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With the second-biggest bloc in Iraq’s parliament, powerful friends in Iran and vast financial assets, the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance has become the predominant force in Iraqi politics, experts say.

In a boost for the alliance, largely made up of pro-Tehran armed groups, neighbouring Iran on Friday elected ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi as president.

Hashed commander Abu Ala al-Walai welcomed the judiciary chief’s election win as a victory for the “axis of resistance”, Iran and its allies across the region from Yemen to Syria.

The Hashed was created seven years ago to battle the Sunni extremist Islamic State group which had seized almost a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive.

Later, the Hashed was integrated into the armed forces of the state. Then it moved into politics.

The alliance “is not an anomaly but an example of how power works in Iraq,” said Renad Mansour, a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House. 

The lack of oversight and rule of law in Iraq allows non-state actors to gain power without being held accountable “to either the people or the system”, he said.

– ‘Better connected than PM’ –

In a demonstration of its clout, the Hashed this month secured the release of one of its commanders after he was arrested on suspicion of ordering the killing of Ihab al-Wazni, a pro-democracy activist.

The judiciary said it had found “no proof” of Qassem Muslah’s involvement in the murder.

His release was also a blow to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi’s efforts to win over Iraq’s pro-democracy protest movement, which has seen more than 70 activists targeted in assassinations or attempted assassinations since 2019.

Authorities have consistently failed to publicly identify or charge the perpetrators.

The commander’s release “shows the connectivity of the Hashed to state power, it show that in some ways the Hashed have more connection to state power than (Kadhemi),” Mansour told AFP.

The Hashed also has agents throughout the country’s regular armed forces, which they “no longer fear”, one senior military official told AFP on condition of anonymity. 

“Armed groups within the Hashed are working to fragment what remains of the security forces of the state to weaken them and break them up,” he said, adding that there are “a few loyal commanders who are trying to resist these efforts.”

– ‘Pallets of cash’ –

Experts have also linked the Hashed to previously unheard-of groups which have claimed attacks against US targets in recent months.

Creating murky proxies would allow the alliance to act against its arch-enemy without being directly implicated in operations — although some of its top commanders have hailed rocket and drone attacks on American targets, without ever claiming responsibility.

Having one foot inside the state and one foot outside allows the coalition to maximise its room for manoeuvre, experts say.

Hashed members run some of Iraq’s main ports and land border crossings, where bribes help fund their operations. 

But none of that is needed to pay their fighters’ wages: since they are integrated into the state, they are paid from the public purse.

The profits are instead used to support multiple allies, including Iran, whose economy has been battered by American sanctions, and its regional allies such as Hezbollah.

One leading Iraqi bank official said some $60 billion had been transferred to Lebanon “by politicians and militiamen who have spent the last 18 years loading aeroplanes with palettes full of cash.” 

– ‘Toxic system’ –

With such a strong financial base and powerful friends across the region, the Hashed has less and less need for a popular base. 

The alliance’s popularity took it to second place in 2018 parliamentary elections, the first time it took part as a political force.

In forthcoming elections in October, Hashed officials admit they are expecting a lower score.

Many Iraqis suspect the alliance of links to targeted killings and the bloody repression of the pro-democracy movement, which mobilised hundreds of thousands to join mass protests against government corruption and incompetence in 2019.

But the vote may count for little.

“This is the design of the system, the parties put out a compromise candidate who could sort of present the face of reform but in reality he is covering up and masking what is a very toxic political system,” Mansour said.

Ironically, the Hashed’s main rival today is none other than Moqtada Sadr, himself leader of an armed group.

Equally rich and well-armed, the firebrand Shiite cleric is “a thorn in the feet of pro-Iran factions”, the Iraqi officer said.

For some observers, if it were not for Sadr, Iraq would have already fallen under the rule of an ideological army modelled on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Some families living in a jungle may be fearful of things going bump at night, but for one household in Thailand, the sight of an elephant rummaging through their kitchen was not a total shock.

