🇮🇩 | "Seize the assets of corrupt officials!" – Mass protests erupt in Indonesia. Some protesters are demanding the de*th pen*lty for the worst cases. A replica coffin was carried through the protests, bearing slogans like "de*th pen*lty for corruptors." Protesters marched on the parliament building in Jakarta holding banners with slogans like "The corrupt get rich while the people suffer." Jakarta police deployed 18,500 officers. Authorities detained 65 people before the protests had even begun. At the core of the protests is the Asset Forfeiture Bill, under discussion for 18 years, which would create a legal basis for going after corrupt wealth. Some tried to storm the parliament gates, leading to a standoff with police, who used tear gas and water cannon. The protest was also timed to fall on the anniversary of last year's anti-government uprising, the largest Indonesia has seen in recent history. "The fact that policy has barely changed is proof their aspirations were not heard," said Usman Hamid of Amnesty International Indonesia. The latest survey by Tempo put President Prabowo's approval rating at just 37%.

🇮🇷 🇺🇸 | A sailor who jumped from the USS Abraham Lincoln is now facing disciplinary action from the US Navy, according to his wife, who spoke to MS NOW. "I think they're insane for doing this to people who need mental help," she said. Multiple reports have revealed that sailors aboard the USS Lincoln, currently deployed in the war against Iran, have made repeated attempts to jump overboard. The carrier, once touted as "one of the greatest US war machines," is in the midst of a record-setting deployment. Morale and mental health concerns are mounting among its crew as President Trump's military campaign against Iran drags on with no resolution in sight. Crew members have decried squalid conditions on board, from mould-ridden showers and overflowing sewage to shortages of food and hygiene products. One family member said their son described seeing “holes that have worn through the Lincoln’s flight deck.” The Navy's handling of sailors grappling with mental health struggles has drawn mounting outrage. According to the US Department of War's latest report, 471 service members died by su***** in 2024. The toll of US casualties in the war against Iran has also reportedly been undercounted. The military recently disclosed that an additional 60 service members had been wounded, raising the official count to 776 troops killed or wounded, 345 of them since a second ceasefire collapsed on July 7.

🇯🇵 | Japan’s classrooms are becoming the latest front of Tokyo's war on history. Newly approved high school textbooks, set to enter classrooms in 2027, are being written with omissions that are anything but accidental. The Specter and @Meekalefay read between the lines.

🇮🇷 | "We have prepared 5,000 graves in the desert for US soldiers," Tehran public cemetery director Mohammad-Javad Tajik said in an interview with Ofogh TV. Tajik confirmed that Iranian officials are weighing every possible option in the event of a US invasion, describing the burial sites as part of practical contingency planning rather than a mere psychological threat. Negotiations with Washington remain stalled, with the Trump administration continuing to threaten military action alongside other forms of political and economic pressure, including blockades and further sanctions. According to Iranian analysts, Tehran views the US-Israeli war against Iran as ongoing, arguing that Washington has upheld neither the memorandum of understanding nor the terms of the temporary ceasefire.

🇹🇼 🇺🇸 | Taiwanese journalist @AngelicaOung doesn't want Taiwan to become the next Ukraine, and she's tired of Americans who do. “That's objectively a crazy thing to say." The Specter met Oung in Taipei. Read the full interview now.

🇹🇩 🇫🇷 | French military officers and trainers have returned to Chad, 14 months after the Central African country tore up its defense pact with its former colonial ruler and ordered its soldiers out, according to reporting and analysis by the Institute for Security Studies. French personnel have been on the ground since April, the ISS said, providing training, intelligence and limited air support to Chadian forces. No new treaty has been signed. No ceremony marked the return. Neither Paris nor N'Djamena has publicly confirmed the arrangement, and France maintains no permanent base in the country. Chad ended its defense cooperation agreement with France in November 2024, giving Paris weeks to withdraw. About 1,000 French troops had left by the end of January 2025, closing a military presence that had run without interruption since independence in 1960. President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno hailed the departure at the time as "a new sunrise for a fully sovereign Chad" — language that placed N'Djamena alongside Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which had each pushed out French forces in the preceding two years. The renewed cooperation includes French intelligence on what the ISS describes as "politico-military groups" — the term used in Chad for armed opposition to the government. The arrangement has taken shape during a sustained squeeze on Deby's opponents. In May, the Supreme Court dissolved the country's main opposition coalition and jailed eight of its leaders. They were pardoned this month.

