How Stable Is the China-North Korea Alliance?

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Jun 18, 2026 | Antiwar.com

For more than 7 decades, leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) have emphasized that their countries maintain an exceptionally close political, economic, and security relationship.  Mao Zedong even stated during the Korean War that the bilateral relationship was “as close as lips and teeth.” Numerous PRC officials have repeated that phrase throughout the years since then.  (A variation describes the alliance as close as “teeth and gums,” a formulation that is essentially the same).  The summit meeting between PRC President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held in mid-June sought to reemphasize both the continuing importance and the compatibility of PRC-DPRK ties.

There is an indisputably crucial history of very close relations between Beijing and Pyongyang.  In late 1950, PRC forces intervened in the war between communist North Korea and anti-communist South Korea (whose government was massively supported with military personnel and weaponry from the United States and other Western countries).  The armistice that ended the fighting in 1953 left the Korean Peninsula split between two intensely hostile countries, with the United States and the PRC firmly backing their respective clients throughout the remainder of the Cold War.

Despite that history, the current connection between the two communist states is decidedly more nuanced, ambiguous, and even contentious than the lips and teeth cliché would imply.  Beijing’s ambivalence about its small, more radical, client has especially been building since Pyongyang began pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the 1990s and started conducting underground nuclear tests in the early 2000s.  PRC civilian and military officials believe that North Korea’s actions contribute to the worrisome level of political and military tensions plaguing Northeast Asia and could even trigger a catastrophic war.

Chinese policymakers have had ample reasons for concern.  In 1994, Bill Clinton’s administration was so alarmed by Pyongyang’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal that U.S. officials seriously contemplated launching preemptive aircraft and missile strikes on North Korean installations.  A peace initiative that former president Jimmy Carter initiated helped avert that tragedy, but tensions regarding the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula escalated again as the years passed.  The DPRK’s decision to conduct nuclear tests greatly added to worries in both the United States and China.

Beijing watched with mounting uneasiness the DPRK’s obvious intention to barge into the exclusive global club of nuclear weapons powers.  PRC officials attempted to reassure their Korean clients that China would continue to firmly protect the DPRK’s security.  The PRC’s underlying message was that a North Korean nuclear weapons program, therefore, was both unnecessary and provocative.  Nevertheless, for all the talk about fraternal Leninist solidarity and the image of “lips and teeth,” Beijing’s discontent with Pyongyang became increasingly serious and obvious.  That trend was especially apparent when North Korea ignored its patron’s advice. The DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 and then conducted a series of underground nuclear tests over the next 14 years.  Pyongyang’s pursuit of a larger, more sophisticated capability with respect to medium-and long-range ballistic missiles also agitated Chinese leaders.  Nevertheless, despite Beijing’s sometimes caustic criticism, North Korea has managed to build a modest nuclear arsenal that Western analysts now estimate to number approximately 50 warheads.

My numerous conversations with PRC diplomats in the Foreign Ministry as well as China’s embassy in Washington, D.C. during the 1990s and early 2000s confirmed my impression about the extent of Beijing’s mounting annoyance with North Korea.  Despite their efforts to conceal such frustration, it became obvious to me that many mid-level PRC diplomats privately regarded the DPRK as an embarrassment to China.  They seemed to view the Pyongyang regime as an obsolete client that was needlessly complicating the PRC’s ambitions to play a leading economic, diplomatic, and security role in world affairs.

More recently, Xi’s government also seems uneasy about the extent of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions as well as some of the DPRK’s other freelancing geostrategic initiatives.  For example, Pyongyang has assisted Vladimir Putin’s government to wage its bloody war in Ukraine.  Indeed, North Korean troops are now direct participants in that meat grinder conflict.  Pyongyang’s involvement complicates Beijing’s multifaceted efforts to facilitate an end to the fighting and gain plaudits around the world for its role as peacemaker.

The United States has missed multiple opportunities over the decades to help wean the DPRK off its excessive security dependence on the PRC – and do so without unduly antagonizing China.  For example, when the Cold War ended, both Beijing and Moscow promptly fulfilled their earlier offers to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea.  Washington, however, found reasons to renege on a similar implied offer to extend diplomatic recognition to the DPRK.

Despite some initial promising symbolic gestures during President Trump’s first administration, U.S. leaders still have made no substantive moves to normalize relations with Pyongyang.  That is a serious mistake.  Washington should give the DPRK economic and diplomatic alternatives to a continued extensive reliance on Beijing.  Kim Jong Un appears to want greater policy choices, as indicated by his recent intense courtship of Moscow.

Exchanging ambassadors, lifting some trade sanctions, offering to pull U.S. troops back from their current positions near the Demilitarized Zone, and tolerating the DPRK’s emergence as a nuclear power, would be relatively low-cost, low-risk ways of easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.  Such concessions also would reduce Pyongyang’s intense reliance on Beijing’s security shield and pervasive patronage.  Moreover, they would constitute peaceful steps that would be very difficult for PRC leaders to criticize.  Indeed, Trump administration officials could contend that the approach is consistent with the president’s apparent overall willingness to treat China as a benign peer power.

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He is also a contributing editor to National Security Journal and The American Conservative. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,600 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil liberties issues. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).

The World Government That Wasn’t

In 1961 Washington and Moscow agreed to abolish war. Then the men who meant it died.

by Pelle Taylor | Jun 19, 2026 |

Reprinted from The Realist Review.

There are certain episodes in Cold War history that modern conservatives are expected to treat as either sinister fantasy or liberal delusion. The McCloy–Zorin Accords of 1961 occupy a curious place. Explain the concept today and half of the audience assumes you are describing a proto-globalist fever dream hatched in Manhattan conference rooms full of Scandinavian furniture and earnest men in rimless spectacles.

