Category World News

The 2025 Formula One season has all the makings of a highly competitive 24-race celebration to mark 75 years since the inaugural seven-race championship in 1950.

Lewis Hamilton’s highly publicised move to Ferrari has been the key off-season storyline. The star British driver says his move from Mercedes to Ferrari has given him a new lease on life.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen appears to have his work cut out to seal a fifth straight drivers title with Lando Norris of McLaren poised to knock the Dutchman off his perch.

Here are the key talking points before the 2025 F1 season gets under way in Australia on Sunday:

Can Max win title number five?

Seventy-five years after Giuseppe Farina claimed the first F1 world championship at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo, Verstappen embarks on the 2025 season in pursuit of a fifth successive title, a feat achieved only once before, by Michael Schumacher, from 2000 until 2004.

If he succeeds, it will cement the Dutchman’s place as a titan of the sport.

He hoovered up seven of the first 10 races in his rampaging Red Bull season last year before enduring a 10-race winless run as McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari closed the championship points gap.

But Verstappen had the last word, fighting back to win in Brazil and clinch title number four with two races to spare.

McLaren prised the F1 constructors championship away from Red Bull – an award determined by the total points accumulated by the team’s two drivers over a season – for the first time since 1998.

The tough task facing Verstappen is underlined by the betting, which has him as only the second favourite behind Norris (who ended last season 63 points behind) for the 2025 drivers crown.

Can Hamilton return Ferrari to the glory days?

Hamilton is convinced he can help Ferrari win its first drivers championship since 2007 after the seven-time world champion made the move to Italy.

At 40, the Briton seems full of youthful enthusiasm for the new challenge.

“The passion here is like nothing you’ve ever seen. They’ve got absolutely every ingredient they need to win a world championship, and it’s just about putting all the pieces together”, he said.

The battle of the 2025 rookies

An Italian teenager who passed his driving test only in January is among the six-strong 2025 rookie intake.

Kimi Antonelli is an exciting 18-year-old who takes Hamilton’s seat alongside George Russell at Mercedes.

“I really want to make my own story”, last year’s multiple Formula 2 winner said, brushing off suggestions he is the seven-time world champion’s “replacement” at the Silver Arrows.

New Zealand’s Liam Lawson, who replaced Daniel Ricciardo at Red Bull in 2024 and has already raced in 11 Grand Prix, makes his full-fledged debut as Verstappen’s new wingman at Red Bull.

Ferrari’s British academy driver Ollie Bearman joins the Haas team while Brazil has a presence on the grid for the first time in five years in F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto at Sauber.

Australia’s Jack Doohan will be hoping to enjoy even a small slice of his legendary father Mick’s success on two wheels in MotoGP as he graduates from reserve driver to become Pierre Gasly’s teammate at Alpine.

Last but not least is Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, the 20-year-old French-Algerian who narrowly missed out to Bortoleto for the F2 title.

FIA in drivers ‘ crosshairs

In the volatile, unpredictable, high-octane bubble that is F1, one thing seems assured in 2025: renewed tension between the governing body and the drivers, notably over the FIA’s crackdown on swearing.

Top drivers Verstappen and Charles Leclerc fell foul of the rules in 2024 for using profanities at an F1 news conference.

The guidelines were strengthened in January, triggering an indignant response from drivers, who took a swipe at FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

“We urge the FIA president to also consider his own tone and language when talking to our member drivers, or indeed about them, whether in a public forum or otherwise”, they wrote, adding: “Our members are adults. They do not need to be given instructions via the media, about matters as trivial as the wearing of jewellery or underpants”.

From Australia to Abu Dhabi

Australia hosts the first of the 24 races next weekend, and the race in Bahrain has been moved to April as Ramadan runs throughout March. In addition, there will be six sprint races held at six of the 24 venues: Shanghai, Miami, Belgium, Austin, Sao Paulo and Qatar.

The FIA is trying to liven up the jewel in the calendar – Monaco – where overtaking is nigh on impossible, imposing a mandatory two-pit-stop strategy.

The traditional three-week summer break comes in August, and the F1 circus pitches up in the desert of Abu Dhabi for the season finale on December 7.

F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said “2025 will be a special year as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the FIA Formula One World Championship, and it’s that legacy and experience that allows us to deliver such a strong calendar”.

