A view of part of online retailer Lazada’s warehouse in Depok, south of Jakarta, Indonesia March 26, 2018. Picture taken March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/File Photo
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BANGKOK, May 7 (Reuters) – Thailand on Saturday warned against the creation of online content that risked insulting the country’s monarchy, after a video by a social media influencer promoting e-commerce platform Lazada incensed royalists, who said it was mocking the palace.
Thai law prescribes punishments of up to 15 years in jail for each offence if found guilty of defaming, insulting or threatening King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his closest family.
The video, which has since been taken down, was promoting Lazada’s May 5 sale and featured a woman dressed in a traditional Thai costume sitting in a wheelchair and playing the role of an influencer’s mother.
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Royalists complained the woman in the wheelchair was a veiled reference to a royal family member. The video did not use the language used by the royal family, nor mention any of its members.
In videos posted on Facebook, the influencer, Aniwat “Nara” Prathumthin, said the clip was a parody of a famous Thai soap opera and told critics the perceived royal insult was “all in your imagination”.
Lazada, the Southeast Asian arm of Alibaba Group Holding (9988.HK), in a statement apologised for the “emotional damage” the video had caused and said it should have been more careful.
Government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana said such content risked damaging the reputation of brands.
“Let us warn marketers, influencers and content creators to be careful about presenting content or promotions that reference appearances or individuals of the institution that all Thais worship and love,” Thanakorn said in a statement.
“This is inappropriate, and will not only upset every Thai in the country, but also destroy the image and reputation of the brand. It could also be against the law.”
The incident follows an April Fool’s prank tweeted by a staff member at budget airline Thai Vietjet Air, an offshoot of Vietnam’s Vietjet Aviation JSC (VJC.HM), about a new route to Munich that stirred anger among royalists, who said it was a hidden joke about the Thai king spending time in Germany. The airline apologised. read more
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Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Martin Petty and David Holmes
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BANGKOK — Each morning in her market stall in the Bangkok Noi district of the Thai capital, Jintana Rapsomruay rolls balls of dough into a snack known for its resemblance to the eggs of an oversize lizard. The sweet treat, which looks like a doughnut hole, was supposedly invented by a consort of the first king of the Chakri Dynasty, which continues to reign 240 years later.
The 18th-century monarch liked to nosh on the eggs of water monitor lizards, so the story goes, but the concubine couldn’t get her hands on any, so she substituted dough stuffed with sweet bean paste. The king — among whose accomplishments was moving the Thai capital to its present location — was pleased.
The snack remains popular to this day, but Ms. Jintana can barely get by. Like millions of Thais struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, her income has plummeted by half.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former military chief and leader of the 2014 coup — approved the Royal Society’s ruling with its own decree, making a parenthetical Bangkok the law of the land.
The shift from semicolon to parentheses has provoked public dissatisfaction. But it’s not the name itself to which anyone really objects; the capital is universally known to Thai speakers as Krung Thep, or, by the initials “Kor Tor Mor.”
Rather, the way an elite clique did the update is what bothered some in a populace that appears increasingly unwilling to accept diktats from royalist, tradition-bound institutions.
turned up dead. Dozens of young protest leaders have been imprisoned.
Prosecutions of royal defamation have increased sharply, with a former civil servant sentenced last year to more than four decades in prison. Some protest leaders have called for the monarchy to submit to the Constitution and are now facing, collectively, hundreds of years in prison for lèse-majesté, which criminalizes criticism of senior members of the royal family.
“People across Thailand, not just the young, recognize the argument of reforming the monarchy,” said Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, who was elected president of the Student Union at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “It’s not marginal, it’s mainstream.”
Mr. Netiwit lost his position in February after the school administration determined that he was connected to an event involving activists who have called for monarchical reform.
Some Thais are more enthusiastic about the government espousing the longer name.
On a recent morning, Vichian Bunthawi, 88, a retired palace guard, sat cross-legged on a bench at the sleepy railway station in Bangkok Noi. The capital should be known around the world as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, he said, remembering how his primary schoolteacher would write the full name on the chalkboard.
“Krung Thep Maha Nakhon is the name of the capital,” he said. “It is where the king lives.”
The first king of the Chakri Dynasty, Rama I, moved the capital in 1782, from the left bank of the Chao Phraya River, where the Bangkok Noi district is, to the east bank. On marshy ground, he and his successors built gilded, jeweled palaces. The full name of Krung Thep Maha Nakhon includes a paean to “an enormous royal palace resembling the heavenly abode in which the reincarnated god reigns.” In Thai tradition, the king is semi-divine.
