Global Pulse

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  • Shenzhou XXI crew complete third spacewalk

    Shenzhou XXI crew complete third spacewalk

    China’s ongoing human space exploration program reached a new milestone earlier this week, when the three-person Shenzhou XXI crew stationed at the nation’s Tiangong space station successfully wrapped up their third extravehicular activity, according to official announcements from the China Manned Space Agency.

    The excursion, which concluded at 1:36 a.m. Beijing Time on Friday, saw mission commander Senior Colonel Zhang Lu and spaceflight engineer Major Wu Wu spend roughly five and a half hours operating outside the massive orbiting outpost before returning safely to the Wentian experimental module. The third member of the crew, payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang — a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences — remained inside the space station throughout the spacewalk to coordinate operations and provide critical in-orbit support.

    Working in tandem with ground control teams and leveraging the station’s robotic arm for assistance, the astronauts checked off every scheduled task on their itinerary, including the installation of protective shields designed to mitigate damage from orbital space debris and comprehensive inspections of extravehicular hardware.

    This spacewalk carries special historical significance for China’s human space program: it marks the 27th extravehicular activity conducted by Chinese taikonauts overall, and it is the seventh spacewalk for commander Zhang Lu. With this milestone, the 49-year-old Hunan-born astronaut has become the new record holder for the most spacewalks completed by any Chinese astronaut. Zhang previously completed four spacewalks during his first mission, the six-month Shenzhou XV expedition that launched in November 2022.

    The Shenzhou XXI mission is China’s 16th crewed spaceflight, and the trio has served as the 10th long-term resident crew aboard Tiangong, currently the only operational space station fully developed and operated independently by a single nation. The crew has now lived and worked in low-Earth orbit for more than five months, having arrived at the station on November 1, 2025.

    Over the course of their stay, Zhang Lu and his crewmates have carried out a wide range of work, from cutting-edge scientific experiments in space life science, human physiology and microgravity physics to routine maintenance and operations. These routine tasks include in-orbit environmental monitoring, regular equipment checks and upkeep, and organization of cargo delivered to the station. The team has also completed required emergency preparedness training, including a full-system pressure emergency response drill and on-orbit emergency survival training, alongside all pre-deployment preparations for extravehicular activities.

    In a surprise announcement included in the agency’s news release, officials confirmed that after comprehensive technical analysis and risk assessment, the Shenzhou XXI mission will be extended by approximately one additional month. The adjustment is designed to further test and validate key technologies required for long-duration human spaceflight, and to allow the crew to make full use of additional mission supplies and materials transported to the station by the uncrewed Shenzhou XXII spacecraft.

    Shenzhou XXII launched in late November 2025 on an uncrewed resupply mission to Tiangong, dispatched after a window damage incident affected the return capsule of the earlier Shenzhou XX mission during its reentry. In addition to delivering critical replacement hardware, the spacecraft carried a large volume of additional mission supplies to support extended operations aboard the station.

    Looking ahead, the CMSA confirmed that the Shenzhou XXI crew will continue carrying out their ongoing scientific research and technical tasks for the duration of their extended stay, advancing China’s growing body of knowledge about long-duration human spaceflight and orbital operations.

  • Ningxia eyes big push for intl tourism

    Ningxia eyes big push for intl tourism

    Against the backdrop of a post-pandemic global travel recovery and growing demand for unique, experience-focused cultural getaways, Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is launching an ambitious push to position its one-of-a-kind combination of ancient heritage, world-class wine production, and dramatic natural landscapes as a must-visit destination for international travelers. The strategic initiative comes on the heels of a major milestone for the region: the 2025 inscription of the Xixia Imperial Tombs on the UNESCO World Heritage List, a recognition that has significantly boosted Ningxia’s profile on the global tourism map.

  • Russia has looted thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects in the war. Finding them is a challenge

    Russia has looted thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects in the war. Finding them is a challenge

    When Russian troops withdrew from Kherson in late 2022 after Ukraine reclaimed the strategic southern Ukrainian city, Alina Dotsenko, director of the Kherson Art Museum, returned to her workplace to a devastating scene: nearly all of the institution’s collections had been stripped and carted away.

    “ I stepped inside to find every storage unit gutted, every shelf bare. My legs couldn’t hold me, and I just slid down the wall, crying like a child,” Dotsenko recalled in an interview with the Associated Press.

    Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kherson Art Museum housed more than 14,000 artworks spanning global creative traditions from North American pieces to Japanese art. Multiple sources, including Dotsenko and citizen footage captured after the liberation, confirm that retreating Russian forces loaded the majority of the collection onto military trucks and transported it to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. To date, the whereabouts of nearly 10,000 missing artifacts remain unknown.

