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‘Psychological torture’: Spanish tenants fight back against housing ‘harassment’

When the Madrid building where Jaime Oteyza had lived since 2012 was sold to an investment fund two years ago, a local tenants’ union swiftly warned him what to expect. First the tenants would be told that none of their rental contracts – regardless of their expiry date – would be renewed, the union said. Then, as the 50 or so families in the building grappled with what to do next, a series of construction projects would probably be launched in the building to ramp up pressure on them to leave. “One by one, all of the situations that the union described began to happen,” said Oteyza. “Construction work was the weapon they used to make our lives impossible; power cuts, leaks, noise, drilling through walls, ceilings collapsing on top of gas stoves.” It’s a pattern that housing campaigners say is playing out across much of urban Spain, as investors seek to cash in on the country’s roaring housing market. The aim is simple: to force out long-term tenants as quickly as possible to make way for more profitable tourist, short-term or luxury lets. It’s come to be known across Spain as acoso inmobiliario, roughly translating as real estate harassment. The phrase refers to the myriad ways in which long-term tenants are subjected to worsening conditions so that they end their contracts on their own accord. But within the walls of one nondescript building in the madrileño neighbourhood of Lavapiés, tenants may have found a way to fight back. Last year, a dozen tenants, including Oteyza, turned to the country’s courts, alleging that the construction work was a bid to coerce them into ending their leases prematurely. Late last year, a court in Madrid agreed to hear the case, launching what housing campaigners say is the country’s first preliminary investigation into real estate harassment. For residents of the building, the groundbreaking case has added another layer of complexity to their long-running battle. “It’s bittersweet,” said Cristina Gómez, who has lived in the building since 2020. The court’s decision was “nice, as it confirmed we’re not just imagining things,” she said. “But at the same time, this is the result of a lot of suffering. It’s a shit situation for everyone.” The construction work began in November 2024. As the work led to flooding in some apartments and turned parts of the building into no-go zones, residents saw a clear attempt by the new owners to bypass the costlier, more time-consuming process of going through courts to evict them individually. The tenants said they tried to negotiate with the new owners – at one point even offering to buy the building for the same amount that the investment fund had paid for it – as the company offered some tenants a few thousand euros to help with the move. “They were very tough, very long conversations, at no point did they accept anything other than us leaving the building,” said Gómez. Noise levels in the building skyrocketed, as drills and jackhammers rang out and rubble was felled, said Oteyza. For those at home during the day, it was a form of “psychological torture”, he said. “It’s really difficult to live with noise, eight hours a day, day in and day out.” The father of two young children, Oteyza also worried constantly for their safety. “There’s a real fear that there will be an accident,” he said. “There might be a power tool plugged in on the landing. Or they’ve left a hole in the courtyard. These are risky situations.” As one tenant, who asked to be named only as Nani, put it: “We’re resisting and we’ll continue to resist, but it’s really difficult,” she said. “But we have to do it – it can’t be that those who have money can come and buy and sell buildings without caring about the lives of the people inside.” On at least five occasions, police and firefighters were called to the building as tenants wrestled with the fallout of the construction work. About 15 months after it began, residents say that about half of the tenants in the building have opted to leave. It’s a hint of the kinds of situations that are playing out across Spain, said Alejandra Jacinto, a lawyer with the tenants’ union who helped draft the pioneering legal challenge. “From sending in eviction companies to carrying out construction works that cause damage, to putting glue in people’s locks, real estate harassment is a tool that is increasingly being used,” she said. Both the legal challenge and the court’s decision to launch a preliminary investigation were trailblazing steps pushing back against this trend, she said. “I think it’s already sending a message that there’s no impunity and that not everything goes. You can’t act outside the law to achieve your goals.” The court battle had made headlines across the country, she said, offering a glimmer of hope as many in Spain reel from the soaring cost of housing. In January, campaigners in Barcelona announced that a local court had become the second to admit a case alleging real estate harassment. The case argues that the new owners of a five-floor building had left tenants without a working lift for more than a month, stranding elderly tenants and those with mobility issues, including one person who uses a wheelchair, in a bid to get them to leave. In Madrid, weeks after news broke of the court’s investigation, the tenants said it had already had an impact. “Curiously enough, we noticed that when the case made headlines, they continued working but in a more orderly, more systematic way and respecting the noise levels,” said Oteyza. In a statement to the Guardian, a legal representative for the building’s owner said the construction work was aimed at improving accessibility, reinforcing the building’s structure and renovating the roof, noting: “all of which are essential measures to ensure the safety and habitability of the property”. The company had all of the necessary permits to carry out the work, it said. The spokesperson said agreements had been reached with more than 30 tenants in the building, in a show of their “commitment to dialogue and the search for mutually agreed upon solutions”. It added: “Aware of the inconvenience that this type of work can cause, and in order to minimise the impact on the lives of the residents, the owner has offered alternatives from the outset to the residents directly affected by the work, providing them with options for temporary relocation to other homes and accommodation adapted to their needs.” At the building in Lavapiés, the tenants were bracing themselves for a legal battle that could stretch on for months, if not years. But for Gómez, it was an absolute necessity. “What’s happening to us is something that is happening every day, all the time around us,” she said. “I think we need to show them that we’re willing to enforce the law, that we know our rights and are going to assert them.” In a country where the average rent has doubled in the past decade, it also felt as if it was the only option, she added. “It’s not like I can just go to somewhere nearby or another neighbourhood, it’s impossible,” she said. “So where does one go?”