“It came to cook again,” wrote Kittichai Boodchan sarcastically in a caption to a Facebook video he shot over the weekend of an elephant nosing its way into his kitchen.

Likely driven by the midnight munchies, the massive animal pokes its head into Kittichai’s kitchen in the early hours of Sunday, using its trunk to find food.

At one point, it picks up a plastic bag of liquid, considers it briefly, and then sticks it in its mouth — before the video cuts out.

Kittichai and his wife live near a national park in western Thailand, by a lake where wild elephants often bathe while roaming in the jungle. 

He was unperturbed by the mammoth mammal, recognising it as a frequent visitor as it often wanders into homes in his village where it eats, leaves and shoots off back into the jungle. 

The elephant had actually destroyed their kitchen wall in May, he said, creating an open-air kitchen concept reminiscent of a drive-through window.

This weekend, its sole task was to find food. 

Kittichai said a general rule of thumb in dealing with unwelcome visitors crashing is not to feed them.

“When it doesn’t get food, it just leaves on its own,” he told AFP. 

“I am already used to it coming, so I was not so worried.”

Wild elephants are a common sight in Thailand’s national parks and its surrounding areas, with farmers sometimes reporting incidents of their fruits and corn crops being eaten by a hungry herd. 

An aviation firm has carried out the first tests in India of longer-range drone deliveries, as hopes grow that they could deliver medicines as well as Covid-19 vaccines to remote areas.

Greater use of drones could be a game-changer for medical services in the South Asian nation’s hard-to-reach rural areas where healthcare is limited and roads often poor, experts say.

Throttle Aerospace Systems is among 20 organisations granted permits by the government since May to conduct experimental flights beyond the current limit of 450 metres (1,475 feet).

Two drones — one that can carry up to one kilogramme (2.2 pounds) for 20 kilometres (12 miles) or nearly an hour, and another that can lift two kilos for 15 kilometres — were tested on Monday in the southern state of Karnataka.

“Medicines was the payload here and… 2.5 kilometres were covered in seven minutes and it delivered the medicines at the designated point and the drone returned,” Throttle’s co-founder, Sebastian Anto, told AFP at the test site in the southern state of Karnataka.

The government this month also invited bids from drone operators to help set up a pilot project for the delivering of medical supplies as it seeks to bolster its faltering coronavirus vaccination drive.

The closing date for expressions of interest was Tuesday, although the government has yet to announce when such projects would become operational. 

The epidemiology chief of the Indian Council of Medical Research, Samiran Panda, told The Hindu daily newspaper that the technology could help vaccinate priority groups in hard-to-reach places.

“We need smart vaccination instead of mass vaccination to stem an epidemic,” Panda told the newspaper last week.

India lags behind many other nations when it comes to drones — or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — both in terms of their uses and the regulatory framework.

Under current regulations, they have to be flown in full view, or within 450 metres, of their operators on the ground.

In Germany, researchers are reportedly testing drone prototypes that can track down disaster victims by their screams.

In Australia, drones using artificial intelligence algorithms are being used to spot crocodiles and count koalas in rugged terrain.

India, home to 1.3 billion people spread across some 3.2 million square kilometres (1.15 million square miles), is the world’s seventh-largest country by land mass.

“Drone technology would have a huge impact in those areas where emergency medicines and vaccines could be supplied,” co-founder of lobby group the Drone Federation of India, Vipul Singh, told AFP.

“Where it takes a few hours to travel 20-30 kilometres by road, whereas a drone can actually travel that distance in 10 to 15 minutes,” said Singh, also the co-founder of Bangalore-based Aarav Unmanned Systems.

An arachnid invasion left swathes of Australia’s Gippsland region covered in webs as the spiders sought higher ground to escape flooding. 

A sea of silk engulfed an area in Australia’s southeast hit by flooding earlier in June, caused by sheet web spiders that normally live on the ground looking for shelter according to ecologist Dieter Hochuli.

