Global Pulse

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  • Carlos ‘Indio’ Solari, a legend of Argentina’s rock scene, dies at 77

    Carlos ‘Indio’ Solari, a legend of Argentina’s rock scene, dies at 77

    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentine music and counterculture icon Carlos Alberto Solari, the iconic singer-songwriter widely known by his stage nickname “El Indio” and frontman of the nation’s legendary rock group Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, passed away on Friday at the age of 77.

    Local law enforcement officials confirmed that Solari, who had lived with a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis for more than 10 years, was found unresponsive near an indoor pool at his residential property in Ituzaingó, a small town located roughly 18 miles west of the Argentine capital. Authorities have not yet released an official cause of death.

    Solari’s family shared confirmation of his passing via social media, announcing plans for a public funeral service to give fans across the country an opportunity to pay their final respects to the rock legend. Within minutes of news of his death breaking, hundreds of admirers began gathering outside his home, many bringing flowers to lay at the gate and wearing vintage band T-shirts emblazoned with Solari’s famous nickname. In a public statement shared after his death, the family wrote, “We will mourn as we deserve, listen to his songs, and above all, look out for one another, just as he taught us to do.”

    As the lead vocalist and creative driving force behind Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota — better known to generations of fans simply as “Los Redondos” — Solari grew into one of Argentina’s most defining countercultural icons. For young Argentines coming of age during the country’s fragile transition from a violent military dictatorship to a new democratic system in the 1980s — an era marked by unprecedented new freedoms alongside crippling economic instability and hyperinflation — Solari’s music became a soundtrack for a generation of disaffected young people.

    During the 1990s, when Argentina’s government under then-President Carlos Saul Menem pushed sweeping free-market policies that sparked a wave of unregulated consumerism across the country, Solari’s gritty classic rock anthems, upbeat danceable tracks and layered, cryptic lyrics gave voice to widespread frustration with capitalist excess and growing foreign cultural and economic influence. Over the band’s active years, Los Redondos released 10 full-length studio albums, and the group famously rejected deals with major record labels throughout their career to protect full creative independence over their work.

    After the band split in 2001, Solari launched a successful solo career that spanned two decades. He released five additional studio albums under his own name, blending his signature classic rock sound with new electronic influences, and continued to draw crowds of hundreds of thousands of fans to massive stadium and park shows across Argentina.

    In 2016, during a headline performance at a massive sold-out concert, Solari publicly revealed his Parkinson’s diagnosis to fans. “Mr. Parkinson is nipping at my heels. But here I am,” he told the crowd, which erupted in a long standing ovation in support of the singer. He eventually retired from touring not long after, and spoke openly in subsequent interviews about the severe, debilitating impacts of his degenerative condition.

    In the days following the news of his death, tributes have poured in from across Argentina’s political, cultural, and sports sectors. The Argentine Soccer Association noted in a statement that Solari’s music “became a popular rallying cry” that “echoed in the stands” of stadiums across the soccer-mad nation. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the prominent human rights group that works to locate relatives killed or disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, said Solari “inspired society as a whole to doubt, to question and to think critically.” Even former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is currently serving a corruption conviction under house arrest, shared one of Solari’s most famous lyrics on social media — a verse popularized as a call for courageous living that reads “Just living costs you your life.”

    Solari is survived by his wife, Virginia Mones Ruiz, and their 25-year-old son, Bruno.

  • Ex-CIA official accused of stashing $40m in gold bars is a ‘master manipulator’, prosecutors say

    Ex-CIA official accused of stashing $40m in gold bars is a ‘master manipulator’, prosecutors say

    A high-stakes federal court hearing in Virginia has ended with a ruling that a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official charged with public corruption will remain behind bars pending his trial, after prosecutors painted him as a calculating, untrustworthy master manipulator with the skills to evade law enforcement.

    Forty-nine-year-old David Rush, who once held top-secret security clearance granting access to the US intelligence community’s most sensitive information, faces a single initial charge of criminal theft of public funds tied to allegedly fraudulent timesheets that netted him roughly $70,000. But the case has ballooned into a far larger scandal after federal investigators uncovered a stunning cache of undeclared assets at his residential property.