    Today, this act of cultural plunder is back in the international spotlight as Russia pushes to rejoin global cultural circles, just months ahead of the 2024 Venice Biennale — one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art events. For the first time since 2022, event organizers have cleared Russian representatives to participate, a move Ukraine has sharply condemned. Kyiv argues the biennale “must not become a platform to whitewash the war crimes Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”

    Unlike most cases of cultural looting across Ukraine, the Kherson Art Museum theft is uniquely well-documented, thanks to pre-war preparation by Dotsenko herself. Years before the invasion, the director launched a full-scale project to photograph every item in the museum’s collection, building a comprehensive digital archive. When Russian forces occupied Kherson, Dotsenko hid the archive’s hard drives in secret, and retrieved them intact after liberation.

    This detailed record has turned the Kherson case into a top priority for Ukrainian prosecutors and Interpol, who are using the catalog to trace missing works and build legal cases against those responsible for the looting. Unfortunately, this level of documentation is extremely rare across the country.

    Across Ukraine’s occupied and war-torn regions, most pre-war cultural collections lack complete, accessible digital records. Russian occupying forces have deliberately seized or destroyed original inventory logs and collection documentation, making it nearly impossible to meet the strict evidentiary requirements for international legal claims to recover lost artifacts.

    The experience of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum reflects this widespread challenge. Halyna Chumak, the museum’s former director, fled Russian-controlled Donetsk in 2014, shortly after Moscow first seized parts of eastern Ukraine. She was only able to smuggle out a fraction of the museum’s collection catalogs, documenting just over 1,000 of the institution’s 15,000 total works. Over the course of a year, Chumak carried the fragile documents through multiple armed checkpoints, leaving most behind to avoid attracting suspicion from pro-Russian search teams.

    A decade later, a team led by Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is working to digitize these surviving catalogs, a painstaking process that took more than three months to process just 400 works. Once complete, the digitized database will be turned over to Ukrainian authorities to serve as partial legal evidence for future ownership claims.

    Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Office currently has 23 open criminal cases focused on cultural heritage crimes, covering 174 separate incidents of looting, destruction, and damage to cultural sites. Anna Sosonska, deputy head of the office’s war crimes unit, explained that the Kherson case stands out from the rest almost entirely because of Dotsenko’s surviving archive.

    “Russian forces almost always take inventory books and all original collection documentation from museums they occupy,” Sosonska explained in an interview. Without these records, prosecutors must rely on open-source intelligence, tracing looted artifacts through social media posts, auction house listings, and other online traces — a slow, labor-intensive process that can rarely reconstruct entire stolen collections. Still, Sosonska emphasized that cultural heritage crimes fall under international humanitarian law and carry no statute of limitations, meaning investigations will continue long after active fighting ends.

    The full scale of Ukraine’s cultural losses remains impossible to calculate accurately. As of March 2024, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry confirms Russia has destroyed or damaged more than 1,700 designated cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities, including high-profile targets like the Mariupol Drama Theatre. More than 2.1 million museum objects are still held in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, and more than 35,000 items have been confirmed looted from territories Kyiv has retaken since 2022.

    Moscow has moved to formalize its control over stolen cultural property. In 2023, the Russian government amended national legislation to add 77 Ukrainian museums from occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions to Russia’s official national cultural catalog. Critics call this move a deliberate attempt to cement illegal ownership and block the eventual return of looted works to Ukraine.

    Tetiana Berezhna, appointed Ukraine’s Culture Minister in October 2023, has made widespread digitization of all Ukrainian cultural collections a core priority for her ministry. “If we had fully digitalized all collections before the invasion, we would know exactly how many objects were stolen and exactly what they look like,” she noted.

    There are small signs of progress on accountability for these crimes. In March 2024, a Polish court approved the extradition of Russian national Oleksandr Butiahin to Ukraine, where he faces charges for conducting illegal archaeological excavations in occupied Crimea and smuggling ancient artifacts out of the site that Ukraine recognizes as its sovereign cultural heritage. Butiahin was arrested in Poland in 2023 at Ukraine’s request, and the ruling is still subject to appeal. If extradited and convicted, this would mark the first time a Russian national faces prosecution in Ukraine for crimes against Ukrainian cultural heritage in occupied territory.

    For Dotsenko, who has dedicated 50 years of her life to the Kherson Art Museum, the fight to recover the collection is deeply personal. She recently spoke to the AP at a Kyiv exhibition featuring high-quality reproductions of the stolen paintings, many of which have not been seen by the public since 2022. “While these works remain in captivity, all of us hold out hope that this will be resolved in favor of the Kherson Art Museum,” she said. “I did not spend 50 years of my life building this collection for nothing.”

    The Russian Culture Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press on the allegations of looted Ukrainian art. In past statements, Russian-installed officials in occupied Ukrainian territories have described the removal of cultural artifacts as “protective measures” to save works from damage during fighting. Kirill Stremousov, the former Russian-installed deputy administrator of occupied Kherson who died shortly before the city’s liberation, claimed looted statues would “definitely return” to Kherson once active fighting ended.