“When we get these types of very heavy rains and flooding, these animals who spend their lives cryptically on the ground can’t live there anymore, and do exactly what we try to do — they move to the higher ground,” Hochuli, from the University of Sydney, told local broadcaster Channel 7. 

Spiders are known to release webs to create makeshift parachutes and ride the wind to change location, a phenomenon known as ballooning.

At least two people died when the storms hit Victoria earlier this month, with authorities finding both bodies in separate partially submerged vehicles.

Thousands of people in the hardest-hit areas were also left without power for weeks, with some homes yet to be reconnected to electricity.

Australians living in regional and rural areas have struck by a series of disasters in recent years.

A prolonged drought was followed by months of devastating bushfires in late 2019 to early 2020 before welcome rains brought damaging floods in several regions.

An aviation firm has carried out the first tests in India of longer-range drone deliveries, as hopes grow that they could deliver medicines as well as Covid-19 vaccines to remote areas.

Greater use of drones could be a game-changer for medical services in the South Asian nation’s hard-to-reach rural areas where healthcare is limited and roads often poor, experts say.

Throttle Aerospace Systems is among 20 organisations granted permits by the government since May to conduct experimental flights beyond the current limit of 450 metres (1,475 feet).

Two drones — one that can carry up to one kilogramme (2.2 pounds) for 20 kilometres (12 miles) or nearly an hour, and another that can lift two kilos for 15 kilometres — were tested on Monday in the southern state of Karnataka.

“Medicines was the payload here and… 2.5 kilometres were covered in seven minutes and it delivered the medicines at the designated point and the drone returned,” Throttle’s co-founder, Sebastian Anto, told AFP at the test site in the southern state of Karnataka.

The government this month also invited bids from drone operators to help set up a pilot project for the delivering of medical supplies as it seeks to bolster its faltering coronavirus vaccination drive.

The epidemiology chief of the Indian Council of Medical Research, Samiran Panda, told The Hindu daily newspaper that the technology could help vaccinate priority groups in hard-to-reach places.

“We need smart vaccination instead of mass vaccination to stem an epidemic,” Panda told the newspaper last week.

India lags behind many other nations when it comes to drones — or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — both in terms of their uses and the regulatory framework.

Under current regulations, they have to be flown in full view, or within 450 metres, of their operators on the ground.

In Germany, researchers are reportedly testing drone prototypes that can track down disaster victims by their screams.

In Australia, drones using artificial intelligence algorithms are being used to spot crocodiles and count koalas in rugged terrain.

India, home to 1.3 billion people spread across some 3.2 million square kilometres (1.15 million square miles), is the world’s seventh-largest country by land mass.

“Drone technology would have a huge impact in those areas where emergency medicines and vaccines could be supplied,” co-founder of lobby group the Drone Federation of India, Vipul Singh, told AFP.

“Where it takes a few hours to travel 20-30 kilometres by road, whereas a drone can actually travel that distance in 10 to 15 minutes,” said Singh, also the co-founder of Bangalore-based Aarav Unmanned Systems.

Myanmar soldiers battled an anti-junta civilian militia with small arms and grenades in the country’s second city on Tuesday, with four protesters killed and several members of the security forces injured, authorities said. 

Fighting has flared across Myanmar since the February coup as people form “defence forces” to battle a brutal military crackdown on dissent, but clashes have largely been restricted to rural areas.

Acting on a tip-off, security forces raided a house in Mandalay’s Chan Mya Tharsi township on Tuesday morning, the junta’s information team said in a statement, and were met with small arms fire and grenades.

“Some security members were seriously injured” in the ensuing battle, the statement said, adding that four “terrorists” were killed and eight arrested in possession of homemade mines, hand grenades and small arms.

The mass uprising against the military putsch that toppled the government of Aung San Suu Kyi has been met with a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 870 civilians, according to a local monitoring group.

As well as the rise of local self-defence forces, analysts believe hundreds of anti-coup protesters from Myanmar’s towns and cities have trekked into insurgent-held areas to receive military training.

