In an incident that has sparked considerable controversy before one of the most sensitive World Cup playoff matches, the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team found itself at the center of a “spying suspicion” after a mysterious individual was spotted filming their training session from a restricted area. This prompted the coaching staff to intervene immediately and raise questions about the motives behind the incident.

These developments come just before their highly anticipated match against Italy in the European playoff for the 2026 World Cup. The match is pivotal for both teams in the race to secure a place in the tournament, especially for Italy, who are striving to avoid missing the World Cup for the third consecutive time. This adds a competitive dimension and extra pressure to the encounter, both on and off the pitch.

Bosnia and Herzegovina spying scandal

OneFootball reported that:

Bosnian security detaining an Italian soldier for filming Edin Dzeko and his team-mates during a closed session, according to SportSports.ba.

The man stayed beyond the 15 minutes open to media, then was caught recording on his phone after the gates were shut. He is an Italian Eufor soldier based at Butmir, next to the national team’s training centre.

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The source added that the coaching staff acted swiftly upon discovering the incident, removing the individual from the training area amidst heightened security within the camp.

The matter didn’t remain local, quickly reaching European media. Cadena SER radio confirmed that the Bosnian Football Federation had filed an official complaint with the EUFOR mission, a move reflecting the seriousness with which the incident was being treated.

Meanwhile, Goal.com, citing defense sources, reported that the individual in question is an Italian soldier serving with EUFOR deployed in the country, while also confirming that there is no evidence of his involvement in any organized espionage activity.

AS newspaper indicated that the filming continued for several minutes before being discovered, which increased suspicions within the Bosnian camp, especially with the upcoming match.

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Trump’s illegal war against Iran is gripping Asia. Major disruptions to oil and gas and the resulting fuel shortages are acutely felt by India’s economy. This is especially true in terms of energy security and supply.

Asia feels the sting

The impact of what is unambiguously regarded as a ‘war of choice’ has reverberated beyond the Middle East. Since initial strikes on Iran were launched in late February, vessels have not been able to pass freely through the Strait of Hormuz. This crucial waterway has global significance for Asia, serving as the gateway for 20% of global Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and 25% of seaborne oil.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have invoked emergency measures and sought alternative suppliers. Meanwhile, China has secured its energy needs by stockpiling reserves. It has also maintained access to Iranian and Russian oil despite US sanctions. Some of these, get this, have been paused to relieve the global energy market.

Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview that while China is unhappy about the situation in the Middle East, given its interest in regional stability, China was not unique in having these concerns. Moreover, the evolving situation is of deep importance for Asia.

He added that other Asian countries, like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, are even more vulnerable to energy market, supply chain disruptions. The US has also complicated energy security for countries like India through tariffs and sanctions, he said.

Feigenbaum said:

West is complacent so far

Eric Nutall told Bloomberg that we are facing the worst energy crisis of our lifetime. He forecasts that the oil disruption from war with Iran is projected to be worse than during the COVID pandemic, as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, affecting the continent of Asia’s energy strategies significantly.

West has really yet to feel the true impact. When you read stories about product hoarding, you read about operators of gas stations being shot dead because they ran out of product in India and was unable to fill up cars. You hear about fishing boats in the East not being able to fill up because the economics of going out and fishing just don’t make any sense. We see the world through a western lens and yet this is a global crisis.

Coal to the rescue

Since no coal goes through the Strait of Hormuz, Asian countries, as reported by Financial Times are:

opening the tap on coal generation to help offset rising gas prices and supply risk.

Reports suggest that Japan will allow more coal-fired plants in capacity auctions. Meanwhile, South Korea is considering moving away from coal power, a move which could reshape energy usage patterns in Asia altogether.

India’s prime minister Modi said that adequate coal stocks were available amid rising summer demand in Parliament last week.

He added that:

Modi is far from an innocent bystander. He is a member of the US-Israel alliance. Despite his proximity to Netanyahu, India has remained a ‘fence sitter.’ Furthermore, Modi refrains from openly condemning either side.