  • Ireland’s bank bailout era draws to a close

    Ireland’s bank bailout era draws to a close

    Fifteen years ago, Ireland’s devastating banking collapse handed Irish taxpayers an unwanted new asset: a controlling stake in small domestic lender Permanent TSB (PTSB). What was once a symbol of systemic rot and public fiscal burden is now set to return to full private ownership, marking the definitive end of a painful chapter in Ireland’s post-2008 economic history. This week, Austria’s leading regional bank BAWAG announced a binding agreement to acquire the Irish government’s majority holding in PTSB for a total of €931 million (£812 million).

    The 2011 PTSB bailout was not an isolated event. It came amid a full-blown collapse of Ireland’s property-fueled banking sector, where reckless lending on overinflated real estate assets left most major lenders on the brink of insolvency. At the time, a government-ordered probe revealed that the systemic damage ran far deeper than policymakers had initially acknowledged, and PTSB required an emergency €4 billion (£3.49 billion) cash injection just to avoid total collapse. No private commercial investor was willing to take on the ailing bank’s toxic assets and liabilities, leaving Irish taxpayers to foot the entire bailout bill. That €4 billion injection was just one small slice of the hundreds of billions in public funds committed to stabilizing Ireland’s collapsing banking system after the 2008 global financial crisis.

    Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Simon Harris has framed the PTSB sale as the most transformative shift in Ireland’s retail banking sector in more than 10 years. Beyond marking the state’s exit from its final major bank shareholding, Harris has expressed clear expectations that BAWAG’s entry will inject much-needed competition into a market long dominated by just two institutions: Bank of Ireland and AIB, the two other large lenders that survived the crisis via state bailouts.

    Harris also stressed that the transaction delivers a strong fiscal outcome for public finances. When combined with earlier asset sales of PTSB holdings and various regulatory and transaction fees collected by the state over the past 15 years, total public funds recovered from the PTSB bailout will top €3.7 billion (£3.23 billion) – putting the government within touching distance of recouping the full 2011 emergency injection. More broadly, Harris noted that taxpayers have actually come out roughly €1.3 billion (£1.13 billion) ahead across the combined bailouts of PTSB, AIB, and Bank of Ireland.

    Yet even as this chapter closes, the debate over the legacy of Ireland’s banking bailouts remains far from clear-cut. While the three surviving major lenders have returned to profitability and private ownership, the catastrophic collapse of Anglo Irish Bank – the most reckless of Ireland’s crisis-era lenders – casts a long shadow over any narrative of full success. That single collapse cost Irish taxpayers an estimated €30 billion (£26 billion) in bailout funds, wiping out any overall net gain from the sector’s rescue.

    Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) and a leading analyst of Ireland’s financial crisis, points out that Ireland’s 15-year path to full market stabilization mirrors the trajectory of Sweden’s 1980s banking crisis, which followed a near-20-year cycle to restore full market health. Excluding the outlier of Anglo Irish Bank, O’Brien argues the Irish bailout strategy would align with the Swedish model and be widely deemed a success story.

    The end of state ownership has also reignited long-running debates around one of the most controversial decisions of the crisis: the choice to protect international bondholders who lent to failing Irish banks, rather than forcing them to share part of the losses – a policy approach widely referred to at the time as “burning the bondholders.” O’Brien explains that the decision to shield bondholders came under overwhelming external pressure from Eurozone authorities. At the time, European Central Bank leadership insisted that any haircut for bank bondholders would drive up borrowing costs for every euro area bank, triggering widespread financial contagion across the bloc. This pressure culminated in a notorious ultimatum from then-ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, who warned that “a bomb would go off in Dublin” if Ireland did not back down from any plan to impose losses on bondholders.

    One striking outcome of the crisis that O’Brien highlights is the lack of sustained Euroscepticism in Ireland, despite the harsh economic constraints and external pressure the country endured during the bailout era. Today, opinion polling consistently ranks Ireland among the most pro-EU member states across all key metrics, from public support for the euro to trust in the European Commission and wider EU institutions.

  • Even the dead must make way as construction transforms Afghanistan’s capital

    Even the dead must make way as construction transforms Afghanistan’s capital

    In a dusty residential and commercial neighborhood of central Kabul, what remains of Syed Murtaza Sadar’s life and livelihood stands as a stark testament to the human cost of Afghanistan’s push for infrastructure renewal. Where a two-story building once housed his family’s barbershop and public bath on the ground floor, and their home above, only scattered piles of broken brick and crumbled mortar remain. Sadar, a 25-year-old head of an extended family, says he was forced to tear down most of the structure with his own hands after municipal authorities ordered the property seized for road widening.

    “This was our house, and now I am destroying it with my own hands,” Sadar explained pausing mid-work, his hands dusted with mortar. “It will be very difficult for us.”

    The land expropriation that displaced Sadar’s family is part of a broad infrastructure initiative that the ruling Taliban administration has revived, originally drafted decades ago under the former U.S.-backed Afghan government. The plan aims to untangle Kabul’s crippling traffic congestion by expanding narrow, pothole-riddled streets, adding new flyovers, and constructing modern underpasses across the capital. When the plan was first proposed, it never moved past the drafting stage: bureaucratic gridlock, systemic corruption, and widespread violence during the Taliban insurgency derailed all construction work. Within months of the Taliban seizing control of Kabul in August 2021, following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops, the new municipal government prioritized reviving the stalled projects.