Yet for a brief moment — and this is the part that ought to unsettle both the utopians and the cynics — the United States and the Soviet Union formally agreed that the ultimate goal of international politics should be the abolition of war itself.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The “Joint Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations,” better known as the McCloy–Zorin Accords, was negotiated between American statesman John J. McCloy and Soviet diplomat Valerian Zorin in September 1961 and endorsed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1961. It envisioned phased and verified general disarmament under international control, including the eventual elimination of national military establishments and the creation of a United Nations peace force.

This was not drafted by Woodstock pacifists smoking hashish in Vermont. McCloy was the very model of the American establishment insider: Wall Street lawyer, banker, Assistant Secretary of War, and one of the founding grandees of the postwar Atlantic order. Zorin, meanwhile, was a hard Soviet apparatchik who had spent decades navigating the darker corridors of Kremlin diplomacy.

And yet there they were, at the height of the Berlin Crisis and only a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, jointly sketching a roadmap toward “general and complete disarmament.”

The irony is that the men closest to this project were not starry-eyed internationalists in the modern sense. They were realists in the older and more serious tradition. They had lived through industrial slaughter on a civilizational scale. Twenty-seven million Russians had died in World War Two. They understood that thermonuclear war was not a talking point but an extinction event. The generation that built the United Nations had watched Europe commit suicide twice in thirty years and concluded, however imperfectly, that sovereign states armed to the teeth and gripped by ideological hysteria might not indefinitely coexist.

Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish Secretary-General of the UN, became the moral and administrative face of this ambition. Today he is remembered, if at all, as the Nordic bureaucrat whose name adorns the plaza outside the UN building by the East River in New York and the library inside that skyscraper. In his own time he was treated almost as a secular pope. The press followed him obsessively. In the newsreels, he emerged from turboprop airliners with a mysterious Swedish smile. A new conflict, a new day for Dag. For a few years from the mid-fifties to very early sixties, the UN became a repository for a tired planet’s hopes. Diplomats regarded him with awe, irritation, or both. He believed the UN could become not merely a debating chamber but an actual mechanism for preventing great-power war.

This is the part modern conservatives are supposed to laugh at.

And yet before laughing too hard, it is worth observing that Hammarskjöld’s world, unlike ours, still possessed statesmen capable of fearing war more than they feared bad headlines.

The McCloy–Zorin framework emerged at the same time as the Berlin confrontation of 1961. Nikita Khrushchev wanted NATO forces out of West Berlin. Washington refused. Khrushchev declared they would be forced out, and brandished nuclear threats. In public, Kennedy responded by talking tough: Berlin would be defended militarily. The city was framed as a great testing place of Western courage. “Any dangerous spot is tenable if men—brave men—will make it so. We do not want to fight—but we have fought before,” he told American prime-time TV audiences from a sweltering Oval Office on 25 July 1961.

Behind the scenes, however, Kennedy was far more open to compromise, leading top secret discussions with his cabinet about transforming Berlin into a kind of internationally supervised city under UN protection — blue helmets replacing the tripwire forces of the Cold War blocs, perhaps even moving UN headquarters from New York to that city. According to a memo from 5 September 1961 in the diplomatic archives of the State Department (FRUS): “The President asked the State Department to consider the following elements of an eventual negotiation on Berlin… a move of some UN functions, or the whole Headquarters of the UN, to West Berlin, with appropriate guarantees to make West Berlin really a Free City.”

When one of his officials, Adlai Stevenson, objected to moving the United Nations out of New York City, Kennedy snapped, “I don’t think enough of the UN not to be able to trade it for a nuclear war.”

The concept sounds fantastical now because contemporary diplomacy imagines nothing except its own next communiqué.

The broader principle was simple enough: if neutral international supervision could defuse Berlin, perhaps similar arrangements could reduce tensions elsewhere. If the blue helmets could make Soviet-American conflict moot in its most neuralgic area of tension, Berlin and central Europe, maybe it could work in many other places, and the superpowers could eventually stand down their forces. From there would emerge the wider concept of phased disarmament backed by international verification and collective security mechanisms. Eventually, only the UN would have an army. No nation state would have an army, only police forces. The extraordinary UN document, A/4879, agreed by the USSR and USA on 20 September 1961, signed by Messrs McCloy and Zorin, lays out the long term goal in black and white:

“The program for general and complete disarmament shall ensure that States will have at their disposal only those non-nuclear armaments, forces, facilities, and establishments as are agreed to be necessary to maintain internal order and protect the personal security of citizens; and that States shall support and provide agreed manpower for a United Nations peace force.”

Of course, almost none of this happened. Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash in the small hours of 18 September 1961 while attempting to negotiate peace in the Congo, two days before McCloy and Zorin set their names to the text — so that the man most identified with the dream of a UN that could hold the peace never read the document that assumed one.

His death remains controversial, with continuing allegations of foul play and longstanding suspicions involving mercenaries, mining interests, Western intelligence, and colonial networks. Various UN inquiries have examined unresolved evidence and incomplete archival disclosures, particularly from British and American sources.

Then, two years later, Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. A notorious handbill circulating in the city, published by right wing groups, accused Kennedy of selling out the sovereignty of the United States to the “communist-controlled United Nations.”

Yet the grand design did not vanish entirely. Even as “general and complete disarmament” passed beyond reach, fragments of it survived. Kennedy had been genuinely taken with Hammarskjöld and his vision of a world at peace, and he was not about to let so convenient a martyrdom go unused. On 25 September 1961 — a week after the crash, and five days after McCloy had signed the Joint Statement — the President rose before the General Assembly and bound the dead Secretary-General to his own disarmament programme: “So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain…as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.”