Still, the imperial boomerang unleashed by Trump’s latest war is felt beyond the Middle East, reaching even the world’s fastest-growing major economy—India—and emerging markets in Southeast Asia. It’s a scorched-earth policy by alternative means.

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On Monday 30 March, Al Jazeera published an exclusive interview with US secretary of state Marco Rubio. Predictably, the Trump crony used the opportunity to deny US responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Cuba, stating that America had done “nothing punitive.”

Of course, this is an outright lie and utterly unconnected to basic, observable fact. But then, this shameless display of propagandising has long been the order for the Republican administration.

Stranglehold

As the Canary previously reported, Trump’s second administration has massively tightened the longstanding US stranglehold on Cuba. On top of the decades-long US embargo, Trump issued an executive order in January threatening any country which sends oil to the island.

His escalating campaign of terror has brought the island’s health system to its knees, putting thousands of lives at risk. On 25 March, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that: 

Reports show that Cuban hospitals have been struggling to maintain emergency and intensive care services.

Thousands of surgeries have been postponed during the last month, and people needing care, from cancer patients to pregnant women preparing for delivery, have been put at risk due to lack of power to operate medical equipment and cold chain storage for vaccines.

Similarly, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that Cuba has suffered three total grid collapses over the last month:

leaving over 10 million people without electricity after three consecutive months without diesel, fuel oil, gasoline, jet fuel or liquefied petroleum gas.

‘I could do anything I want with it’

Worse still, Trump has indicated that he intends an outright attack on Cuba. On 16 March, he voiced plans to “take” Cuba, along with the chilling statement:

I think I could do anything I want with it.

Similarly, on 29 March, in a self-aggrandizing rant on his recent illegal attacks on Venezuela, the president stated:

Cuba’s next, by the way, but pretend I didn’t say that, please.

Cue Marco Rubio, who is himself the child of Cuban immigrants. The US state secretary has been vocal in his hatred for the communist government in Cuba and its president Miguel Diaz-Canel.

In his March 30 interview with Al Jazeera, Rubio argued that the US was blameless for the crisis in Cuba:

We’ve done nothing punitive against the Cuban regime. They claim we have, but we haven’t. The only thing that’s changed for the Cuban regime is they’re not getting free Venezuelan oil anymore. They’re not getting subsidies anymore. That’s the only thing that’s changed.

As a reminder, Venezuela isn’t shipping oil to Cuba because of the threat of US retaliation.

Likewise, Rubio also denied reports from Cuban officials and the UN that the blackouts on the island are getting worse:

These blackouts that are occurring that I see people reporting have nothing to do with us. They were having blackouts last year. They’re having blackouts because they have equipment from the 1950s in their grid that they’ve never maintained and never upgraded because they’re incompetent.

Cuba does indeed experience frequent blackouts. However, that situation has been made far worse by the fascist US administration blocking fuel from reaching the island.

Brazen lies

Instead, Rubio tried to blame the dire situation on Cuba’s leadership, issuing one of his frequent calls for a change in government:

We’ve tried to explain it to anyone who will listen. Their system doesn’t work, their system of economics. It’s completely dysfunctional. It’s just not a real system, and you can’t change it unless you change the government.

The US state secretary is blatantly trying to manufacture cover for a US attack on Cuba, as if America bothers with finding a reason to wage its wars anymore.

Trump has prevented almost all fuel from reaching the communist nation. As a consequence, it has experienced increasing, life-threatening power outages. And Rubio wants us to believe that this is Cuba’s fault?

The Trump administration is lying — openly, brazenly, without a care for the fact that the whole world can see what they’re doing, plain as day.

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As of now, just 21% of the British people think Keir “he’s playing a blinder” Starmer is doing well as Prime Minister.

The 70% of us that say he is doing badly — also known as the vast majority — isn’t just a dip, but a crater.