    According to city officials, the progress has been substantial over the past four and a half years. Naimatullah Barakzai, Kabul municipality’s cultural affairs representative, announced at a recent press briefing that construction crews have completed roughly 280 miles of new roads across the capital, while expropriating more than 11,000 private properties to make way for the expanded network. For 2025 alone, the city has greenlit 233 new projects, with an allocation of more than 1.9 billion afghanis, equal to roughly $29 million in funding. Mohammad Qasim Afghan, the municipality’s head of planning, confirmed the budget allocation, noting that all road construction costs are covered entirely by local municipal funds. Barakzai added that Kabul’s municipal government has raised more than 28 billion afghanis (approximately $434 million) over the past four and a half years to fund the initiative, and property owners receive three months’ advance notice plus compensation at rates set by the city. More than 1.2 billion afghanis ($18.6 million) has been paid out to displaced property owners over the past year alone, per city data.

    For affected residents, however, the compensation and long-term infrastructure benefits often do little to ease immediate hardship. After the initial round of demolition cleared the front of his street, Sadar says authorities ordered remaining property owners to tear down the rest of their structures themselves, leaving residents with little room to push back against the orders. His former business employed 25 local workers and supported five extended families, each with three to four children. Today, Sadar and his family live in rented accommodation, drawing down their limited savings while waiting for compensation to be fully processed. “If the government gives us money, God willing, I will be able to go back to work and buy or build a new house for myself,” he said. Even amid his displacement, Sadar acknowledges the urgent need for the project: the existing single-lane road running past his former neighborhood is so chronically congested that any trip across the city requires more than an hour of sitting in gridlock.

    For a country grappling with widespread poverty and mass unemployment, the construction push has delivered one clear benefit: thousands of much-needed jobs for local workers. At the massive Baraki intersection construction site, project manager and civil engineer Obaidullah Elham says crews work around the clock, seven days a week, to complete a Turkish-designed $23 million flyover and underpass complex that will replace one of Kabul’s most congested junctions. The project employs 500 skilled and unskilled local workers, injecting much-needed income into a local economy reeling from international aid cuts and systemic economic collapse. Work on the 1,540-foot underpass began in July of last year and is already 80% complete, Elham said, standing beside a working excavator moving earth at the site. Construction on the flyover, only the second to be built in Kabul, started earlier this year.

    The scope of the project has required clearing space even for longstanding community landmarks, including a 200-year-old graveyard in Kabul’s Qala-e-Khater neighborhood. The new planned road will cut directly through the historic burial ground, requiring the exhumation and relocation of hundreds of graves to a new section of the cemetery. Today, large rectangular empty holes mark where remains once rested, a quiet reminder of the project’s far-reaching impact.

    Abdul Wadood Alokozay, a 21-year-old resident of the neighborhood, says his grandfather’s remains were among those moved. Alokozay’s extended family lost three properties in the area: a girls’ religious madrassa, and two multi-generational family homes, all of which were expropriated and leveled. “At first our family all were sad for this, that we lost our house,” Alokozay said. “It was even harder to tear it down ourselves, after we lived there for more than 20 years.” The family received roughly $13,000 in compensation for the three structures, with additional compensation promised for the land, and has since built a new three-story home on other family land overlooking the former property.

    Shah Faisal Alokozay, a 30-year-old community representative and Abdul Wadood’s cousin, says plans for the connecting road have sat on city drawing boards for decades. “It’s a very important road, connecting east and north Kabul,” he explained. “So it is very important for the community.”

    For Kabul’s new leadership, the infrastructure push represents both a practical solution to chronic urban congestion and a visible demonstration of the Taliban administration’s ability to deliver long-stalled public projects that the previous government could not complete. For displaced residents like Sadar, it is a complicated trade-off: short-term hardship and displacement in exchange for the promise of a more connected, less congested capital for future generations.

  • Starmer’s Mandelson nightmare never ends. This time, it may cost him his job as UK leader

    Starmer’s Mandelson nightmare never ends. This time, it may cost him his job as UK leader

    LONDON — For British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the name Peter Mandelson has become a political albatross that threatens to end his tenure in Downing Street, just eight months after he swept to power on a promise of clean governance after years of Conservative Party scandal. The deepening controversy around Starmer’s fateful decision to appoint Mandelson, a veteran Labour figure with long-documented ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain’s ambassador to the United States has reignited urgent questions about the prime minister’s judgment and credibility.

    Two months ago, Starmer already survived a wave of internal pressure over the 2024 appointment, with senior Labour figures including the party’s Scottish leader calling for his resignation. This time, the crisis is far more severe: Starmer now stands accused of misleading the UK Parliament over whether Mandelson cleared mandatory official vetting to take the sensitive diplomatic post.

