Global Pulse

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  • Two Mexicans arrested as police uncover big meth lab on South African farm

    Two Mexicans arrested as police uncover big meth lab on South African farm

    Following a two-month long probe into suspicious activity at a rural farm, South African law enforcement has dismantled one of the largest illegal crystal methamphetamine production operations uncovered in the country this year, carrying out an overnight raid that resulted in five arrests and the seizure of roughly $37 million in drugs, production equipment, and undisclosed cash.

    The raid targeted a property outside the border town of Musina, located in Limpopo province just kilometers from South Africa’s boundary with Zimbabwe. Of the five suspects taken into custody, two are Mexican citizens, two are Zimbabwean, and one is a Malawian national. All five are scheduled to make their initial court appearance on Monday, where they will face formal charges related to the illegal manufacturing and possession of controlled illicit substances.

    In an official statement following the operation, police described the bust as exposing a highly sophisticated, industrial-scale criminal enterprise built specifically to produce dangerous illicit drugs for widespread distribution across regional and global markets.

    This latest bust is far from an isolated incident. Over the past two years, South African police have uncovered a string of large-scale crystal meth production operations operating out of isolated rural farms across the country, with a consistent pattern of Mexican national involvement. Just three months prior to this raid, in May 2026, authorities arrested 11 people including four Mexicans after discovering a $6 million meth operation on a remote farm northwest of Johannesburg. Going further back, in September 2025, five Mexican suspects were arrested when police broke up a $20 million crystal meth lab on a farm in eastern South Africa, and in July 2024, three Mexicans were among those arrested at another Limpopo province lab holding $108 million in seized drugs.

    The expanding trend of Mexican cartel activity on the African continent extends far beyond South Africa’s borders, counter-narcotics officials confirm. In May 2026, Nigeria’s national drug enforcement agency announced it had dismantled a multi-million dollar Nigeria-Mexican meth production syndicate operating out of a remote dense forest in the West African country, a case that remains active in the country’s courts.

    Data from US Africa Command (Africom) underscores the rapid growth of this threat: since the start of 2023, counter-narcotics forces have carried out raids on 14 meth labs operated by Mexican criminal groups across the continent, with discoveries documented in Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa. Regional security experts say the pattern of these busts makes one trend clear: Mexican criminal cartels are increasingly shifting their operations to use Africa not just as a transit hub for drug trafficking to European and Asian markets, but as a full-scale production base for illicit methamphetamine.

    This expansion plays into existing vulnerabilities across Southern Africa. According to the 2022 Global State of Harm Reduction report, South Africa is already ranked as one of the largest consumer markets for crystal methamphetamine in the world. The United Nations has also warned that the country’s expansive geography and loosely regulated, porous border regions make it an ideal transit point for illicit drug traffickers moving product between continents.

  • Republicans blame $4 trillion US debt milestone on ‘socialism’

    Republicans blame $4 trillion US debt milestone on ‘socialism’

    The recent milestone of U.S. national debt surpassing $40 trillion has ignited a sharp partisan battle on Capitol Hill, with congressional Republicans rushing to criticize Democratic economic policies as reckless, “unaffordable socialist spending” that has driven the nation’s borrowing crisis. But independent economists and policy analysts are pushing back against that narrative, arguing that decades of Republican-led policy decisions — from sweeping tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to costly discretionary military interventions in the Middle East — are the primary drivers of the national debt’s rapid expansion over the past 25 years.

    Central to this debate is the record of former President and current President Donald Trump, who campaigned repeatedly on a pledge to fully eliminate the national debt. Across his two terms in the White House, Trump has already overseen an $11.6 trillion surge in total national debt, a figure that outpaces the debt growth of any other modern U.S. president.

    Dean Baker, a senior economist at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, framed the issue clearly in a commentary published Thursday. “I have never been a deficit hawk, and I’m not about to change my religious affiliation now,” Baker wrote. “But whatever we think of debt and deficits, there is one point that should be very clear: It has been run up almost entirely due to Republican tax cuts and their inept management of the economy.”

    Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman echoed that assessment, noting that while the $40 trillion figure itself holds no inherent special economic meaning, it serves as a stark reminder of the fiscal irresponsibility of the Trump administration. Krugman pointed to unfunded tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the top 1% of earners, billions in unnecessary wasteful military spending — including costly redesigns of aircraft carriers undertaken solely because Trump disliked their original appearance — as key contributors to ballooning borrowing.

    Krugman added that the nation’s deficit outlook would be far more stable today if not for the large, inequality-widening tax cuts rammed through by successive Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, both of which heavily favored high-income households.

    Data from Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, backs up these claims. In a 2023 analysis, Kogan found that tax cuts passed under the Bush administration and during Trump’s first term accounted for 57% of the total growth in the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001. When one-time emergency spending to address the 2008 Great Recession and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is excluded from calculations, that share jumps to more than 90% of all debt ratio growth over the period.

    Just last summer, Trump signed into law yet another massive tax cut package that will deliver disproportionate benefits to wealthy households and large corporations, and is projected to add trillions of additional dollars to the national debt over the coming decade.

    Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich highlighted a further layer of inequity in the current system in his Thursday commentary. “From now on, whenever you hear someone fret about how huge, horrible, and out-of-control the national debt is, explain to them that it’s largely because of tax cuts to the wealthy – who are also the major recipients of interest on that debt,” Reich wrote.

    The $40 trillion debt milestone was reached several months earlier than independent forecasters initially projected, a gap partially attributed to lost federal revenue from Trump’s trade tariffs that were later invalidated by federal courts.

    Democratic lawmakers have joined economists in calling out Republican fiscal hypocrisy. “Before his second term is even over, Donald Trump is responsible for more than $10 trillion of this,” Representative Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania wrote Thursday. “Just INTEREST on this debt is now sucking up more of our public money than even the military and Medicare. DC Republicans are leaving our kids a colossal mess to clean up.”

  • 2,500 dead and rising — UN says DR Congo Ebola outbreak ‘growing exponentially’

    2,500 dead and rising — UN says DR Congo Ebola outbreak ‘growing exponentially’

    An Ebola outbreak raging across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is spreading at an exponential rate, with the official death toll surging past 2,500 and half of those fatalities recorded in just the last 20 days, the United Nations’ senior Ebola response coordinator confirmed Friday.

    This outbreak, the 17th recorded Ebola event in DRC history, is already the deadliest the country has ever faced, and is expanding faster than any previous Ebola outbreak on record. Speaking to reporters via remote connection from Bunia – the outbreak’s epicenter – Julien Harneis, the UN’s top coordinator for the crisis, painted a stark picture of the rapidly worsening situation.

    “The epidemic is spreading widely. It’s now covering an area that is bigger than France…. It is growing faster and wider than the Ebola response,” Harneis said. Experts believe the outbreak began spreading quietly for several weeks before it was officially declared by DRC authorities on May 15, giving the virus a critical head start on containment efforts.

    The virus has taken hold primarily in northern and eastern regions of DRC, where long-standing systemic vulnerabilities have created a perfect environment for unchecked spread: weak central government presence, crumbling and under-resourced health infrastructure, and decades of activity by dozens of armed armed groups that have destabilized communities.

    The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) echoed the UN’s alarm Friday, warning the outbreak is accelerating “at an alarming rate.” “This epidemic continues to spread, moving faster than the response can keep up,” MSF president Javid Abdelmoneim said in an official statement.

    The ongoing response effort has faced widespread criticism for its slow rollout and poor coordination, and is further complicated by deep-rooted mistrust of medical authorities among local populations. To date, confirmed cases have been reported across six DRC provinces, with some cases detected near the South Sudan border and a previous cluster in neighboring Uganda. Uganda, which recorded 20 cases and two deaths before containing its outbreak, declared itself Ebola-free last month.

    Complicating response efforts further, the current outbreak is driven by the Bundibugyo Ebola strain, for which no specifically approved vaccine or targeted treatment exists, though multiple clinical trials are currently underway. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday that DRC will receive 70,000 doses of Ervebo, an approved vaccine that has proven highly effective against the more common Zaire Ebola strain.

    Earlier this month, WHO vaccine experts endorsed a full-scale human trial of Ervebo to test whether it provides cross-protection against the Bundibugyo strain. While early data from animal trials suggests the vaccine may offer partial protection, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier emphasized Friday that “it is not yet known whether Ervebo is protective against the Bundibugyo virus in humans.”

