina Trespalacios, as well as crimes of concealment, alteration or destruction of evidence.

The killing occurred in Bogotá in January 2023, and has since captured public attention in Colombia. Before her death, Trespalacios was beginning to gain success at music festivals and had been in a romantic relationship with Poulos since 2021, according to accounts from her family and lawyers who took her case.

The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia said in a statement after the ruling that its prosecutors had proven that Poulos struck and suffocated his partner and tried to hide the body.

“The security camera records show that the aggressor wrapped the victim’s body, hid it in a suitcase and abandoned it in a garbage container in the town of Fontibón, in the west of Bogotá. It was found there hours later by the authorities,” the AG office said.

During Tuesday’s court proceedings, the judge considered that the evidence presented by the prosecutors was sufficient to determine Poulos’ guilt, imposing a prison sentence of 42 years and eight months – about five years less than what prosecutors had requested.

Additionally, the judge prohibited Poulos from approaching or attempting to communicate with Trespalacios’ family for 20 years, and ordered that he be expelled from Colombia once he completes his sentence.

Poulos’ defense team has said it will appeal the judgement. It had argued that Poulos was innocent of femicide and that he should instead be tried for homicide, which would carry a lesser sentence.

In Colombia, femicide — the killing of a woman because of her gender — is considered a more serious crime than homicide. Under Colombian law, femicide is often punished with a higher penalty.

Defense lawyer Fredy Spíndola told the Focus Noticias channel that he and his client believe the witnesses “were all in cahoots, that they all said the same thing.”

The victim’s legal team, meanwhile, celebrated the sentence, saying it recognizes that Trespalacios was a victim of various types of violence.

“It is a fair decision for us, which is also consistent with the material evidentiary elements, with the theory of the case that we had from the beginning. From the beginning, we established that we were facing objectification, an instrumentalization of a woman through various factors, psychological violence, violence of various types, including physical violence,” lawyer Miguel Ángel del Río told Focus Noticias.

Poulos was detained in Panama in January 2023, when he was trying to fly to Turkey. He was then deported to Colombia, where he denied the charges against him. He was sentenced almost a year and a half after Trespalacios’ death.

Del Río also pointed out that only until the conviction is made final in a second-instance appellate court will Trespalacios’ family be able to seek reparation for damages.

South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) party faces a mammoth challenge as it needs to form a government with its political rivals after suffering a seismic blow in last week’s election.

On Wednesday, the ANC’s national spokesperson insisted that any coalition government would be in the interests of unity and stability and hinted at a government of national unity of some kind.

“The ANC has taken the position that we must all act in the interest of our country and its people, and work on a national consensus on the form of government that is best suited to move South Africa forward at this moment in our history,” Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri told a press briefing.

Still, some of the same parties that sought the ANC’s demise will now have to play a part in governing South Africa.

For decades, the ANC could rule alone, but support for the the party plummeted to around 40% in last Wednesday’s elections, down from 57% in 2019.

Analysts and opinion polls had forecast losses for the ANC but a pivotal factor in the party’s staggering decline was former President Jacob Zuma and his newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which capitalized on widespread discontent within the ANC’s traditional voter base.

Zuma’s revenge

Zuma – a fierce critic of current ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – was forced to resign as president in 2018 and has been looking for political revenge ever since.

His MK party, named after the ANC’s former armed wing, appears to have achieved just that – formed just five months ago, it is now the third-largest party in South Africa, receiving almost 15% of the vote.

Zuma positioned MK as “a party that is meant to restore the ANC to its former glory,” said political analyst Tessa Dooms, programmes director at the Rivonia Circle non-profit organization/political think tank in Johannesburg. She says many MK voters saw this ballot as a protest vote.

Despite Zuma being barred from running for parliament by the Constitutional Court because of a previous contempt of court violation, the 82-year-old’s face remained on the ballot paper.

Zuma is no stranger to controversy or the courtroom. He has faced hundreds of corruption, fraud and racketeering charges over the years. He has always denied all of them and became known as the “Teflon President” because few politicians could have survived the scandals he weathered.

Ramaphosa replaced him as president when Zuma was finally forced to resign. Later revelations of “state capture” – or rampant corruption riveted the nation in an anti-corruption commission. Much of the focus was on Zuma’s relationship with the influential and wealthy Gupta brothers.