YouGov’s latest tracker puts his net favourability around -48. That’s the kind of rating that is usually reserved for politicians caught in flagrante with an expenses scandal or, in Liz Truss’s case, the iceberg lettuce that outlasted her premiership.

This isn’t some right-wing hit job. These are the cold, hard numbers staring back at a man who once promised “change” the way a dodgy salesman promises a revolutionary vacuum cleaner that turns out to be last year’s pile of shite with a fresh lick of paint.

None of this is particularly surprising – it was just so depressingly predictable.

Starmer’s descent was oh-so predictable

Starmer was elected in 2024 on a platform so fucking vague it could have meant socialism-lite, neoliberalism, or a particularly enthusiastic neighbourhood watch scheme.

Keir Starmer chose the path of least resistance, managerial centrism, served with a side order of ruthless purges of anyone to his left.

This has resulted in a government that has alienated its own base faster than you can say “rules-based international order”, while failing poor and working-class people that it claims to champion.

Look at the last few days alone for the perfect example of why Keir Starmer simply doesn’t get it.

While households brace for yet another surge in energy bills courtesy of the escalating Israel-US illegal war on Iran, Keir Starmer jetted off to Finland for a military summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force.

I’m sure the Starmer-friendly media will call this something like “admirable statesmanship”, but the optics? Chef’s kiss of disaster.

Chaos

Back at home, pensioners and families are staring down higher fuel costs, a cost-of-living that refuses to die, and the grim realisation that Keir Starmer’s New Year’s pledge to bring down living expenses has aged about as well as a pint of full fat milk left out on the hottest day of the year.

This has become so very typical of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer’s leadership. When the people need bread, Labour offers us foreign policy briefings and hope nobody notices the difference.

The Iran-related energy shock is hammering precisely the red wall and working class communities Labour was supposed to protect — the same voters who dragged themselves to the polls in 2024 out of sheer exhaustion with Tory chaos.

Fuel duty rises loom again in September. Winter fuel payments remain rationed like wartime luxuries. And instead of the bold left-wing measures we needed — a proper windfall tax on energy giants that actually bites, serious public investment in renewables that creates unionised jobs, or rent controls to stop tenants being fleeced for every last penny – we get the usual centrist technocratic tinkering.

Starmer’s remaining cheerleaders will trot out the usual excuses about global headwinds, wars, energy shocks, and an Inherited mess, some of which is completely valid because the world is in a particularly sorry state right now.

A left government was and is needed

But I would argue this is exactly why a genuinely left government was needed. A progressive administration would have seized this moment for structural reform by taking energy into full public ownership to shield bill-payers, launching a real Green New Deal that builds hope instead of just targets, and pursuing a foreign policy grounded in diplomacy, peace, and justice rather than automatic alignment with whatever the Washington predator Trump dreams up next.

Instead, we get the politics of the “national interest” that mysteriously always aligns with the City, defence contractors, and endless summits abroad while domestic pain festers.

It’s centrism as performance art — all sensible suits with zero soul.

During the leadership years and early government, the left warned that purging socialist traditions, scrapping or watering down public ownership pledges, and triangulating on welfare and immigration would end in tears.

We were dismissed as unrealistic, divisive, trots, dogs, rabble, and – that favourite insult – “unelectable”. Yet here we are, a Labour government barely 18 months old, polling like it’s already on its deathbed.

The deeper tragedy is what this means for the millions of us who actually need radical change.

Starmer must go. The left was right all along.

Britain in 2026 still grapples with stagnating wages, a crumbling NHS and council services, and a housing crisis that makes Victorian slums look like aspirational living.

Only unashamedly bold, structural solutions can fix these deep-rooted failures. Starmer’s cautious centrism was sold as the safe, adult alternative. In practice, it’s delivered paralysis, broken promises, and the slowest political suicide in recent memory.

You see, the problem isn’t merely that Starmer is deeply unpopular. The problem is that the politics he embodies were never going to inspire the working-class voters Labour exists to serve.