In 1932, absolute monarchy was abolished, but the royal family still retains an enormous presence in Thai life. Giant posters of King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun and Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya, the current king’s fourth wife, tower over public places.
The king, whose lavish lifestyle contrasts with the austerity forced upon many Thais by the pandemic, spends most of his time in Germany.
Whether as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or Bangkok, the character of the capital has changed drastically over the decades. City planners filled in the canals that used to be the city’s transportation arteries. Rice paddies gave way to malls and condominiums.
In a back alley behind a Buddhist temple in Bangkok Noi, Chana Ratsami still plays a Thai xylophone. His wife’s family of palace attendants lived in Bangkok Noi for generations.
Now, he said, the lane’s residents are mostly migrants from upcountry.
“They don’t know the history of this place,” he said, describing how the traffic-choked road at the end of the lane used to be a canal with boats floating past, filled with flowers and fruit. “I miss the old city, no matter what it’s called.”
Just how long has the British monarchy been in crisis? This time – after “Megxit”, after Prince Andrew – it was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s disastrous trip to the Caribbean. What was supposed to be a “charm offensive”, drumming up enthusiasm in the year of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, ended up looking more like a long goodbye, with the headlines spotlighting anti-royal protests, failures to address legacies of slavery, and the news that Jamaica is planning to ditch the Queen as head of state.
It may well be time for the royal family to face up to the fact that the sun is setting on those final remnants of the empire that they once embodied – and not a moment too soon.
For Britons, it can be easy to forget that the Queen’s realm and territories stretch far beyond these isles. Out of the 54 “independent and equal nations” that make up the Commonwealth of Nations, 15 (including the UK) still count the Queen as their head of state. Becoming a republic doesn’t necessitate surrendering membership of the Commonwealth itself – it simply means a symbolic rejection of British rule. And with Barbados finally taking the leap last year, longstanding debates about republicanism have been reignited in the remaining realms.
The issue is just as hotly debated in the likes of Australia (54% of people there would support becoming a republic) as it is in Jamaica, but packing William and Kate off to the Caribbean has inevitably focused minds in that region. Though republican camps in the Caribbean have long cited the impact of colonialism and slavery on the contemporary fortunes of their countries, a new reckoning is afoot, against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter movement and renewed conversations about the legacy of empire. Thanks to the attention the royals command, the disintegration of British overseas rule is being documented in real time.
‘This is not crown land’: William and Kate cancel first Caribbean tour visit due to protests – video
The signs weren’t looking good for William and Kate from the outset. The couple’s first official engagement, in Belize, was unceremoniously cancelled after protests from the Q’eqehi Maya people over a land dispute with a charity that William patronises. Heading to Jamaica, they were met with more demonstrations, this time calling on the royals to address the issue of reparations for the several hundred years they directly profited from the slave trade. Government officials backed up the sentiment, with Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, informing a solemn William and Kate that the country was “moving on’’ and wanted to be “independent”, seemingly following the example of Barbados. It’s no wonder the royals were gracing Sunday’s front pages in damage-limitation mode, with William offering a half-apology for the tour.
As ever, sometimes opening their mouths only makes things worse: in a speech given in Kingston last week, Prince William expressed “profound sorrow” for the transatlantic slave trade, but people were quick to point out that he stopped short of an apology or acknowledging the monarchy’s direct interests in slavery. At one point in history, enslaved Black Africans arriving in the Caribbean via the Royal African Company were branded with the initials “DY”, marking them as the property of the then Duke of York . Royal profiting from slavery continued apace – the future William IV even personally argued for the continuation of the trade in the House of Lords in 1799, a move that, according tohistorian Brooke Newman, helped “delay” abolition for a few more years but “misjudged the mood of the nation” – and damaged the reputation of the royal family as a result.
For the royals, the trip has been a sharp lesson in how people in the Commonwealth now perceive Britain and its institutions. As the Jamaican dancehall artist Beenie Man put it during an interview with ITV News: “We are just here, controlled by the British, ruled by the British law when you go in the court. It’s all about the Queen … but what are they doing for Jamaica? They’re not doing anything for us.” The Jamaican writer Ashley Rouen Brown summed up the grounds for resentment succinctly: Jamaicans, he wrote, are “currently the only citizens within the Commonwealth realm that require a visa to visit the land of their head of state”. Meanwhile, requests for financial reparations, in recognition of the impact centuries of plunder had on economic prospects, have been met with egregious responses, like David Cameron’s 2015 offer for Britain to finance a £25m prison to hold Jamaican “criminals” in lieu of compensation for slavery.