    Court documents and official statements from prosecutors lay out extraordinary allegations: between November 2025 and March 2026, Rush was issued gold bars and foreign currency to cover work-related expenses, but failed to file any required documentation for how the assets were used, leaving CIA officials unable to locate the bulk of the stock. When the FBI executed a search warrant at his home last month, agents found more than 300 gold bars valued at approximately $40 million, alongside $2 million in untraceable cash and more than 30 high-end luxury watches. Prosecutors argue Rush deliberately converted stolen public funds into easily tradable commodities to hide the illicit proceeds, adding that hundreds of millions in allegedly stolen assets remain unaccounted for to date.

    Beyond the missing assets, prosecutors have leveled a series of additional allegations against Rush: they claim he defrauded the government by continuing to collect paid military leave after he was honorably discharged from the US Navy, and lied about his professional background when applying for his government role, falsely claiming to have served as a Navy pilot to mislead neighbors and employers. Prosecutors told the court Friday that Rush leveraged his decades of experience in intelligence work and his access to senior agency networks to carry out his scheme, painting him as a skilled manipulator who cannot be trusted to comply with pre-trial release rules.

    Rush’s legal defense has pushed back sharply against the government’s narrative, dismissing the core allegations as sensationalized and out of context. Defense attorney Jessica Carmichael argued that the bizarre, secretive framing of many claims is inherent to the nature of classified intelligence work, not evidence of criminal wrongdoing. She told the court that all gold bars in Rush’s home were fully accounted for: when FBI agents arrived to search the property, Rush voluntarily disclosed the locked basement storage holding the bars and provided agents with the access codes, never claiming ownership of the assets. Carmichael called the government’s public focus on the gold cache a misleading publicity stunt, and requested that Rush be moved from his current solitary confinement (where he is only allowed two hours of out-of-cell time daily) to home detention with a GPS ankle monitor.

    However, US Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick sided fully with federal prosecutors in his ruling, concluding that Rush poses an extreme flight risk that cannot be mitigated with supervised release. “He’s in a different position than most people to flee and avoid detection by law enforcement,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his decision, noting that Rush’s intelligence training and professional connections give him unique ability to evade capture if released. The investigation into the missing assets and potential additional charges remains ongoing, after the CIA itself referred the original tip of misconduct to the FBI for investigation.

  • US VP Vance blames British student’s murder on migrant ‘invasion’

    US VP Vance blames British student’s murder on migrant ‘invasion’

    A tragic murder case in southern Britain has erupted into a cross-Atlantic political firestorm after United States Vice President JD Vance tied the 18-year-old victim’s death to what he falsely frames as a mass ‘migrant invasion’ driving Western civilizational collapse. The killing of Henry Nowak, stabbed last December in Southampton by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, has already become a polarizing flashpoint for right-wing groups globally, triggering unrest across British communities. Digwa, a Sikh man born and raised in the UK, lied to responding officers claiming Nowak had subjected him to racial abuse. Disturbingly, police left Nowak handcuffed at the scene as he lay bleeding out, a misstep that has drawn widespread criticism from across the political spectrum.

    Vance, a leading hardliner within the Trump administration and a longstanding harsh critic of liberal European migration policies, took to social platform X Friday to lay the blame for Nowak’s death directly at the feet of European leadership and open migration. ‘Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit,’ Vance wrote. ‘His murder is as tragic as it is enraging.’ He went further, arguing that Nowak would still be alive if previous generations of European elites had pushed back against ‘the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.’ Vance called for ‘righteous anger’ over the case, warning that Nowak’s death would not be the last such preventable tragedy if current policies remain unchanged.

    Vance’s intervention marked the highest-profile American comment on the case to date, coming days after the U.S. State Department released a statement condemning what it called ‘ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing’ in the UK. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X and a close ally of both Vance and Trump, has already amplified multiple posts about the police handling of the stabbing, drawing sharp pushback from Downing Street earlier this week.

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office issued a swift and forceful rejection of Vance’s remarks, condemning what it framed as improper foreign interference in UK domestic affairs and deliberate attempts to stoke societal division. A Downing Street spokesperson noted that Nowak’s own family has explicitly asked that his death not be exploited to further deepen divides, spread hatred, or fuel tension across the country. Starmer himself had already accused Musk of ‘trying to whip up division’ in Britain just one day before Vance’s comments went public, underscoring the British government’s anger at external actors leveraging the tragedy for political gain.

    The row highlights growing tensions between the Trump administration and European governments over migration policy, as top U.S. officials increasingly frame mass migration as an existential threat to Western cultural and political cohesion. Critics warn that politicizing a local criminal case to advance a broader anti-migration agenda distorts the facts of the tragedy and risks amplifying far-right extremism on both sides of the Atlantic.