With the ANC’s popularity now at an all-time low and as Ramaphosa’s political future hangs in the balance, Zuma could have the last laugh. But it is too early to tell.

Due to the poor election showing, South Africa’s political landscape has been fundamentally altered, leaving the ANC with the daunting task of forming a coalition government.

In many countries, coalition talks can take months, but South Africa’s constitution gives rival parties a short window to do something they have never really done before: come together.

According to the constitution, rival parties have a mere 14 days to create a coalition after the final election results are announced.

The outcome of these talks will likely determine Ramaphosa’s future as president.

Ramaphosa’s allies in the party are digging in. On Sunday, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula warned potential coalition partners that the president’s resignation is “not going to happen.”

The potential coalition partners present starkly different political ideologies and policy priorities.

A marriage of convenience

First, there is the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), a broadly centrist and pro-business party that has heavily criticized the ANC for many years.

Led by John Steenhuisen, it is seen by many as a party for White South Africans, something the DA rejects. Steenhuisen has not ruled out going into a coalition with the ANC.

A DA-ANC alliance, however it would form, would likely keep Ramaphosa in his job, say analysts.

“The only way Ramaphosa stays is through a DA-ANC coalition. Outside that, the other parties, MK and EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters), have made it clear the first point of negotiation is he must go,” said TK Pooe, a senior lecturer at Wits School of Governance.

If the ANC were to pair with the DA, which received 21.8% of the vote, their combined support would amount to more than 60%, an outright majority. However, this relationship would require both parties to make some major compromises.

While in government, the ANC’s flagship policy for driving economic inclusion and racial equality in post-apartheid South Africa has been its Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy, known as triple-BEE or simply BEE.

The BEE policy has been criticized by some as neither broad-based, nor empowering.

In contrast, the DA has said it would replace BEE with an “Economic Justice Policy” that “targets the poor black majority for redress, rather than a small, connected elite.”

The DA is also against the ANC’s flagship National Health Insurance Act (NIH) in its current form. The act, which was signed into law two weeks before the election, seeks to provide universal health care for all and gradually limit the role of private health insurers.

However, both parties believe in the primacy of South Africa’s constitution and both have promised to crack down on corruption. Awkwardly, the DA is currently pressing corruption charges against the ANC’s deputy president, Paul Mashatile.

In a move to appease internal critics, the ANC-DA coalition could be expanded to include smaller parties, or the ANC could form a minority government with a “confidence-and-supply” agreement with opposition partners like the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), where they remain outside of government but support it on key votes in exchange for policy concessions.

A bitter pill to swallow?

If the ANC decides to pursue coalition talks with MK, then Zuma will want Ramaphosa out, solidifying his revenge.

However, if South Africa’s president maintains his grip on the ANC, a coalition with MK is unlikely.

The MK party’s manifesto also demands an overhaul of the country’s constitution to restore more powers to traditional leaders.

By appealing to his Zulu base, Zuma’s party has also stirred ethnic and tribal tensions, a strategy that, while electorally effective, risks deepening divisions in South Africa, Verwoerd added.

The ANC’s policies, grounded in the principles of non-racial and non-tribal governance, are at odds with this approach.

It is also currently unclear how much MK actually wants to govern. Despite doing well at the polls, the party has demanded a re-run, threatened court action, and suggested boycotting the first sitting of Parliament. However, it has provided no evidence of voting irregularities.

The other option for a coalition is the EFF, led by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, who was expelled from the party more than a decade ago. The breakaway party espouses land expropriation without compensation and sweeping state nationalism, including nationalizing the Reserve Bank.

Malema has said he would give the EFF vote to the ANC on the condition that his deputy, Floyd Shivambu, becomes Minister of Finance in an effort to control fiscal policy.

South Africa’s business community and middle class are broadly nervous about an EFF–ANC coalition and its effect on investor confidence. The DA calls it part of a “doomsday” option because of the potential impact on investment and trade.

The EFF won just under 10% of the vote, so any coalition with the ANC would need to include at least another party in the mix to give it a healthy majority. The IFP, with almost 4% of the vote, could be such a kingmaker.

