Australia announced a multimillion-dollar agreement with Nauru on Monday that gives Canberra a veto right over a range of pacts the tiny Pacific atoll might want to enter with third countries, including China.

Australia offered 140 million Australian dollars ($89 million) over five years to the remote nation’s population of 12,000 under the treaty to be implemented next year, including 40 million Australian dollars ($26 million) to enhance policing and security.

“Recognizing the security of one of us affects the security of both of us, the treaty provides that Nauru and Australia will jointly agree to any engagement by other countries in Nauru’s security, banking and telecommunications sectors,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a joint statement with Nauru President David Adeang at Australia’s Parliament House.

Adeang said Nauru’s partnership with Australia, its former colonial master, is “vital” to his country.

The pact has some similarities to a deal a struck in May with Tuvalu, another tiny Pacific island nation with a similar-size population as Nauru, which also gave Australia veto power over third-country deals.

The Tuvalu deal followed a security agreement struck between China and the Solomon Islands in 2022 that has raised concerns over a Chinese naval base being established in the South Pacific.

Meg Keen, director of the Pacific Island Program at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank on international policy, said Nauru had sacrificed its ability to strike security, banking and infrastructure deals with China and other third parties in return for a big increase in Australian funding.

“It is a move by Australia to limit Chinese reach and influence in the region,” Keen said in an email.

“The treaty allows Australia to strengthen regional ties and cement its leading role as the development and security partner of choice,” she said.

A key part of the deal is that Nauru will retain an Australian bank. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia will open a branch in Nauru next year after Australia’s Bendigo Bank withdraws from the country.

“This treaty strengthens our own economy, enhances also our mutual security and addresses critical challenges like debanking and ensuring inclusive growth and resilience for our own people,” Adeang said.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva underwent surgery in Sao Paulo to drain a bleed on his brain linked to a fall at home in October, a medical note published by the government said on Tuesday.

The surgery was successful and the 79-year-old Lula is “well” and being monitored in the intensive care unit, the note said. Doctors will hold a press conference at 9 a.m. local time to provide details.

Lula underwent an MRI late on Monday in Brasilia after suffering a headache, which detected an intracranial hemorrhage. He was transferred to Sao Paulo for surgery at the Sirio Libanes hospital.

Lula fell at home in late October and suffered a small brain hemorrhage and trauma to the back of his head that required stitches. Tests in early November showed his condition had remained stable.

The president’s injury forced him to cancel a trip to Russia for a summit of the BRICS group of major emerging markets being held in Kazan, following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights.

This is a developing story. More to come.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the witness for the first time on Tuesday in his long-running corruption trial to give testimony that will likely force him to juggle between the courtroom and war room for weeks.

Netanyahu, 75, is Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime. He is the country’s longest serving leader, having been in power almost consecutively since 2009.

“I have been waiting for eight years for this moment to tell the truth,” Netanyahu told the three judges hearing the case. “But I am also a prime minister … I am leading the country through a seven-front war. And I think the two can be done in parallel.”

He smiled confidently when he entered the Tel Aviv District Court around 10 a.m. (3 a.m. ET). The trial was moved from Jerusalem for undisclosed security reasons and convened in an underground courtroom, a 15-minute walk from the country’s defense headquarters.

Before Netanyahu took the stand, his lawyer Amit Hadad laid out for the judges what the defence maintains are fundamental flaws in the investigation. Prosecutors, Hadad said, “weren’t investigating a crime, they were going after a person.”

A few dozen protesters gathered outside the courthouse, some of them supporters and others demanding he do more to negotiate the release of some 100 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has been waging war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group for more than a year, during which Netanyahu had been granted a delay for the start of his court appearances. But last Thursday, judges ruled that he must start testifying.

Charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu will testify three times a week, the court said, despite the Gaza war and possible new threats posed by wider turmoil in the Middle East, including in neighboring Syria.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in three cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favors for media tycoons in return for favorable coverage. He denies any wrongdoing.

In the run-up to his court date, Netanyahu revived familiar pre-war rhetoric against law enforcement, describing investigations against him as a witch hunt. He denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty.

“The real threat to democracy in Israel is not posed by the public’s elected representatives, but by some among the law enforcement authorities who refuse to accept the voters’ choice and are trying to carry out a coup with rabid political investigations that are unacceptable in any democracy,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

At a Monday night press conference Netanyahu said he had waited eight years to be able to tell his story and expressed outrage at the way witnesses had been treated during investigations.

Before the war, Netanyahu’s legal troubles bitterly divided Israelis and shook Israeli politics through five rounds of elections. His government’s bid last year to curb the powers of the judiciary further polarized Israelis.