But part-time fighters know the odds are stacked against them in any confrontation with Myanmar’s military — one of Southeast Asia’s most battle-hardened and brutal.

Repeatedly dubbed the happiest nation on the planet with world-beating living standards, Finland should be deluged by people wanting to relocate, but in fact it faces an acute workforce shortage.

“It’s now widely acknowledged that we need a spectacular number of people to come to the country,” recruiter Saku Tihverainen from agency Talented Solutions told AFP.

Workers are needed “to help cover the cost of the greying generation”, the recruiter explained.

While many Western countries are battling weak population growth, few are feeling the effects as sharply as Finland.

With 39.2 over-65s per 100 working-age people, it is second only to Japan in the extent of its ageing population, according to the UN, which forecasts that by 2030 the “old age dependency ratio” will rise to 47.5.

The government has warned that the nation of 5.5 million needs to practically double immigration levels to 20,000-30,000 a year to maintain public services and plug a looming pensions deficit.

Finland might seem like an attractive destination on paper, scoring high in international comparisons for quality of life, freedom and gender equality, with little corruption, crime and pollution.

But anti-immigrant sentiment and a reluctance to employ outsiders are also widespread in Western Europe’s most homogenous society, and the opposition far-right Finns Party regularly draws substantial support during elections.

– Tipping point –

After years of inertia, businesses and government “are now at the tipping point and are recognising the problem” posed by a greying population, said Charles Mathies, a research fellow at the Academy of Finland.

Mathies is one of the experts consulted by the government’s “Talent Boost” programme, now in its fourth year, which aims to make the country more attractive internationally, in part through local recruitment schemes.

Those targeted include health workers from Spain, metalworkers from Slovakia, and IT and maritime experts from Russia, India and Southeast Asia. 

But previous such efforts have petered out. 

In 2013, five of the eight Spanish nurses recruited to the western town of Vaasa left after a few months, citing Finland’s exorbitant prices, cold weather and notoriously complex language.

Finland has nonetheless seen net immigration for much of the last decade, with around 15,000 more people arriving than leaving in 2019. 

But many of those quitting the country are higher-educated people, official statistics show.

Faced with the OECD’s largest skilled worker shortage, some Finnish startups are creating a joint careers site to better bag overseas talent.

“As you can imagine, this is a slow burner,” Shaun Rudden from food delivery firm Wolt said in an email, adding that “We try to make the relocation process as painless as possible.”

– Systemic problem –

Startups “have told me that they can get anyone in the world to come and work for them in Helsinki, as long as he or she is single,” the capital’s mayor, Jan Vapaavuori, said to AFP.

But “their spouses still have huge problems getting a decent job.”

Many foreigners complain of a widespread reluctance to recognise overseas experience or qualifications, as well as prejudice against non-Finnish applicants.

Ahmed (who requested his name be changed for professional reasons) is a 42-year-old Brit with many years’ experience in building digital products for multinational, household-name companies.

Yet six months of networking and applying for jobs in Helsinki, where he was trying to move for family reasons, proved fruitless.

“One recruiter even refused to shake my hand, that was a standout moment,” he told AFP.

“There was never a shortage of jobs going, just a shortage of mindset,” said Ahmed, who during his search in Finland received offers from major companies in Norway, Qatar, the UK and Germany, and eventually began commuting weekly from Helsinki to Dusseldorf.

Recruiter Saku Tihverainen said shortages are pushing more companies to loosen their insistence on only employing native Finnish workers. 

“And yet, a lot of the Finnish companies and organisations are very adamant about using Finnish, and very fluent Finnish at that,” he said.

– Changing priorities –

For Helsinki mayor Jan Vaaavuori, four years of Finland being voted the world’s happiest country in a UN ranking have “not yet helped as much as we could have hoped.”

“If you stop someone in the street in Paris or London or Rome or New York, I still don’t think most people know about us,” he mused. 

Mayor Vapaavuori, whose four-year term ends this summer, has turned increasingly to international PR firms to help raise the city’s profile. 