Antiques auction selling neck shackles accused of ‘profiting from slavery’

An antiques auction selling chains linked to the enslavement of African people in Zanzibar has been accused of “profiting from slavery”. Neck irons dated to the Omani-Arab dominated trade in enslaved people in east Africa, which ended after African resistance and British pressure in the late 19th century, will go on sale this weekend in Scotland. The auctioneer Marcus Salter, of Cheeky Auctions in Tain, Ross, said he wanted to ensure history was confronted with the sale of the “sensitive artefact” and did not wish to offend. But the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, said trading in such items meant people were “continuing to profit from the slave trade”. Nigel Murray, a retired lawyer in the Scottish Highlands, contacted the Guardian after he saw the chains promoted on Facebook and said “he was never going to buy anything more” from Cheeky Auctions. The shackles, dated to 1780 and valued at about £1,000, are among objects listed in the auction, called “Challenging History”. Salter said he was selling the chains for a dealer whose father had owned them for 50 years, adding: “No matter what happens there’s going to be money made out of it from somewhere.” He claimed if the item was donated to a museum, it could be “put into storage and never seen again”, and that slavery-linked mahogany was sold and used without controversy. “I think it’s important not to upset and offend, but shock people into learning the whole truth,” Salter said. “There are certain things we’re not allowed to sell at auction. We had to check with the platform we’re selling with that we could do this. They consider the slave chains to be a historical artefact, therefore we can. “We’ve had people we’ve never met say they’re boycotting us. We’ve had people who educated us and we educated them. There have been others who just disagree and never want to come in.” In 2024, the Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan refused to value an ivory bangle linked to enslavement. Ribeiro-Addy said of the chains: “If they were to be put in a museum I would understand, but buying and selling them like oddities is the same thing that people do when it comes to human remains – treating them as collector’s items, something to be fetishised rather than items that should be looked at in horror. “Why are you selling it for profit? Unless you’re trying to re-enact the history of enslavement by profiting from something used to inflict pain and oppression. We’ve got people trying give valid reasons for continuing to profit from the slave trade – that’s all it sounds like to me.” Murray said the auction was “vile”, adding: “An auction is the way enslaved people were sold, and here you are auctioning these chains off. “[Descendants of plantation owners] have millions of pounds gained from slavery, to see people making more money out of it just made me feel very angry.” Caecilia Dance, an associate at London law firm Wedlake Bell, has advised on the restitution of Nazi-looted art. Dance said she could not comment on the auction, but that there was “no specific law against” trading objects linked to slavery. She added that “public interest stewardship” – donation, sale, or long-term loan to a museum with relationships with affected communities – would be the “ideal management pathway” for an item linked to slavery. Dance said: “It’s reached a point in the art trade where if there’s any sign an item might have been looted in the Nazi period, no one wants to buy it. “It’s probably only a matter of time that that ethical framework extends to objects associated with enslavement because you risk commodifying trauma, even if the sale is completely lawful. Public opinion is definitely turning in favour of restitution.”

