Foreign News
‘Gruesome’ war bets fuel calls for crackdown on prediction markets
Stew, a 35-year-old from Montana, has enjoyed dabbling in sports bets since he downloaded the Kalshi app about 18 months ago.
But just a few weeks ago, after spotting reports of elevated pizza deliveries around the Pentagon during some late-night scrolling, he made a different kind of bet – wagering $10 (£7.50) on the odds that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “out” by 1 March.
It was a trade that tested the limits of the kinds of bets Americans are allowed to make.
So-called predictions markets – overseen by firms such as Kalshi – have exploded in popularity over the last year, hosting more than $44bn in trades.
They are rapidly transforming the betting landscape in the US, where sports betting was largely illegal until 2018 and gambling on elections had been off-limits for years until 2024.
While much of the activity on the platforms revolves around sporting matches, users can speculate on any number of questions, including local elections, whether the US central bank will cut interest rates and the year of Jesus Christ’s return.
The apps caught fire during America’s 2024 presidential campaign, after a legal victory cleared the way for them to accept election bets and they showed the odds tilting toward Donald Trump.
But it is more grisly wagers tied to military action involving Iran, Venezuela and Israel that have drawn attention lately.
In theory, such bets run afoul of US financial rules, which bar trading on contracts involving war, terrorism, assassination, gaming or other illegal activities.
But that hasn’t stopped firms from taking in millions of trades.
Critics have seized on the activity, calling for a crackdown on the apps, which they say are facilitating unseemly, and potentially illegal, war profiteering, generating national security risks and enabling opportunities for insider trading and corruption.
“You have now opened up gambling basically on almost anything and it has turned into this very, very gruesome type of thing on the death of a head of state,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the Public Citizen advocacy group, which recently filed a complaint this week over the bets.
Polymarket alone has hosted what Bloomberg estimated as more than $500m in bets related to the Iran war, at one point offering an opportunity to play the odds on the chance of nuclear detonation.
The company, which is headquartered in New York but operates on a limited basis in the US, eventually removed that market after it drew scrutiny on social media but users can still submit bets on questions like when US forces will enter Iran. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Kalshi also ended up cancelling the Khamenei market, which had drawn $54m in trades, noting that US-regulated entities are barred from “having a market directly settling on someone’s death”.
The company, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said the war bets are happening on unregulated exchanges outside the US.
Concerns about the war bets have collided with a bigger battle over how prediction market firms should be regulated.
Unlike traditional gaming firms, in which the odds are set by the company, prediction market companies function more like a stock exchange, allowing users to bet against each other on the outcome of future events using “event contracts”.
That design has allowed national financial regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to claim oversight.
But critics say they are sports betting and gambling operations trying to dress up as financial exchanges in a bid to avoid stricter rules and taxes faced by traditional gaming firms, which are regulated by the states.
Disagreement over who should be policing the apps has sparked dozens of legal battles across the US, as states start to assert their right to regulate the companies like other gaming firms, rather than leave oversight up to the CFTC.
Even some Republicans have voiced concerns, as traditional gaming firms have also stepped up their lobbying, enlisting a savvy former Trump official, Mick Mulvaney, to plead their case in Washington.
“Nobody is saying that gambling shouldn’t be allowed,” says Ben Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, which advocates for financial reforms. “What the states are saying and other advocates are saying is things that are gambling should be regulated as gambling.”
Suspiciously timed bets related to military operations involving Israel, Venezuela and Iran have added fodder to those calls.
In recent weeks, Democrats have introduced legislation to bar federal officials from trading event contracts, pointing to incidents such as when a gambler new to Polymarket made nearly half a million dollars on the capture of Venezuela’s president just before it was officially announced.
They have also issued alerts to consumers about the risks of insider trading and written to the administration urging it to more clearly enforce the rules against wagering on war.
But the odds of a crackdown remain long.
Though the Biden administration had taken a hard line on the sector, proposing to ban sports and politics-related event contracts, that regulatory drive stalled after a court defeat and the 2024 election of Donald Trump, who came to power promising a lighter hand.
Last month, the CFTC said it would withdraw the proposed ban on sports and election related contracts.
It has also taken the side of prediction market firms in the legal fights they are facing in the states, which Michael Selig, Trump’s chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, condemned in a recent opinion piece as “overzealous”.
He argued that event contracts served “legitimate economic functions”, allowing businesses to hedge against risks triggered by events.
“It’s clear that Americans like the product and want to participate,” he said, while also emphasising that platforms must still follow rules.
As the pressure mounts, Polymarket has announced steps to more formally police suspicious activity, while Kalshi, which advertises its status as a “regulated exchange”, has become more vocal about what it is doing to combat insider trading.
It recently announced punishments in two cases of insider trading and disclosed that it had opened up 200 investigations over the last year.
The company also ultimately cancelled the $54m market around Khamenei’s ouster.
In series of statements explaining the decision, the firm said it did not “list markets directly tied to death”, noting that its terms had included that carve-out.
It promised to make the terms more clear from the get-go, saying it had “learned a lot” from the incident.