    The bombshell dropped earlier this week, when The Guardian revealed that Mandelson had originally been denied formal security clearance for the ambassador role — a position Starmer once described as the most coveted posting in UK diplomacy. This directly contradicts Starmer’s previous statement to Parliament that “full due process” was followed during the appointment process. The UK government has confirmed that Starmer and senior cabinet ministers only learned this week that the Foreign Office had issued a negative initial assessment of Mandelson’s eligibility. The fallout has already forced the resignation of Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office’s top civil servant.

    Vetting for the ambassador role would have included a full review of Mandelson’s financial history, professional connections, and personal associations, with his long-standing links to Epstein a core point of scrutiny. Starmer has pushed back against claims that he pressured officials to bypass red flags about the 72-year-old appointee, saying he is “absolutely furious” that details of the blocked initial clearance were hidden from him, calling the omission “staggering” and “unforgivable.” The prime minister is set to address Parliament and the public on the scandal Monday.

    This controversy is far from an unexpected crisis. Mandelson was always a high-risk pick for the critical US ambassador role: he resigned twice from previous Labour governments over early 2000s ethical and financial missteps, and his association with Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019 while serving a sentence for sex trafficking, was well documented ahead of the appointment. Starmer’s original calculation was clear: he gambled that Mandelson’s well-honed lobbying skills and deep trade expertise would help the UK secure favorable terms with a second Trump administration, avoiding the most punishing tariffs on British exports. For a time, that gambit appeared to pay off.

    The narrative shifted dramatically in September 2025, when newly released private emails proved Mandelson had publicly supported Epstein even after the financier was convicted and jailed for sex offenses. Starmer moved quickly to fire Mandelson, hoping to close the chapter on the embarrassment. But a new wave of disclosures followed in January, when the US Department of Justice released millions of pages of court documents tied to the Epstein case. Files included emails showing that while Mandelson served in the Labour government between 2009 and 2010, he passed sensitive, potentially market-moving government information to Epstein.

    Starmer has repeatedly apologized to the British public and to Epstein’s victims for trusting what he calls “Mandelson’s lies.” British police have since launched a formal criminal investigation into Mandelson’s conduct: officers searched his two properties in London and western England, and arrested him on February 23 on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released on bail after more than nine hours of questioning, and has denied all wrongdoing; he does not face any accusations of sexual misconduct tied to the Epstein case.

    Before the latest vetting revelations, political fervor around Starmer’s leadership had cooled. The prime minister had earned moderate public support for his decision to avoid direct British involvement in the Iran conflict, and he had hoped to weather expected heavy Labour losses in May’s local elections, the UK equivalent of US midterms. That calm has evaporated entirely.

    “Starmer positioned himself as the leader who always followed the rules, a stark contrast to figures like Boris Johnson, and he won office on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ of the scandal that marred the previous Conservative government,” explained Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. “Because he built his entire electoral platform on integrity, the latest revelations from this mess mean many voters now see him as both a liar and a hypocrite — and hypocrisy is one of the most unforgivable sins for any British politician.”

    Opposition Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has doubled down on calls for Starmer’s resignation, saying “This scandal is not ending. He has run out of people to sack, he has run out of places to hide, he has run out of authority. The buck stops with him. His position is untenable and he must go.”

    The ultimate fate of Starmer’s leadership now hinges on the mood of his own Labour Party lawmakers. So far, only a small handful of senior party figures have openly called for him to step down. But ahead of Starmer’s Monday parliamentary address, political observers are watching closely to see if more Labour representatives break ranks after this weekend’s local campaign events with voters. Should more party members publicly withdraw their confidence, Starmer’s position could become unsustainable almost overnight. Confidence in political leaders can evaporate in an instant, a lesson Britain learned just a few years ago: Boris Johnson won a landslide parliamentary majority in 2019, only to resign as prime minister and lawmaker three years later amid a cascade of overlapping scandals.

  • Weapons-grade chemical carfentanil surges as dangerous substitute for fentanyl

    Weapons-grade chemical carfentanil surges as dangerous substitute for fentanyl

    Thirty-six-year-old Michael Nalewaja had built a stable, quiet life as an electrician in Alaska, nearly 20 years removed from a teenage battle with drug addiction that led him to rehabilitation. That peaceful existence ended abruptly just days before Thanksgiving 2025, when Nalewaja and a mutual friend unknowingly consumed a deadly combination of fentanyl and carfentanil, which they had mistaken for cocaine.

    Kelley Nalewaja, Michael’s mother, recalled the devastating phone call she received from her son’s wife: “I heard the word ‘autopsy’ and I literally just collapsed to the floor. Even if somebody had been there prepared with Narcan — even if somebody had called 911 in time — he was not going to survive.”