    Bringing the outbreak under control, which spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids and causes life-threatening hemorrhagic fever, faces a host of additional barriers. Harneis pointed to widespread insecurity across eastern DRC and a chronically weak public health system as major obstacles.

    “The law and order is undermined, and the basic services, particularly health, have been fragmented,” he said, describing working conditions for frontline responders as “brutal.” Since the outbreak began, 160 healthcare workers have contracted Ebola, and 43 of those workers have died. Frontline teams have also faced repeated targeted attacks on ambulances and response facilities.

    Harneis added that a barely functional banking system has made it difficult to deliver timely wages to response workers, while recent cuts to international funding have reduced the response capacity of humanitarian organizations operating in the region by one third.

    In closing, Harneis issued an urgent call for expanded international support and resources. “If we provide more staffing, if we get more resources into remote areas across … the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, within months we can slow the transmission and move to stopping it,” he said. “If we do not, … then this epidemic will become more deadly. It will spread wider and it risks to spread into neighbouring countries.”

  • Rosenberg: Shortage of petrol but not patriotism as Russians feel growing impact of war

    Rosenberg: Shortage of petrol but not patriotism as Russians feel growing impact of war

    In the sweltering late summer days of August 2026, motorists across Moscow and large swathes of Russia are trapped in a growing fuel crisis, triggered by sustained Ukrainian drone attacks on key oil refining infrastructure that have plunged daily life into disruption.

    At a petrol station in southeast Moscow, 58-year-old driver Svyatoslav has sat idling in a two-hour queue, only to watch the facility’s digital sign flip to a stark notification: no fuel available. With barely any fuel left in his tank to reach another station, he holds out faint hope that a new delivery will arrive soon. “They say there will be petrol here, they just don’t know when. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow,” he says, his quiet optimism belying the scale of the shortage gripping the capital.

    This is not an isolated incident. This week, lines of dozens, even hundreds of vehicles have stretched for blocks from petrol stations across the city, with wait times stretching into hours for drivers desperate to fill their tanks. In one station alone, 80 vehicles were counted waiting in a single line. For many motorists, the scramble for fuel has become a daily grind. Elizaveta, another driver waiting in line, recalled waiting until midnight the previous night just to reach the pump, only for the station to close for two hours before she could refuel. Lyubov, who drove into Moscow from a provincial region, said every station she passed along her route was completely empty. To calm her nerves during the hours-long wait, she gently strokes her small pet dog Agatha in the passenger seat.

    Russian officials have attributed the shortage to unscheduled maintenance at domestic oil refineries – a framing that omits the direct cause of these repairs: repeated long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on refining facilities. These attacks first sparked widespread fuel shortages earlier this summer, and targeting of oil infrastructure has continued unabated. This second wave of shortages has produced even longer queues than the first, and Russian authorities are struggling to address gaps in refining capacity and supply chain logistics. Leading Russian broadsheet *Nezavisimaya Gazeta* declared this week that “the second wave of the fuel crisis is building.”

    The irony of the crisis is impossible to ignore: Russia, long billed as a global energy superpower and one of the world’s top crude oil exporters, has been forced to take extraordinary emergency measures to stem the shortage. The Kremlin has authorized imports of finished petrol to boost domestic supply, and temporarily lifted a 13-year ban on lower-grade Euro 2 petrol, a high-sulfur fuel phased out over environmental and engine health concerns. While faster to produce than modern Euro 5 fuel, state newspaper *Rossiyskaya Gazeta* warned that regular use of Euro 2 damages critical engine components including fuel injectors, spark plugs, catalytic converters and soot filters – while a single tank will not destroy an engine, it drastically cuts an engine’s operational lifespan and safety margin.

    The fuel shortage is not the only way the Ukraine war has been brought home to ordinary Russians. Recent Ukrainian strikes on logistics centers for Wildberries, Russia’s largest domestic e-commerce platform equivalent to Amazon, have disrupted online shopping and caused significant financial losses for small sellers across the country.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged that these attacks on industrial and energy infrastructure do cause damage, but has downplayed the severity of the crisis. “There are no critical consequences from such attacks. There have not been and cannot be,” Putin said this week, urging the public not to panic. But independent observers and recent polling suggest a growing gap between the Kremlin’s official narrative and public sentiment.