He continued to pursue arms control after Hammarskjöld’s death, and something of the original ambition survived in the doing. The 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty grew out of the same atmosphere of post-Cuban terror and reluctant cooperation; the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the long architecture of strategic arms control followed. But the dream had been quietly redefined. The goal was no longer to abolish war, only to manage the apocalypse — to make the destruction survivable, or at least postponable.

That, in the end, is what became of McCloy–Zorin. It did not fail so much as shrink. The universal ambition collapsed into technocratic containment, as such ambitions usually do. We did not transcend power politics; instead we installed hotlines and verification protocols so that Washington and Moscow could threaten one another more responsibly. Perhaps that was the only realistic outcome.

And it is surely right to be wary of the alternative. The twentieth century offered evidence enough that universal ideologies, administered by self-anointed experts, tend to end in coercion, bureaucracy, and eventually blood. No sane person wants a superstate policing the planet from a tower on the East River.

But realism cuts both ways, and this is the part the cynics miss. The accords were not the fever-dream of pacifists. They were the last serious attempt by rival empires to imagine a totally new security order beyond permanent confrontation — and even at their most utopian they rested on a hard premise: that modern war had simply become too destructive to remain an ordinary instrument of policy. The men who drafted them feared annihilation more than they feared looking naive.

Set that against what followed. The post-Cold War triumphalists promised that liberal hegemony, NATO expansion, financial globalization, and humanitarian intervention would deliver permanent peace. What they delivered was forever wars, color revolutions, mass migration, collapsing social trust — and, once again, a nuclear confrontation in Eastern Europe. Today Western elites discuss war between nuclear powers in the bored tones of men who have never seen one, while proving unable to close a border to asylum seekers, or balance a budget. One suspects McCloy and Zorin, those hard old operators from Washington and Moscow, would have found our governing class not reckless so much as unserious — which, in the nuclear age, is the more frightening condition.

For the great irony is that the “New World Order” so feared by conspiracy-minded conservatives never arrived at all. No world government was ever built. What came instead was something far smaller and far shabbier: not a superstate but a drifting western order — managerial, directionless, conducted under ever-thinner moral slogans, with the occasional proxy war or managed student revolution to lend it the appearance of purpose.

And so the thing worth mourning is not the universal peace that was never going to come. It is the seriousness that died with the men who briefly believed in it: the capacity, now almost wholly lost, to look at a century of industrial slaughter and conclude that history itself had become too lethal to be left to run its course.

Pelle Neroth Taylor is a British-Swedish journalist and historian based in Sweden. He is writing a book on the death of Dag Hammarskjöld at Ndola in 1961.

Highly contagious bird flu found in Australia for the first time

20.06.2026, dpa

Photo: Richard Wainwright/AAP/dpa

By Rebekah Lyell, dpa

The highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected in mainland Australia for the first time, authorities said on Saturday.

Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said a brown skua, a type of migratory seabird, found on a remote beach south of Perth in Western Australia had tested positive for the disease.

The positive result means the virus, which has infected millions of birds worldwide, had now spread to every continent.

"This is the highly pathogenic strain of concern that has been circulating globally, and this is its first detection on mainland Australia," Collins said.

There was no evidence of any mass mortalities nor any evidence of infection in any poultry, she said.

Samples from another sick bird from the same region had been tested and had returned a suspected positive result for the avian influenza. The samples had now been sent for confirmatory testing.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the case was concerning, but the country was well prepared to respond.

"This is something that has happened through migratory birds, and has happened by definition around the world, and this is why we are preparing for this," he said.

Collins pointed to a A$100 million (US$70 million) government investment to prepare for a potential avian influenza outbreak.

"We have looked at what has happened overseas we have learnt from that, which is why we have invested early."

The H5 variant of avian flu was found on the sub-Antarctic remote Australian territory of Heard Island last year. The disease was detected on the island, about 4,000 kilometres south-west of Perth, after an unusually high number of elephant seals died there.

• Scimex on Australia confirmation
• Statement

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

S.Africa anti-migrant hate loses team African support at World Cup

Nairobi (AFP) – In a Kenyan sports bar, several football fans cheered South Africa's opponents in their latest match at the World Cup -- reflecting a wave of anger at the country's recent xenophobic violence.


Issued on: 19/06/2026 - RFI

South Africa has seen a wave of anti-migrant protests this year 

© EMMANUEL CROSET / AFP/File

"Everything is political in football. We're against what South Africa is standing for," said Shahim, a 37-year-old Kenyan woman, clenching her fists in joy every time the South African team missed an opportunity against the Czech Republic on Thursday night.

"We want (South Africans) to react against what is happening in their country... But nothing happens," she added.

South Africa has been gripped for months by protests demanding the departure of undocumented immigrants.

The marches have never exceeded a few thousand people, but they have been accompanied by a torrent of xenophobic hatred online and received significant media attention.

That has flipped the usual script during the World Cup, when African nations traditionally support each other.

"We support all the other African teams. This is to teach them that there are consequences," said Shahim's friend, Fatma, a 34-year-old farmer.

"When you have a superiority complex, you suffer alone," she added.

South Africa says it has repatriated 2,745 foreigners following President Cyril Ramaphosa's promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

Ghana and Nigeria have repatriated several hundred of their citizens, and some 600 Mozambicans returned home after violence in the southern city of Mossel Bay that left at least two dead.

It has shocked many across the continent and turned football fans against the Bafana Bafana, as the South African team is known.

There was joy when the team lost to Mexico last week. A popular social media meme showed a map of the African continent covered with the Mexican flag, excluding South Africa.

"The whole continent seems to have become Afro-Mexican," quipped Wode Maya, a popular vlogger in Ghana, asking his fans to reply in Spanish.