In Jamaica, republicanism has been part of the political conversation since the 1970s, and there is cross-party support for the move. But now, debate has been replaced by decision. Emancipation is in full swing. It’s no coincidence that it comes as the Queen – who “made the Commonwealth central to her life when she became monarch” – reaches the twilight of her reign. But nor can it be a coincidence that this is all happening after several years of governmental and monarchical misrule in London. The aftermath of the Windrush scandal still leaves a bitter taste. And, albeit on a different scale, it’s worth taking account of some more of Beenie Man’s words: “If Harry was coming, people would react different,” he said. “People are going to meet Harry.” In that sense, the royals really are the authors of their own misfortune.
‘The monarchy is a relic’: Protests in Jamaica over royal visit – video
But with or without the Sussexes, there is an air of historical inevitability to all this. So, what happens next? Ahead of Kate and William’s visit, the Windrush campaigner Patrick Vernon said: “If Jamaica decided it did [want to become a republic], there would be a domino effect on the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean.”
His words may well be prescient. The royal couple flew into the Bahamas, the last leg of their tour, to be greeted by protests on the ground and opposition from the likes of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee. Belize has announced a constitutional review, and late last year leaders including the St Vincent premier were urging fellow Commonwealth realms to attain republican status. The wheels seem firmly set in motion, with the royals’ open-backed Land Rover left spinning in the sand.
This kind of reckoning with reality is long overdue, and, who knows, it may even be a long-term positive for Britain if it helps disabuse our political class of its globe-trotting, Empire 2.0 fantasies. At the very least, now is the time to admit that for many parts of the world, the benefits of sovereign British rule are most heavily felt by the home nation itself. Within our own borders, we may kid ourselves that the monarchy is still a glittering jewel in our crown. But for many people overseas who wish to escape the long shadow of empire and exploitation, the shine has well and truly rubbed off.
This article was amended on 28 March 2022 because in 1799, it was in the House of Lords that the future William IV argued for the continuation of the slave trade, not in the House of Commons as an earlier version said.
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — A pregnant Saudi woman, far from home, finds herself stalked by inner and outer demons. A wannabe Saudi vlogger and his friends, menaced by the internet’s insatiable appetite for content and more mysterious dangers, try to escape a dark forest. At a wedding, the mother of the bride panics when her daughter disappears with all of their guests waiting downstairs.
These were just a few of the 27 Saudi-made films premiering this month at a film festival in Jeddah, part of the conservative kingdom’s huge effort to transform itself from a cultural backwater into a cinematic powerhouse in the Middle East.
The Saudi push reflects profound shifts in the creative industries across the Arab world. Over the past century, while the name Saudi Arabia conjured little more than oil, desert and Islam, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad stood out as the Arab cultural beacons where blockbuster movies were made, chart-topping songs were recorded and books that got intellectuals talking hit the shelves.
to promote pro-government themes.
In many ways, the region’s cultural mantle is up for grabs, and Saudi Arabia is spending lavishly to seize it.
At the Red Sea International Film Festival, held on a former execution ground, Jeddah residents rubbernecked as stars like Hilary Swank and Naomi Campbell strutted down a red carpet in revealing gowns, and Saudi influencers D.J.-ed at dance parties.
All this in a country where, until a few years ago, women were not allowed to drive, cinemas were banned and aspiring filmmakers often had to dodge the religious police to shoot in public.
CineWaves.
Although Saudi Arabia’s population is about a fifth of Egypt’s, the Saudis are more affluent and wired, making them more likely to pay for streaming services and movie tickets. At about $18, a ticket in Saudi theaters is among the most expensive in the world.
But the kingdom only allowed cinemas to reopen only in 2018 after a 35-year ban. Before that, Saudis escaped to nearby Bahrain or Dubai to go to theaters.
Now, the country has 430 screens and counting, making it the fastest-growing market in the world, with a target of 2,600 screens by 2030, Mr. Abdulmajeed said.
Film Clinic, a Cairo-based production company.
Several Saudi-Egyptian collaborations are in the works, and an Egyptian “Hangover”-style comedy, “Wa’afet Reggala” (“A Stand Worthy of Men”), was the highest-grossing release in Saudi Arabia this year, beating the Hollywood blockbusters.