    Andrei Kolesnikov, a columnist for independent Russian outlet *Novaya Gazeta*, argues there is a fundamental disconnect between Putin’s framing of the situation and the reality ordinary Russians experience. “It is a disconnect between people’s feelings and the description of reality by Vladimir Putin, the description of his personal reality in his head,” Kolesnikov said. “Maybe he’s trying to hypnotise himself that everything is okay.”

    Recent polling from Russia’s Public Opinion Foundation confirms that public anxiety is rising, and the Kremlin’s call for “keep calm and carry on” is failing to resonate with the public. “This permanent feeling of anxiety is with everyone right now. You feel that something is wrong. Anxiety is the main sentiment,” Kolesnikov explained. He added that the Russian government has failed to outline any clear vision for the future, leaving the public with a very short planning horizon and a reluctance to think long-term.

    Just minutes from the petrol stations choked with queues, a stark contrast played out across Moscow this week for Russian Flag Day: state-organized patriotic events featuring street concerts, free candyfloss for families, and public displays of military hardware, including Kalashnikov rifles and hand-held rocket launchers that children were invited to handle and pose with. The event highlights the growing militarization of everyday Russian society, and the Kremlin’s efforts to maintain public morale amid growing hardship.

    For some Russians, the difficulties have reinforced patriotic unity. “Difficulties unite us. The harder things are, the stronger we get,” said pensioner Tatyana, who attended the Flag Day event. But for many others, the fuel shortages and drone attacks have created a persistent undercurrent of fear and uncertainty. “When you go to sleep you don’t know if you’ll wake up in the morning,” said Muscovite Angelina. Another resident added: “The problems we have are high prices, petrol shortages and last night, for the first time, my windows shook…I heard ‘boom boom!’”

    Many ordinary Russians report feeling powerless to change the situation, saying the only option available to them is to adapt and maintain their psychological strength. “Right now, it’s important to take care of your psychological state, so that it’s strong and unbreakable. So that, whatever happens, you can say: ‘Oh well, never mind,’” one resident said. Even as state events keep patriotism on full display, for millions of Russians across Moscow, the daily struggle to find petrol has made the cost of the war impossible to ignore.

  • Prince Harry and 6 others to learn initial cost of failed Daily Mail case

    Prince Harry and 6 others to learn initial cost of failed Daily Mail case

    LONDON – A high-stakes legal battle between a group of high-profile public figures, led by Britain’s Prince Harry and music icon Elton John, and the publisher of the Daily Mail is entering its final financial chapter this Friday, as the courts prepare to unveil how much the losing claimants will owe in up-front legal costs.

    The case wrapped up last month at London’s High Court, when Justice Matthew Nicklin dismissed the group’s claims that Associated Newspapers Ltd., the parent company of the Daily Mail, had engaged in unlawful privacy violations including phone hacking and private investigator surveillance to gather sensitive information on the claimants. In his ruling, Nicklin found that the claimants had failed to produce sufficient evidence to back their allegations, and noted that much of the disputed reporting could be traced to legitimate journalistic sources. Associated Newspapers has repeatedly and vigorously denied all accusations of unlawful activity throughout the 11-week trial, which concluded on July 7.

    Joining Harry and John as co-claimants are a roster of well-known public figures: Doreen Lawrence, the prominent anti-racism activist whose son Stephen was murdered in a 1993 racist attack; David Furnish, Elton John’s husband and a leading film producer; actors Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley; and former politician Simon Hughes.

    Friday’s ruling will clarify the total financial liability the losing side faces, as well as the schedule for paying the outstanding balance after the initial interim payment. Court documents show the defendant, Associated Newspapers, has requested an interim payment of more than 9.9 million pounds, while the claimants’ legal team has argued the up-front amount should be capped at just over 7.9 million pounds. Total accrued legal costs for the publisher amount to roughly 34 million pounds (equivalent to $46 million), and industry estimates indicate the claimants’ insurance policies cover approximately half of that total. That leaves the up-front payment, which could reach as high as 10 million pounds, as the first major financial order the court will issue.