🇸🇩 | A children's rehabilitation center in Sudan has reopened. The facility is located in Khartoum but still has no running water and no power. Dar Shesher is treating children for the first time since the war shut it down. The centre operates two days a week, staffed entirely by volunteers and funded by individual donors. Its residential wards and school unit remain out of service. "If they are lying down, we help them get up; if they are sitting, we help them stand and walk." Says Mansour Sulaiman, who runs it. "All these aids are manufactured by us." On 26 July, Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said 75% of hospitals and primary healthcare facilities were operating again. Khartoum state claims over 85%. In April, WHO found 37% of health facilities non-functional across 18 states, and 21 million people cut off from care. Much of that recovery has been carried out by Sudanese doctors, volunteers and diaspora physicians, not the state. Volunteers led by Dr Mai Mohamed Youssef reopened Al-Tijani Al-Mahi psychiatric hospital, which the Ministry of Health had ordered demolished. Officials attended the ribbon-cutting when Ahmed Qasim Hospital reopened in January. At Dar Shesher, Sulaiman says, no state support has arrived.

🇹🇼 🇨🇳 | "I see Taiwan as part of China, period," said Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim indicated he would not condemn a forceful reunification of the island with mainland China, arguing he would do the same to preserve territorial integrity. The Prime Minister argued that today's reality is a product of colonial history, which he said he refuses to uphold. The future of Taiwan has become an increasingly pressing issue amid escalating tension in East Asia, driven by militarization pushed by Washington and its regional partners, especially Japan. Beijing views Taiwan as a historic part of China, while the ruling, US-backed DPP continues to push for the island's separation.

🇰🇪 | Kenyan police have arrested six activists who carried coffins to their police chief's office in Nairobi. The coffins, marked "Why kill Kenyans?", were thrown over the gate of Jogoo House on Monday. Protesters demanded the resignation of Inspector General Douglas Kanja over deaths in custody. Julius Kamau, a human rights activist, chained himself to the gate. Officers carried him away as he shouted "Siogopi bana" — I am not afraid. All six were booked at Central Police Station, where blogger Albert Ojwang died in custody in June 2025. At least 20 people have died in police custody so far in 2026, according to the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, matching its total for all of 2025. Kanja, who commanded Kenya's paramilitary riot unit before his appointment, ordered on August 12 that record-keepers, cell sentries and duty officers be suspended after custodial deaths, the lowest ranks in any station. Kenya's police oversight body has secured 47 convictions from 3,988 officers investigated since 2011. The United States opened a grant of up to $1.6m in July to train Kenyan police in crowd control.

🇰🇪 🇬🇧 | Victims of the British army marched on Kenya's Parliament this week. They are survivors of sexual violence, bereaved families, and residents of the communities around Britain's training areas in Laikipia. On Wednesday they walked down Harambee Avenue in Nairobi and handed Parliament a petition demanding the Kenya–UK Defence Cooperation Agreement be halted. The agreement was signed in 2021 and has never been ratified. Britain wants primary jurisdiction over its own soldiers for offences committed "in the course of official duty." Kenyan MPs want Kenyan courts to try crimes committed on Kenyan soil. A National Assembly inquiry published in November 2025 found "compelling evidence of widespread sexual violence perpetrated by BATUK, particularly against women from the Samburu and Maasai communities." The committee described the unit as closer to an occupying force than a partner.

🇯🇵 🇨🇳 | Japan’s WWII chemical weapons are still turning up in Chinese soil, and still claiming lives. 2,000,000 chemical munitions were abandoned as Japanese forces retreated. @Meekalefay joins The Specter to dig into the story.

🇨🇳 🇹🇼 | “Taiwan has never been a country.” KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun is leading a direct offensive against the ruling DPP's separatist trajectory, pushing for improved cross-strait relations with Beijing. The DPP's US-aligned politics have steered the island toward an increasingly dangerous standoff with the People's Republic of China, which has maintained its claim to Taiwan as sovereign Chinese territory since the 1949 civil war, when KMT Nationalists retreated to the island following their defeat by the Communist Party. Washington intervened in 1950, deploying the 7th Fleet to the Taiwan Strait and freezing what Beijing considers unfinished business. Western governments and media have since worked hard to project a uniform Taiwanese desire for independence, but a 200,000-strong protest in Taipei recently told a different story, with improved cross-strait relations among the central demands. The KMT argues that Taiwanese identity is inseparable from Chinese civilization. The DPP has spent decades building a competing narrative. Washington has spent decades bankrolling it.

