The P-3 propellor plane banks sharply, silhouetted against dozens of shimmering lights in the sea against an Argentine sunset. As the camera pans across the scene, it becomes clear: the glaring lights come from dozens of fishing vessels dotting the ocean below.

The footage, shared by the Argentine military in late February, shows the overwhelming scale of a flotilla near a marine boundary which separates the country’s more restrictive exclusive economic zone from less-regulated international waters.

This area, about 200 nautical miles off the coast of southern Argentina, is notorious for illegal and unregulated fishing — often carried out by Chinese vessels, according to the Argentine Navy.

Most of these ships hunt for squid, which are abundant along the Argentine coast and a vital food source in the marine ecosystem.

The Argentine military is now ramping up efforts to combat these fishing operations in a region experts warn is on the brink of environmental collapse.

The military’s footage shows an advanced P-3C “Orion” surveillance plane — designed for anti-submarine and maritime surveillance — approaching the fishing fleet. The aircraft took part in the Argentine military operation in January alongside a smaller C-12 surveillance plane and two corvette warships, according to the Argentine navy.

This surveillance mission was conducted to address ongoing concerns that the fishing vessels may cross into the country’s more restricted EEZ, according to a spokesperson for Defense Minister Luis Petri.

The mission identified a total of 380 fishing vessels just outside Argentina’s EEZ, many of which sailed from Asia to richer waters, the military says.

Since September, the Argentine Navy has acquired multiple planes designed for maritime surveillance, which Petri said will help “control and monitor” the country’s coastline “in light of the enormous challenge we face with the possible intrusion of fishing vessels into our Exclusive Economic Zone.”

Petri described the existential threat earlier this year, arguing that “the (natural) resources of all Argentines are at stake.”

A ‘floating city’ off Argentina’s coast

The cluster of ships, stretching approximately 150 miles from north to south, raised concerns over illicit fishing. At night, many of these fishing vessels turn on bright lights to lure squid to the surface, where they are harvested using a large net. The lights are so strong that they can be seen from space.

Argentina’s Navy has noted a pattern of foreign fishing vessels turning off their tracking systems to avoid detection when illegally fishing inside the exclusive economic zone — an area where Argentina maintains sovereign rights to its natural resources, according to international law.

Historical ship tracking data corroborates the pattern and reveals these abundant waters off Argentina’s coast as a hotspot for lapsed vessel beacons.

Seven of the identified vessels — all sailing under China’s flag — were operating under US sanctions, according to a Treasury Department database.

These ships are linked to Fujian Provincial Pingtan County Ocean Fishing Group Co., Ltd., a Chinese fishing company which was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for its involvement in “serious human rights abuses” and illegal fishing, including operations in the protected waters of the Galapagos Islands and the transport of more than 6,600 shark carcasses, according to a US Treasury Department press release.

The company also received a $19 million subsidy from China’s government as an incentive to develop its deep-water fishing capabilities, according to the statement.

The US Treasury Department press release detailed reports of forced labor, physical abuse, and extreme isolation among crew members. In one case, a Pingtan crew member who tried to leave a vessel after learning of unpaid wages was allegedly denied permission and deprived of food for three days, according to the statement.

It added that China has “actively participated in the formulation of international rules related to fishery subsidies” and has made “contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources and the maintenance of a fair and reasonable international maritime order.”

Pingtan Fishing Group stated that it “has endeavored to ensure that its fishing methods are in compliance with international standards and the laws and regulations of the operating waters” in a letter responding to the Treasury Department’s 2022 sanctions.

Satellite imagery obtained from Planet Labs and captured in the area surveilled by the Argentine military offers a glimpse into this fleet.

In one case, a former crewmember on one squid fishing vessel, Ning Tai 52, accused its parent company Zhoushan Ningtai Ocean Fisheries of employing forced labor practices, according to a 2021 Greenpeace report.

In response to the allegation in Greenpeace’s report, Zhoushan Fisheries said they were “perplexed to be receiving this kind of complaint… we assure you that no such thing as forced labor has occurred.”

Illicit fishing has plagued costal Argentina for decades, experts say, with the Argentine Navy saying that Chinese vessels are frequent violators of the exclusive economic zone.

According to the United Nations, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing can undermine efforts “to manage fisheries sustainably (and) conserve marine biodiversity.” In some cases, it can lead to the “collapse” of local fisheries, according to the UN.