  • Germany’s young midfield star Karl may miss World Cup after injury in training

    Germany’s young midfield star Karl may miss World Cup after injury in training

    CHICAGO — A major cloud of uncertainty has fallen over Germany’s 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign, as 18-year-old midfield prodigy Lennart Karl is at risk of missing the tournament following a training injury that landed him in the hospital for urgent diagnostic scans on Friday. The young talent, who enjoyed a breakout 2025-26 season with Bayern Munich that cemented his status as one of the most exciting young prospects in world football, made club history earlier this campaign when he became the youngest goalscorer in Bayern Munich’s Champions League history. Head coach Julian Nagelsmann shared grim updates on Karl’s condition Friday evening, speaking to reporters ahead of Germany’s final pre-tournament warm-up match against the United States scheduled for Saturday. “Unfortunately Lenni injured himself today in training. We need to wait on what happens with that, and to be honest, it didn’t look so good,” Nagelsmann told assembled media. The German boss added that both the player and the team’s technical staff are still processing the unexpected development, with a formal diagnosis pending before any final decisions are made. “He needs to process the situation, we do too, and we’ll see what we do. We need a diagnosis for that, and then we’ll inform you. Then we’ll see if we can hopefully keep going with him for the tournament or if I need to nominate a replacement,” Nagelsmann explained. Under current FIFA World Cup regulations, Nagelsmann retains the right to name a replacement player if Karl is ruled out with a serious injury, with the window for substitutions remaining open until 24 hours before kickoff of Germany’s opening group stage match. That opening fixture is scheduled for June 14 against Curacao, a first-time World Cup qualifier making its tournament debut. For German football fans, the potential absence of Karl is a devastating blow, as the teenager was widely expected to bring fresh energy and creative spark to the national side’s midfield line in what is already one of the most anticipated international tournaments of the last four years. Follow the latest coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup at AP News’ dedicated tournament hub.

  • Trump urges new spy chief to fire employees

    Trump urges new spy chief to fire employees

    A new political firestorm has erupted in Washington after former President and current U.S. President Donald Trump publicly confirmed Friday that he is pushing his newly tapped acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, to dismiss large numbers of employees across the U.S. intelligence community, amplifying already fierce criticism over the appointment of a Trump loyalist with zero prior professional intelligence experience to the top national security role.

    Pulte, who currently leads the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, was tapped by Trump this Tuesday to fill the acting national intelligence director post, following the departure of Tulsi Gabbard, who stepped down citing the need to care for her ailing husband. The 45th president has made no secret of his plans for the role, telling reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One that he would not object to widespread staff cuts under Pulte’s leadership, claiming the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been overstaffed for decades.

    Trump first outlined his downsizing agenda in an interview with *The Wall Street Journal*, repeating his long-held belief that the 18-agency U.S. intelligence community is bloated with political holdovers from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations who do not align with his policy and political priorities. “I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump told the outlet. Speaking to reporters Friday, he doubled down on that framing: “If he cut, I wouldn’t mind that… the number of employees in Pulte’s office had been ‘way too high for way too long.’”

    Critics warn that Trump’s push for cuts creates a dangerous opening for him to reshape the nonpartisan intelligence community along political lines, particularly given Pulte’s well-documented history of leveraging his government position to target Trump’s political rivals. As head of the FHFA, Pulte has used access to confidential mortgage records to assist investigations into high-profile Trump adversaries, including Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, and Senate Democratic Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.

    Democrats have been unified in their condemnation of Pulte’s appointment, pointing both to his lack of relevant intelligence experience and his track record of politicizing federal agencies to target political opponents. Even within his own party, the appointment has widened growing rifts between Trump and congressional Republicans, many of whom are already anxious about poll numbers ahead of November’s midterm elections.

    The fallout spilled into legislative action Friday, when Senate lawmakers blocked a bipartisan bill to renew a key foreign surveillance authority in direct protest of Pulte’s appointment. Democrats argued that given Pulte’s history of politicization, they could not support expanding U.S. surveillance powers without ironclad guarantees that intelligence gathering would not be weaponized for political purposes. The legislative collapse upended months of bipartisan negotiations on the top national security priority.

    Trump has sought to de-escalate the backlash by framing Pulte’s appointment as a temporary stopgap, noting Friday that he has already interviewed five candidates for the permanent national intelligence director role. But even that framing raised new alarms: Trump told *The Wall Street Journal* that Pulte’s temporary status actually gives him more latitude to overhaul the intelligence community. “You’re less shackled… It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time,” Trump said.