    Michael’s death is far from an isolated tragedy. Authorities are now sounding the alarm over a dramatic resurgence of carfentanil, a weapons-grade synthetic opioid 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times stronger than standard fentanyl, that has killed hundreds of unsuspecting drug users across the United States. This growing public health threat has emerged against a backdrop of an unprecedented multi-year decline in both overall drug overdose deaths and fentanyl seizures, a shift that experts and law enforcement trace to new regulatory controls.

    Following a recent Chinese government crackdown on the sale of chemical precursors used to manufacture illicit fentanyl, Mexican drug trafficking organizations have turned to carfentanil to boost the potency of diluted fentanyl supplies, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intelligence bulletins reviewed by The Associated Press. This is not the first time carfentanil has penetrated the North American drug market: a decade ago, the substance caused a wave of mass overdoses before Chinese regulatory controls and U.S. enforcement cracked down on its supply, driving incident numbers sharply down.

    That trend has reversed dramatically in just a few short years. DEA laboratory data obtained by the AP shows that agents identified carfentanil in 1,400 separate drug seizures across the U.S. in 2025. That number marks a drastic jump from just 145 positive identifications in 2023 and only 54 in 2022. Law enforcement officials say Mexican cartels are now either experimenting with domestic carfentanil production or sourcing the substance from Chinese vendors who evade Beijing’s regulations by advertising on unregulated online forums hosted in third countries.

    Manufacturing carfentanil carries extreme risk even for experienced traffickers, notes Frank Tarentino, the DEA’s chief of operations for the Northeast region covering Maine to Virginia. “You can’t just dabble in this. This is not some mad scientist on Reddit you’re going to get to go out to a rudimentary laboratory in Mexico to make carfentanil,” he explained. For people struggling with opioid dependence who purchase unregulated drugs on the street, the risk is unparalleled: a dose smaller than a grain of salt is enough to cause lethal overdose, and even high multiple doses of naloxone — the life-saving overdose-reversing medication — are often ineffective against carfentanil exposure. “This presents an extremely frightening proposition for substance abuse dependent people who seek opioids on the street today,” Tarentino added.

    The resurgence of carfentanil comes at a moment of rare progress in the U.S. overdose crisis. Overall drug overdose deaths have fallen for more than two years, the longest sustained decline in decades. Experts attribute this drop to multiple factors, including wider distribution of naloxone, expanded access to evidence-based addiction treatment, and international regulatory changes targeting fentanyl precursor production. Fentanyl seizures at the U.S. border have also plummeted: U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that seizures fell to roughly 12,000 pounds in 2025, less than half the total seized in 2023.

    Even with this progress, the DEA has maintained fentanyl and emerging synthetic opioids as its top enforcement priority, recently requesting a $362 million budget increase focused exclusively on combating cartel-driven trafficking. Sara Carter, the White House drug czar under the current administration, framed the crisis as an deliberate act of harm. “Anyone who takes a pill that is not prescribed to them by their doctor is playing a game of Russian roulette with their life,” Carter said. “But if those terrorists think they can continue this chemical warfare without consequences, they are wrong.”

    Public health experts and drug policy specialists warn that carfentanil’s unique deadliness makes its resurgence an especially alarming threat. Originally developed and researched for use as a chemical weapon, carfentanil was infamously deployed by Russian forces against Chechen separatists during a 2002 hostage crisis. Today, the only legal use for the substance in the U.S. is as a tranquilizer for large zoo animals such as elephants, with the DEA capping annual legal manufacturing at just 20 grams — an amount small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

    “If the world thinks we had a problem with fentanyl, that’s minute compared to what we’re going to be dealing with with carfentanil,” said Michael King Jr., founder of the Opioid Awareness Foundation, comparing the substance to a biological weapon. The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data underscores this risk: in 2024, overdose deaths linked to carfentanil nearly tripled from the previous year, totaling 413 deaths across 42 states and Washington, D.C. While carfentanil’s overall prevalence still trails that of standard fentanyl, experts warn it could spread rapidly across the country without targeted law enforcement intervention to cut off supply chains.

    In recent months, the DEA has already intercepted large shipments of carfentanil-laced counterfeit pills. In October 2025, the agency’s Los Angeles field division seized 628,000 pills laced with carfentanil; just one month prior, officials in Washington state seized more than 50,000 counterfeit M30 opioid pills at a gas station, which tested positive for a lethal mixture of carfentanil and acetaminophen.

    Traffickers are drawn to carfentanil for the same economic reason that drove the rise of fentanyl years ago: extremely small amounts can produce a massive supply of cut street drugs, generating enormous profits. Rob Tanguay, senior medical lead for addiction services at Canadian health agency Recovery Alberta, added that some frequent opioid users who have developed tolerance to standard fentanyl actively seek out carfentanil for its more intense high, despite the well-documented lethality. “The toughest part about all of this is that this is all about money,” Tanguay said.

    For Kelley Nalewaja, the loss of her son — a charismatic electrician who recently earned a national award from his industry union — has turned private grief into public advocacy. Instead of holding a large funeral, she organized a community town hall in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing together local leaders and other bereaved families who have lost loved ones to illicit synthetic opioids. She is now pushing for sweeping legislative and policy changes to curb carfentanil trafficking, arguing the substance was never intended for human consumption. “It’s not an OD; it’s not an overdose,” she said. “It’s a murder weapon.”

  • Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’ and Iran will ‘never close’ it again, Trump announces

    Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’ and Iran will ‘never close’ it again, Trump announces

    In a major development that calms one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, Iran and the United States announced Friday that the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway through which roughly one-quarter of all global oil shipments pass — will resume full commercial passage for all vessels during an ongoing ceasefire period, just days after heightened military tensions between the two nations and an Israel-US strike on Iranian targets.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed the move in a post on X, noting that the decision aligns with the broader ceasefire agreement reached for neighboring Lebanon. “The passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran,” Araghchi wrote.

    US President Donald Trump hailed the announcement as a landmark win for the global community in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, calling it “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!”

    Trump clarified that while all commercial traffic is permitted to transit the strait, the unilateral US naval blockade targeting Iranian oil exports, implemented earlier this week, will remain in effect until all terms of the bilateral agreement between Washington and Tehran are fully finalized. “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE,” he wrote, adding that most core terms have already been negotiated and the finalization process is expected to move rapidly.

    The US president also claimed Iran had committed to a permanent, future commitment that the strait will never be closed to international shipping, and that Iran has cleared or is in the process of removing all naval mines from the waterway with US support.

    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres joined in welcoming the reopening, framing the decision as “a step in the right direction” for de-escalating broader regional tensions.

    However, a key caveat has emerged from the Iranian side, an anonymous Iranian official told Reuters: the reopening of the strait remains conditional on the United States upholding all existing ceasefire commitments. This stands in direct tension with Trump’s repeated public insistence that the Hormuz agreement is completely disconnected from the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire he brokered just one day prior.

    Iran had previously demanded that any regional ceasefire deal must include protections for its allied militant group Hezbollah, which has been engaged in cross-border hostilities with Israel for months. Rejecting any linkage between the two deals in his Truth Social posts, Trump wrote, “This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”

    The US leader also outlined terms of the nuclear component of the agreement, stating that the US will take possession of all enriched uranium dust created by recent US B-2 Bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, adding that “No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form.” He further confirmed that the US will address the Hezbollah situation separately, and that Israel has been prohibited by Washington from conducting further bombing operations in Lebanon, saying “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA Enough is enough!!!”

    The Iranian official pushed back on Trump’s characterization of nuclear progress, telling Reuters that no final agreement has been reached on the details of outstanding nuclear issues, and that substantive negotiations are still required to lock in any agreements on that front.

    In his series of Friday social media posts, Trump also thanked several regional and neighboring powers for their mediation and support: he singled out Pakistan for leading mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran, and expressed gratitude to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for their assistance throughout the negotiations. Notably absent from his list of thanks were Washington’s traditional European allies, whom Trump publicly criticized as unhelpful.

    “Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger! President DJT,” he wrote.

    Trump’s rebuke came as an international summit focused on Strait of Hormuz maritime security was already underway in Paris, France. Speaking at the summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that roughly 40 countries have agreed to speed up military planning operations to secure permanent freedom of navigation through the strait once a full, permanent end to hostilities is reached.

    The current two-week ceasefire is scheduled to expire next week, though Trump has indicated he is open to extending the truce to allow for further negotiations. Starmer added that full details of the proposed international military security mission will be released publicly next week.

  • Kennedy Wesley scores 1st international goal and adds assist as USWNT beats Japan 3-0

    Kennedy Wesley scores 1st international goal and adds assist as USWNT beats Japan 3-0

    COMMERCE CITY, Colo. – In a frigid, snow-dusted friendly match at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on Friday night, the U.S. Women’s National Team delivered a dominant second-half performance to secure a resounding 3-0 win over Japan, wrapping up their three-game international series with two victories to Japan’s one.

    The game kicked off in nearly freezing temperatures, just hours after overnight snowfall left a white dusting across the Major League Soccer pitch that hosts the Colorado Rapids. Japan faced an early setback when defender Hikaru Kitagawa suffered an injury in the 25th minute and had to stretchered off the pitch, replaced by Miyabi Moriya. For the U.S., starting defender Tierna Davidson took a hard fall in the 30th minute, received on-field medical evaluation, and managed to play through the end of the first half.

    Despite the U.S. holding a commanding 9-1 shot advantage in the opening 45 minutes, neither side could find the back of the net, and the two teams went into halftime locked in a 0-0 draw. The game’s momentum shifted dramatically immediately after the break, when substitute Kennedy Wesley – who entered the match to replace the injured Davidson – sparked the U.S. scoring surge. In the 47th minute, Wesley redirected a header off a cross toward the near left post to set up Naomi Girma, who buried a point-blank header to put the U.S. ahead 1-0.