    The upcoming ruling comes just two days after the public announcement that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are preparing to move back to the U.K. after more than six years of self-imposed exile in California. The couple, who stepped down as working members of the British royal family in 2020, will take up residence in a private non-royal home outside London.

    This failed case against Associated Newspapers closes out the third of three high-profile legal actions Prince Harry has brought against British tabloid publishers over allegations of unlawful information-gathering tactics. The prince notched two prior legal wins: in 2023, a judge ruled against the publisher of the Daily Mirror, finding evidence of “widespread and habitual” phone targeting of Harry. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun issued an unprecedented public apology for years of invasions of Harry’s privacy and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle the claim out of court.

    For Harry, this series of legal actions represents far more than personal grievance: he has long framed his fight against the British tabloid press as a campaign to reform an industry he blames for deep personal harm. The prince has openly stated that his decision to take the press to court – a break from longstanding royal tradition of avoiding public litigation – was a core reason for his public rift with his father, King Charles III, and elder brother Prince William. His resentment of the press dates back to the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris while being chased by paparazzi photographers. Harry has also argued that relentless negative press coverage of Meghan pushed the couple to leave their royal roles and relocate to North America, saying the years of intrusion left him “paranoid beyond belief.”

  • Peru earthquake damages buildings and causes power cuts

    Peru earthquake damages buildings and causes power cuts

    A 6.7-magnitude earthquake rattled a remote stretch of the Andes Mountains in southern Peru on Thursday, leaving a trail of damaged infrastructure and three non-critically injured people, according to local and international seismic and emergency officials.

    The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) placed the quake’s epicenter roughly 31 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of the tiny settlement of Aniso in the Ayacucho region, hitting at approximately 1 p.m. local time (6 p.m. GMT) at a depth of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Seismic authorities in Peru recorded a higher magnitude of 7.2 for the event. Shaking from the quake was detected across broad swathes of the country, even reaching the capital city of Lima located more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the impact zone.

    Peru’s National Institute of Civil Defence confirmed that the seismic event caused damage to more than a dozen infrastructure sites across the southern highlands. In addition to the 22 residential homes and six schools damaged in Ayacucho reported by Defense Minister Rafael Belaunde, 10 healthcare facilities in the region also sustained damage. Two additional medical centers were impacted in the adjacent Cusco region, though all health services have remained fully operational throughout the affected areas. Approximately 9,000 residential properties across the impact zone lost power following the quake, and the total count of damaged educational facilities has risen to nine. Photographs from Pausa, a Peruvian town located roughly 74 kilometers (46 miles) from the epicenter, show thick dust clouding the air in the wake of the tremor.

    Peru is no stranger to frequent seismic activity, as its territory sits along the volatile convergent boundary where the Nazca tectonic plate slides beneath the South American tectonic plate. Thursday’s quake marks the latest in a string of powerful seismic events to hit South America in recent months, coming on the heels of two deadly major quakes that struck the northern part of the continent. In late June, a pair of large earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 hit Venezuela just 39 seconds apart, leaving more than 6,000 people dead according to local official counts. A 7.4-magnitude quake that hit Colombia on August 10 has claimed more than 300 lives, and the national government declared a national state of emergency in response to the disaster.

    As of the latest updates, emergency response teams are coordinating assessments of the damage across the affected Andean regions, with no reports of fatalities connected to Thursday’s earthquake released to the public.

  • China moves to wrap up saga of troubled property giant Evergrande after founder gets life sentence

    China moves to wrap up saga of troubled property giant Evergrande after founder gets life sentence

    Nearly five years after Chinese property giant China Evergrande defaulted on a staggering $300 billion in total liabilities, Chinese authorities have launched the final phase of resolving one of the largest corporate collapses in global history.

    On Friday, a court in Guangzhou, the capital of southern China’s Guangdong province, confirmed it has accepted a bankruptcy liquidation petition targeting Evergrande’s core onshore property development unit — the entity responsible for the vast majority of the group’s total outstanding debt. The court filing comes just one day after a Shenzhen court handed down a life prison sentence to 67-year-old Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, also known as Xu Jiayin, on multiple financial crime charges. Dozens of other co-defendants with ties to the embattled conglomerate, including two of Hui’s sons, were also sentenced to prison terms ranging up to 18 years. The Shenzhen court additionally ordered full confiscation of Hui’s personal assets; once ranked China’s richest person, Hui currently has an estimated $7.7 billion in global assets that have already been frozen under a Hong Kong court order.