Even a spokesperson for the Confederation of African Football, Ibrahim Sannie Daara, joined in, posting on X: "You cannot mistreat Africa and still expect Africa's full blessing on the world stage," though he later moderated his remarks and called on all Africans to wear the South African jersey.
'Unacceptable'

The atmosphere remained light-hearted in the Nairobi bar visited by AFP for the Czech Republic match -- which ended in a draw -- where a few South Africans were present.

Edwin, a 50-year-old Kenyan communications professional, said he was determined to support all African teams: "You can't judge a whole country because of a minority."

The squad has received a torrent of 'online harassment and abuse' 

© Alfredo ESTRELLA / AFP

He recalled even harsher times in east Africa, when dictator Idi Amin Dada expelled tens of thousands of Ugandans of Indo-Pakistani origin in 1972.

But others were less forgiving.

"It is not because you don't have jobs that you can attack Africans," said Richie, a Tanzanian consultant visiting Nairobi, recalling his country's support for black South Africans during the apartheid era.

"Unless they change, we will do it over and over," he added.

The South African Football Association issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing the "online harassment and abusive messages" directed at its players, which it said was "unacceptable".

At a press conference on Thursday, Bafana Bafana captain Ronwen Williams admitted "it does hurt".

"You want to focus on doing your job, which is being a footballer, but then you get involved in politics and you don't want to get into that space," he said.

© 2026 AFP

The tape and the illegal ketchup: FIFA's sponsor protection rules

20.06.2026, dpa

Photo: Tom Weller/dpa

FIFA makes a big effort to protect its sponsors which can lead to bizarre measures. Tape is an important tool but some of the measures are deemed counterproductive.

By Tom Bachmann and David Joram, dpa

Austria coach Ralf Rangnick was highly amused by a small PR coup while Jamal Musiala will probably have to carry a roll of tape with him for the next few weeks.

The Germany star’s headphones are not made by a World Cup sponsor which means that he had to cover the clearly visible logo with tape in official tournament areas.

The zeal with which world governing body FIFA protects the exclusivity of its sponsors at the World Cup is causing more than just surprise. It is also prompting companies that are not among the official sponsors to come up with clever ideas.

What the sponsors pay

Being an official FIFA or World Cup sponsor is not cheap.

Florian Pfeffel, professor for sports management at the university of applied sciences in Bad Homburg, says that official FIFA partners pay $50-100 million per years and World Cup sponsors $20-30 million. There are also regional sponsors that only appear in certain areas.

To protect exclusivity, there is strict trademark protection for terms such as “World Cup 2026,” as well as logos, mascots, and even the World Cup trophy.

Around the stadiums and at official fanfests, no competing products from non-sponsors may be sold. Stadiums have also been renamed in a neutral way for the World Cup.

“FIFA follows a clean-site principle, under which stadiums must ensure that the venue and surrounding grounds are free from potentially competing third-party naming rights,” economist Markus Voeth from Hohenheim university says.

Please cover it up: Musiala’s headphones and ketchup containers

FIFA was not particularly lenient when it came to Musiala’s headphones.

“You naturally think: that’s terribly petty. And it is,” says Pfeffel. “On the other hand, you also have to understand the rights holders and FIFA. These partners pay substantial sums for these rights, and FIFA must ensure that there are no free riders who benefit from the reach without paying for those rights.”

Tape apparently ranks among FIFA’s most important tools when it comes to sponsor protection.

In Foxborough, the naming sponsor has its logo on every single seat, which means that tape was needed for more than 60,000 seats. In Santa Clara, the manufacturers’ names on ketchup and mayonnaise containers were covered with black tape.

For advertising executive Robert Zitzmann, managing director of Jung von Matt Sports, such action is counterproductive: “It’s an invitation to pay attention, because otherwise we would never concern ourselves with the ketchup bottle or with Musiala’s headphones that are now being taped over.”

Levi’s trick

Naming rights sponsorships for stadiums are commonplace in the United States, but they are prohibited during the World Cup. Jeans brand Levi’s had its logo covered with white tarps in such a way that the outline of the logo remained clearly recognizable.

“A good marketing stunt,” says Pfeffel, but he also notes: “FIFA will probably keep this in mind for future tenders and add a few more clauses so that something like this may no longer be legally possible.”

Rangnick did not miss the trick either, saying: “I had to laugh a bit when I saw outside that the Levi’s logo had been covered. Of course, now nobody can tell what it’s actually called underneath.”

For advertiser Zitzmann, the campaign offers “an outstanding cost-benefit ratio.” After all, an advertising campaign generating similar attention would have been far more elaborate and expensive.

“All sports fans and sports media in the US know that it’s the Mercedes-Benz Arena, Levi’s Stadium, or MetLife Stadium. And with that brand awareness capital, these companies can get people talking by creatively and actively playing with the ban on visibility.”

The problem in Atlanta

Atlanta’s futuristic stadium is named after car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz, which reportedly pays $10 million per year for the naming rights through 2042. The company’s logo is displayed prominently on the arena’s roof.

FIFA obviously wanted it removed but was told by the the stadium operators: We can do that, but then we’ll have a structural problem.

Each of the eight roof sections weighs 500 tons. The issue of structural integrity ultimately convinced FIFA and Atlanta is thus the only stadium where the naming sponsor’s logo did not have to be concealed. Inside the stadium, however, around 2,000 Mercedes logos were covered.

The tricks of the others

Those who are not official FIFA sponsors find ways to sneak into the tournament’s attention span anyway. Companies deliberately buy TV advertising slots during halftime or during the hydration breaks newly introduced by FIFA.

At World Cup host locations, FIFA’s restrictions are countered with wordplay. The term “World Cup” may not be used, so slogans such as “Atlanta welcomes the world” were invented, or people refer to the “summer of soccer.” Completely permissible — and everyone knows what is meant.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

Iran to lodge complaint with FIFA over World Cup travel restrictions

The Iranian World Cup team will lodge a complaint with world football association FIFA over the unfair travel restrictions imposed on them during the North American tournament, Iran's football federation said Thursday.