A wider issue

The problems faced in Argentina are part of a wider pattern of unregulated fishing conducted by Chinese fishing fleets across the globe. Having depleted its own domestic fishing resources, similar Chinese flotillas have been spotted off the coast of Western Africa, in parts of the disputed South China Sea and around South America.

Driving the expansion of China’s global fishing footprint is the ever-growing demand. As China grows richer, its appetite for seafood has also soared. Once a luxury reserved for coastal elites, shrimp, squid, and saltwater fish have become everyday dishes in inland Chinese cities. The country is now the world’s largest seafood consumer and, by one estimate, is expected to drive 40% of the world’s seafood consumption growth by 2030.

Approaching the fleet of fishing vessels at night is akin to watching a sunrise, Schvartzman recounted. Others have described the flotilla as a “floating city” which fills the entire field of view, he recalled, having spent over a decade monitoring overfishing off the coast of Argentina.

“(Only) when you get closer, you find that each light is… a vessel with hundreds of very powerful lights used to fish squid,” Schvartzman says.

By comparison, the Argentine fleet that was authorized to fish inside the EEZ consists of between 70 and 75 ships, according to Darío Sócrate, the executive director of the Argentine Chamber of Squid Jig Owners.

This imbalance harms Argentine fishermen, Sócrate says. He estimates that local fishermen only catch half of what they could have because of the foreign fishing activities.

“You don’t have any place in the world where in a short strip of ocean, you have more than 550 vessels fishing without any regulation,” Schvartzman said. “And the environmental impact is because (of) this.”

“For the species, for the ecosystem, it doesn’t matter if the vessel is one mile farther or closer… the impact is the same.”

North Korea unveiled for the first time a nuclear-powered submarine under construction, a weapons system that can pose a major security threat to South Korea and the US.

State media on Saturday released photos showing what it called “a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” as it reported leader Kim Jong Un’s visits to major shipyards where warships are built.

The Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, didn’t provide details on the submarine, but said Kim was briefed on its construction.

The naval vessel appears to be a 6,000-ton-class or 7,000-ton-class one which can carry about 10 missiles, said Moon Keun-sik, a South Korean submarine expert who teaches at Seoul’s Hanyang University. He said the use of the term “the strategic guided missiles” meant it would carry nuclear-capable weapons.

“It would be absolutely threatening to us and the US,” Moon said.

A nuclear-powered submarine was among a long wishlist of sophisticated weaponry that Kim vowed to introduce during a major political conference in 2021 to cope with what he called escalating US-led military threats. Other weapons were solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, spy satellites and multi-warhead missiles. North Korea has since performed a run of testing activities to acquire them.

North Korea obtaining a greater ability to fire missiles from underwater is a worrying development because it’s difficult for its rivals to detect such launches in advance.

Questions about how North Korea, a heavily sanctioned and impoverished country, could get resources and technology to build nuclear-powered submarines have surfaced.

Moon, the submarine expert, said North Korea may have received Russian technological assistance to build a nuclear reactor to be used in the submarine in return for supplying conventional weapons and troops to support Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine.

He also said North Korea could launch the submarine in one or two years to test its capability before its actual deployment.

North Korea has an estimated 70-90 diesel-powered submarines in one of the world’s largest fleets. However, they are mostly aging ones capable of launching only torpedoes and mines, not missiles.

In 2023, North Korea said it had launched what it called its first “tactical nuclear attack submarine,” but foreign experts doubted the North’s announcement and speculated it was likely a diesel-powered submarine disclosed in 2019. Moon said there has been no confirmation that it has been deployed.

North Korea has conducted a slew of underwater-launched ballistic missile tests since 2016, but all launches were made from the same 2,000-ton-class submarine which has a single launch tube.

Many experts call it a test platform, rather than an operational submarine in active service.

In recent days, North Korea has been dialing up its fiery rhetoric against the US and South Korea ahead of their upcoming annual military drills set to start Monday.

During his visits to the shipyards, Kim said North Korea aims to modernize water-surface and underwater warships simultaneously.

He stressed the need to make “the incomparably overwhelming warships fulfill their mission” to contain “the inveterate gunboat diplomacy of the hostile forces,” KCNA reported Saturday.

Unpaid work. Sexual harassment. Violence. Low wages. The “motherhood penalty.” These are just some of the issues that millions of women continue to face at work in 2025.

