According to the Global Terrorism Index 2025, Pakistan was the second-worst country affected by terrorism in the preceding year. This isn’t surprising; three of the world’s ten deadliest terrorist groups — Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK), and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) — operate in Pakistan. These groups have grown deadlier since the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.
Despite obligations under the 2020 Doha Agreement to not allow terrorist groups to use Afghan soil for terrorism in other countries, the Taliban regime has allowed the TTP to use hideouts in Afghanistan to plot attacks in Pakistan.
The Taliban’s ideological patronage of and logistical support to the TTP has emboldened the latter and enabled it to expand its organizational framework and boost its operational strength. Ahead of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, TTP renewed its oath of allegiance to the Taliban’s Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada in order to continue living in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan energized the TTP and provided it with a template to emulate for its militant campaign in Pakistan.
The Taliban have refused to disarm TTP, relocate it away from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, or restrain it from carrying out attacks in Pakistan. TTP attacks in Pakistan have not only soured Afghanistan-Pakistan ties, resulting in frequent border closures and trade disruption but also compelled Pakistan to carry out air strikes against TTP’s positions in Afghanistan thrice in the last three years. These strikes were meant to signal to the Taliban that while Pakistan respects Afghanistan’s sovereignty, it will not hesitate to respond if TTP continued to use Afghan soil for cross-border attacks in Pakistan.
Another key concern for Pakistan is that the TTP has access to small arms and light weapons worth $7 billion left by the U.S. in Afghanistan. These weapons have added to the lethality and accuracy of TTP’s attacks. Moreover, they are available in Pakistan’s black market.
After assuming power, U.S. President Donald Trump has raised serious concerns about these weapons being used for terrorism. Pakistan has shared his apprehensions, noting that they have imperiled the safety and security of its citizens.
The Taliban’s rivalry with the ISK has also hindered cooperation with Pakistan against TTP. Since the Taliban’s return to power, ISK has positioned itself as the anti-Taliban jihadist group, critiquing it for cutting a deal with the U.S. and giving up “jihad.” Against this backdrop, the Taliban fear that if they take any action against the TTP at Pakistan’s behest, it will benefit ISK as disgruntled TTP elements would gravitate towards ISK. It bears mention that in 2015, when ISK was officially declared the Islamic State’s franchise in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, it comprised two TTP factions from Orakzai and Bajaur tribal districts.
The ongoing ISK-Taliban conflict has benefited TTP: the more this rivalry sharpens, the more space it will generate for the group in Afghanistan. In a way, keeping TTP on its side has become a necessity for the Taliban. ISK’s ideological critique of the Taliban leaves very little room for the latter to abandon TTP. ISK would unleash a hostile propaganda against the Taliban if it took any harsh step towards TTP.
Successive reports by the United Nations’ Monitoring Committee on ISIL and Al-Qaida have pointed out that Afghanistan under the Taliban regime has reemerged as a terrorism incubator. Contrary to the counterterrorism commitment the Taliban have given under the Doha Agreement, the U.N. reports point to deepening of its ties with al-Qaida, TTP and other like-minded groups. Although al-Qaida is lying low, it is reestablishing its links with regional jihadist groups like TTP. Furthermore, al-Qaida continues to advise the Taliban on strategic matters. The operational freedom afforded by the Taliban to groups like TTP and al-Qaeda has created a conducive environment for them to regroup and regrow.
While Pakistan is bearing the brunt of the evolving terrorist threat from Afghanistan, regional and global peace could be undermined too if the international community continues to ignore this threat. Though the epicenter of global terrorism has moved to Africa’s Sahel region, as the land of Khorasan where the mythical force of black banners will emerge, Afghanistan still has a strong pull for jihadists around the world. If Afghanistan’s slide under the Taliban regime continues, foreign jihadists will refocus their attention towards Afghanistan.
The recent aid cuts announced by the Trump administration have dented Afghanistan’s struggling economy, creating new governance challenges for the Taliban regime. As the Afghan currency has weakened and prices have soared, popular discontent in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s harsh rule is growing. The Taliban’s internal rifts further add to the situation’s gravity. Amid this chaos, Akhundzada’s hardline circle has firmed its grip on the Taliban movement.