Testing times

The times from three days of preseason testing in Bahrain last month did not reveal much about the form of the top-ranked teams.

With fuel loads unknown and team set-ups kept under wraps, it was hard if not impossible to pinpoint the winners and losers.

Russell’s Mercedes was top of the pile on the last day. Carlos Sainz’s Williams topped the times on the middle day, and Norris’s McLaren took the first day honours.

Ferrari were bang in the thick of it, and Verstappen will have been pleased with his showing on the final day.

The main takeaway from testing is that the bulk of the teams look closely matched, prompting McLaren CEO Zak Brown to predict: “I can see it being super competitive. Last year, four teams won multiple races. This year, I could see that being even more. I’m more excited than nervous”.

Manila, Philippines – The office of the President of the Philippines has reported the arrest of the country’s former leader, Rodrigo Duterte, after receiving a request from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating allegations of “crimes against humanity” committed during his presidency.

Duterte was taken into custody on Tuesday at Manila airport upon his arrival from Hong Kong, according to the Philippine government, which received the ICC request through the international police agency, Interpol.

“Upon his arrival, the prosecutor general served the ICC notification for an arrest warrant to the former president for the crimes against humanity”, the government said in a statement.

“He’s now in the custody of authorities”, it said.

The charge is related to Duterte’s brutal anti-drugs drive. The so-called “war on drugs”, while Duterte was in office from 2016-2022, deprived suspects of “due process under the law” and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including children, according to the complaint.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) described Duterte’s arrest as “a critical step for accountability in the Philippines”.

“His arrest could bring victims and their families closer to justice and sends the clear message that no one is above the law. The Marcos government should swiftly surrender him to the ICC”, said Bryony Lau, HRW’s deputy Asia director.

Duterte, however, questioned the legality of his arrest on Tuesday.

“What is the law and what is the crime that I committed”, Duterte said in a video uploaded on social media by his daughter, Veronica Duterte.

“Explain to me now the legal basis for my being here as apparently I was brought here not of my own volition. It’s somebody else’s”, he added.

In a speech on Saturday in Hong Kong, he also defended his actions as president saying he “did everything…for the Filipino people”.

“If it’s really my fate in life, that’s OK, I will accept it. There’s nothing I can do about it”.

Over the course of Duterte’s six-year presidency, more than 7, 000 people were killed in official anti-drug operations, according to police records.

However, human rights advocates have claimed that the killings numbered more than 30, 000, including those who were killed by unknown suspects, some of whom later turned out to be police officers.

‘ Shoot and kill ‘

The ICC began examining the complaint in 2018.

The arrest order is seen as a major victory for human rights campaigners and families of victims, despite Manila’s decision to withdraw as signatory of the Rome Statute.

During his presidency, Duterte declared a relentless war against drugs, inciting police officers to either “shoot and kill” drug suspects, or provoke them into fighting back to justify the use of lethal force.

Most of the cases probed by the ICC took place between 2016 and 2019, when a Duterte order to withdraw from the ICC came into effect.

Earlier alleged crimes committed when Duterte was mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he served for two decades, were also investigated.

Among those killed during the anti-drug war campaign were more than a dozen town mayors and other local officials as well as lawyers and judges.

Several children, who were without any links to any drug activity, were also killed. The government dismissed these deaths as “collateral damage”.

The ICC’s investigation into the bloody drug-war had so enraged Duterte, that he ordered the the withdrawal of Manila from the ICC.

He also threatened, using racially-charged language, to arrest then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda should she visit the Philippines to conduct an official investigation.

Bensouda retired in 2021 and was succeeded by Karim Khan, who continued the investigation.

The United States ‘ stock market has shed more than $1.7 trillion in value after US President Donald Trump declined to rule out the possibility the economy could enter a recession this year.

The benchmark S&amp, P 500 on Monday tumbled 2.7 percent, dragging the index nearly 9 percent below its all-time high reached on February 19.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 plunged 3.81 percent, its steepest single-day loss since September 2022.

The losses, which follow two weeks of steep declines, mean that the S&amp, P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are now at their lowest levels since September.

Tesla, the electric car company run by Trump’s cost-cutting tsar, Elon Musk, racked up some of the steepest losses among individual firms, plunging 15.43 percent.