    Beyond staff cuts, Trump has also made clear he expects Pulte to continue a political project that falls entirely outside the official mandate of the Director of National Intelligence: investigating baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, a falsehood he has repeated since his election loss in 2021. Gabbard, Pulte’s predecessor, was also tapped by Trump to lead this inquiry despite the intelligence community having no official role in overseeing domestic U.S. elections.

  • Israel sent troops to ‘Azerbaijan, UAE, Iraq and Somaliland’ during Iran war

    Israel sent troops to ‘Azerbaijan, UAE, Iraq and Somaliland’ during Iran war

    A bombshell new report published Friday by CNN has laid bare extensive, secretive deployments of Israeli special operations forces and intelligence personnel across four countries in the broader Middle East region, carried out amid Israel’s ongoing open conflict with Iran. Citing four anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the activities, the outlet details that operatives from Israel’s iconic foreign intelligence agency Mossad, alongside elite units of the Israeli military including a specialized airborne rescue detachment from the Israeli Air Force, were positioned in southern Azerbaijan, just kilometers from the Iranian border. At their closest point, these deployments sit roughly 100 kilometers outside of major Iranian city Tabriz, placing critical Iranian infrastructure and military assets well within operational range.

    According to the report, the deployed Israeli personnel have conducted two core mission sets: coordinated drone strikes against targeted individuals and broad, systematic intelligence gathering to map Iranian military movements and facilities. One high-profile strike launched from Azerbaijani soil, a source confirms, was the assassination of Rahman Moghaddam, a senior leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who oversaw the force’s special intelligence operations division. Moghaddam was killed in an attack on March 4. Just 24 hours after that killing, unmanned aerial vehicles targeted Nakhchivan International Airport in Azerbaijan and an adjacent local village. Azerbaijani authorities in Baku immediately pinned the blame for the strike on Iran, a charge Tehran has repeatedly and categorically denied.

    Beyond Azerbaijan, CNN’s investigation reveals that Israel has built and maintained a sprawling network of covert operational outposts and bases scattered across the broader Middle East and Horn of Africa, with additional facilities located in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland. The report notes that a portion of these sites were developed with the explicit knowledge and approval of host nation governments, while other covert positions may have been established without the host authority’s awareness.

    Within hours of the report’s publication, the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Washington DC issued a sharp rejection of the claims, telling CNN that Baku dismisses all unfounded assertions that Azerbaijani territory has been used to launch offensive operations against any third country.

    On the Somaliland front, the report confirms that the breakaway region in northern Somalia, which has not received widespread international recognition as an independent state, has hosted hidden Israeli operational positions. Notably, Israel made global headlines in December 2024 when it became the first United Nations member state to formally recognize Somaliland’s sovereignty. As of Saturday morning, Somaliland authorities had not issued any public response to CNN’s reporting.

    The new revelations build on similar reporting published in recent weeks by other major international outlets. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both reported last month that Israel had constructed two secret operational facilities inside Iraq amid its escalating conflict with Iran. Separately, Axios and the Financial Times also confirmed that Israel has deployed active-duty ground troops, an Iron Dome air defense battery, and additional advanced air defense systems to the UAE since the outbreak of the current conflict with Iran.

    CNN’s sources also shared details of pre-planned Israeli covert activity dating back to earlier this year. When large-scale anti-government protests roiled Iran in January, Israeli special operations command finalized preparations for a secret mission along the Azerbaijan-Iran border. The planned operation was designed to lay groundwork for future strikes by establishing long-term surveillance infrastructure in the border region. After the protests wrapped up, Israeli special forces accompanied by stealth aircraft were deployed to install the intelligence gathering equipment, which has since been used to continuously monitor Iranian military movements and key facilities along the border, the report says.

    Diplomatic records confirm that Israel has long maintained deep, formal strategic partnerships with both Azerbaijan and the UAE. For Baku, Israeli cooperation extends across energy development, advanced defense systems sales, and cybersecurity collaboration. With the UAE, Israeli ties focus heavily on expanding economic integration, joint intelligence sharing, and public and private security partnerships.

  • Putin says there is no point meeting Zelensky over ending Ukraine war

    Putin says there is no point meeting Zelensky over ending Ukraine war

    Fresh tensions have flared in the 3-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned down a public request from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy for one-on-one negotiations to end the full-scale war that launched in 2022.