If a middle-ground between Taliban hardliners and moderate elements is not found in the near future, Afghanistan’s drift towards instability will accelerate. If Afghanistan descends into chaos, it will provide a fertile ground for groups like ISK, TTP and al-Qaida to expand their footprints to the detriment of international peace and stability. Though the international community has blamed Pakistan for not controlling the Taliban during the war on terror, recent developments bring into sharp focus how little leverage the former had on the latter.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation has completed its probe into Colonel Oleh Poberezhniuk, commander of the 211th Pontoon Bridge Brigade, accusing him of knowingly allowing torture and abuse of soldiers under his command to continue unchecked, the officials said on May 29.
According to the official statement, investigators determined that from February to July 2024, Poberezhniuk was aware of repeated instances of torture and cruel treatment carried out by a subordinate officer but failed to take any action. The officer in question, Senior Lieutenant Vladyslav Pastukh, allegedly beat, humiliated, and tortured fellow servicemen.
Pastukh, who is no longer with the unit, is the son of the brigade’s chief of staff and a close associate of Poberezhniuk. Authorities say this personal connection likely influenced the commander’s decision to conceal the crimes and avoid reporting them to law enforcement.
Pastukh was charged with abusing his authority in December 2024 after allegedly beating, humiliating, and torturing fellow service members. The commander faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
“Instead of protecting the rights of his subordinates, the commander effectively became complicit through criminal inaction, enabling further abuse,” the bureau said. Such actions, it added, not only violate the law but also pose a serious threat to the internal discipline of Ukraine’s Armed Forces during wartime.
Poberezhniuk has been charged with inaction of military authority under martial law, a serious offense under Ukraine‘s Criminal Code, carrying a sentence of seven to 10 years in prison. The case has been forwarded to Poberezhniuk and his legal team for review before being submitted to court. The Prosecutor General‘s Office is overseeing the case.
The charges follow a December 2023 Ukrainska Pravda investigation that revealed a pattern of systemic abuse within the brigade, including beatings, extortion, and reports of a soldier being tied to a wooden cross. The report also highlighted widespread nepotism, with multiple family members serving within the same unit.
Following public outcry, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi suspended Poberezhniuk, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov ordered an internal investigation.
He was one of the richest men of his time, a powerful force in business and then in government — so influential that political adversaries taunted the White House that he was “the real president.”
Today, that’s Elon Musk’s story, as the world’s richest man winds down his tumultuous time in Washington as a “special government employee” in President Donald Trump’s administration. But while Musk’s astronomical wealth and the work of his Department of Government Efficiency have been one of a kind, there are strong echoes of another businessman-turned-slasher-of-government who came to Washington just more than 100 years ago.
Andrew Mellon, a Pittsburgh banker and one of America’s wealthiest men in the early 20th century, was treasury secretary to three Republican presidents — Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover — for more than a decade in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Like Musk, Mellon came to Washington with the aim of drastically cutting back federal spending. Like Musk, he remained involved in his private businesses at the same time, as biographer David Cannadine has chronicled, sparking fierce protests from opposition Democrats. Like Musk, political opponents made him a national boogeyman and suggested that Mellon was the true power in Washington.
Three presidents served under him, the joke went. Sen. Robert La Follette Sr., a Wisconsin progressive, said Mellon was “the real president of the United States. Calvin Coolidge is merely the man who occupies the White House.”
And as Musk leaves the White House and appears to consider his political legacy, voicing concern that Trump and Republican lawmakers won’t follow through on his hopes of big spending cuts, Mellon’s own complicated legacy illustrates how difficult even titans of industry have found the task of permanently bending politics and government toward their will.
Mellon achieved his goals for a time, paring back yearly federal spending to approximately half the level it was before he took over the Treasury Department and reforming U.S. tax laws.
But the Great Depression turned the nation sharply against him and the Republican Party personified by wealthy businessmen, with Mellon becoming a political lightning rod in the way Musk has this year.
Andrew Mellon (center) with President Calvin Coolidge and first lady Grace Coolidge on the White House lawn in 1926.Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
In “Mellon: An American Life,” Cannadine wrote that Mellon’s son recalled witnessing an early exercise in political social media targeting the treasury secretary: a rhyme written on a urinal at a rest stop between Pittsburgh and Washington.
“Mellon pulled the whistle, Hoover rang the bell,” it began, “Wall Street gave the signal, and the country went to hell.”