The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose

During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service. What they couldn’t do was check international headlines about thousands of people being killed by government forces during one of the bloodiest weeks in recent Iranian history. Nor, for the most part, could they get evidence out of Iran to the outside world – no pictures, no videos, no testimony of military vehicles being driven into protesters or family members being dragged from their homes and shot. What Iran has, a splinternet, is becoming reality for many millions of people. It is likely to get far worse. More than half of Russia’s regions are able to access only a limited, government-approved version of the internet through their mobile phones. The “great firewall of China” blocks most of the global internet, including sites such as Google and the Guardian. The Myanmar junta has experimented with targeted internet shutdowns and so recently have authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For nearly two decades, the US backed a global effort to make it extremely difficult for governments to divide up the internet in this way. It hinged on funding tools built by groups worldwide to circumvent censorship. These made it very costly and very hard to shut down the internet entirely, and they ensured that governments that did seek to cut off their people often had to isolate themselves and their financial institutions as well. Like many US soft-power initiatives, the programme was imperfect, morally complex and at times at odds with the policies of other governments. Yet it is one foundation of what the internet is: a global commons. Today’s online world is dominated by large tech platforms and awash with illegal content and misinformation. But it is still a structure in which facts, ideas and information accessible from London are largely accessible from Delhi, Johannesburg and São Paulo as well. That could change rapidly. On the one hand is the matter of US funding, now cut or apparently redirected towards a Trumpian, politicised effort to undermine global attempts to regulate US big-tech platforms. On the other is the mounting export of censorship technologies, which are constantly improving and increasingly marketed overseas. These include devices sold by companies in China that give their customers – governments in Pakistan, Myanmar and Ethiopia among others – extremely fine-tuned control over what comes in and out of a country. It is believed that similar technologies are the foundation of Iran’s current shutdown. Censorship technologies are growing more powerful at the same time as programmes designed to stymie them have been decimated. To those who work on the problem, the stakes are high. “When governments want to not be scrutinised for how many people they’re killing in their streets, they’ll shut the internet down,” said a former US official. It is not easy to build a splinternet. The internet is, by design, a decentralised and deeply inter-dependent network. But Iran’s recent example indicates that it is becoming far more plausible. Russia has been attempting to create a similar cut-off internet for some years, and other authoritarian regimes appear to share the ambition. It will become cheaper and easier to achieve. Governments worldwide, including in Europe, are promoting notions of sovereign data, sovereign AI and, in some cases, sovereign internet. Accompanying this is an ambition to nationalise infrastructure, for example to keep UK citizens’ health records stored in UK data centres. This is an understandable goal, given the increasingly authoritarian bent of US tech platforms that are the custodians of much of the world’s data. But if fascist or authoritarian regimes ascend, such an approach risks replacing one set of despots with another. Iran’s ability to cut off its internet was prefigured by a years-long push to nationalise its underlying infrastructure. Shutdowns such as Iran’s become far easier when a country’s data is entirely accessible to its domestic authorities. Those fighting for digital freedoms in harsh environments – in Iran and beyond – are approaching Europe, hoping the EU might pick up some of what the US has dropped and fund anticensorship technologies. It is doubtful that Europe has the money or the willpower to do much, given the other responsibilities it must shoulder. Next to defence, it seems a marginal concern. But the information environment as we know it – the ground of shared fact that allowed this piece to be written and you to read it – is at stake.

Ukraine war briefing: Hungary threatens to block €90bn EU loan to Kyiv in oil row