Saudi productions may also continue to draw acting, writing and directing talent from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt — and will most likely need to do so to reach non-Saudi audiences, said Rebecca Joubin, an Arab studies professor at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Five Movies to Watch This Winter
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“With Saudi opening up, they say in Egypt that it’s saving Egypt’s movie industry,” said Marwan Mokbel, an Egyptian who co-wrote “Junoon,” the Saudi horror film about the vlogger that premiered at the Jeddah festival.
Shahid, its Dubai-based Arabic counterpart.
That has created a big market for Arabic-language content.
Netflix has produced Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian-Lebanese shows, with varying degrees of success, and just announced the release of its first Arabic-language feature film, “Perfect Strangers.”
Syrian and Lebanese studios that used to depend on gulf financiers — who, they complained, often forced them to water down their artistic ambitions by nixing political themes — are also turning to web series and Netflix for new funding and wider audiences.
a hip alternative to the somnolent broadcast television. Mohammad Makki recalled dodging the police, guerrilla style, to film the first season of his show “Takki,” about a group of Saudi friends navigating Saudi social constraints, a decade ago. Then, it was a low-budget YouTube series. Now, it is a Netflix hit.
“We grew up dying to go to the cinema,” he said, “and now it’s two blocks from my house.”
Saudi women in the industry faced even greater challenges.
When “Wadjda” (2012), the first Saudi feature directed by a woman, was filmed, Haifaa al-Mansour, the director, was barred from mixing in public with male crew members. She worked instead from the back of a van, communicating with the actors via walkie-talkie.
“I’m still in shock,” said Ahd Kamel, who played a conservative teacher in “Wadjda,” which portrays a rebellious young Saudi girl who desperately wants a bicycle, as she walked through the festival. “It’s surreal.”
As a young actress in New York, Ms. Kamel hid her career from her family, knowing they, and Saudi society, would not approve of a woman acting. Now, she said, her family pesters her for festival tickets, and she is preparing to direct a new film to be shot in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi political, religious and cultural sensitivities are still factors, of course.
Marvel’s big-budget “Eternals” was not released in Saudi Arabia — or in Qatar, Kuwait or Egypt — because of gay romantic scenes. Several of the non-Saudi films screened at the Jeddah festival, however, included gay scenes, nudity and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Hisham Fageeh, a Saudi comedian and actor, said officials had told him future films should avoid touching directly on God or politics.
Sumaya Rida, an actress in the festival movies “Junoon” and “Rupture,” said the films aimed to portray Saudi couples realistically while avoiding onscreen physical affection.
But the filmmakers said they were just happy to have support, accepting that it would come at the price of creative constraints.
“I don’t intend to provoke to provoke. The purpose of cinema is to tease. Cinema doesn’t have to be didactic,” said Fatima al-Banawi, a Saudi actress and director whose first feature film the festival is funding. “It comes naturally. We’ve been so good at working around things for so long.”
Vivian Yee reported from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Nada Rashwan from Cairo.
LEIGH-ON-SEA, England — For the second time in little more than five years, a British lawmaker meeting with constituents was killed in full view of the public, this time in a genteel seaside town, where the victim, a Conservative Party member of Parliament, was fatally stabbed on Friday inside a church.
The attack, which the authorities declared a terrorist attack early Saturday, stunned Britain’s political establishment, raising questions about the security of lawmakers at a time when the country is already on edge, unnerved by shortages of food and fuel, and frayed by a political culture that has become increasingly raw and combative in the aftermath of Brexit.
“The early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism,” the police said.
The lawmaker, David Amess, 69, was a long-serving member of the House of Commons known for his soft-spoken manner and hard-line views on Brexit. He was engaged in the everyday political routine of meeting with constituents when the attack occurred in Leigh-on-Sea, on the mouth of the Thames, about 40 miles east of London.
a right-wing extremist targeted her outside a meeting with constituents.
In 2010, another Labour lawmaker, Stephen Timms, was stabbed twice in the abdomen by an Islamist extremist, but survived.
Photographs taken at the scene showed a number of emergency responders and a cordoned-off area around the church. The police said that officers had responded to reports of a stabbing shortly after 12:05 p.m., and that Mr. Amess had died at the scene.
the Brexit referendum, and the assailant, Thomas Mair, an unemployed gardener, was sentenced to life in prison.
on Twitter. “Attacking our elected representatives is an attack on democracy itself,” he wrote. “There is no excuse, no justification. It is as cowardly as it gets.”