He is optimistic about Finland’s ability to attract talent from Asia in future, and believes people’s priorities will have changed once international mobility ramps up again post-coronavirus.

Helsinki’s strengths, being “safe, functional, reliable, predictable — those values have gained in importance,” he said, adding: “Actually I think our position after the pandemic is better than it was before.”

Hong Kong’s embattled pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily has been hit by a wave of resignations as authorities push to silence the outspoken tabloid and staff mull whether to leave or stay until the bitter end.

On late Monday afternoon, Apple Daily’s 1,000-odd staff got the news they had long expected given Hong Kong’s hardening political climate: the 26-year-old paper was on its last legs. 

The board had met that day and announced the paper was almost certainly going to close unless they found a way to unfreeze its assets, with a final decision to be made on Friday.

Section heads then gathered staff and told them they could decide whether to resign immediately or stay until the final day — whenever that might be — according to three employees who were present.

“I hastily decided to hand in my resignation letter after my team meeting,” a reporter who asked just to use the name Joanne, told AFP.

“I believe the risk of being arrested is real… I do not want to see anyone else being rounded up anymore,” she added.

Apple Daily has long been a thorn in Beijing’s side, with unapologetic support for the city’s pro-democracy movement and caustic criticism of China’s authoritarian leaders.

Those same leaders have made no secret of their desire to see the paper shuttered.

Its owner Jimmy Lai is in jail, among the first to be charged under a new national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year to root out dissent after the financial hub was rocked by huge and often violent democracy protests in 2019.

– Asset freeze –

Then came last week’s hammer blow — the charging of two more executives under the powerful security law and the freezing of Apple Daily’s assets by the city’s security chief.

The latter left the paper unable to pay staff, vendors and suppliers. Advertisers and supporters who tried to deposit money into its accounts were unable to do so.

Authorities say the police action was sparked by articles over the last year that allegedly supported the imposition of sanctions on China and Hong Kong.

Lai, the paper’s editor Ryan Law, and its CEO Cheung Kim-hung have been charged with colluding with foreign forces to undermine China’s national security. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

Authorities reject suggestions that the prosecution is an assault on press freedoms. They have not identified which articles were illegal but say the paper’s content pointed to a “conspiracy”.

It is not clear how many Apple Daily staff have resigned but several were filmed carrying boxes out of the paper’s headquarters on Monday evening and the departures have already impacted the paper’s coverage.

On Monday night, the anchor of a half-hour daily evening news show broadcast online announced she was hosting her final episode.

“Take care Hong Kongers,” Tse Hing-yee said in her swansong broadcast. “We will meet again, should fate allow.”

The paper’s financial news desk and its English edition have also announced they have ceased publishing.

Another reporter who only gave her first name, Peggy, said colleagues spent Monday afternoon bidding farewell to those who had decided to leave, and taking group photos.

“It felt like a graduation ceremony, but there was the constant sound of someone crying,” she told AFP, adding she had quit and lined up a job in another industry. 

– ‘No shame’ –

“I will stay till the last,” Kitty, a third reporter, told AFP. “The risk of staying for a few more days is nothing more than the risk of staying here for the past year.” 

All three spoke of the pride they felt working for the paper. 

But Joanne said she felt local reporters were no longer allowed to do their job unimpeded. 

“Is it allowed or not in today’s Hong Kong for me to say something I truly believe in and I have facts to support?” she asked rhetorically. 

Kitty, 40, said she has yet to decide whether to remain in the industry.

“Even when I find a new job in a different newspaper, I suppose the newsroom will be much more cautious,” she said, referring to the self-censorship that has crept into the local media scene in recent years.

Peggy said she had no regrets about the three years she spent working for the paper.

“It’s my honour to be an Apple Daily reporter when Hong Kong’s situation went through such a crazy period,” she said. 

“Everything I did here brought no shame upon myself or Hong Kong’s people.”

Australia said Tuesday it will strongly oppose a UNESCO plan to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” over deterioration caused by climate change.