Despite progress made towards global gender equality, men continue to hold the highest paid positions in industries worldwide, while many women still typically handle grunt work across companies and supply chains.

Meanwhile, many women around the world are still struggling to find work, with many holding precarious jobs or forced to hustle in the informal economy just to get by.

Overall, women continue to carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, underlining United Nations Secretary General António Guterres’ comments that global poverty “has a female face.”

“If the quantity and quality of employment are failing women, the impact is higher poverty risk,” said Sally Roever, formerly the international coordinator at Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), a global network that aims to improve working conditions for women in the informal economy.

Labor experts say that the working world excludes, underpays, overlooks and exploits around half of its available force – and as such, work systems – in their current structures – are failing women.

What is work and why is it not working for women?

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines work as “any activity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or to provide services for use by others or for own use.”

Globally, the most common form of work is informal and unregulated, according to the ILO, who estimates nearly 60% of all workers are involved in this type of work, most of whom are women in the Global South.

Although work in the informal economy is most prevalent in developing economies, it is also an important part of advanced economies, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Informal work takes many different forms globally and includes jobs such as street sellers, unregistered taxi drivers, domestic workers and day laborers.

For women working in the formal economy, they often don’t hold the same legal rights as men, according to a 2024 World Bank report. More than 90 countries do not have laws mandating equal pay for equal work, while dozens of others prohibit women from working in certain industries, such as construction or manufacturing. Some countries prohibit women from working jobs deemed “too dangerous,” and others ban women from working at night.

What work do women do?

In the formal sector, women typically hold lower-paying roles and are only likely to hold leadership positions in occupations “traditionally viewed as female-centric,” according to the ILO.

For example, women make up 67% of the global health and social care workforce – providing essential health services for an estimated five billion people worldwide – yet men are estimated to hold 75% of leadership roles in the sector, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Women working in the informal economy are over-represented in the most vulnerable types of employment, including domestic work, food production and agriculture, according to the ILO.

The invisible burden of care work

Unpaid care work is a barrier to women actively engaging in the labor market, leaving women marginalized, and without any social protections or income stability in many parts of the world, experts say.

In 2023, around 708 million women worldwide were unable to enter the labor force because of unpaid care responsibilities, according to the most recent ILO global estimates, who said the data “confirm that care responsibilities continue to be the main reason women are not looking or not available for employment.”

And even when domestic work is paid, safety risks are often not accounted for, she said. For example, domestic work is mostly carried out in homes, which are not commonly considered a workplace. Paz said this means occupational health and safety standards are rarely in place to protect people – mostly women – who are paid to do that work.

While unpaid care work isn’t counted in traditional economic measures, it is vital to economic activity, Pozzan of the ILO added, noting that care work allows others participate in the workforce. “You cannot have paid work unless you have unpaid care work,” she said.

Women face more risks at work

While all workers face some risk and vulnerabilities on the job, women face them in greater numbers, particularly those working in the informal economy across the Global South.

This is partly because of the nature of the jobs they do. For example, domestic and factory workers risk exposure to toxic chemicals, industrial workers face extreme pain and farm workers risk prolonged sun exposure. And many women in the agricultural industry – who make up most rural smallholder farmers worldwide – are often not recognized formally as farmers in many countries, leaving them without any rights to the land they work.

Across nearly every sector, gender-based violence and sexual harassment at work continues to persist as patriarchal societies have normalized gender-based violence, according to the experts.

That violence has a knock-on effect on the overall economy.

In Cambodia, a 2017 study by the humanitarian agency CARE said that almost one in three women garment factory workers reported they had been sexually harassed, lowering productivity and seeing many women leave the job – costing employers an estimated $89 million annually.

Meanwhile, women are facing risks to the future of work, with big tech and the climate emergency two of the most prominent disruptors.

Women’s jobs are more at risk of being lost to AI as women typically hold low-skill positions requiring less education and formal qualifications that are more likely to be replaced by automation.

Climate change is also disrupting work and affects women differently than men. During an extreme weather event, which is often exacerbated by human-made climate change, women are usually the ones to shoulder a larger burden when it comes to running the household, making cooking, cleaning, gathering resources and childcare more challenging and time consuming.

More women are working until they die

Women are also working longer than men as they typically have less access to state and social benefits – including sick leave, unemployment pay, or pensions.

For example, in a high-income country such as the United Kingdom, women retire with an average pension savings of £69,000 (approximately $87,340), compared to men’s £205,000. ($259,480), according to NOW: Pensions, a UK-based pension scheme.