    Zelenskyy published an open letter Thursday that formally called for face-to-face talks with Putin, arguing that the international community cannot afford to wait for renewed U.S. focus on the conflict to push forward peace processes. The letter included a defiant, occasionally mocking tone toward the Russian leader — including jabs at his decades in power and recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory, one of which targeted St. Petersburg just days prior, which Zelenskyy framed as a “visit” to Russia. The Ukrainian president also called for an immediate ceasefire to precede formal negotiations.

    Putin pushed back against the request Friday during remarks at Russia’s annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, dismissing the letter as “rude” and arguing it was never intended to set the groundwork for genuine dialogue. “Was it a way to create the conditions for a face-to-face meeting or a way not to set up a face-to-face meeting? I think it was the second,” Putin told attendees.

    The Russian leader doubled down on his long-held negotiating position, which holds that a ceasefire cannot come before binding peace agreements are reached. He warned that a temporary pause in fighting would only allow Ukrainian forces to regroup and rearm, while Moscow’s core demands remain unaddressed. “The only point [of a ceasefire] is for the Ukrainian side to halt the advance of our armed forces. But we need agreements — not for six months, not for three months, but for the long term,” Putin said. “Let the experts get to work and come up with some solutions. After that, we can meet.”

    Putin reaffirmed that military operations will continue until Russia achieves its stated war aims, which include Ukraine ceding control of the four Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions and permanently abandoning its bid to join NATO. Kyiv has repeatedly rejected these demands, refusing to surrender any sovereign territory and noting that Russia launched its full-scale 2022 invasion eight years after annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, arguing territorial concessions would only embolden future Russian aggression.

    When asked directly whether he would meet Zelenskyy for talks, Putin responded clearly: “I don’t see any point for now.”

    While Zelenskyy’s overture was met with cautious hope in some international circles, including the White House, where former U.S. President Donald Trump said a meeting between the two leaders “would be great,” the conflict on the ground continued to escalate even as diplomatic efforts stalled.

    On the same day as Putin’s remarks, Ukrainian military officials announced they had struck five vessels carrying unauthorized cargo in the Sea of Azov and off the coast of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, said the targeted ships were involved in stealing Ukrainian grain and transferring fuel and military supplies to Russian forces.

    Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry later confirmed that five civilians were killed in attacks on two of the ships, adding that the vessels were not Azerbaijani-flagged and did not specify who it held responsible for the casualties.

    In another separate incident, a Ukrainian drone detonated in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta this week. Ukrainian military operators said the drone was blown off course by Russian electronic warfare interference, marking an accidental incursion into NATO-member Romanian territory.

    Russia launched a wave of new attacks across Ukraine in the 24 hours prior, killing at least 13 people and wounding 70 more, Ukrainian emergency officials confirmed. Four workers died when a dairy factory outside Kyiv was hit, while a 35-year-old woman was killed in a drone strike on a Kherson petrol station, among other casualties reported across the country.

  • Finding moments of childhood in Gaza, one bubble at a time

    Finding moments of childhood in Gaza, one bubble at a time

    When the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail on May 18 to break Israel’s aerial, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, its cargo held far more than life-sustaining basics. Alongside stockpiles of food, clean drinking water, infant formula and critical medical equipment targeted to Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, the aid mission carried a surprising, gentle addition: portable homemade bubble play kits. These simple kits, crafted from just soap, water, rope and wooden sticks, are the core initiative of Bubbles Not Bombs (BNB), a grassroots humanitarian project dedicated to giving children trapped in war zones and displaced by conflict small, precious moments of respite through mindful bubble play.

    For 15 years, BNB operated under the umbrella of Dr Zigs, a Welsh eco-friendly toy company founded by 56-year-old Italy-born Paola Dyboski that frames play as a foundational tool to support children’s emotional wellbeing in crisis settings. Just recently, the initiative spun off to become an independent non-profit organization, expanding its reach to conflict-hit regions across the globe.

    Dyboski does not minimize the urgent need to deliver basic necessities to Gaza, where the Palestinian health ministry confirms more than 22,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign launched after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. But she has long argued that play itself is a universal human right that no child, even in the midst of active conflict, should be denied.

    Currently, BNB is working to deliver physical bubble kits to children across Gaza and southern Lebanon, where ongoing Israeli military operations have killed more than 3,500 people and displaced nearly one million since March 2024. To bridge gaps in delivery amid restricted access, the organization has already shared simple, open-source digital instructions for making homemade bubbles using locally available materials, so children and caregivers can build their own kits without waiting for external shipments.