Across the political spectrum, lawmakers and other prominent Britons recalled Mr. Amess’s gentle manner and work on behalf of animals.
“He was hugely kind and good,” said Carrie Johnson, the wife of the prime minister, on Twitter. “An enormous animal lover and a true gent. This is so completely unjust. Thoughts are with his wife and their children.”
“Heartbroken,” wrote Tracey Crouch, a fellow Conservative lawmaker. “I could write reams on how Sir David was one of the kindest, most compassionate, well liked colleagues in Parliament. But I can’t. I feel sick. I am lost. Rest in Peace. A little light went out in Parliament today. We will miss you.”
In Leigh-on-Sea, known for its annual regatta and folk festival, news of the attack reverberated through normally tranquil tree-lined streets.
“This doesn’t really happen, this is a nice quiet area,” said Alysha Codabaccus, 24, who lives in an apartment a few doors down from the church. “I mean, it literally happened in a church.”
At Mojo’s Seafood, a small white shack that serves fresh fish from the nearby coastline, the customers expressed horror and sadness. One remarked on the impact on Mr. Amess’s family. “He’s got five kids,” the man said quietly.
Lee Jordison, who works at a butcher shop 100 yards from the church, said he had heard sirens and seen armed officers running up the street, shattering the typical autumn afternoon quiet, and had known instantly that something was very wrong. He said a shaken woman had told him that people ran from the church screaming, “Please get here quick, he’s not breathing!”
Mr. Jordison said he had met Mr. Amess a few times. “He always used to visit our shop,” he said. “He was a very nice guy from the time I met him. He had a lot of time for the community.”
Megan Specia reported from Leigh-on-Sea, and Stephen Castle and Mark Landler from London.
PARIS — The Catholic Church in France was once so powerful that it was considered a state within a state. In Roman Catholicism’s global hierarchy, France cemented its position as far back as the fifth century, when it became known as the “eldest daughter of the church.”
While Catholicism has ebbed across the Western world, its unrelenting decline in France is all the more striking given its past prominence. Now, a devastating church-ordered report on sexual abuse by the clergy released this week, after a similar reckoning elsewhere, was yet another degradation, further shaking what was once a pillar of French culture and society.
The report, which confirmed stories of abuse that have emerged over the years, shocked the nation with details of its magnitude, involving more than 200,000 minors over the past seven decades. It reverberated loudly in a country that has already been transformed, in recent generations, by the fall of Catholicism, and deepened the feeling of a French church in accelerating retreat.
The Rev. Laurent Stalla-Bourdillon, a priest and theologian in Paris, said that the church was still coming to grips with “the extent of its gradual marginalization in French society.”
especially in Germany and the United States. For some Catholics — who, in their lifetimes, have experienced the rapid shrinking of their faith in society and in their own families — the report added to a sense of siege.
“It’s perceived somewhat as an attack,” Roselyne Delcourt, 80, said after evening mass on Wednesday at Notre-Dame de Grâce of Passy, a parish in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris, a wealthy, conservative bastion. “But I don’t think it’s going to harm the church.”
Studies using data from the European Values Study have found that in 2018, only 32 percent of French people identified as Catholic, with fewer than 10 percent regularly attending mass.
Today, according its own statistics, the church celebrates half as many baptisms as two decades ago, and 40 percent of the marriages.
The number of priests in France has declined, but not the number of foreign ones, who are often called from abroad to fill the ranks of a declining priesthood — in a reversal of the colonial era during which the country was the biggest exporter of priests to Africa.
Successive governments curbed the church’s reach by pushing it out of schooling and other social functions it had traditionally performed. For decades, public schools were even closed on Thursdays to let students attend Bible study, according to this week’s report.
written a book on the sexual abuse scandals in France’s Catholic Church.
While middle-aged French may no longer practice their faith, many grew up attending church and understand its rituals, Mr. Liogier said. Today, many young French ignore basic facts about Catholicism, like the meaning of Easter, and are incapable of transmitting that knowledge to the next generation, he said.
Claire-Marie Blanchard, 45, a mother of four who teaches Bible study, has seen it firsthand.
“There are children who have never heard of Jesus, even children whose parents are Christian or Catholic,” said Ms. Blanchard at the Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse chapel in the Seventh Arrondissement of Paris. Her own son riled her when he did not baptize his newborn so the child could decide later.
“Being Catholic in France is complicated,” she said. “But we aren’t giving up.”