Asian stock markets piled on the losses on Tuesday morning, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Taiwan’s TAIEX dropping more than 2.5 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sliding about 1.5 percent.

The market rout comes as Trump’s back-and-forth tariff announcements have unnerved investors and stoked fears that the economy could be headed for a major slowdown or, at worst, a recession.

In an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday, Trump left open the possibility of a downturn when asked if he expected a recession this year.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big”, Trump said. “We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing…It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us”.

&nbsp, “There’s total uncertainty in the market”, Steve Okun, founder and CEO of APAC Advisors in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

“]Trump] has no credibility right now when it comes to tariffs, because of what he has done, in particular with Mexico and Canada. That’s why the markets are reacting the way they are – they don’t know what’s going to happen”.

Trump last week slapped a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada and doubled the rate of duties on Chinese goods to 20 percent, only to announce two days later that he would postpone some duties on Mexican and Canadian goods until April 2.

A separate 25 percent tariff on imports of steel and aluminium is set to take effect on Wednesday.

Goldman Sachs economists last week raised its odds of a recession within the next 12 months from 15 percent to 20 percent, while JPMorgan Chase has lifted the probability from 30 percent to 40 percent “owing to extreme US policies”.

‘ Indecisiveness, confusion and mixed messaging ‘

New York Stock Exchange trader Peter Tuchman described Monday’s trading session as a “bloodbath”.

“These stocks are being eaten away and this is obviously all over fear of a recession, right”? Tuchman said in a video posted on X.

“We had a roller coaster last week, we had some up days, we had some down days – and all a function of what is coming out of the Oval Office, which is just complete indecisiveness, confusion and mixed messaging and the investing community losing confidence in the whole situation”.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who represents the state of Massachusetts, accused Trump of jeopardising the economy with his policies.

“We’re in real economic trouble thanks to the President, and right now, the stock market is a flashing warning light”, Warren said on X.

In a rare note of dissension with Trump among Republicans, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul also raised alarm about the stock rout.

“The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading”, Paul said on X.

“The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment. When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen”.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Kevin Hassett, the head of Trump’s National Economic Council, played down concerns about the health of the economy as “blips in the data”.

Free speech groups point out that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Khalil of leading “activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization”.

But analysts note that the department’s allegation falls short of more tangible claims. US law, for instance, prohibits anyone in the country’s jurisdiction from providing “material support” to terrorist organisations.

The rationale provided for Khalil’s arrest, experts argue, was overly broad and could be wielded against any voices critical of Israel and US foreign policy.

“It’s a loophole so big that you could drive a truck through it”, Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech group, told Al Jazeera.

“I think what’s perhaps most dangerous about this moment is that, given the rhetoric coming out of the administration today, folks across the country are going to think twice before they criticise the government, whether it’s the US government or Israeli government, and that chill is a real problem”, he added.

The effort to connect criticism of Israel with support for terrorism also appears to mirror Project 2025, a controversial series of policy proposals for Trump’s second term compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.

The document drew alarm for its expansive interpretations of executive power, as well as its views on issues like the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

One Project 2025 proposal states that pro-Palestine protests are part of a “highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network”.

Greer has told media outlets that, when she spoke with ICE agents over the phone, they appeared to have incorrect information about Khalil’s immigration status, informing her they were going to revoke his student visa.

Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December, was previously in the US on a student visa but has since obtained a green card, making him a lawful permanent resident of the country.

Greer said that, when she informed ICE agents that he was a permanent resident, they said his green card would be revoked instead.

Nithya Nathan-Pineau, a policy lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Al Jazeera that green card status can be revoked under some circumstances, such as the discovery of fraudulent information in an immigration application or certain criminal activity.

“I haven’t seen any information about criminal convictions or arrests”, she said.

“It sounds like the ICE agents just unilaterally decided that whatever immigration status he had, it didn’t matter”.

Greer said that she and Khalil’s wife were told he was being held in an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but when they arrived, he was not there. Khalil has reportedly been moved to a detention centre in Louisiana.

“This is a tactic that ICE loves to use, transferring someone to a facility that is further away from their legal assistance, community and loved ones”, said Nathan-Pineau. “It increases the psychological strain of detention”.