    Dyboski explains that the soft, fleeting nature of bubbles, with their inherent joy and lightness, offers children living with chronic trauma a tangible tool to process fear and grief, articulate unspoken difficult feelings, regulate their breathing, and stabilize their emotions amid constant chaos.

    That impact is visible on the ground in Gaza, where Mohamed Abushbeka has cared for his two young nieces since their father was killed in the first weeks of Israel’s military campaign. Last week, BNB reposted a video Abushbeka shared of his older niece, Batool, blowing bubbles inside an overcrowded displacement camp.

    “Bubbles give children these rare stretches of joy, safety, and escape from all the anxiety and brutal reality around them,” Abushbeka told Middle East Eye in an interview. He emphasized that bubble play helps children release overwhelming emotions they often lack the words to name, giving them a brief, tangible sense of freedom. “You see them running, laughing, chasing the bubbles as they float up, then suddenly fall and burst,” he said.

    He added that bubble play is uniquely accessible in a context where most resources are scarce: it is low-cost, simple to make, and children will repurpose any available materials, from plastic cups to discarded small tubes, to make their own wands. For caregivers working to preserve any shred of normal childhood for the next generation, protecting these small moments of play is non-negotiable, Abushbeka said. “One day, Palestinian children will laugh without fear, sleep without bombs, and grow up surrounded by peace instead of loss,” he wrote on his Instagram page.

    Leigh Evans, a Welsh emergency nurse, paramedic and activist with four medical aid missions to Gaza under his belt, has witnessed first-hand the constant trauma that shapes daily life for Gaza’s children, and the heartbreak of seeing them robbed of the chance to just be kids. “I think children’s need to play and develop as whole human beings should be a major part of what we count as essential aid,” Evans said.

    He reflected on how Gazan families work tirelessly to preserve small bits of normalcy even amid widespread destruction, recalling invitations to share meals in partially bombed-out homes, where families leaned on cooking and play to comfort their children when death could come at any moment. Evans has long integrated BNB’s bubble kits into his solidarity work: he joined the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, used bubble play during the 2025 Global March to Gaza, blew bubbles during a peaceful Red Line solidarity rally in West Wales last week, and joined activists in a direct action outside Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in March, where bubble play was used to disrupt production of munitions deployed in Gaza.

    “Bubbles are wonderfully therapeutic,” Evans said. “They offer a small but incredibly powerful form of psychological relief for children in conflict zones, letting them be children in a place where they would otherwise have no space for that.”

    Sabine Choucair, a Lebanese performer and co-founder of Clown Me In, an organization that brings arts programming to children in crisis zones, frames bubbles as uniquely magical for young people. “Bubbles are magical, like small globes that reflect everything around children,” she explained. “They bring kids together and give them a low-stakes way to experiment and play.”

    Choucair, who has 20 years of experience performing for children in refugee camps and disaster zones across the world, recently partnered with BNB by sharing a video of her original activity “Pop the Fear”, where children are invited to name their fears, visualize placing them inside a bubble, pop the bubble to release the fear, then blow new bubbles to make space for joy and hope.

    Speaking of the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, where children are once again displaced, forced out of school, and forced to re-live the trauma of bombardment and home loss, Choucair pushed back against the narrative that mental health and play support are secondary to basic aid. “Imagine re-living the loss of your home, hearing drones and bombs again, and being out of school once more,” she said. “How are we supposed to survive if our mental state is destroyed?”

    Mental health experts echo this framing, noting that even when basic survival needs are unmet, psychosocial support for children facing repeated bombardment, displacement and grief is not a secondary priority—it should be a core component of any emergency response. A powerful video from the Gaza-based Sameer Project illustrates this impact, showing a young girl channeling her fear of shelling and famine into popping bubbles, before sharing her wish to be reunited with her mother, who was killed in the conflict.

    “It’s a simple but deeply effective way to help children process trauma,” Dyboski said. “Creating moments of play is healing. They can feel a sense of control and make the experience their own.”

    Beyond Gaza and Lebanon, BNB has already begun distributing bubble kits to children in Myanmar and at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, home to the world’s largest refugee camp. The organization is working to expand access to Sudan in partnership with local group Let’s Have Hope, though shipment challenges have delayed entry to date. It also plans to send kits to children in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia’s Tigray region, both sites of ongoing protracted conflict.