The UN body released a draft report on Monday recommending the reef’s World Heritage status be downgraded because of its dramatic coral decline, after years of public threats to do so.

Environmental campaigners said the decision highlighted Australia’s lack of action to curb the carbon emissions which contribute to global warming.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley said Australia would challenge the move, accusing UN officials of backflipping on their assurances ahead of the World Heritage Committee’s 44th session in China next month, where the recommendation will be formally considered.

“Politics have subverted a proper process and for the World Heritage Committee to not even foreshadow this listing is, I think, appalling,” she told reporters in Canberra.

The UN body did not consider the billions of dollars spent attempting to protect the world’s largest coral reef, she added.

The committee’s draft report did commend Australia’s efforts to improve reef quality and its financial commitment. 

But it noted “with the utmost concern and regret… that the long-term outlook for the ecosystem of the property has further deteriorated from poor to very poor,” referring to Australia’s move to downgrade the reef’s health status after back-to-back mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017.

Ley said she had spoken to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay overnight Monday to express “very clearly our strong disappointment, even bewilderment”.

Placement on the UN body’s in-danger list is not considered a sanction. According to UNESCO, some nations have their sites added to gain international attention and help to save them but it is seen as a dishonour by others.

– ‘Shame’ –

Australia has resisted calls to commit to a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying the country hoped to reach carbon neutral “as soon as possible” without harming its commodity-dependent economy.

The downgrade recommendation for the Great Barrier Reef prompted environmental groups to take aim at the Australian government’s reluctance to take stronger climate action.

The Climate Council said it brought “shame on the federal government, which is standing by as the reef declines rather than fighting to protect it”.

“The recommendation from UNESCO is clear and unequivocal that the Australian government is not doing enough to protect our greatest natural asset, especially on climate change,” said WWF head of oceans Richard Leck.

Aside from its inestimable natural, scientific and environmental value, the 2,300-kilometre-long (1,400-mile-long) reef was worth an estimated US$4.8 billion a year in tourism revenue for the Australian economy before the coronavirus pandemic.

In December, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said climate change had pushed the reef into critical condition.

Australian Marine Conservation Society environmental consultant Imogen Zethoven said the UNESCO report made clear that limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels was critical for the Great Barrier Reef.

“Australia’s climate record is more consistent with a 2.5-3.0 Celsius rise in global average temperature –- a level that would destroy the Great Barrier Reef and all the world’s coral reefs,” she said.

The Great Barrier Reef has now suffered three mass coral bleaching events in the past five years, losing half its corals since 1995 as ocean temperatures have climbed.

Bleaching occurs when changes in ocean temperatures stress healthy corals, causing them to expel algae living in their tissues, which drains them of their vibrant colours and can lead to their death.

It has also been battered by several cyclones as climate change drives more extreme weather and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish — which eat the coral — in recent decades.

Myanmar soldiers battled an anti-junta civilian militia with small arms and grenades in the country’s second city on Tuesday, with four protesters killed and several members of the security forces injured, authorities said. 

Fighting has flared across Myanmar since the February coup as people form “defence forces” to battle a brutal military crackdown on dissent, but clashes have largely been restricted to rural areas.

Acting on a tip-off, security forces raided a house in Mandalay’s Chan Mya Tharsi township on Tuesday morning, the junta’s information team said in a statement, and were met with small arms fire and grenades.

“Some security members were seriously injured” in the ensuing battle, the statement said, adding that four “terrorists” were killed and eight arrested in possession of homemade mines, hand grenades and small arms.

The mass uprising against the military putsch that toppled the government of Aung San Suu Kyi has been met with a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 870 civilians, according to a local monitoring group.

As well as the rise of local self-defence forces, analysts believe hundreds of anti-coup protesters from Myanmar’s towns and cities have trekked into insurgent-held areas to receive military training.

But part-time fighters know the odds are stacked against them in any confrontation with Myanmar’s military — one of Southeast Asia’s most battle-hardened and brutal.