Aside from a classic coalition deal or a “confidence and supply” agreement, another hypothetical option on the table would be a “government of national unity” (GNU), bringing in all the major parties.

This scenario would hark back to the post-apartheid era when South Africa operated under a GNU to oversee the new constitution, led by Mandela as president and FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki as deputy presidents, between April 1994 and February 1997.

With less than two weeks to finalize coalition agreements, South Africa’s political future remains uncertain; the ANC must navigate this complex landscape to form a stable government and address the challenges that have led to its diminished support, while Ramaphosa’s leadership hangs in the balance amidst Zuma’s dramatic comeback.

Israel is phasing out the use of the detention camp of Sde Teiman in Israel’s Negev desert, a state attorney told Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday during a first-ever hearing about the facility where hundreds of Palestinian detainees from Gaza have allegedly been held under conditions of extreme abuse.

State attorney Aner Helman told the court that 700 inmates had been moved to Ofer military facility in the occupied West Bank, with another 500 set to be transferred in the weeks to come. Around 200 detainees will remain in Sde Teiman, said Helman, who added that the state would provide an update on their status within three days.

Last week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said the military launched a probe into the allegations of mistreatment at Sde Teiman, as well as at Anatot and Ofer, two other military detention camps for Palestinians from Gaza. The committee tasked with examining the conditions of Palestinian detainees from Gaza is set to submit its recommendations to Halevi this month.

According to the accounts, the camp some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier is split into two parts: enclosures holding scores of detainees from Gaza, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are blindfolded, strapped to their beds, wearing diapers and fed through straws.

In a May 20 response to a petition led by the rights group Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the Israeli government said it is set to “reduce the number of inmates held in military facilities in general and the facility of Sde Teiman in particular, with the intention that this facility will be used as a reception, interrogation and initial sorting facility, for keeping prisoners for short periods only.”

“Detainees are handcuffed based on their risk level and health status. Incidents of unlawful handcuffing are not known to the authorities.”

The IDF did not directly deny accounts of people being stripped of their clothing or held in diapers. Instead, the Israeli military said that the detainees are given back their clothing once the IDF has determined that they pose no security risk.

Russia will increase the number of military instructors in Burkina Faso, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday during a trip to the West African nation.

“Russian instructors are working here, and their number will increase; at the same time, we are training members of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies of Burkina Faso in the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said in the capital city of Ouagadougou. “Here, Russian instructors are working; their number will increase.”

Russia furthermore intends to supply Burkina Faso with military products to strengthen the country’s defense capability, he said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday posted a photo of Lavrov in Ouagadougou, noting that he had been received by acting President Ibrahim Traoré. Lavrov was accompanied on the trip by Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yevkurov.

Burkina Faso is currently under military rule after a junta staged a coup d’état in July 2022. Its junta, headed by Traoré, has said it is prioritizing building up security amid an ongoing and deadly internal conflict.

Violence-related deaths in Burkina Faso doubled last year, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

So far in 2024, hundreds of civilians have already been killed in attacks this year, including around 170 in three villages in March, and approximately 30 in separate mosque and church attacks in February.

Engulfed in violence, Burkina Faso has been named the world’s most neglected displacement crisis for the second year, by the NRC. In 2024, 6.3 million people in the country will need humanitarian assistance, the aid organization said, with over two million people internally displaced.

US officials have warned for years now that both Russia and China are working to build influence in Africa. In 2019, the former head of US Africa Command, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser also said that Russia was using mercenaries and arms sales to gain access to natural resources in Africa.

Isolated from much of the world due to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia appears to be renewing overtures in the continent. In early March of this year, Africa Command again warned Congress that Russia was aggressively working to expand its footing in Africa, and that several countries were “at the tipping point” of falling under its influence.

In his comments this week, Lavrov also thanked Burkinabe leaders for their “effective assistance in resolving issues that allowed us to resume the activities of our embassy in Ouagadougou.”

“We are implementing a program to resume the activities of Russian diplomatic missions in Africa. Burkina Faso was the first country to do this quickly and effectively,” he said.

Ukrainian forces claimed Monday that they had successfully hit a Russian S-300 missile system using Western-supplied weapons inside Russian territory.