    The Americans doubled their lead nine minutes later, in the 56th minute, after winning possession near the midfield. Trinity Rodman played a precise through ball to Rose Lavelle, who outpaced Japan’s backline down the center of the pitch and slotted a clinical shot from the edge of the 18-yard box inside the left post. The goal extended Lavelle’s impressive recent scoring run; the veteran playmaker has now contributed to 10 goals – five scored and five assisted – across her last 10 matches.

    Wesley, a young rising prospect, capped off the rout with her first career international goal in the 64th minute. Off a corner kick delivered perfectly by Jaedyn Shaw, Wesley connected on a clean volley to push the U.S. lead to 3-0, a score that would hold through the final whistle. Goalkeeper Claudia Dickey earned a clean sheet for the U.S. with three key saves.

    A post-match interview, a clearly elated Wesley spoke about her milestone goal. “I really don’t have any words,” she said. “I mean, it was the perfect ball from Jaedyn and I was just in the right place at the right time. I’m just over the moon.”
    U.S. head coach Emma Hayes praised her side’s sharp finishing after the break, noting, “I felt we came out in the second half and there was no coming back, to be honest. I felt tonight we were just clinical in the final third.”

    Friday’s match closed out a tightly contested three-game series between two of the world’s top-ranked women’s teams. The U.S. took the first matchup 2-1 last week in San Jose, California, before Japan pulled off a 1-0 upset win in Seattle on Tuesday. That victory snapped the U.S.’s 10-game winning streak, ended a 42-game scoring stretch for the Americans, and marked the U.S.’s first loss since a 2-1 defeat to Portugal last October. Hayes had rotated her entire starting lineup for the second Seattle game as part of her ongoing work to expand the team’s player pool ahead of 2024 World Cup qualifying, marking the fourth time during her tenure she has fielded a completely new starting 11 in consecutive matches.

    Japan entered the series riding high after a dominant championship run at the 2025 Women’s Asian Cup, where the side outscored all its opponents 29-1 and beat host Australia 1-0 in the final. The technically skilled Japanese side had also beaten the U.S. at the 2024 SheBelieves Cup, giving them momentum heading into the three-game series. Ahead of Friday’s decider, Hayes acknowledged Japan’s elite standing in international women’s soccer. “They’re a world-class team,” she said. “I think when you win the first one, inevitably, the second one becomes that challenge. They are a top side, so we have to give them a lot of credit. So, game on for the third game.”

  • Iran, not US, cancels Hormuz blockade after Israel-Lebanon truce

    Iran, not US, cancels Hormuz blockade after Israel-Lebanon truce

    On Friday, Iran formally announced the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical strategic shipping chokepoints, to all international commercial vessels, a move tied to the newly implemented ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon. The announcement came directly from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who clarified that open passage would be maintained for the duration of the ceasefire along the pre-coordinated shipping route already made public by Iranian authorities.

    The development drew an initial response from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who first extended gratitude to Iran via a post on his Truth Social platform. Just 20 minutes after his first message, however, Trump issued a follow-up post that clarified U.S. policy would remain unchanged on one key front: “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED.”

    This multi-front ceasefire framework traces back to an agreement reached on April 7 between the U.S., Iran, and Israel, which established a two-week truce. The deal came together after Trump threatened a catastrophic full-scale attack on Iran, warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if an agreement was not reached that same day. All parties have explicitly stressed that the current truce does not mark a permanent end to the broader ongoing conflict across the Middle East.

    Friday’s announcement follows the rollout of a tentative 10-day ceasefire between Israeli and Lebanese forces. The 50 days of heavy Israeli bombardment that preceded the truce have left a devastating humanitarian toll in Lebanon: thousands of Lebanese people have been killed or injured, including hundreds of children, and more than one million have been displaced from their homes.

    A major unresolved question hangs over the truce: how Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned Lebanese militant group that was not included in the ceasefire negotiations, will respond. Hezbollah has launched ongoing rocket and drone strikes on Israeli territory in retaliation for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its incursion into southern Lebanon, and the weak Lebanese central government currently lacks the capacity to prevent the group from resuming attacks if it chooses to do so.

    The broader conflict that sparked this latest diplomatic push has already had catastrophic consequences across the region. Since the war’s escalation on February 28, thousands of Iranian civilians have been killed or wounded in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. That same day, a U.S. cruise missile strike on a girls’ school in the Iranian city of Minab killed 168 people, the vast majority of whom were children.

    Approximately 30 minutes after his posts addressing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump issued another statement on Truth Social addressing the situation in Lebanon. He wrote: “the USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah [sic] situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!”

    Within minutes of Trump’s public prohibition on further Israeli bombing, both Lebanese and Israeli media reported that Israel had carried out a new drone strike targeting a motorcycle traveling between the southern Lebanese towns of Kounine and Beit Yahoun, killing one person. The official terms of the ceasefire signed Thursday allow Israel to carry out so-called “defensive” strikes in response to what it frames as planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks. This immediate breach of the truce’s spirit has underscored widespread concerns that the ceasefire is fragile and unlikely to bring a lasting end to violence in the region.