Issued on: 19/06/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

Iran's Mohammad Mohebbi scores their second goal against New Zealand on June 15, 2026. © Matthew Childs, Reuters


Iran's World Cup team will lodge a complaint with FIFA saying they are being subjected to travel restrictions during the tournament in North America, the Iranian football federation spokesman said on Thursday.

"Despite having submitted its preparation schedule for the tournament well in advance, Iran's national football team has once again encountered restrictions imposed by the organisers, affecting the implementation of its technical staff's plans," the spokesman said.

Iran wanted to fly from their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States two days before their next match, against Belgium in Los Angeles on Sunday.

But the Iranian federation said its request was turned down.

"Given that the game will be played at 12pm local time in Los Angeles, the Football Federation of Iran requested that the team be allowed to travel to Los Angeles two days before the match," the spokesman said.

"The aim was to provide sufficient time for players to adapt to the match conditions, complete their final training session, and finalise preparations.

"Despite the technical reasons presented by the federation, the request was once again denied."

The Iranians were also angry that they had to leave Los Angeles the night of their first game of the World Cup, a 2-2 draw against New Zealand.

The US administration has pushed back against the Iranian claims.

Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA Task Force, said on Monday that Iran had been informed in advance that they would be allowed to come into the United States only on the day before the game.

"The team will be allowed to come in, match day minus one, so the day before the match," Giuliani told CBS News.

"They'll be asked to leave the day that the match wraps up, so the evening of the match. And they'll be able to do that again in Los Angeles."

He added that the procedure would be the same for Iran's final group game against Egypt in Seattle on June 26.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Germany's IKEA stores affected as workers go on strike

19.06.2026, dpa

Photo: Bernd Wüstneck/dpa

Thousands of retail workers across Germany have once again walked out in the current round of collective bargaining. 

The focus of Friday's action, called by the Verdi trade union, was the furniture retailer IKEA. Verdi stated that 31 furniture stores were "involved in industrial action to varying degrees".

The union said more than 8,000 retail workers took part in the strikes. A spokeswoman said there had been noticeable disruptions to operations, including impacts at the checkouts. In some branches, Kitchen design appointments also had to be cancelled.

IKEA told dpa that "We are currently seeing only a minor impact from the strikes in our furniture stores. All 54 branches are open". 

Steven Haarke, the collective bargaining director for the German Retail Association, said: "Business is continuing as usual. Verdi must understand that the strikes will not achieve their aim." Confrontation, he said, is the wrong tactic.

Verdi is demanding a 7% pay rise, amounting to at least €225 over a twelve-month period. Employers have most recently offered a 2% increase in the retail sector from November onwards in several federal states and a further 1.5% increase from August 2027 over a two-year period. Verdi rejected this.

The union says around 5.2 million people work in the retail sector in Germany. 

The previous collective bargaining negotiations dragged on for more than a year. In the end, retail workers secured a total pay rise of around 14% for the years 2023 to 2025.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

SOS messages from Mideast seas plunge India-US ties into choppy waters


The US military killed three Indian soldiers last week when it fired on a vessel while enforcing a US naval blockade, the latest in a series of setbacks for US-India ties. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit this week, the two leaders will seek to reset bilateral relations. But for Modi, it might be too little, too late.

Issued on:  17/06/2026 

FRANCE24
By: Leela JACINTO

Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi talks to US President Donald Trump before the plenary session at the G7 summit, June 16, 2026, in Evian-les-Bains, France. © Julia Demaree Nikhinson, AFP

The panic was audible in the sailor’s SOS message shortly after a US missile hit a tanker off the coast of Oman.

“We have fire on board. We have fire on board and vessel is sinking,” began the frantic call of the sailor on board the Marivex.

“Please help. Please help. We have fire on board … All crew Indian, 24 crew. All crew Indian. Please help quickly. Please, we need immediate help.”

The message to Indian authorities was released by an Indian seafarer’s union earlier this month, as the US military targeted commercial shipping vessels in the Gulf of Oman while enforcing a US naval blockade.

The Marivex crew were lucky. All 24 sailors were saved by the Omani navy on June 8. But a day later, the US military killed three Indian sailors on board the Settebello in the Gulf of Oman in the third such attack in a week, forcing India’s foreign ministry to lodge a “strong protest” with the US.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) statement on the Settebello attack was brisk and arrived with aerial video of the tanker disappearing in black smoke as powerful munitions hit the vessel.

“US forces disabled an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman for the second consecutive day after another vessel violated the ongoing blockade by attempting to transport oil from Iran,” said the statement. “A US aircraft fired precision munitions into the ship’s engine room after the crew repeatedly failed to comply with directions from American forces.”

As families grieved and Indian media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the latest tragedy on the high seas, the top US diplomat spoke to his Indian counterpart in New Delhi. But the phone call only increased the outrage. During his conversation with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio “underscored that violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated”, the State Department readout said.

“US offers no regret over Indians killed in strike,” read news headlines as opposition politicians asked why the US military could not use non-lethal means to halt non-compliant commercial vessels.

“How can a 'friend' and strategic partner be so deeply insensitive?” asked Shashi Tharoor, a Congress Party MP and former UN under-secretary-general.

India-US ties have frayed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. The once-celebrated “bromance” between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US leader – highlighted by exuberant “Howdy Modi” and “Namaste Trump” rallies in 2019 and 2020 – has since chilled.