But in an indication of growing pains, the decision still sparked outrage among users, including Stew, who said the firm had initially “buried” those rules and its explanation seemed disingenuous, given that there were “only a handful of realistic methods” for Khamenei to go.
Stew, who received a refund, said he wasn’t sure regulation was the answer, but he was sympathetic to the idea that the debate seemed to be stumbling around semantics.
“They call it contract trading, which I guess technically speaking, that’s what it is. But if we’re all being honest here, it’s still betting,” he said.
[BBC]
A rescue diver has died while searching for the bodies of a group of Italians who died in a scuba-diving accident in the Maldives.
Staff Sgt Mohamed Mahdhee was taken to hospital in critical condition and later succumbed to his injuries, a government spokesman told the BBC on Saturday.
Five Italians died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of around 50m (164ft) on Thursday. So far, the body of one of them is thought to have been recovered, in a cave at a depth of around 60m (197ft).
The incident is believed to be the worst single diving accident in the tiny Indian Ocean nation, a popular tourist destination because of its string of coral islands.
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu travelled to Vaavu Atoll on Saturday to observe the search operations.
“Eight rescue divers went into the water today. When they surfaced, they realised Mahdhee didn’t come up,” Mohamed Hossain Shareef, a Maldivian government spokesman told the BBC.
The other divers immediately went into the water again and they found Mahdhee had blacked out.
The Maldives military has described the operation as very high risk, with unfavourable weather conditions.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani sent condolences: “These days of grief for Italy are compounded by the news that one of your brave soldiers… died while attempting to dive to reach the bodies of our fellow Italians.”
“This tragedy unites Italy and the Maldives in grief and respect for the victims,” he added.
Four of the Italian divers were part of a University of Genoa team, including professor of ecology Monica Montefalcone, her daughter and two researchers. The fifth was a boat operations manager and diving instructor.
The five entered the water at Vaavu Atoll on Thursday morning, local media said, and were reported missing when they failed to resurface later on.
Police said the weather was rough in the area, about 100km (62 miles) south of the capital, Male. A yellow warning was issued for passenger boats and fishermen.
Shareef said recreational scuba divers were only allowed to dive up to a depth of 30m and it was not clear why the Italians went into a cave that’s 60m under water.
Italy’s foreign ministry said earlier that another 20 Italian nationals aboard the Duke of York yacht, from which the five divers took off, were unharmed and receiving assistance from the Embassy of Italy in Colombo, Sri Lanka
[BBC]
At least eight people have been killed, and dozens injured, after a freight train crashed into a public bus in Thailand’s capital.
Flames engulfed the bus and nearby vehicles near an airport rail link station in the centre of Bangkok Saturday afternoon.
The city’s emergency services Erawan Medical Center confirmed the number of deaths, while Bangkok police chief Urumporn Koondejsumrit told AFP news agency at least 35 people were injured.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Deputy Transport Minister Siripong Angkasakulkiat said that all the bodies were found on the bus. It was not yet clear how many people were on board in total.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul ordered an investigation into the crash, according to a statement from his office.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Bangkok, said the crash unfolded around 3:40pm local time (08:40 GMT), when the bus appeared to get stuck on an intersection with the rail line after the safety barriers descended.
As the freight train rammed into the stationary bus and continued travelling, it dragged several nearby vehicles along with it before the bus burst into flames.
Siripong would not confirm whether the bus had stopped on the railway track or discuss reports that the barriers may not have lowered properly, saying the matter still needs to be investigated.
Firefighters and rescue crews were dispatched to pull people from the wreckage and battle the flames as motorcyclists and passersby attempted to redirect traffic.
The fire has since been brought under control.
[Aljazeera]
New Zealand’s Māori Queen Te Arikinui Kuini Nga Wai hono i te po has met King Charles III at Buckingham Palace.
The meeting with the British monarch was Te Arikinui’s first since she became queen in 2024, following the death of her father, Kiingi Tuheitia.
The visit marks a near 200-year relationship between the indigenous peoples of New Zealand and the crown, formalised in the Treaty of Waitangi, one of New Zealand’s founding documents.
A spokesperson for the queen says the two discussed the former king’s death in what was a “heartfelt” discussion, as well as the strengthening of their relationship.
Earlier this week, the Māori queen was also welcomed by Prince William to Windsor Castle.
In a post on Instagram, Prince William acknowledged the visit, saying, “it was a pleasure to meet with the Queen.”
A statement released after the meeting from the Kīngitanga said the Māori queen discussed a range of global topics with Prince William.
“Te Arikinui affirmed her belief in the power of indigenous knowledge and intergenerational stewardship to help solve the world’s environmental and social challenges.”
Te Arikinui was crowned in 2024 after the death of her father – becoming only the second Māori queen, the first being her grandmother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu.
The Māori monarchy dates back to the 19th Century, when different Māori tribes decided to create a unifying figure similar to that of a European monarch in order to try to prevent the widespread loss of land to New Zealand’s British colonisers and to preserve Māori culture. It is a largely ceremonial and symbolic role.
[BBC]
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