In developing countries, women often withdraw from the workforce due to family responsibilities, according to Aura Sevilla, also from WIEGO. Maternity policies that aim to fill in income gaps are often inadequate, according to WEF figures.

Nearly one in two women who become pregnant aren’t protected from income loss if they have their child, according to the ILO, leaving women with less overall wealth just because they started a family.

At an average life expectancy of 74, women also live longer than men, whose life expectancy is 69, according to World Bank data. In many heterosexual relationships, this means women need to keep working if their partners are no longer able to work, or die, said Florian Juergens-Grant, also from WIEGO.

Are there solutions to improve work for women?

Experts say that investing in the care economy, changing the culture of care, and strengthening unions and workers protections will help improve work conditions for women globally.

For work to really work for women, experts agree that it is important to invest in the care economy, as it can create new jobs and offer a return on investment.

Unpaid domestic and care work would equal a substantial portion of global GDP if given an equivalent monetary value, according to the ILO, who said that in some countries that amount would exceed 40%, based on conservative estimates.

An example of how this action works in practice can be seen in a city-run project located in Bogotá, Colombia, where men are taught basic care skills in a bid to rebalance domestic care responsibilities.

More than 400,000 people have benefitted from the Care Schools for Men program since its inception in 2021, and a survey from late 2023 suggests more men and women in Bogotá say that they now distribute household work more equally than in 2021.

The city government also runs “‘Care Blocks”’ to support caregivers – the majority of whom are women – which include laundry services, legal aid, daycare, psychological support, and dance classes, among others.

Between March 2021 and December 2023, almost 250,000 caregivers benefitted from these services, and the team is hoping to add a further 23 Care Blocks by 2035.

Another way to improve work for women is to encourage multinational brands to audit working conditions all the way across their supply chain, WIEGO experts said.

For example, many women in the garment and footwear industry prefer to work from home than in factories to either balance care responsibilities, for cultural or religious reasons, because they are too old to work in factories, or because they live in villages. But they often receive low wages, unstable and irregular pay, and endure poor working conditions.

The strengthening of unions and collectives is also key in establishing better workers’ rights for women.

One success story comes from São Paulo, Brazil, where after years of organizing, the women-led Domestic Workers Union successfully negotiated a minimum wage above the national minimum, and weekly rest periods for live-in domestic workers, among other achievements.

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Europe is staring down the barrel of a stark new reality where the United States being the backbone of NATO – the alliance that has guaranteed the continent’s security for almost 80 years – is no longer a given.

President Donald Trump’s public animosity towards Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, his willingness to embrace Russia’s Vladimir Putin and recent comments casting doubt over whether he would defend NATO allies “if they don’t pay” have all forced European leaders to start thinking the previously unthinkable – is the US a reliable security partner at a time when the continent is being rocked by its biggest war since the 1940s?

But NATO without the US is far from impotent, with more than a million troops and modern weaponry at its disposal from the 31 other countries in the alliance. It also has the wealth and technological knowhow to defend itself without the US, analysts say.

The US and Germany are the biggest contributors to NATO’s military budget, civil budget and security investment program, at almost 16% each, followed by the UK at 11% and France at 10%, a NATO fact sheet says. Analysts say it wouldn’t take much for Europe to make up for the loss of Washington’s contribution.

“Europe alone (still has) a capacity to muster the resources it would need to defend itself, it’s just a question of whether (it is) willing to,” Schreer said.

And that’s the key question. Over more than 75 years and the administrations of 14 different US presidents, including the first Trump administration, the US has been the sinew that has kept the alliance together.

During the Cold War, US troops on the continent were there as a deterrent to any Soviet ambitions to expand the Warsaw Pact alliance and eventually saw out its end when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. NATO campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990s were conducted with US troops and airpower. And, until the second Trump administration took office on January 20, Washington spearheaded aid for Ukraine.

Those decades of trans-Atlantic solidarity may have come to an end in recent days, analysts say.

Trump’s Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky – after which he halted US aid to Kyiv – “felt like a deeper rupture, not just with Ukraine, but with the US ‘free world’ strategy from Truman through Reagan,” Dan Fried, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, said on the council’s website.

John Lough, a former NATO official who is now an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, sees an even more profound split in the alliance.

It’s a fracture that Lough sees as unrepairable.