Feeling under siege, some practicing Catholics have grown increasingly conservative. In the 2017 presidential elections, the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, won the votes of 38 percent of practicing Catholics, compared with 34 percent of the total vote.
Éric Zemmour, the far-right writer and TV star who has been rising in the polls before the presidential elections next year, has long attacked Islam and gained popularity on the right by styling himself as a great defender of France’s Catholic culture — even though he is Jewish and his parents settled in France from Algeria.
Isabelle de Gaulmyn, a top editor at La Croix, France’s leading Catholic newspaper, said that the church’s decline might have made it reluctant to tackle the issue of sexual abuse head-on, for fear of adding to its existing challenges.
“The evolution was very brutal,” she said of the church’s drop in power. “So there is a bit of a feeling that it is a fortress under siege.”
That feeling is also fueled by a sense that the church is poor. Unlike its counterpart in Germany, which is supported by a government-collected tax, the French church receives no steady stream of subsidies and must rely almost exclusively on donations from worshipers, although, under France’s complex secularism law, the state pays for the upkeep of almost all church buildings
Victims of sexual abuse, who expect compensation from the church, are quick to point out that some dioceses have sizable real estate assets.
Olivier Savignac, who was sexually abused by a priest as a minor and who founded an association for victims, said that they wanted compensation to recoup years of medical bills, “not a small symbolic amount” covered by churchgoer donations.
“We want the dioceses to pay out of their pockets,” he added.
Many say the report has put the Church at a turning point — reform, or fade further.
“It’s now,” Father Stalla-Bourdillon said. “Not later.”
GAZA CITY — King Abdullah II of Jordan came under heightened scrutiny on Sunday after an alliance of international news organizations reported that he was among several world leaders to use secret offshore accounts to amass overseas properties and hide their wealth.
The king was accused of using shell companies registered in the Caribbean to buy 15 properties, collectively worth more than $100 million, in southeast England, Washington, D.C., and Malibu, Calif. The purchases were not illegal, but their exposure prompted accusations of double standards: The Jordanian prime minister, who was appointed by the king, announced in 2020 a crackdown on corruption that included targeting citizens who used shell companies to disguise their overseas investments.
The Jordanian royal court declined to provide a comment to The New York Times, but lawyers for King Abdullah told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which published the report, that his foreign properties were bought exclusively with his personal fortune and not public funds.
The claims against King Abdullah were part of a major investigation, known as the Pandora Papers, that was conducted by the ICIJ in partnership with more than a dozen international news outlets, including The Washington Post and The Guardian. Based on leaks of nearly 12 million files from 14 offshore companies, the investigation found that King Abdullah was among 35 current and former leaders, as well as more than 300 public officials, who have used offshore shell companies to disguise their wealth, and to hide the transfer of that wealth overseas.
accusing the prince of conspiring against him. The king forgave the prince, who previously embarrassed the king by speaking out against government corruption, but a court later jailed two of the prince’s alleged accomplices.
In recent months, King Abdullah attempted to shore up his standing by underscoring his reliability as a Western ally and a major player in Middle Eastern diplomacy; he met recently with President Biden and with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, following several years of fraught relations with their predecessors.
But just as King Abdullah appeared to have turned a corner, the new revelations “might be a trigger for people to go back to the streets,” said Mr. Al Sabaileh.
King Abdullah is among dozens of current and former leaders whose overseas investments were exposed. Other leaders included President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose alleged former lover was found to have purchased an apartment in Monaco; Prime Minister Andrej Babis of the Czech Republic, who is said to have bought property in the south of France using a complicated offshore structure; President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who sold a London mansion to the Crown Estate, a property trust formally owned by Queen Elizabeth II; and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, who avoided paying taxes worth more than $400,000 when he and his wife Cherie obtained a London property by purchasing the offshore company that owned it.
The mechanism was legal and Mrs. Blair, who used the property as an office for her legal consultancy, told the BBC that the Blairs had only bought the building through the offshore company at the request of the sellers.
If Israel was going to kill a top Iranian official, an act that had the potential to start a war, it needed the assent and protection of the United States. That meant acting before Mr. Biden could take office. In Mr. Netanyahu’s best-case scenario, the assassination would derail any chance of resurrecting the nuclear agreement even if Mr. Biden won.
The Scientist
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh grew up in a conservative family in the holy city of Qom, the theological heart of Shia Islam. He was 18 when the Islamic revolution toppled Iran’s monarchy, a historical reckoning that fired his imagination.