The shock Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war swept Netanyahu’s trial off the public agenda as Israelis came together in grief and trauma. But as the war dragged on, political unity crumbled.

In recent weeks, while fighting abated on one front after Israel reached a ceasefire with Hamas’ Lebanese ally Hezbollah, members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, including his justice and police ministers, have clashed with the judiciary.

In power almost consecutively since 2009, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving leader and its first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime.

His domestic legal woes were compounded last month when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.

China has fielded its largest regional maritime deployment in decades, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday, as it monitors what it says is a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific.

Taiwan has been on high alert since Monday as it braced for expected military drills after President Lai Ching-te sparked Beijing’s ire by making unofficial stops in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam earlier this month.

Taiwan on Monday said multiple formations of Chinese naval and coast guard vessels were moving in regional waters and around the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has not announced military drills or acknowledged the large-scale deployment cited by Taipei.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own territory, despite never having controlled it, and has not ruled out taking the island by force. It views unofficial interactions between Washington and Taipei as a violation of its sovereignty. Taiwan’s leadership rejects China’s territorial claims over it.

An “astonishing” number of Chinese vessels have been deployed at a scale that “could block external forces,” Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, said at a Taiwan Defense Ministry briefing Tuesday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval deployment was not only targeting Taiwan, Hsieh said, adding that the geographic spread stretched into waters past the first island chain. The strategically significant chain of islands encompasses Japan, Taiwan, parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, and as long been a key plank in the US maintaining its position as the dominant power in the Pacific.

“The PLA’s recent activities not only exerted military pressure on Taiwan. Its naval forces, specifically, have significantly raised its posture around Taiwan and the Western Pacific,” Hsieh said.

China’s ability to block outside forces from entering the first island chain could pose a survival threat to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, potentially cutting off naval access by outside forces seeking to aid the island.

The maritime deployment was the largest since China began holding large-scale war games around Taiwan in the mid-1990s, according to the ministry.

Taiwan authorities also reported a significant increase in PLA aircraft operating around the island, detecting 47 such jets in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. Tuesday.

In a statement Monday, Taiwan authorities said the PLA had designated seven zones of reserved airspace to the east of its coastal Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.

No live-fire exercises had yet taken place in the zones which lie to the north and northwest of Taiwan respectively, the ministry said in its Tuesday briefing.

Visit to US

The Chinese military movement comes days after Lai made unofficial stops in Hawaii and Guam during a weeklong South Pacific tour, which wrapped Friday.

The visit was Lai’s first to the United States since becoming president in May. The leader, who has long faced Beijing’s wrath for championing Taiwan’s sovereignty, used his travel to tout solidarity with likeminded democracies.

Chinese authorities voiced firm opposition to Lai’s trip, referring to him as a “separatist.” His travel came after the US approved new arms sales to Taiwan, which prompted China to vow “strong countermeasures.”

Military drills have increasingly become one of Beijing’s go-to tools to voice dissatisfaction and visits by US or Taiwanese officials to each other’s soil have in the past sparked significant war games from China.

In May, days after Lai’s inauguration, China launched two days of large-scale military drills surrounding Taiwan in what it called “punishment” for so-called “separatist acts.” It called those drills “Joint Sword-2024A.”

China then conducted “Joint-Sword-2024B” drills in October, after Lai said during a National Day address that the island was “not subordinate” to China.

When asked about the military movements during a regular briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment directly but said, “the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affair, and China will firmly defend its national sovereignty.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

Kennedy Johnson was 15 years old when she gave birth to a baby girl in a Detroit foster home for teen moms, in February 1996. Twenty-five years later, when Johnson found herself in northern Ghana being made a queen, she couldn’t quite believe where life had led her.

In front of an adoring crowd in Tamale, the largest city in northern Ghana, Johnson was given her honorary title of “Zosimli Naa” in October 2021. It was conferred on her by the Dakpema, Abdul-Razik Salifu, a local spiritual leader, with Zosimli Naa roughly translating as “Friendship Queen” — effectively making her the Dakpema’s head of development in the area.

Thousands of miles from home, riding on a horse and dressed in traditional royal attire, Johnson would have been forgiven for thinking she was in a dream.

‘I had to abandon a lot of my childhood goals’

Johnson’s journey began as a young mother in 1990s Detroit, a time she remembers as “a bit of a challenge.” It’s an understatement. She recalled a relative dropping her off, a pregnant 15-year-old, at the foster home, and promising to pick her up when the child was born. They never returned.