🇵🇸 | "Settlers beat me all over my body." The Spectre has gathered the harrowing testimony of a Palestinian man who survived a violent settler attack. According to witnesses, hundreds of settlers raided Sura, southwest of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, last week. Organised group of settlers, operating under the protection of Israeli military forces, stormed the village, torching properties and homes and beating residents. UN data has recorded at least six settler attacks per day since January, with an average of 17 Palestinians displaced daily in 2026. Analysts say Israeli settlers, financed and armed by the Israeli government, are seeking to engineer a new reality on the ground, one aimed at the annexation of the entire West Bank. Settler violence has been accompanied by the displacement of indigenous Palestinian communities and the expansion of illegal settlements. At least 200 new settlement outposts have been established since 2023.

🇱🇾 | Libyans took to the streets of Misrata on Friday over power cuts of up to 14 hours a day, and a new deal being brokered by the US. Libya holds Africa's largest oil reserves, but the recurring blackouts have made daily life unbearable for residents. The signs went beyond the blackouts. Several targeted a US-backed political initiative now being negotiated. The initiative is led by Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump's envoy and the father of his son-in-law. It would formalise a split between Libya's two rival administrations, in place since 2014. Under the proposed terms, Tripoli's prime minister stays on. The eastern commander's son takes the presidency. US oil companies gain access to the fields. "Unfortunately, here we are in 2026 and history is still repeating itself" a protester said, 15 years after the NATO intervention that left the country fighting over power.

🇵🇸 | "We will not stop reporting on Israeli crimes." The voices of Palestinian journalists in Gaza affirm their steadfastness and unwavering dedication to their work, one year on from the loss of Anas al-Sharif. On this day one year ago, an Israeli strike struck a clearly marked press tent sheltering Palestinian journalists near Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital. Alongside Anas, the strike claimed the lives of Mohammed Qreiqeh and Mohammed al-Khalidi, as well as camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Momen Aliwa. Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, reflecting on Gaza's fallen colleagues, wrote: "It is important to speak about this journalistic model they introduced, which was embodied in exceptional performance under exceptional circumstances. It redefined the concept of journalism and media in the modern era, and restored dignity to the profession and its noble humanitarian mission." Since October 2023, Israeli forces have taken the lives of more than 270 journalists and media workers across the Gaza Strip. On the world's persistent failure to hold Israel accountable, al-Dahdouh wrote: "The world has participated in killing them twice: once through silence over the crime, and again through silence over the lack of accountability for the criminal."

🇯🇵 | Japanese police violently remove anti-war protesters during the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Anti-government protests in Japan are growing against the Takaichi administration's remilitarization agenda.

🇦🇷 | Thousands of Argentines mobilized outside Congress in Buenos Aires against President Javier Milei's neoliberal austerity agenda. Police forces responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters opposing the attack on worker's rights.

It was great speaking to @specter_affairs about Taiwan’s precarious situation. The truth of the matter is abandoned allies are a dime a dozen. The smart thing to do is to assess the relative strength of all the players realistically. After the Iran war more than ever!

🇹🇼 | "They feel like [Taiwan] is almost on the level of Israel." The Specter met Taiwanese journalist @AngelicaOung in Taipei, amid the severe political crisis shaking the island. The Western narrative pushes the idea that everyone in Taiwan opposes unity with the mainland. Oung made clear to us that this is far from reality. "American influence in Taiwan means that the elite are not aligned with Taiwan's interests," Oung told The Specter. The ruling DPP is now facing one of its worst crises yet. Mass protests are rocking the island, the largest in years, demanding the party step down. The Specter was on the ground as 200,000 people took to the streets. A severe food safety scandal was the trigger, but deeper questions, above all cross-strait relations, sit at the heart of people's anger. This snippet is only the beginning. More from our meeting with Angelica Oung is coming. Follow us so you don't miss it.

81 years ago today, the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, it did it again over Nagasaki. Together the two bombings killed hundreds of thousands of people. Washington remains the only power in history to have used a nuclear weapon.