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has threatened to veto the EU’s €90bn ($106bn) loan to Ukraine unless Kyiv restores Russian oil deliveries through a pipeline on its territory. Ukrainian authorities say the Druzhba pipeline was shut down after being damaged during a Russian attack in January, angering Kremlin allies Orbán and the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico. “As long as Ukraine blocks the Druzhba pipeline, Hungary will block the €90 billion Ukrainian war loan,” Orbán said on Facebook on Friday. “We will not be pushed around!” Slovakian economy minister Denisa Sakova said Ukraine had postponed the resumption of oil deliveries until 24 February. On Wednesday, Fico declared a state of emergency over supplies and threatened retaliatory measures against Ukraine if the pipeline – which runs from Russia through its territory to Slovakia and Hungary – was not reopened. Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, confirmed it was opposing the EU loan, saying on X on Friday: “By blocking oil transit to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, Ukraine violates the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, breaching its commitments to the European Union. We will not give in to this blackmail.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country is not losing its war against Russia, has taken hundreds of square kilometres in a new counteroffensive and that European troops should deploy right on the frontline after any ceasefire. The Ukrainian president told Agence France-Presse ahead of the war’s fourth anniversary on 24 February: “You can’t say that we’re losing the war. Honestly, we’re definitely not losing it, definitely. The question is whether we will win.” Speaking at the presidential palace in Kyiv, he added: “That is the question – but it’s a very costly question.” Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were gaining ground in counterattacks along the southern frontline. “I won’t go into too many details,” Zelenskyy told AFP of the advances, “but today I can congratulate our army first and foremost – all the defence forces – because as of today, 300 [square] kilometres have been liberated.” He did not say over what timeframe and the claim could not be verified. Military bloggers have suggested some of those gains could have been aided by sweeping outages of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front. Zelenskyy said Kyiv was taking advantage of the situation but conceded that Ukrainian forces had also experienced interruptions due to the outages. “There are problems, there are challenges,” he said. Five of Europe’s top military powers have announced a joint programme to quickly develop low cost drones, as the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the fighting in Ukraine drives a shift in modern warfare. Defence ministers and deputy ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland said in a statement on Friday that the low-cost effectors and autonomous platforms (Leap) initiative would help “improve our collective security” within Nato while strengthening European cooperation. German defence minister Boris Pistorius said the aim of the project was to “rapidly and cheaply develop innovative systems, in particular for defence against drones, and then just as rapidly produce them in large numbers”. UK minister of state Luke Pollard said each member of the group has made a “multimillion” dollar commitment to advance the technology needed to start producing components of the new system “within 12 months”. The US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine but most of Europe – including Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. Shaun Walker’s exclusive account draws on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries. As the war anniversary approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022. Ukrainian drones damaged a site in southern Russia’s Udmurtia region, the governor said early on Saturday. Injuries had resulted, Alexander Brechalov also said on Telegram. An unofficial Ukrainian Telegram site, Realna Viyna, said Ukrainian forces had attacked a plant manufacturing Russian missiles in the city of Votkinsk in Udmurtia, about 1,400km (780 miles) from Ukraine and posted what it said were pictures of the strike. Ukrainian competitors will boycott the Milano Cortina Paralympics opening ceremony on 6 March in Verona, their committee said on Friday, due to the authorisation of some Russian and Belarusian athletes with their national flags. The International Paralympic Committee’s allocation of 10 combined slots to Russian and Belarusian athletes has created a political storm over the coming Games. More than 5,000 women and girls have been killed in Ukraine and another 14,000 injured since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, Sofia Calltorp, the head of UN Women in Geneva, told reporters on Friday.

Why is South Korea angry that Yoon Suk Yeol wasn’t sentenced to death?

On Thursday, former president Yoon Suk Yeol was found guilty of leading an insurrection and sentenced to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024. When he received his sentence, hundreds of his opponents cheered outside the court. But the mood quickly shifted to disappointment and anger. So what is happening in South Korea and why are so many people unhappy? What has the reaction been to Yoon’s sentencing? Although life imprisonment and the death penalty are in effect the same in a country that has not executed anyone since 1997, many South Koreans see Yoon’s sentence as dangerously lenient. A Gwangju civic coalition called the life term “a failure to deliver even minimal justice”. Other South Korean human rights groups, civic groups, labour unions and political parties also issued statements expressing dismay. Democratic party leader Jung Chung-rae, who had prepared a speech celebrating a death sentence, said the verdict was “a clear retreat” from the citizens’ movement that stopped the December 2024 martial law attempt. International human rights groups opposed the death penalty for Yoon, while acknowledging the gravity of the charges. Why are people upset about the punishment? Anger is rooted in South Korea’s history of elite impunity, and the severity of the punishment, rather than a desire for an execution. In 1996, military dictator Chun Doo-hwan received the death penalty for leading a 1979 coup and the subsequent massacre in Gwangju. His sentence was reduced to life on appeal. He was then pardoned and released in 1997. He lived freely until his death in 2021. In closing arguments, prosecutors said the death penalty in South Korea’s criminal justice system “does not mean execution but rather functions as the community’s will to respond to crime.” The criminal code offers only three punishments for the ringleaders of an insurrection: death, life with labour, or life without labour. Thursday’s verdict gave Yoon life with labour, which allows parole after 20 years. A death sentence, offering no chance of parole, would have sent a stronger signal that such acts cannot be mitigated. What was the court’s reasoning? Judge Jee Kui-youn cited several mitigating factors: Yoon’s planning didn’t appear meticulous, he attempted to limit force, most of his plans failed, he had no prior criminal record, had long served in public office, and was relatively old at 65. Critics dismissed the reasoning as perverse. Lawmakers argued long public service should aggravate, not mitigate, abuse of state power. They noted the coup was halted by citizen resistance and parliamentary intervention, not Yoon’s restraint. Progressive newspaper Hankyoreh wrote in an editorial that “the judiciary is showing behaviour that falls far short of citizens’ standards.” One human rights group pointed to recent German prosecutions of elderly former Auschwitz guards as evidence that state crimes by those in power cannot be excused by age or clean records. Could Yoon be pardoned? South Korea has convicted four conservative former presidents before Yoon. Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were pardoned in 1997. In the democratic era, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak were pardoned after serving a few years each. Many fear a life sentence makes a future pardon more politically feasible, whereas death would raise the political cost. Political parties are pushing an insurrection pardon prohibition bill through parliament. Democratic party leader Jung said it would pass soon, warning that the judiciary’s leniency toward Chun Doo-hwan had “returned like a boomerang” and resulted in “another tragedy”. How has Yoon reacted to his sentencing? In a statement released on Friday, Yoon maintained his martial law declaration was “for the nation and the people” and “deeply apologised” for the frustrations and hardships experienced by citizens due to his “inadequacies”. He showed no remorse for the act itself, calling it a “decision to save the nation”. He questioned whether appealing was worthwhile, accusing the judiciary of a lack of independence, but his legal team clarified the statement did not mean he was abandoning his potential appeal. He urged supporters: “Our fight is not over. We must unite and rise.”