“It burns beautifully. It’s a Russian S-300. On Russian territory. The first days after permission to use Western weapons on enemy territory,” Ukrainian government minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted on Facebook alongside a picture purporting to show the strike.

This comes just days after US President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to carry out limited strikes using US weapons in Russian territory around Kharkiv, after several European nations had removed restrictions on how the weapons can be used.

It is unclear if the weapons used in the strike described by Vereshchuk were US-supplied.

Ukraine had for months pleaded with Washington to allow it to strike targets on Russian soil with US weapons, as Moscow launched a brutal aerial and ground assault on Kharkiv, safe in the knowledge that its troops could retreat back to Russian soil to regroup and its weapons depots could not be targeted with Western arms.

The permission granted by the US was both groundbreaking and bold, but tentative and highly conditional. Ukraine can only hit targets around Kharkiv, and the US is standing firm in not allowing Ukraine to use the most formidable munition it has been given to fire into Russia: the long-range missiles known as ATACMS that can hit targets 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) away.

Instead, Ukraine can only use shorter-range missiles known as GMLRS, which have a range of around 70 kilometers (around 40 miles).

While the removal of this taboo appears to mark a new chapter in the war, Russia has already experienced Ukrainian strikes with Western weapons on territory to which it lays claim.

Ukraine has frequently targeted occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, using “Storm Shadow” missiles provided by the United Kingdom.

Ukraine also launched strikes on Kharkiv and Kherson in late 2022, as it sought to liberate the regions occupied by Russia in the early weeks of the war.

Then as now, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials rattled the nuclear saber in an attempt to deter Western support. Before Biden gave Kyiv the green light, Putin said the decision could lead to “serious consequences,” particularly for “small and densely populated countries.”

The US joined several other European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, in removing this particular restriction on how Ukraine can use the weapons it has been given.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised Biden’s decision to allow some strikes in Russian territory as a “step forward” that will help his forces defend the embattled Kharkiv region.

Any tourist wandering through the glitzy lobby of Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel this weekend would have stumbled on a rather bizarre scene.

Military officers from around the world thronged the halls of the luxury hotel, their shoulders dripping with gold braids and epaulets, complicated colored bars lined up on the chests of their dress uniforms like some martial game of Tetris.

Every few minutes a defense minister strode purposely through the mix, surrounded by a phalanx of aides and escorts.

This gathering is an annual spectacle that to the uninitiated might seem surreal. But the topics being discussed here are deadly serious.

The annual Shangri-La Dialogue is one of the few places in the world where you can watch warriors who spend their careers preparing for armed conflict, engaged in polite, carefully-moderated debate.

The stakes this year could hardly be higher.

War rages in both the Middle East and Europe. Meanwhile China’s increasingly assertive moves has much of the Asia-Pacific on edge.

The Singapore summit brought key players together.

Where else would you have the President of the Philippines, a nation whichdo has seen its vessels increasingly targeted by Chinese coast guard ships in the disputed South China Sea, deliver a keynote address on the same stage that, two days later, Beijing’s new Defense Minister makes his debut appearance?

There was even a surprise appearance from Ukraine’s embattled president Volodymyr Zelensky – and a first face-to-face meeting between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Adm Dong Jun.

Given its location in the city-state of Singapore, events in Asia – and in particular China’s behavior in the region – stalked the conference.

In his keynote speech, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued a stark warning about the ongoing confrontations between Philippine and China Coast Guard vessels in a contested part of the South China Sea.

“If a Filipino citizen is killed by a willful act,” he said, “that is I think, very, very close to what we define as an act of war.”

Two days later, China’s Adm Dong fired back from the same stage, accusing the Philippines of “blackmail” in the maritime dispute.

“There is a limit to our restraint,” said Admiral Dong Jun.

“I saw that as a threat,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a research professor at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Center who has been attending the Shangri-La Dialogue since its founding twenty-one years ago.

“In decades past, the Chinese only came in a small number and they were extremely quiet,” she said.  “Now they’re very self confident…they intervene in all the sessions.”

The open nature of the Shangri-La Dialogue provides delegates with a unique opportunity to ask blunt questions of speakers.

After his speech on Sunday, China’s Dong received many questions from audience members on Beijing’s increased threats towards self-governing Taiwan as well as its disputed claims in the South China Sea, and he replied in unapologetic terms.