    “We need to make sure children not only survive but are also able to grow into human beings who can live, love and function fully,” Evans said. Citing UNICEF data that an estimated 473 million children worldwide currently live in active conflict zones, Dyboski says the work is far from over. “We’ve got a lot of children to reach.”

  • Labour contender Andy Burnham declines to say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

    Labour contender Andy Burnham declines to say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

    As the race for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party slowly takes shape ahead of a upcoming by-election, two prospective contenders have staked out contrasting positions on the highly charged question of whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide, exposing deep internal divides within the party over Middle East policy.

    Andy Burnham, the sitting Mayor of Greater Manchester who is running to become Member of Parliament for Makerfield in the June 18 by-election — a step widely seen as paving his way to challenge Keir Starmer for the party leadership and eventually the post of prime minister — laid out his stance in a Thursday interview with *The Guardian*. When pressed to label Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, Burnham declined, arguing that the gravity of such an accusation puts it beyond his ability to rule on from his current position. “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester,” he told the outlet.

    That said, Burnham did not shy away from criticizing the scale of Israel’s military operation. He made clear he holds serious concerns about what he described as the disproportionate level of destruction inflicted on Gaza, and called for a full independent investigation to hold responsible parties to account. His comments come against a backdrop of mounting death and humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave: since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, Israeli military operations have killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with an additional 170,000 wounded. Thousands more remain unaccounted for, presumed dead under rubble from Israeli airstrikes and ground operations. Humanitarian groups have also documented that Israel has implemented a deliberate policy of blocking entry of food, clean water, medicine and other essential supplies to Gaza’s civilian population, creating widespread famine; even when aid has been allowed in after global public outcry, the volume has been far too insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2 million trapped residents.

    Multiple prominent human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and leading Israeli human rights groups, have formally concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, a finding echoed by dozens of leading global genocide studies experts. Last year, a United Nations commission of inquiry also reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

    Burnham’s position is notably more muted than that of another likely Labour leadership challenger, Wes Streeting, the recently resigned UK Health Secretary who has also publicly stated his ambition to replace Starmer as prime minister. While Streeting has never publicly accused Israel of genocide or war crimes, internal details that emerged late last year revealed he privately stated that Israel was carrying out war crimes “before our eyes” and that the Israeli government was using the “language of ethnic cleansing.” This week, while he did not repeat those private accusations publicly, Streeting defended his decision to share a dossier of graphic images showing injured Palestinian children in Gaza with fellow cabinet ministers. He told reporters he was “horrified by the war in Gaza” and had worked behind closed doors to pressure the British government to act with what he called the moral urgency the crisis demands. “That included sharing the eyewitness testimony of doctors on the ground in Gaza, whose accounts needed to be heard at the highest levels of government to ensure that what was happening in Gaza wasn’t a war without witnesses,” Streeting explained.

    Streeting also launched a sharp rebuke of Starmer’s leadership on the issue, saying that while multiple cabinet ministers pushed for a stronger policy shift on Gaza, their efforts repeatedly ran into intransigence from the top. “We often felt like we were hitting up against a brick wall. Our concerns and motives were dismissed,” he said. Streeting sought to frame his position as balanced, noting that he has long backed both Israel’s right to self-defense and the Palestinian people’s right to an independent sovereign state, pointing to his past record as a backbench lawmaker when he called for sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, his meeting with survivors of the October 7 attack, and his status as the first shadow cabinet minister to visit Israel.

    Disclosed documents released earlier this week showed a sharp negative reaction from senior Labour figure Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former cabinet minister, Labour peer and former UK ambassador to the U.S., who described Streeting’s criticisms of Israel as “wild” and “hysterical” and claimed the contender was “experiencing an early midlife crisis.”

    Unlike Streeting, who publicly backed the Labour leadership’s initial support for Israel’s post-October 7 war on Gaza, Burnham broke ranks with Starmer’s team just weeks after the conflict began, joining London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar to issue a joint statement calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire. Their statement expressed “profound concerns about the loss of thousands of lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.” Burnham also became one of the most prominent proponents within the Labour Party of pressing the government to formally recognize a Palestinian state, a step Starmer’s government ultimately took last September.