Floreana giant tortoise reintroduced to Galápagos island after almost 200 years

Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years. The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages. Remarkably, 158 juvenile giant tortoises descended from the Floreana subspecies have been returned to the island in a vital step for the largest ecological restoration project undertaken on the Pacific Ocean archipelago. A relic population of giant tortoises discovered on Wolf volcano in the north of Isabela Island in 2008 were found to be descended in part from the Floreana population. Most of the Wolf volcano tortoises had domed shells like those living on Isabela’s other volcanoes to the south, but some had a saddleback-shaped carapace more typical of the tortoises that evolved on Floreana. A captive “back breeding” programme began in 2017, for which 23 hybrid tortoises most closely related to the Floreana subspecies were chosen to recreate it as genetically close to the original as possible. More than 600 hatchlings had been born by 2025, and several hundred grew large enough to be returned to their ancestral island. Males can reach nearly 1.5 metres (5ft) in length. Although whalers wiped out the Floreana tortoise, it ironically endured on Wolf volcano because they also deposited live tortoises on other islands for safekeeping and sometimes tossed tortoise cargo overboard if they needed to lighten their load during their whaling missions. Floreana, the sixth largest island in the archipelago, was once home to a wealth of endemic wildlife, including spectacular species such as the Floreana mockingbird, the Floreana racer snake. But the arrival of sailors, whalers and then settlers brought invasive mammals including rats and feral cats that wiped out native fauna and flora, a pattern repeated on small islands across the world. When Charles Darwin reached Floreana in 1835, its giant tortoise population was in its death throes. Its reintroduction has been brought about by the Floreana Ecological Restoration Project, a partnership between the Galápagos national park directorate and a number of charities working closely with the island’s 160 residents. An invasive species eradication programme, which began in 2023 and has removed most of the rats and feral cats on the island, paved the way for the tortoises’ return. The Galapagos rail has since been rediscovered on Floreana after not being recorded since Darwin’s first visit, and there has been a resurgence in populations of ground finches and native geckos, lizards and snails. Verónica Mora, a Floreana community representative, said of the tortoises’ return: “This moment marks an important step toward a future where conservation and community wellbeing go hand in hand, because our livelihoods, from tourism to agriculture and fishing, depend on the health of this island.” The island’s farmers have also reported much-improved harvests since rat numbers were drastically reduced. Giant tortoises are “keystone species”. Their grazing maintains open habitats, promoting the growth of native plants and creating conditions that benefit reptiles, invertebrates and birds. They also distribute native seeds across the island as they roam. “Habitats are the foundation for biodiversity, the home that allows species to move, live and evolve naturally over time,” said Rakan Zahawi, the executive director of the Charles Darwin Foundation. “Giant tortoises are a critical part of this system. By dispersing seeds, shaping vegetation, creating micro-habitats such as their well known wallows, and influencing how landscapes regenerate, they help rebuild ecological processes that many other species depend on.” Hugo Mogollón, the chief executive of Galápagos Conservancy, said: “By identifying tortoises on Wolf Volcano with Floreana ancestry and breeding their descendants, we are returning this species to its island in a form that closely reflects the original lineage – laying a critical scientific foundation for the restoration of Floreana’s ecosystems and the future reintroduction of additional native species.” The next phase of restoration will seek to return species including the Floreana mockingbird, the Floreana racer snake, the vegetarian finch and the little vermilion flycatcher. Dr Jen Jones, the chief executive of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, said: “It’s a validation of the incredible efforts we’ve seen over the last 20 years from a whole ecosystem of conservation NGOs, local authorities, determined individual researchers and community champions.”