He set out to achieve two dreams: to become a nuclear scientist and to take part in the military wing of the new government. As a symbol of his devotion to the revolution, he wore a silver ring with a large, oval red agate, the same type worn by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and by General Suleimani.
He joined the Revolutionary Guards and climbed the ranks to general. He earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Isfahan University of Technology with a dissertation on “identifying neutrons,” according to Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency and a longtime friend and colleague.
He led the missile development program for the Guards and pioneered the country’s nuclear program. As research director for the Defense Ministry, he played a key role in developing homegrown drones and, according to two Iranian officials, traveled to North Korea to join forces on missile development. At the time of his death, he was deputy defense minister.
“In the field of nuclear and nanotechnology and biochemical war, Mr. Fakhrizadeh was a character on par with Qassim Suleimani but in a totally covert way,” Gheish Ghoreishi, who has advised Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Arab affairs, said in an interview.
When Iran needed sensitive equipment or technology that was prohibited under international sanctions, Mr. Fakhrizadeh found ways to obtain them.
BOGNOR REGIS, England — Little has changed in the 40 years that Jean Sheppard has been calling numbers at Crown Bingo here in the heart of Bognor Regis, one of Britain’s oldest seaside resort towns, about 60 miles south of London. The regulars still line up before the doors open at 11 a.m., hoping to nab their upholstered seat of choice in a converted cinema built in the ’30s.
When the games begin, there are no distractions.
“We had an elderly lady here once whose family came to tell her that her husband had passed away,” Ms. Sheppard recalled recently. “And this woman said, ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do for him now,’ and kept right on playing.”
The other constant over the years is the decline of Bognor Regis. Like most of the country’s seaside resorts, the town’s heyday in the ’50s and ’60s is the stuff of dim memories. Bognor and its many rival destinations — Brighton, Hastings, Margate, Skegness, Blackpool and others — once thronged with summer travelers who packed the beaches, seafood shacks and amusement arcades in search of a good time and, for those lucky enough to encounter a cloudless sky, a tan.
Then in the 1970s came the rise of cheap jet travel and overseas package tours. For the same price as a trip here, a family could fly to the beaches of Spain, where blazing sunshine was essentially guaranteed. The resort towns of Britain went into an economic free fall from which they have never recovered.
“Pubs have shut down, theaters have shut down, lots of buildings were knocked down,” said Ms. Sheppard, speaking after her shift on Sunday evening. “There’s been talk about regeneration for years, but nobody seems to know how to do it.”
Now, the limitations imposed by the pandemic are succeeding where all else has failed — at least for the moment. Government-imposed air travel restrictions and warnings have curbed the national appetite for overseas trips. Brits are still allowed to fly to Spain, and elsewhere in Europe, but unless you’re heading to Gibraltar — where infection rates are low — you must quarantine for 10 days after returning home and pay for two Covid-19 tests.
This past week, the British health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the policy would soon be revisited and liberalized. That good news was offset by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron of France, who on Thursday urged all countries in the European Union to require British travelers to quarantine upon arrival.
So towns like Bognor Regis are getting a second look. There were more than 180 new players last week at Crown Bingo, said Jenny Barrett, the assistant manager. And for the first time in decades, hotels here are reporting occupancy rates well above 90 percent.
“This weekend we’re at 95 percent,” said André Gonçalves, a manager at the Beachcroft Hotel. “And our prices are up about 20 to 30 percent.”
The owner of the mini golf course right next to the beach-side promenade, Paul Tiernan, is relishing the payoff from a renovation during the height of the pandemic. He refurbished and cleaned the whole course, in part because during lockdown there was nothing else to do. Lately, on weekends there has been a waiting line that extends around the corner and down the street.
“British seasides are having a massive renaissance, everywhere you go,” he said. “Everyone is just filling their boots.”
Daily Business Briefing
Mr. Tiernan sat in a chair near the edge of the first hole of his course, directly in the line of fire of any overzealous putters. He moved to Bognor Regis 50 years ago, as a child, which makes him just old enough to have glimpsed the last vestiges of the town’s halcyon days.
“There was a pier over there,” he said, pointing across the street. “Honest to God, it was beautiful. Right at the end there was a pavilion. And there was a theater there.”
Today, the pier is short and looks hazardous. Across a different street stands an empty lot with nothing but debris from a building that burned down four years ago under what Mr. Tiernan called dubious circumstances.
