World News

A new survey of Southeast Asian opinion leaders shows they prefer China to the United States as a partner, while the region’s biggest geopolitical concern is U.S. global leadership.

The United States may have struck a fragile ceasefire deal with Iran, but the war has inflicted damage on U.S. relationships in Asia that were already strained after more than a year of Donald Trump’s unpredictable approach to foreign policy. A new survey of leaders in Southeast Asian countries highlights the weakness of U.S. influence in the region, even among allies and partners.

The annual State of Southeast Asia survey report produced by the Singapore-based think tank ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute is hotly anticipated by regional experts, policymakers, and other opinion leaders. It surveys a range of Southeast Asian elites from academia, think tanks, research institutes, the private sector, governments, and civil society. Though it is not a complete public poll, the survey is generally considered the best gauge of Southeast Asian sentiment on a wide range of issues, including external powers’ influence in the region.

Almost 800 Hungarian government email addresses and associated passwords are circulating online, revealing basic vulnerabilities in the security protocols of ministries involved in classified and sensitive work.

A Bellingcat analysis of breach data shows that 12 out of the government’s 13 ministries have been affected, which in some cases have exposed the confidential information of military personnel and civil servants posted abroad.

Among those affected were a senior military officer responsible for information security, a counter terrorism coordinator in the foreign affairs department, and an employee whose role was to identify hybrid threats against the country.

The revelations come as Hungarians head to the polls this Sunday to decide if Viktor Orbán, leader of the right-wing populist party Fidesz and the country’s longest-serving prime minister, will be elected to a fifth consecutive term.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/36343692

Former US envoys who dealt with Iran have said that the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz have given Iran new tools and resolve to resist pressure to shutter its nuclear programme.

Two senior negotiators for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama-era agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, said the Trump administration’s war had handed Iran a coveted weapon by demonstrating its ability to cut off the strait of Hormuz, an economic chokehold that one negotiator said would help Iran “balance the asymmetry of power” with the US.

“This administration, to say it more politely, cannot unsoil the bed,” said Alan Eyre, a former diplomat who helped negotiate the JCPOA. “There’s no way to get back to the status quo ante before this war started.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45435884

"the company admitted it likely won’t be able to keep up with competing models."

"As such, the announcement is a bit of an enigma: if it can’t keep up with the competition, why release it at all? There’s a good change Meta is just trying to get its foot in the door — or a “seat at the big kid’s table,” as Wired put it. The company has struggled to stay relevant in a rapidly changing landscape" "Meta’s preceding Llama open source models largely failed to catch on, with a major controversy last year finding that Meta may have faked benchmark results to make its Llama 4 model seem more capable than it actually was."

European airports have said jet fuel shortages could hit the summer holiday season, if oil supplies do not start to flow through the strait of Hormuz within the next three weeks.

Airports Council International (ACI) Europe wrote to Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the EU transport commissioner, saying the bloc is three weeks away from shortages.

The warning will raise concerns of a risk of flight or holiday cancellations if the US and Israel’s war on Iran continues. Oil prices have soared since the start of March after Iran effectively closed the strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for exports from the Gulf, in retaliation.

“If the passage through the strait of Hormuz does not resume in any significant and stable way within the next three weeks, systemic jet fuel shortage is set to become a reality for the EU,” the letter said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45741592

April 9, 2026

As a fragile cease-fire takes hold, Iran is sorting through the wreckage from U.S.-Israeli strikes, which have exacted a heavy toll on its civilian infrastructure. The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities, a fraction of the devastation in the war so far.

The scale of devastation is likely far greater than The Times’s analysis. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.

PM appears to draw comparison between Russian and US leaders’ actions and calls for plan to restore Hormuz strait shipping

Keir Starmer has said he is “fed up” with the effect that Donald Trump’s actions in the Middle East are having on the British public, while appearing to draw a comparison between the US president and Vladimir Putin.

Speaking to ITV’s Robert Peston on Thursday, the prime minister said: “I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”

Starmer, who has been heavily criticised, and at times mocked, by Trump for not committing British forces to the war on Iran, also appeared to condemn Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel’s continued strikes on Lebanon, despite Iran calling for Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire that was agreed on 7 April.