    In a rare show of unity with Starmer, however, Burnham defended the Labour leader’s recent diplomatic clash with U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump had publicly attacked Starmer, claiming the UK had failed to provide sufficient support for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iranian military targets, despite Britain granting the U.S. access to British military bases to carry out strikes on Iranian missile sites. Burnham argued that Starmer’s approach had been correct, noting that “normally you would want a good relationship with the US, but if you can’t agree with them, then say that as well. That’s the only way I think to deal with him [Trump].” He added that while the US-UK special relationship remains important to Britain, that does not mean the UK should blindly align with every U.S. policy position. “We’ve got in trouble in the past when that happens, so no, I think the approach that Keir has taken is the right one”, Burnham said.

    This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and broader global affairs.

  • Zverev to face Cobolli in French Open final after beating Mensik

    Zverev to face Cobolli in French Open final after beating Mensik

    The 2025 French Open men’s singles final is set, after two dramatic days of semi-final action that saw a veteran chasing a long-awaited milestone and an Italian rising star advance under unexpected circumstances. Germany’s Alexander Zverev, the tournament’s second seed and world number three, fought past 20-year-old Czech rookie Jakub Mensik in a four-set thriller on Friday to book his spot in Sunday’s championship match, where he will face Italy’s Flavio Cobolli. For Zverev, the match marks his fourth appearance in a Grand Slam final, and a chance to claim the first major title of his decorated career.

    Zverev’s path to the final required every bit of his 11 years of Grand Slam experience against Mensik, who was competing in his first ever major semi-final. The young Czech had already fought through two draining five-set matches to reach the last four, and fatigue gradually took its toll over the course of the two-and-a-half-hour contest. Zverev struck first, breaking Mensik’s serve in the 11th game of a tight opening set after saving three break points that would have put the 26th seed up 5-3. The German dominated the second set, dropping only four points on his own serve and breaking Mensik twice to take a two-set lead.

    Mensik briefly turned the tide after calling a medical time-out early in the third set for a nagging neck injury. His improved use of drop shots caught Zverev off guard, and he broke to take a 4-2 lead before closing out the set 6-3 — the only second set Zverev has dropped through the entire tournament. But the young Czech could not maintain his momentum. Unforced backhand errors gifted Zverev an early break in the fourth set, putting him up 2-0, and the veteran never looked back. Zverev closed out the 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 win on his first match point when Mensik sent a backhand into the net. Along the way, Zverev drew some criticism from spectators for disputing two line calls and received a time violation warning, but his ability to navigate through physical and mental pressure has kept his title dream alive.

    In the other semi-final, 10th seed Cobolli did not even take the court, after his compatriot and childhood friend Matteo Arnaldi withdrew just one hour before the match due to a sudden viral illness. Arnaldi, ranked 104th in the world, had pulled off a Cinderella run to the semi-finals, winning two back-to-back marathon matches in the third and fourth rounds before his quarter-final opponent Matteo Berrettini retired due to injury. Arnaldi said that despite feeling good through most of the tournament, he woke up suffering from dizziness and decided a withdrawal was the only responsible decision.

    “It’s tough — for how the tournament was, for how many hours I spent on court, I felt pretty good,” Arnaldi told reporters. “Every time I get up I feel dizzy and not the best… so that was the right decision for me.”

    Cobolli, who advanced to his first ever Grand Slam final via walkover, shared his disappointment for his friend and compatriot. “It’s tough for me to speak also. When he came to me an hour ago I almost cried,” he said. “At the same time I’m happy with the result this week.” Cobolli has been one of the tournament’s most impressive performers, dropping just two sets through five matches, including a standout quarter-final win over fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada.

    For Zverev, Sunday’s final will be the culmination of years of near-misses at the sport’s biggest events. He has fallen short in three previous Grand Slam finals, most recently losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the 2023 French Open, and held a two-set lead over Dominic Thiem in the 2020 US Open final before collapsing in five sets. He also entered the French Open in the middle of a 14-month title drought, dating back to his win at a small clay-court event in Munich in April 2024. With tournament favorites Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner exiting early in the second and third rounds respectively, Zverev has handled the pressure of being the top remaining seed well, losing only two sets across six matches to reach the final. He also holds a 3-1 career winning record against Cobolli, making him the clear favorite to lift the trophy on Philippe Chatrier Court.

    After reaching the final, the 29-year-old reflected on his journey to the championship match, leaning into his lighthearted approach to pressure. “This is a Grand Slam, it’s best of five, things are going to happen, opponents are going to play better. I managed it,” Zverev said. “Pure emptiness, there’s absolutely nothing in my head. We’re athletes, very few of us have anything in our heads. Sometimes it’s easier to be stupid and not to think too much. I hope to play another great match on Sunday.”