It’s all a long slide from the days when Bognor was prestigious enough to serve as a place for King George V, Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, to convalesce after lung surgery in 1929. The royal connection was memorialized when “Regis,” Latin for “of the King,” was added to the town’s name. But its most famous link to the monarchy is the story — surely as false as it is amusing — that his last words were an alliterative, impolite put-down of Bognor, uttered after aides suggested that he’d soon be well enough to return. (Polite version: “I don’t want to go to Bognor.”)
King George V and Queen Mary with Princess Elizabeth at Craigweil House in Bognor, circa 1930. The town’s name was later appended with Regis in the king’s honor.Credit…Getty Images
James Joyce left behind kinder impressions after a stay here in 1923. “The weather is very fine and the country here restful,” he wrote to a patron. Joyce scholars believe he picked up the improbable name of the lead character of “Finnegans Wake,” Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, from a nearby cemetery.
The flow of out-of-towners picked up when entrepreneur Billy Butlin opened his second Butlin’s Holiday Camp here in 1960, bringing his vision of a family vacation, filled with vigorous activities and all-inclusive buffets, to the south of the country. Today, the Butlin’s here is one of only three originals still in operation, and it is curiously walled off from the rest of town. A fence stands between the ocean and the Butlin’s campus, which features a gleaming, massive structure that looks like a circus tent from the future.
The logic of a beachside holiday camp with little access to the beach, designed around indoor amusements, seems baffling. Until it starts raining, which it did often last weekend. Bognor boasts that it’s the sunniest place in the United Kingdom, a title claimed by other towns as well. Even when it’s sunny, though, the beach here is not exactly inviting. It’s made of small stones, which are comfortable to lay atop only if you bring a futon.
The water rarely gets much above 60 degrees, a temperature described by the National Center for Cold Water Safety as “very dangerous.”
“We all have wet suits,” said Sara Poffenberger, a Brit who was toweling off with her son and grandson. “But lots of British people will swim without wet suits and tell you the water is boiling.”
The beaches here helped Bognor Regis earn the title of worst U.K. seaside resort in a 2019 survey of 3,000 holidaymakers. Bognor and the fellow bottom dweller Clacton-on-Sea received low ratings for their “attractions, scenery, peace and quiet and value for the money,” the publication found.
Reviews like this explain why even optimists believe Bognor’s boomlet is unlikely to last. Business owners here understand that they are banking the upsides of what could most charitably be described as exceptional circumstances. Someday soon, normal will return.
“Next year, every man and his dog will go abroad,” Mr. Tiernan said, sitting at his mini golf course. “But next year is next year, so I’m enjoying the moment.”
As a candidate, Mr. Biden had said there would be “no more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator’” — meaning Mr. el-Sisi, whose increasing authoritarianism has drawn widespread criticism. Though the Egyptian president was the first Arab leader to congratulate Mr. Biden after the election, Mr. Biden waited until last week to return the call.
But after that chilly start to their relationship, Egypt has sought to capitalize on the Gaza crisis to shore up its ties with the new administration. Mr. Blinken will meet Mr. el-Sisi in Cairo, providing the Egyptian leader an opportunity not only to reaffirm his nation’s the relationship with the United States but also to promote Egypt’s status as a regional power broker and leader among Arab countries.
Though that status has been fading for years as Egypt fell into domestic turmoil and wealthier Arab states asserted themselves in the region, Cairo enjoyed mostly smooth relations with Washington in recent years until the arrival of the Biden administration, which has put human rights at the center of its foreign policy strategy.
The administration, however, has not fundamentally changed the terms of the relationship with Cairo, which centers on the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt receives each year from the United States, a historical byproduct of its agreement to make peace with Israel in 1979. The State Department approved a $197 million arms sale to Egypt in February, around the same time that Egypt arrested the cousins of an Egyptian-American dissident, Mohamed Soltan, in what Mr. Soltan said was a bid to pressure him to stop criticizing it.
The conflict also could serve to continue repairing the relationship between the United States and Jordan that had been largely shelved during the Trump administration. At least two million Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, and its Hashemite monarchy is the custodian of the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam.
Mr. Blinken’s visit comes at a fraught time in Israeli politics, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heading a caretaker government that could be in its last days, after four inconclusive elections in two years, and with no clear picture of what lies ahead.
Experts in the region said Mr. Blinken would have to maneuver carefully between expressing his administration’s unwavering support for Israel and its security while not handing over any gifts that could be perceived as intervening in Mr. Netanyahu’s domestic predicament.
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