The “separatists” in Taiwan’s newly-elected government would be “nailed to the pillar of shame in history,” he said.

But equally, Chinese military officers also used Q&A sessions at other key moments to make their views known.

Senior Colonel Yanzhong Cao of China’s People’s Liberation Army asked US Secretary of Defense asked US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin whether the US was trying to build a NATO-like alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, adding the claim “the eastward expansion of NATO has led to the Ukraine crisis.”

“I respectfully disagree,” Austin replied, the audience in the ballroom then erupting into a rare burst of applause.

“The Ukraine crisis obviously was caused because Mr. Putin made a decision to unlawfully invade his neighbor,” Austin continued. “This was brought on because of a decision by Mr. Putin.”

Later that day, Ukrainian leader Zelensky got a borderline rock star welcome when he made a surprise appearance at the conference, dressed in his trademark fatigues and black t-shirt.

“We stand with you,” Ng Eng Hen, Singapore’s minister of defense, later said to Zelensky.

But the large contingent of Chinese army officers present at other sessions was notably absent during Zelensky’s speech and the Ukrainian leader said he failed to secure a one-on-one meeting with Chinese officials during his Singapore visit.

He also accused Beijing of aiding Ukraine’s mortal enemy.

“With China’s support to Russia, the war will last longer.  That is bad for the whole world, and the policy of China – who declares that it supports territorial integrity and sovereignty and declares it officially. For them it is not good,” Zelensky told journalists.

It was not clear whether Zelensky succeeded in securing new support for Kyiv from non-aligned south-east Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

Instead, Indonesian president-elect and retired general Prabowo Subianto – the new leader of the world’s most populous Muslim majority nation – spent much of his speech calling for an end to the on-going carnage in Gaza and an investigation into recent Israeli attacks that killed dozens of displaced civilians in Rafah.

Another political elephant in the room was what direction might the United States be heading in.

The Singapore gathering began just hours after a 12-person jury in a court-room in New York City convicted former US President Donald Trump on of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money criminal trial.

Asia is watching very closely for whether Trump will return to office in November and what impact that might have on the world’s most populous continent and a region already fraught with very real geopolitical fault lines.

His fellow Republican Senator Dan Sullivan also requested not to discuss Trump during a meeting with journalists, instead directing reporters to a press release.

“This is a very sad day for American and the rule of law,” Sullivan’s statement said, calling the verdict a “gross abuse of our justice system.”

But speaking to journalists, the Senator from Alaska also celebrated what he called America’s “commitment to liberty and democracy,” saying this marked a competitive advantage over “authoritarian aggression led by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

Sullivan was part of a bi-partisan delegation seeking to demonstrate Congressional commitment to US allies in Asia.

“The dictators we are allied against…are ally poor,” Sullivan said.

But there are clearly concerns about US reliability.

An academic from Japan – Washington’s closest ally in Asia – asked defense chiefs from Singapore and Malaysia about Trump’s possible re-election.  He called it a “nightmare” scenario.

That triggered nervous laughter from the audience and on stage.

Singapore’s Dr. Ng Eng Hen gamely responded, “we will work with any administration in any country if we can find common ground.”

I vividly remember collective nervousness at the 2017 Shangri-La Dialogue, held just months after Trump’s inauguration.

Trump’s then secretary of defense James Mattis clearly sought to reassure American defense partners worried about the new mercurial president.

“Bear with us,” Mattis told the audience, after being asked whether the “America First” commander-in-chief would contribute to the destruction of the post-World War II order.

“Once we’ve exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing.  We will still be there.”

Seven years later, uncertainty over the political future of the US is just one of many challenges facing policy makers.

One by one, the leaders of armies and navies shared their fears about climate change, nuclear proliferation, wars in Europe and the Middle East and concerns that a miscalculation between the US and Chinese militaries could spiral out of control

“The world cannot withstand a third geopolitical shock,” Singaporean defense chief Dr. Ng warned, after invoking the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts.

In this tense geopolitical environment, it’s far better for commanders to put on their dress uniforms and rub shoulders in the halls of a five-star hotel, than aim at each other over gun barrels on the battlefield.