The Iran war, with its blockade of vital shipping lanes, has brought the oil import-dependent nation of more than a billion people to the brink of an energy crisis. Trump has slapped India with punishing 50 percent tariffs, headlines decry the deportation of Indian students in the US for voicing support for the Palestinian cause, and opposition leaders now call Modi Trump’s “obedient servant”.

When Modi holds talks with Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit on Wednesday, the Indian leader arrives with the baggage of a host of bilateral issues to be sorted. India is not a member of the G7, but is among the countries invited to join the summit. On Tuesday, the two leaders greeted each other ahead of a plenary session in the first face-to-face interaction between the two leaders since Modi’s February 2025 trip to the US to congratulate Trump on his re-election. Much has changed since, and analysts are questioning whether a desire for good optics will obscure the substantive issues at stake when the leaders of the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies meet.
Protecting the lives of civilians in conflict zones

India is no stranger to the fallout of conflicts and crises in the Middle East. With its massive workforce, impoverishment, and proximity to oil-rich Arab states, India has a long history of trade and labour ties with the region. In just the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – comprising of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – India has more than 9 million workers. The country also accounts for around 12 percent of the world’s maritime workforce, making India among the world’s top three suppliers of seafarers.

In the past, wars in the Middle East have triggered huge logistical operations in New Delhi to repatriate Indian nationals trapped in the conflict zone. When Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, for instance, India conducted one of the world’s largest airlifts, evacuating more than 170,000 nationals in less than two months to safety.

The killings of Indian sailors during the Iran war, however, have raised troubling questions on several fronts.

“The US is a strategic partner of India. The fact that, despite knowing that these vessels are manned by Indian sailors, the US military has targeted these vessels, raises questions about the nature of the India-US relationship,” noted Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University.

“The second question which it raises is about Mr. Modi's foreign policy, about the whole idea of strategic sovereignty. What does India's policy of strategic sovereignty or independence mean if it cannot really protect the lives of its own citizens?” he added.
Lack of ‘political will’

The problem, according to Singh, does not lie in India’s logistical capabilities. “The Indian capacity has not been lost,” he noted. “The bigger question is about the political will – and whether the current Indian government has the political will when a superpower like the United States is involved.”

At a G7 outreach meeting on Tuesday, Modi said the world today suffers from a “trust deficit” and warned about the recent disruptions in maritime trade through the Strait of Hormuz. “The safety of seafarers, who connect nations through global maritime trade, is our responsibility. We must ensure that sea routes remain secure and that seafarers can carry out their work without fear,” Modi said.

Trade is likely to dominate India-US discussions at Evian-les-Bains as the Modi administration engages in tough negotiations to get preferential tariff ​treatment as part of a bilateral trade agreement.

Trump arrives at the meeting after reaching a tentative deal with Iran aimed at ending the war, which will be signed at Switzerland’s mountainside Burgenstock resort on Friday. “I don't think Mr. Modi would want to say anything, including about the killing of these Indian sailors, that would offend President Trump,” Singh said.
In Israel, Modi chooses a side

India is not alone in having to manage an unpredictable and irascible president in the White House. What distinguishes New Delhi’s latest foreign policy bind from the others is that it stems, to a large extent, from Modi’s abrupt departure from India’s historic diplomatic positions. This rupture was presented to Indian domestic audiences as a personalised, triumphalist outcome of Modi’s visionary capacity to engage with the world’s strongmen.

But the Iran war has undermined the strongman narrative.

It started back in February, when Modi was warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel. Just days before Israel joined the US in declaring war on Iran, a country with historic ties to India, Modi addressed the Knesset on February 25 and declared that “India stands firmly with Israel”.

Modi’s Knesset address was delivered in the thick of a massive US military buildup in the region amid Trump’s promises to protesting Iranians that “help is on its way”.

“It reflected very poorly on the Indian government. Very few leaders have gone to Israel to support Benjamin Netanyahu, who is caught in a lot of controversies, including corruption scandals, and he's also charged with war crimes,” said Singh, referring to the International Criminal Court’s November 2024 arrest warrant for the Israeli leader.

“India under Mr. Modi had chosen a side. They clearly wanted to be seen on the side of Israel and the United States, and the UAE, rather than being seen as taking a more balanced position,” said Singh.
Pakistan in the spotlight, India on the sidelines

In the weeks and months after the visit, the fallout from the Modi administration’s break with a decades-old Indian foreign policy position of supporting the Palestinian cause was full display.

As India sat on the sidelines of a major crisis in its neighbourhood, its archenemy Pakistan rose to the challenge, engaging in a high-profile role to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran war.

“Pakistan seems to have hit a strategic sweet spot with whatever it has been able to achieve because of the very close ties that Field Marshal [Pakistani Defence Chief Asim] Munir has with President Trump, and the fact that the Iranians trusted them enough to go to Pakistan or to invite them to Iran,” Singh said.

The Modi administration’s policies have also made Pakistan’s diplomatic success difficult for India to digest.

“It reflects poorly on India, because Mr. Modi's government over the last ten years has followed a strategy of diplomatically isolating Pakistan – that Pakistan should be completely isolated diplomatically, that nobody should engage with Pakistan and it should be treated as a kind of a pariah country globally for sponsoring terror, et cetera. And that strategy has clearly failed,” Singh said.
‘Riding the US-Israel bandwagon without a seat belt’

The Iran war has also exposed the weakness of the Modi administration’s much-touted “multi-alignment” strategy that replaced New Delhi’s old, non-aligned foreign policy, which came to be viewed as a passive position of keeping rival superpowers at arm’s length.

Multi-alignment “was a dynamic engagement with nations and groups of nations guided by a transactional notion of the national interest”, explained Indian historian and novelist Mukul Kesavan in a recent op-ed. But “in effect, it implied a decisive re-orientation of Indian foreign policy towards the US and its allies, particularly Israel”, Kesavan noted. “Our predicament in the Gulf and our irrelevance to conflict resolution there are down to India riding the US-Israel bandwagon without a seat belt.”

