Latest news for 16 July 2025

AFGHANISTAN

Keep it on the DL.

A UK court has lifted a gag order, allowing outlets to report that the UK secretly relocated some 4,500 Western-aligned Afghan personnel and their families to the UK after an accidental 2022 data leak exposed them to Taliban retaliation. It’s one of Britain’s worst data breaches in recent history. (BBC)

Comment: It’s hard to think of a better example of the inherent tension between a government's legitimate need for secrecy and the public’s legitimate right to know.

UNITED STATES

Trade deal ahoy.

The US president has announced that Indonesian imports will face a 19% tariff (down from Liberation Day’s 32%), while Indonesia won’t tax US goods. Jakarta has also reportedly agreed to buy US oil and Boeing jets. (Guardian)

TAIWAN

Public transport for the win.

The local military is using Taipei’s metro in its current annual drills, factoring in the reality of urban warfare in the event of any attempted invasion from China. (TWZ)

EUROPEAN UNION

Where the beer flows like wine.

European winemakers are still lobbying Brussels to exclude wine from the EU’s planned tariff retaliation against the US, fearing any tit-for-tat could cost them their single biggest market. (Euractiv $)

Comment: Both the US and EU wine industries have begged their own governments to keep them out of it, via what they call a ‘wine for wine’ principle. It’s an example of how the battle lines aren’t always national so much as sectoral, with industries trying to shape events in their favour via their own truces.

THAILAND

Tourism delight.

Thailand is holding off for another year before implementing its ~$10 visitor fee, arguing the country needs more time to assess foreign demand. (Strait Times)

COLOMBIA

A new group.

Bogotá is hosting the new Hague Group this week (with Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, and South Africa), seeking “concrete legal, diplomatic and economic measures that can halt Israel’s destruction [in Gaza]”. Members of the local Jewish community have rejected the event as aiming “to scorch the only democracy in the Middle East that’s waging a war for its survival“. (El Pais)

ETHIOPIA

It was you.

The French-born aid organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has published the findings of an internal review, concluding soldiers intentionally killed three MSF workers during Ethiopia’s 2021 civil war. The report stopped just short of echoing a NYT investigation which named a specific Ethiopian officer (Col. Tadesse Bekele) as giving the order. (Al Jazeera)