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Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro looks on during the confidence motion at the parliament in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 11, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Portugal will likely vote (again), US markets swoon, A breath of fresh air, Baloch militants seize train, Trump trumpets Tesla
3/4: Portugal’s parliament has voted no-confidence in Prime Minister Luis Montenegro over a planned parliamentary inquiry into his business dealings. The result: Portugal will probably hold its third election in less than four years. A poll published this week found the opposition Socialists with a small lead over the governing center-right party.
214: On Tuesday, armed insurgents, acting on behalf of a separatist group in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, attacked and boarded a packed passenger train near Quetta. The militants claimed they were holding 214 passengers hostage. But local police said the majority of the passengers were believed to be safe and that 35 had been taken hostage.
4 trillion: From its peak in February, a US stock market sell-off has wiped out $4 trillion from the S&P 500. Many economists blame the meltdown on the potential inflationary impact of President Donald Trump’s growing number of tariff threat
7: Only seven countries – Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Estonia, and Iceland – met World Health Organization air quality standards last year, data showed on Tuesday. The smoggiest five were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad, and India.
50: On Monday, shares in the Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle maker Tesla were down more than 15% for the day and more than 50% from their peak three months ago. Shares recovered a bit on Tuesday, closing up 3.8%. Analysts place much of the blame for the losses on investors spooked by anti-Musk Tesla boycotts. In response, President Donald Trump pledged on Monday that he would buy a “brand new Tesla,” despite his past criticism of electric vehicles.
Charred vehicles in Balochistan province, Pakistan, following separatist militant attacks.
The Balochistan backstory: Pakistan’s festering rebellion
At least 70 people are dead after a wave of attacks in Pakistan claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army.
The who? Well, let’s start with where:Balochistan. A sprawling, mountainous province in Southwest Pakistan that borders Iran, Afghanistan, and the Arabian Sea. It’s home to about 15 million people, a plurality of whom are Balochis, a Persian ethnic group. Despite huge natural resource wealth, which Pakistan and others have exploited, Balochistan is extremely poor. This has fueled tensions with the Pakistani government for decades.
The Baloch Liberation Army began its struggle for independence around 2000, launching terror attacks against the central government and non-Baloch communities in Balochistan.
Pakistan and the US consider the BLA a terrorist group, and Pakistan accuses India, Iran, and Afghanistan of supporting it. The group is believed to fund itself through smuggling and donations from the Baloch diaspora.
In recent years, the BLA has begun attacking the citizens and interests of China, which in 2015 took control of the province’s port at Gwadar as part of a $65 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor project.
A recent rise in BLA violence compounds the headache for a Pakistani government that took over a country in crisis following heavily disputed elections in February.