When India continued to buy Russian oil after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for instance, Jaishankar was a vocal proponent of New Delhi’s multi-alignment, swatting away Western remonstrations.

It could work while the going was good, Singh explained. “They were just seeing it as an opportunistic move, that we will take advantage of anything that comes our way without paying a price for it. While the times were good, you could do that. You could take advantage of your ties with Russia at some point in time, your ties with America at another point in time. But when things became bad, and when a situation emerged out of a war between the US and Iran, you could no longer play that game,” he said.

Modi’s meeting with Trump in France will be followed by a visit by US Trade Representative Jamieson ​Greer to India next week. That’s when some of the difficult, technical issues of a bilateral trade deal are expected to be tackled. There was a time when diplomacy could ease negotiations during tough trade talks. But times have changed.

“This whole crisis in the Middle East, including the war on Iran, has revealed that there are structural problems between India and the United States,” said Singh. “The kind of political costs that Mr. Modi is paying for the killing of sailors, the kind of economic crisis that India has faced, the importance of Pakistan, has all clearly showed that the rhetoric of a great strategic partnership is not what it is actually on the ground.”

SpaceX: Why Chinese investors are banned from the biggest IPO in history


Billionaire Elon Musk’s AI and aerospace giant SpaceX has banned investors from Hong Kong and mainland China from buying its shares as it goes public on Friday – a rarely seen restriction that shows just how geopolitically sensitive the world’s tangled financial markets have grown. But Chinese investors seem all too willing to make risky investments in cryptocurrencies allegedly backed by US companies to avoid letting the initial public offering (IPO) of the century pass them by.


Issued on: 12/06/2026 - 
FRANCE24
By: Sébastian SEIBT

Chinese investors will be restricted from buying SpaceX shares. © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

The biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history will happen without China. Billionaire tycoon Elon Musk’s aerospace and AI conglomerate SpaceX has decided that Chinese and Hong Kong investors will not be able to buy shares in the soon-to-be publicly traded company, which makes its Wall Street debut on Friday.

“Mutual funds, private equities, sovereign funds, family offices and high-net-worth individuals from the two jurisdictions will all be blocked from this highly anticipated IPO,” reported the China Daily, a major English-language newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China.

In the name of national security

First reported by Bloomberg last Friday, the ban on a whole country from buying shares quickly went into effect. Reuters reported that people based in Hong Kong or mainland China trying to sign up to buy shares through the official SpaceX site were treated to an “Error 1009” message.


“As far as I can recall, this is one of the first times an entire nation has been so explicitly excluded from an initial public offering,” said Grégoire Kounowski, an investment adviser at the Norman K group advisory firm.

SpaceX has justified the decision on national security grounds. More precisely, the future darling of Wall Street has alleged that letting Chinese investors buy its shares would put the company in the crosshairs of the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which govern trade in sensitive aerospace and defence technology, Bloomberg reported.

ITAR puts strict limits around the sale and sharing of information concerning products included on a list of technology sensitive for US national security such as weapons, certain software or even technical data needed to build rockets.


SpaceX definitely fits the bill.

“It is much more than just a private player in the aerospace industry,” said Louise Girard, a market analyst at XTB brokerage. “The company works with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, and some of the technologies used by SpaceX in its Falcon and Starship launch vehicles are considered by the US government to be critical military equipment.”

SpaceX is also developing the Starshield military satellite programme – a programme tailor-made for the needs of the US intelligence agencies.
Getting in good with Donald

Certainly, these projects seem sensitive in terms of US national security. But how would random Chinese investors buying shares in SpaceX actually put Americans’ safety at risk?

“A company that goes public is required to share financial data with its shareholders, but not its technology or trade secrets,” Kounowski said. “Becoming a shareholder in SpaceX will not give investors access to the most sensitive information.”

Perhaps more concretely, it’s a decision that will likely meet with warm approval in the White House.

“The USA is cautious about letting China have too much exposure to key companies due to national defence worries,” said Alex Dryden, a specialist in financial markets at the SOAS University of London.

Analysts said that SpaceX’s decision would likely help Musk win credit with US President Donald Trump.

And likely at little cost to the world’s richest man.

“SpaceX doesn't need Chinese or Hong Kong investors because the offering has generated such a buzz that overall demand already far exceeds supply,” Girard said.

Despite this, most corporations preparing to go public try to draw in all the investors they can to raise as much money as possible. Indeed, the idea of cutting off a country of almost 1.5 billion people – of which, the China Daily reports, some 250 million have already invested in publicly traded stocks – might seem tantamount to suicide.

Whether or not the ban can actually be enforced once the company goes public is another question.

SpaceX “has the right to refuse to sell directly to Chinese investors, but it is much harder to prevent Chinese investors from participating in this initial public offering”, Girard said.

In other words, investors from Asia’s leading economic powerhouse who want to “will always find ways to get around this ban”, Kounowski said.

Will the banks that handle this massive IPO be able to verify that the offshore trading accounts buying up bundles of shares aren’t fronts for Chinese investors? And what about more complicated financial products that fold slivers of SpaceX in with other securities? Unpicking the tangled skein of globally traded financial vehicles could quickly prove maddening.

At all costs

But some would say that SpaceX is saving Chinese investors from putting money on a bad bet. For Dryden, “being blocked from this IPO might be a blessing in disguise for Chinese investors”.

He pointed to reports that the massive valuation that SpaceX has put on its offering – a staggering $1.77 trillion – may have little relation to the company’s real value.

Kounowski agreed that the gamble risked “ending badly for some unsuspecting investors”.

