Foreign News
Sudan catastrophe must not be allowed to continue- UN rights chief Türk
A full year of conflict in Sudan has already caused immense suffering and death but the situation could easily worsen with the news that the warring parties are arming civilians, UN rights chief Volker Türk said on Monday.
A year to the day since heavy fighting erupted between Sudan’s rival militaries, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned of a further escalation, including an imminent attack on El-Fasher in North Darfur.
“The Sudanese people have been subjected to untold suffering during the conflict which has been marked by indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas, ethnically-motivated attacks, and a high incidence of conflict-related sexual violence. The recruitment and use of children by parties to the conflict are also deeply concerning,” said Mr. Türk.
And as an international donor conference for the Sudan emergency began in Paris on Monday, the UN rights chief underscored the potential for further bloodshed, as three armed groups announced that they were joining the Sudanese Armed Forces in their fight against the Rapid Support Forces and “arming civilians”.
Since fighting erupted on 15 April 2023, more than eight million people have been displaced, including at least two million to neighbouring countries.
“Nearly 18 million people face acute food insecurity, 14 million of them children, and over 70 per cent of hospitals are no longer functional amid a rise in infectious diseases – this catastrophic situation must not be allowed to continue,” said High Commissioner Türk.
Acute hunger danger
Echoing those concerns, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that some 8.9 million children are suffering from acute food insecurity; this includes 4.9 million at emergency levels.
“Almost four million children under five are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year”, including 730,000 from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition, UNICEF said in a statement on Sunday. “Almost half of the children suffering from severe acute malnutrition are in areas that are hard to access” and where there is ongoing fighting, noted UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Ted Chaiban. “This is all avoidable, and we can save lives if all parties to the conflict allow us to access communities in need and to fulfil our humanitarian mandate – without politicizing aid.”
Civilian rule targeted
Top UN rights official Türk also expressed deep concern that arrest warrants had been issued against former Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and others on apparently unsubstantiated charges.
“The Sudanese authorities must immediately revoke the arrest warrant and prioritize confidence-building measures towards a ceasefire as a first step, followed by a comprehensive resolution of the conflict and the restoration of a civilian government,” Mr. Türk insisted.
UN humanitarians meanwhile have reiterated that chronic hunger and malnutrition continue to make children “much more vulnerable to disease and death”.
Conflict has also disrupted vaccination coverage in Sudan and safe access to drinking water, UNICEF explained, meaning that ongoing disease outbreaks such as cholera, measles, malaria and dengue now threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.
“Spikes in mortality, especially among internally displaced children, are a forewarning of a possible huge loss of life, as the country enters the annual lean season,” the UN agency said, as it underlined the need for predictable and sustained international aid access.
“Basic systems and social services in Sudan are on the brink of collapse, with frontline workers not being paid for a year, vital supplies depleted, and infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, still under attack.”
Schools shuttered
And in a warning that the whole country could be engulfed in fighting that has left half of Sudan’s population in need of humanitarian relief, the global fund for education in emergencies, Education Cannot Wait, underscored that four of the eight million people uprooted by the violence are children.
The conflict “continues to take innocent lives, with over 14,000 children, women and men reportedly killed already,” said Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait.
Ms. Sherif echoed deep concerns that Sudan now has one of the worst education crises in the world, with more than 90 per cent of the country’s 19 million school-age children unable to access formal education.
Mariam Djimé Adam, 33, is sitting in the yard of Adre’s secondary school in Chad. She arrived from Sudan with her 8 children. (UNICEF)
“Most schools are shuttered or are struggling to re-open across the country, leaving nearly 19 million school-aged children at risk of losing out on their education,” she said.
To date, the global fund has provided nearly $40 million to support education for victims of the crisis in Sudan and beyond, in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
“Without urgent international action, this catastrophe could engulf the entire country and have even more devastating impacts on neighbouring countries, as refugees flee across borders into neighbouring States,” Ms. Sherif said.
(UN News)
Ten people have been killed after a fire broke out in the trauma centre of a government hospital in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
All the victims were patients, while 11 hospital staff are being treated for burns suffered while trying to rescue patients, state Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said.
The fire – suspected to have been caused by an electrical short circuit – started in the trauma care ICU of SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack city around 02:30 local time on Monday (21:00 GMT Sunday).
Hospital fires are often reported in India, with many blamed on electrical faults. Last October, six critically ill patients were killed in an ICU fire in Rajasthan state.
In 2024, a blaze in the neonatal ICU of a medical college in northern Jhansi city killed at least 10 new born babies. In 2021, a fire in the ICU of Vijay Vallabh hospital in the western city of Virar killed 13 patients receiving treatment for Covid-19. Another fire in 2021 at a newborn care unit in Bhandara district in western state Maharashtra killed 10 infants.
In Odisha, the blaze was brought under control after fire service personnel rushed to the hospital. Patients were moved to other departments inside the same hospital, officials said.
SCB Medical College and Hospital is one of the largest government-run medical facilities in Odisha.
Speaking to reporters after visiting the hospital, Majhi said the fire affected the trauma care ICU as well as an adjoining ICU and wards.
Majhi said medical staff and security personnel “risked their lives” during the rescue operation and some of them were injured, adding that the government had directed officials to ensure proper treatment for those hurt in the incident.
The state government has announced financial compensation for the families of the victims. Majhi said he has ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident and said strict action would be taken against anyone found responsible.
Short circuits are among the most common causes of hospital fires in India. Hospitals are particularly vulnerable to fires because they contain a lot of electrical equipment, oxygen systems and patients who often cannot be moved quickly during emergencies.
[BBC]
The Ecuadorean government has deployed more than 75,000 police officers and soldiers to four of the country’s most violence-wracked provinces, the interior minister says.
The authorities have also declared a night-time curfew in these areas as part of a “new phase” in their “war” on criminal gangs.
Since coming to office in November 2023, President Daniel Noboa has tried to quell drug-related violence but nevertheless Ecuador registered a record murder rate in 2025.
Noboa has also joined a US-led alliance of 17 countries aimed at fighting criminal cartels in the Western Hemisphere.
“We’re at war,” Ecuadorean Interior Minister John Reimberg told residents of the provinces of El Oro, Guayas, Los Ríos and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
“Don’t take any risks, don’t go out, stay at home,” he added.
Ecuador’s geographical location – sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine – has turned it into a key transit country for the illicit drug.
Around 70% of the cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru is estimated to be shipped through Ecuador.
Noboa’s government has been working with the administration of US President Donald Trump to quell the flow of cocaine from Ecuador to the US.
Last week, the FBI opened its first office in the Andean country, a move which came shortly after the two countries launched joint counter-narcotic operations.
Noboa was one of the Latin American leaders to attend an international meeting hosted by Trump in Mar-a-Lago, which the US authorities dubbed the “Shield of the Americas” summit.
At the summit, Trump likened criminal gangs to a “cancer” and urged his Latin American counterparts to use military force to root them out.
“We don’t want it spreading,” Trump added.
Following the meeting, Noboa posted a photo on social media of himself standing next to Trump with the words: “For too long, the mafias thought that America was their territory. That they could cross borders, move drugs, guns and [spread] violence without consequences. Their time has run out.”
Since coming to office, Noboa has tried to combat criminal organisations in his country with an iron fist and has declared several states of emergency but nevertheless the murder rate rose by over 30% between 2024 and 2025.
[BBC]
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]
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