“I had to abandon a lot of my childhood goals,” she said. “I just had to dig deep and find some sort of strength.”

When her daughter D’Kiya was 11, Johnson started taking her on trips abroad — first to the Bahamas, then Hong Kong, then South America. The pair fell in love with seeing the world, and Johnson began documenting her trips online “to show people that minorities can travel.”

“I would meet other people in my age group, but not my demographic,” she said. “I was going places and people would stop me and be like: ‘Beyoncé!’ They would automatically assume I was in the entertainment industry and not taking a holiday, because people of color weren’t really traveling like that.”

Years later, once D’Kiya had left home, Johnson took a DNA test that determined that she had Nigerian and Ghanaian heritage. For the first time, her travels took her to West Africa. Her arrival there — which she describes as a “return” — “felt like a huge sigh of relief,” she said.

Soon after her first journey, Johnson founded Green Book Travel in 2018, a company that organizes trips to West Africa for members of the diaspora. Named after the annual travel guide that provided Black people with information to keep them safe in Jim Crow America, Green Book Travel takes people to historically significant locations including sites of deportation in the transatlantic slave trade.

The trips immediately attracted hundreds of people, Johnson said, and her travels to West Africa became more frequent. On one trip, she found herself physically compelled — her “body was on fire” — to visit northern Ghana.

On her second day in the region, she was asked to pay a customary visit to the Dakpema and his elders in Tamale. She quickly realized that this was no ordinary meeting.

“They started consulting amongst each other,” she said, “and then they said ‘we want you to go to prepare to be the Queen.’”

Becoming royalty

Initially, Johnson did not understand the significance of the offer. But when she recounted the meeting to a village elder, he nearly crashed his car.

Four months later, with her daughter and best friend alongside her, Johnson was “enskinned” in Tamale — officially recognized as Friendship Queen — before being introduced to the community in a parade at the annual Damba festival, in which she rode on a horse to cheers from the crowd.

“It was overwhelming because the crowd was so big,” said Kendall Jones, Johnson’s best friend who was by her side at the event. “It was my first time ever experiencing having people chase your car down as you’re driving away.”

The role of Friendship Queen comes with an elevated status and practical responsibilities to the community. Johnson works together with elders of the Dagbon Kingdom, which dates back to the 14th century and comprises around five million people, to run positive initiatives in Tamale, where she now lives. So far, together with her charitable foundation Kith and Kin, she has worked to provide clean water, sanitary products, and shoes to the community, and is working on a scheme to support orphans. Locally, she is revered.

“You are put on a pedestal,” she said, “There are all the formalities — the bowing, the ‘Her Royal Majesty,’ making sure that you’re taken care of.”

From Detroit to Tamale

It’s a difficult adjustment for someone unfamiliar with celebrity. But to Johnson, the role comes naturally. “She represents peace, unity, hope and the connection of our past to the future,” said the Dakpema, who was instantly impressed by Johnson upon her first visit to his palace. “She is very popular within Dagbon and highly respected. The people admire her.”

Kennedy Johnson is not the first Zosimli Naa to be enskinned by the Dakpema. Dr Susan Herlin, an academic from Kentucky, had her title conferred in 1995 and died in 2014. Seven years later, Johnson became the next person to receive the title from the Dakpema Palace.

“We felt she was the right choice based on her qualities and her connection to both the Dagbon Kingdom and the diaspora,” said the Dakpema. “By having a Queen who embodies both our rich cultural heritage and strong ties to the world, we open the door to cultural exchange, investment and global awareness.”

In November 2024, Johnson was granted full Ghanaian citizenship. In the same month, she was also included in the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) class of 2024 top 100 futurists and innovators.

“It just unfolded to something beyond my dreams,” she said.

‘Swagger Queen’

Johnson is especially popular with the young people of Tamale, who call her “The Swagger Queen,” due to her striking fashion sense that makes full use of colorful Ghanaian fabrics.

But no one admires her more than her own daughter, now 28. “It’s the story of a person with everything against them being blessed with everything from the universe,” D’Kiya said. “You can say you’ve seen everything when you’ve seen your mom grow up with a lack of family, and then grow to gain millions of people as her family.”

As daughter of the Zosimli Naa, D’Kiya is now considered a princess. “I remember growing up and thinking, maybe one day I’ll play a Disney princess,” recalled D’Kiya, known by her rapper name Stunna Dior. “It’s still a hard thing to conceptualize.”

And what would the teenage Kennedy Johnson in Detroit think of the current Queen in Tamale? “I think she would feel inspired,” Johnson said. “If the young version met the current me, she would know to keep going and to keep pushing.”