When Democrats took back Congress in the backlash after the Depression began, they investigated the intersection of Mellon businesses and government contracts they won while he was in the Cabinet, initiating impeachment proceedings before he resigned to take an ambassadorship.
And ultimately, Mellon saw his low-spending, laissez-faire ethos pushed aside in national politics by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which ushered in a wave of government spending and social programs that were anathema to Mellon-era Republicans.
No historical comparison lines up neatly in all respects. While Musk and Trump’s administration sought to slash programs through presidential orders and an expansive view of executive power, Mellon worked through Congress to enact his budgetary priorities.
Mellon was fabulously wealthy, thanks to investments in businesses from aluminum to oil to early airlines and beyond, but Musk’s businesses and riches are on a significantly different scale. And Mellon’s final work with the government, years later, was also of a decidedly nonpolitical nature: He established the National Gallery of Art, seeding it with his impressive private collection.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the White House on March 11. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Musk’s story is far from its final chapter, with more twists and details to come even as he ends his stint at the White House. What we know for sure, though, is that wealth and power of that magnitude endure through the years.
And there’s another eye-popping financial connection between the Mellon years and Musk’s time in government.
Musk was the biggest disclosed donor in the 2024 elections. The second-biggest? Timothy Mellon, Mellon’s grandson, who gave nearly $200 million in support of Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other causes, according to OpenSecrets — paving the way for Musk’s stint with DOGE in Washington.
Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha has said ITV’s cuts to its daytime schedule came “out of the blue” and have been “absolutely brutal” for those working on the show.
ITV announced last week it was axing more than 220 jobs and making cuts to shows including Loose Women and Lorraine.
Speaking on her YouTube channel, Sawalha said: “What’s been brutal, absolutely brutal, over the last week, honestly I feel tearful about it, is that hundreds of people… are going to be made redundant out of the blue, these are all the people behind the scenes that support us in every way.”
There have been reports that the pool of panellists will be reduced, and Sawalha said she “could be let go tomorrow, [or] I could be let go in five years”.
In an annoucnement last week, ITV boss Kevin Lygo stressed that daytime is “a really important part” of its programming, and said he recognised that the plans “will have an impact on staff”.
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Lorraine Kelly’s shorter weekday show will now air for 30 weeks out of 52
In her video, Sawalha, who has also appeared in EastEnders, Dancing on Ice and The Bill, said Loose Women and Lorraine had been “highly successful”, but that she accepted inflation was “insane, and cuts have to be made”, before becoming emotional.
“Behind the scenes there are people that are really suffering, and what you don’t realise is when you attack the show you attack them, because you never see all the army of people behind the scenes and how hard they work,” she said.
“So to all my friends and colleagues behind the scenes that have just got a huge shock out of the blue, I’m so sorry.”
She added that she thought some conversations about the cuts had been “misogynistic”, stressing the impact of the cuts on many of her friends and colleagues on the show, who have worked there for decades.
“I can’t tell you how upsetting it was to see people walking around numb with shock and fear about what they are going to do… [when] television is coming very slowly to its natural end.”
Speaking from her own perspective, she added: “What people don’t realise at Loose Women is that we’re self-employed. I am self-employed. Every contract is a new contract.
“I could be let go tomorrow, I could be let go in five years, you don’t know because we’re not employees.”
‘Impact on off-screen staff’
Under the changes, Loose Women will be broadcast for 30 instead of 52 weeks. Lorraine Kelly’s morning show will also be cut to 30 weeks, and will reduce from an hour to 30 minutes.
While ITV did not comment on Sawalha’s views, they referred to Lygo’s comments about the cuts in last week’s announcement.
“I recognise that our plans will have an impact on staff off-screen in our Daytime production teams, and we will work with ITV Studios and ITN as they manage these changes to produce the shows differently from next year, and support them through this transition,” ITV’s managing director of media and entertainment said.
“Daytime has been a core element of ITV’s schedule for over 40 years and these changes will set ITV up to continue to bring viewers award winning news, views and discussion as we enter our eighth decade.”
During weeks when Lorraine is not on air, Good Morning Britain will extend by half an hour, from 06:00 BST to 10:00 BST. This Morning will stay in its slot on weekdays across the year.
Earlier this month, ITV chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall said the company was making “good progress” on a cost-cutting drive, and that she expected to make £30m non-content savings during 2025.
In the past few years, there has been a downturn in advertising revenue, part of a funding squeeze throughout the TV industry.