“Once you start to lose part of that commitment, you effectively lose it all,” Lough said.

Some people in European circles are starting to ask whether Washington should be described “in some ways as an enemy,” he said.

But some analysts say a NATO without the US is not a bad idea.

“As soon as US allies become convinced that they can no longer trust in US capabilities to defend them when push comes to shove, they will rush to pick up the slack and work towards growing their own capabilities,” Moritz Graefrath, a postdoctoral fellow in security and foreign policy at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, wrote in War on the Rocks last year.

“It is in this sense that — perhaps counterintuitively — a withdrawal of US forces will create an even stronger, not weaker, Europe,” Graefrath wrote.

Prime Minister of NATO member Poland, Donald Tusk, thinks this process has started already.

“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia – we are simply stronger,” he said ahead of a European Union summit this week. “We just had to start believing in it. And today it seems to be happening.”

What does Europe have?

In concept, a European military could be formidable.

Turkey has NATO’s largest armed forces after the United States, with 355,200 active military personnel, according to the Military Balance 2025, compiled by the IISS. It’s followed by France (202,200), Germany (179,850), Poland (164,100), Italy (161,850), the United Kingdom (141,100), Greece (132,000) and Spain (122,200).

Turkey also has the most army personnel, which make up of the majority of frontline ground troops, with (260,200), France (113,800), Italy (94,000), Greece (93,000), Poland (90,600) the UK (78,800), Spain (70,200) and Germany (60,650), according to the IISS report.

In contrast, there were about 80,000 US troops assigned or deployed to bases in NATO countries as of June 2024, a July 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says.

Most of those US troops are in Germany (35,000), Italy (12,000) and the UK (10,000), the CRS says.

Some of the larger NATO nations also have weapons equal to or many times better than what Russia has.

Take aircraft carriers for instance. While Russia has a single, antiquated aircraft carrier, the UK alone has two modern carriers capable of launching F-35B stealth fighters. France, Italy and Spain field aircraft carriers or amphibious ships capable of launching fighter jets, according to the Military Balance.

Aside from the US, France and the UK maintain nuclear forces, with both deploying ballistic missile submarines.

The NATO allies besides the US have about 2,000 fighter and ground-attack jets among them, with dozens of new F-35 stealth jets included in that number.

Ground forces include modern tanks, including German Leopards and British Challengers, donated units of which are now serving in the Ukrainian military. European NATO countries can field powerful cruise missiles, like the joint Franco-British SCALP/Storm Shadow, which has also proven itself on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The Military Balance 2025 report notes that Europe is taking steps to improve its military forces without US help. In 2024, six European countries united in a project to develop ground-launched cruise missiles, made moves to increase munitions production capacity and to diversify their supplier base, looking to countries like Brazil, Israel and South Korea as new sources for military hardware.

Analysts say even if the US were to completely pull out of Europe, it would leave important infrastructure behind.

The US has 31 permanent bases in Europe, according to the Congressional Research Service – naval, air, ground and command-and-control facilities that would be available to the countries where they are located if the US were to leave.

And Graefrath notes, that infrastructure would not be lost to Washington if there is regret after a possible US withdrawal.

“It leaves much of the US military infrastructure intact for an extended period (ensuring) that the United States retains the ability to make a military return if Europe were to fail to respond as predicted,” he wrote.

What comes next?

Some hope that the talk of a US withdrawal from NATO is just Trump bluster aimed at pushing allies to cough up and spend more on defense.

They say the world, and another key US alliance, have been here before – during Trump’s first administration, when he reportedly asked the Pentagon to look at options for drawing down US troops stationed in South Korea as protection against nuclear-armed North Korea.

That came as Trump prepared for meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at which he hoped to persuade Kim to commit to giving up his nuclear arsenal.

But Kim rejected all entreaties for him to give up his nuclear weapons program.

The Trump-Kim meeting “was sold as a big success despite that fact that it wasn’t,” said Schreer.

Afterward, the US returned to “business as usual” on the Korean Peninsula, Schreer said. The US – with tens of thousands of troops in South Korea – kept them there. Bilateral exercises with Seoul’s forces resumed, US warships visited South Korean ports and US Air Force bombers flew over the region.

The same could occur in Europe if Trump doesn’t get what he wants from Putin, analysts said. NATO could go on, with the recent threats to depart just a small bump in the road.

“If Putin tries to … screw Donald too much, even Donald Trump might recognize that,” Schreer said.