Hamas reportedly holds leadership vote at critical moment for militant group

Hamas has reportedly begun holding leadership elections among its members at a time when the militant Palestinian movement faces imminent decisions which will be critical to its own continued existence and the potential for peace in Gaza. According to the BBC and press reports in the Gulf, Hamas members in Gaza have already voted. Those in the West Bank, in Israeli prisons and the diaspora are also expected to cast ballots for delegates to the movement’s 50-member general Shura council, which ultimately chooses its politburo and a new interim leader. The process could last weeks. The new leader will have to decide how far to cooperate with a US-sponsored peace plan, whether to disarm and how much of its arsenal to give up, what to demand in return from Israel in terms of withdrawal from the territory and whether to press for inclusion in a new Gaza government or fade into the political background. Much of the Hamas leadership has been killed by Israel in a military campaign that also razed much of Gaza and killed more than 75,000 Palestinians over 28 months. Among those killed was Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza Hamas leader, and Mohammed Deif, its military chief who led the shock attack on southern Israeli communities in October 2023, killing about 1,200 people, including more than 800 civilians. Israel also assassinated the movement’s deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in Beirut in January 2024 and the overall political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July 2024. Israel tried to kill much of the surviving leadership in a single airstrike on Doha in September last year when they had gathered to discuss a US peace proposal, but the key leaders survived. The two frontrunners in the leadership contest are thought to be Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal, who both survived the Doha airstrike. Between them, they present a fairly clearcut choice on Hamas’s future direction. Al-Hayya leads the Gaza wing, though he lives in the Gulf, and is considered Sinwar’s heir – hardline, though not drawn from the military wing, and closest to Iran among Hamas’s foreign sponsors. Meshaal is a Hamas veteran, one of its founders, who served as overall leader for more than two decades. He now leads the movement abroad and is thought to live in Doha. He is viewed as being at the more flexible end of the Hamas spectrum, with stronger ties to Qatar and Turkey. “Meshaal wants to consider a political settlement with Israel – not a recognition but maybe a long-term settlement – and even reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority, and once again be part of the formal political system in the Palestinian arena,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence colonel now at Tel Aviv University. “These two represent two different camps, and different agendas about the future and the goals of Hamas.” It is unclear whether there are other significant candidates. The vote is taking place under conditions of maximum secrecy due to the danger of assassination faced by anyone identified as playing a leading role in Hamas. “Whoever is in the leadership – whether it’s the Shura council or the actual top leadership – the question is: who wants to be in that position, knowing that they will most likely be on an Israeli hitlist?” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington. “It’s clear that this is going to be a new chapter for Hamas, and it may even be existential. Will Hamas survive? What will it look like? Obviously, they’re going to do anything and everything to avoid the optics of a surrender,” Elgindy said. “Meshaal will have better ties with the Arab states, certainly with the Qataris and the Turks, all of whom are going to be very influential,” he added. “I can see him making the case that Hamas’s reliance on Iran is going to have to diminish as Tehran is preoccupied with its own survival. “There’s so much anger and frustration with Hamas on the street, but has that translated to the membership, the people who are actually voting? I don’t have a sense of that.” Under Donald Trump’s plan, a group of non-affiliated Palestinian technocrats, called the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG), are supposed to take over the immediate task of running Gaza, and overseeing Hamas’s disarmament. While Hamas leaders are reported to have indicated informally they would consider handing over heavier weapons, such as rockets and mortars, to a Palestinian body, its fighters are likely to refuse to surrender personal firearms, which they say are necessary for self-defence against Gaza’s multiple armed clans and criminal gangs, some of them backed by Israel. Reuters news agency has reported that Hamas has been busy rebuilding its organisation in recent weeks, collecting taxes on goods allowed into the territory under a ceasefire deal and replacing senior officials in Gaza ministries and district governors.