The problem is that the Chinese seem ready to take significant risks to access SpaceX shares, according to the Financial Times – for example, buying cryptocurrencies promoted as being backed by shares in publicly traded US companies such as Musk’s conglomerate.

The rush to buy up such assets has reached such a pitch that some investors have snapped them up without waiting to do the due diligence to make sure the investments are actually safe.

READ MOREMusk loses landmark lawsuit against OpenAI after jury finds he filed his claim too late

Other investors have turned to anything that looks even a little like SpaceX, the South China Morning Post reported. Investments in China’s own aerospace companies have risen dramatically, as has the purchase of shares in subcontractors who could conceivably be called upon to work for SpaceX in the future, such as satellite antenna manufacturers.

“The lengths they are going to in order to get exposure to the stock is troubling,” Dryden said.

And Friday’s IPO may mark the beginning of a new age of restricted investment.

After SpaceX, AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic will take their own first steps onto the stock market – and likely be walking on the same geopolitical eggshells as Musk’s corporation.

“I strongly suspect that Anthropic, in particular, will be politically contentious,” Dryden said. “Some of the tools that they have developed would be very dangerous in the wrong hands – I suspect it will be hit by the same geopolitical concerns.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.

'Major discovery': France's National Library brings forgotten Mozart manuscript back to life


A long-forgotten manuscript by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be brought to life this weekend in Paris. The newly rediscovered work – composed in 1778 when the Austrian prodigy was just 22 – will be performed in public for the first time ever at France's National Library.


Issued on: 19/06/2026
By: FRANCE 24

A composition notebook by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart containing seven pieces for harp and flute is displayed at the National Library of France (BnF) in Paris on June 15, 2026. © Kenzo Tribouillard, AFP

Musicians this weekend will for the first time publicly interpret music for flute and harp that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote as a 22-year-old while teaching an aristocratic French student.

The unprecedented concert on Sunday at France's National Library (BnF) comes after what it has called a "major discovery".

Francois-Pierre Goy, a curator in the library's music department, stumbled across the treasure as he examined a pile of anonymous manuscripts he wanted to get through before retirement.

"I never imagined what I was about to find," he told AFP.


The 44-page notebook includes a dozen daily exercises the Austrian prodigy gave Marie-Louise-Philippine de Bonnieres de Guines from May to July 1778, as well as seven pieces for flute and harp, he said.

She was an excellent harpist and the daughter of the Duke of Guines, himself a renowned flautist.

"It just so happened that I had been looking at some of Mozart's teaching material a few weeks earlier," Goy said.

Soon he noticed similarities – including "the treble clefs that are quite rounded and tilted slightly forward", and bass clefs drawn in the opposite direction from how they usually are in France, he added.

"Could it be him?" Goy said he thought to himself.

Comparisons with Mozart's other handwritten works, the French paper used, and stamps on the notebook identical to those on a French copy of Mozart's "Concerto for Flute and Harp" that the Duke of Guines had commissioned all seemed to indicate he was right.

Armin Brinzing, director of the Austria-based Mozarteum Foundation, authenticated the document in April.

The manuscript "is part of two bundles of music that were confiscated from the home of the Duke of Guines in 1794" during the French Revolution, and eventually ended up at the BnF, according to the library.

Mozart died in 1791 aged 35.

Discoveries like this "for such a famous composer are almost unheard of", said Mathias Auclair, director of the BnF's music department.

Several Mozart compositions have been rediscovered in recent years.

READ MORE  Mozart Foundation discovers two new compositions

In one case, in 2012, someone found a Mozart piano piece composed when he was 11 in an Austrian attic.

For harpists and flautists, who have "very little repertoire" available to them, the discovery at the BnF is a wonderful surprise, he said.

BnF president Gilles Pecout said the new music sheets shed light on Mozart as a young teacher and documented his last stay in Paris in 1778 – on which there is scant information.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

France's Louvre museum 'running out of steam', new director says

The world's largest museum is having a hard time securing investments to upgrade its decaying infrastructure, the Louvre's new director Christophe Leribault told a Senate committee Wednesday. The museum has been hit by a series of public scandals including a water leak, a large-scale ticket fraud operation and the daylight theft of nearly $100 million worth of imperial jewellery.


Issued on: 17/06/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

Building-related emergencies are piling up at the Louvre, its new director has said. © Stéphane de Sakutin, AFP


The Louvre museum is struggling to find funding to upgrade its ageing facilities, its new director said Wednesday, following a litany of problems that included a brazen $100-million jewellery heist.

"Despite its imposing majesty, despite the daily commitment of its staff, the Louvre is running out of steam," Christophe Leribault told a Senate committee.

"Its equipment and infrastructure are reaching the end of their life cycle."

Leribault, an art historian and museum director specialising in 18th-century art, took the helm in February, after his predecessor stepped down following an embarrassing daylight theft of imperial jewels in October that laid bare severe security failings.

Home to iconic pieces of art including Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", the Louvre is the world's most visited museum, receiving around nine million visitors a year.

It is housed in a vast palace in central Paris on the banks of the Seine River, built over centuries by various French monarchs who at times used it as their official residence.

"Building-related emergencies are piling up, and we're facing a wall in terms of investments," Leribault said.

French President Emmanuel Macron last year announced a sweeping overhaul for the Louvre that would include a new space for the Mona Lisa and a new museum entrance.

Macron's aides have said the project is expected to cost from €700 million to €800 million ($730 to 830 million). But the French Court of Auditors has put the price tag at €1.15 billion.

Under the plan, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece – which attracts around 20,000 visitors a day – will be independently accessible from the rest of the museum, with a separate ticket to see it.

The museum has recently struggled with repeated strikes causing loss of revenue, a ticket fraud scheme that may have cost the museum €10 million ($11.7 million), a water leak and other maintenance issues.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)