We wanted transformation. We got tweaks.

For Labour to try and miraculously survive, it needs to rediscover what it actually stands for – or step aside for someone that does.

The shocking numbers really don’t lie. Keir Starmer’s centrist politics has failed spectacularly. The left was right all along.

Featured image via the Canary

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker tried to invest in a defence fund weeks ahead of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. The Financial Times (FT) said three sources have corroborated this claim, which the Pentagon denies.

On 31 March, the FT reported the following.

Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.

The inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to the people familiar with the matter. BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and the Pentagon declined to comment.

Hegseth is a key architect of America’s illegal attack on Iran.

Initial, unprovoked offensive strikes on Iran were launched by the US and Israel on 28 February. Iran was offering concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

So far the Iranian government remains functional. The main US and Israeli achievement so far appears to be creating a global energy crisis after Iran predictably closed the vital oil channel in straits of Hormuz.

The FT said the purchase did not go ahead in the end:

The investment discussed by Hegseth’s broker did not ultimately go ahead as the fund, which launched in May last year, was not yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to buy.

Making a killing

The inquiry about buying into the fund was flagged because it was related to a “high-profile potential client.”

The FT explained the perverse nature of such funds, and their links to global arms giants—profiting from death.

According to BlackRock, the $3.2bn equity fund, which carries the ticker IDEF, pursues “growth opportunities by investing in companies that may benefit from increased government spending on defense and security amid geopolitical fragmentation and economic competition”.

The newspaper also reported:

Its largest holdings include defence conglomerates RTX, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which count the US Department of Defense as their biggest customers, as well as data integration specialist Palantir.

The legendary US Marine Corps General turned war resister and whistleblower Smedley Butler (dubbed the Fighting Quaker) once said that war is a racket. That was in 1935, after Butler had tried to head off a fascist coup in the US. Then 91 years later, the fascists are in power, and, if these reports are true, they’re still looking to make a killing off the killing — at the expense of the people of Iran.

Featured image via the Canary

Nazi-saluting billionaire Elon Musk’s X app will be pivotal in a new wave of pro-US propaganda spread through American embassies. A cable sent to embassies around the world encourages staff to use X for psychological influence operations.

Commenting on the directive, a report by the Guardian, which has seen the document (signed by secretary of state Marco Rubio), states it instructs:

embassies and consulates [to] work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation.

This likely means substituting foreign propaganda with American disinformation.

The Guardian’s Washington correspondent, Joseph Gedeon, also noted that the cable:

endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it …[and]… lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.

The news comes as the US is getting spanked daily by Iranian memes and AI videos.

The message highlights five areas where US propaganda will focus:

countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls “telling America’s story”.

The US will recruit Influencers, academics and community leaders in target countries And also develop an approach designed:

to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed.

This already sounds very convincing…

A direct threat to US interests?

The cable also states that ‘enemy’ campaigns seek to:

shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms

The paper warned that:

Using digital platforms, state-controlled media, and influence operations, they pose a direct threat to US national security and fuel hostility toward American interests.

The cable also instructs embassies to work with:

“the Department of War’s Psychological Operations” – the military unit more commonly known as Miso, or Military Information Support Operations, formerly Psyop, which is part of the Pentagon.

The US State Department told the Guardian that Sarah Rogers, the new under-secretary for diplomacy, had made countering foreign propaganda a priority. A spokesperson reminded the Guardian that leftwing groups were being framed as linked to foreign powers and targeted for US influence operations:

The state department also noted that Rogers had already drawn attention for a separate report to Congress identifying Code Pink and several other leftwing activist organizations as vectors of Chinese influence operations inside the United States.

The fact this information is now in the public domain may disappoint situational analysts who love to refer to everything as a PSYOP.

Presumably this particular guessing game is much less fun when the US publicly announces its running PSYOPs. Hate that for you, lads.

Though maybe—just maybe— the announcement is itself a PSYOP…*plays X Files music.*

Featured image via the Canary