AI hit: India hungry to harness US tech giants’ technology at Delhi summit

India celebrates 80 years of independence from the UK in August 2027. At about that same moment, “early versions of true super intelligence” could emerge, Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, said this week. It’s a looming coincidence that raised a charged question at the AI Impact summit in Delhi, hosted by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi: can India avoid returning to the status of a vassal state when it imports AI to raise the prospects of its 1.4 billion people? Modi’s hunger to harness AI’s capability is great. He compared it on Thursday to a turning point that resets the direction of civilisation, such as “when the first sparks were struck from stone”. The most common analogy heard among the thousands of visitors to the summit was the dawn of electricity, but Modi was talking about fire. His desire to use AI to supercharge Indian economic growth is matched by that of the big US tech companies. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic all played prominent roles at the summit, announcing deals to get ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude AIs into more people’s hands. The Trump administration, seeing AI as central to its battle for supremacy with China, was clearing the path for the three AI companies. The US government signed the Pax Silica, a technology agreement that binds India closer to US tech and away from Beijing. At the signing, Jacob Helberg, the US under secretary of state for economic affairs, emphasised the threat from China if India should even think about looking elsewhere for its AI. “We have seen the lights of a great Indian city extinguished by a keystroke,” he said, in an apparent reference to a suspected Chinese cyber-attack on Mumbai in 2020. India lacks the semiconductors, power plants and vast gigawatt datacentres to go it alone. In common with most other countries, it faces a choice between US and Chinese AI models. Which they choose could have profound consequences for who controls India’s future, because if AI’s power emerges as predicted, it will not only tweak economic and social structures, but become their new bedrock. Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, who closely follows India’s progress, said: “If we get to AGI [artificial general intelligence], AI is going to be producing 80% of the global economy. All manufacturing, most agriculture, all services will be just done; managed by AI, produced by AI.” Imagine, he said, an Indian village priced out of having a health centre. In the future, AI could design the hospital and “along comes a bunch of giant quad copters carrying the materials, and a bunch of robots come and assemble everything. Two weeks later, you’ve got a hospital.” In this scenario, technology becomes integral to a country’s wellbeing. Elements of sovereignty can be fought over, but how successful that will be remains to be seen. AI’s power is such that its controller gains enormous leverage. Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, told the summit: “It may sound absurd, but AI can even help India achieve a standout 25% economic growth.” If that were to happen, it would take India to a per-capita GDP in a decade that is equivalent to Greece today. How could a leader resist? Modi’s tech secretary, Shri Krishnan, said India realised it must ally with like-minded countries to ensure it did not become “enslaved”. It is a high-stakes decision. India appears unlikely to turn to China, for now. It has the AI models, but there are tensions on the Himalayan border, and Chinese companies and leaders were scarce at the summit. Will India thrive with US AI? Silicon Valley companies talk of cooperation not control. Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global policy, said: “We don’t see India as a customer, we see it as a strategic partner.” US officials framed the deal with India as an alliance of two nations that “broke centuries of colonial rule”, and as “two great democracies saying we will build together”. The Guardian asked Michael Kratsios, Donald Trump’s science and technology adviser, if India risked being controlled by the US under a form of digital colonialism. “I would say it is actually the opposite,” he said. “Any country that builds on top of the American AI stack will have the most open, independently controlled, secured stack the world has to offer. And that is why we are soon keen to share it with so many countries that are prioritising their AI sovereignty.” Russell sees another possibility. “I think the American companies want to get in at that high-school and middle-school level to create basically a bunch of AI addicts who can’t tie their shoelaces without the help of AI,” he said. “Silicon Valley has always been about eyeballs. You monetise later and it works. Google and Facebook generate vast amounts of money.” Could India build its own AI? It is investing billions in datacentres and semiconductor capacity, but it takes years to come online. India can press US tech companies to adapt their AIs to its kaleidoscope of languages and cultures, and attempt to insist on guardrails. There is much at stake. As the summit came to a close, Joanna Shields, a former Facebook and Google executive and ex-UK minister for internet safety, warned: “If we have a world where we are accepting models from just the global north, we will lose so much of our cultural diversity, our uniqueness as people, wherever we come from … We don’t want to develop a monoculture based on a handful of models that everybody uses around the world and we lose that richness of who we are, what makes us human.”