    Industry restructuring specialists say the sequence of legal actions makes clear that Chinese regulators have a clear timeline to bring the years-long Evergrande crisis to a close. “Beijing appears to already have a clear road map for wrapping up the entire Evergrande saga,” explained Foreky Wong, founding partner of Hong Kong-based restructuring advisory Fortune Ark. “These procedural steps were inevitable, but they have moved forward sooner than many market observers expected.” Still, Wong cautioned that given Evergrande’s unprecedented scale, the full bankruptcy and liquidation process will extend over multiple years.

    The Evergrande collapse first erupted in 2020, when Chinese regulators introduced strict new limits on excessive borrowing among real estate developers to cool overheated housing markets. The policy crackdown triggered a sudden liquidity crisis for Evergrande, which at the time was the world’s most indebted developer, and sparked a domino effect of defaults across China’s property sector that plunged the industry into a deep, prolonged downturn. For years prior to the crisis, real estate served as the primary engine of China’s economic growth, accounting for roughly a quarter of total national GDP as recently as the late 2010s. Today, three years after Evergrande’s first default, average national home prices have fallen by roughly 20% or more, and the sector has shown few signs of a sustained recovery. Oversupply continues to plague hundreds of smaller tier cities across China, while broad domestic economic slowdown has eroded household consumer confidence and purchasing power, leaving demand far weaker than pre-crisis levels.

    Back in 2024, a Hong Kong court ordered the liquidation of Evergrande’s Cayman Islands-incorporated holding company, which was listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, after the group failed to reach a viable debt restructuring agreement with international creditors. But legal experts note that cross-jurisdictional complexities will significantly slow asset recovery efforts. Most of Evergrande’s assets and core operations are located on mainland China, which operates under a separate legal system from Hong Kong, leaving Hong Kong-appointed liquidators with very limited authority to seize and distribute onshore assets to creditors.

    Jonathan Leitch, a restructuring partner at international law firm Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, noted that the Guangzhou court’s ruling has opened a host of untested legal questions that will take years to resolve. “One of the biggest open questions is how competing claims on Hui Ka Yan’s personal assets will be prioritized, between mainland authorities and the Hong Kong liquidation team,” Leitch explained.

    Beyond pursuing Hui and other former Evergrande executives, liquidators have also launched legal action against Big Four accounting firm PwC, seeking $8.4 billion in damages over PwC’s role auditing Evergrande’s financial statements in the years leading up to its collapse. Regulatory investigations confirmed that Evergrande inflated its total revenue by roughly $80 billion across 2019 and 2020 through widespread financial manipulation. In 2024, mainland Chinese regulators fined PwC approximately $62 million for its audit failures, while Hong Kong regulators secured a $166 million fine and compensation settlement from the firm in April 2024.

    Most industry analysts agree that Evergrande’s creditors — both domestic and international — will only recoup a tiny fraction of the total money they are owed. Wong projects that even after all asset recoveries are complete, total creditor payouts will amount to only a single-digit percentage of Evergrande’s $300 billion in total liabilities.

  • Indonesia warns against starting open blazes as haze from wildfires spreads to Malaysia

    Indonesia warns against starting open blazes as haze from wildfires spreads to Malaysia

    JAKARTA, Indonesia – As massive wildfires on the island of Borneo churn out toxic, choking haze that has blanketed urban centers and drifted across international borders into neighboring Malaysia, Indonesian law enforcement and environmental officials announced Friday that strict legal penalties will be pursued against any individual found starting illegal open burns.

    The vast majority of the fire activity is concentrated on Borneo, the world’s third-largest island, which is split between three Southeast Asian nations: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. Indonesia controls around 75 percent of the island’s territory, and the country’s Ministry of Forestry has documented more than 5,000 distinct fire hot spots across its portion of Borneo. Local media reports confirm that the thick haze has smothered large swathes of Indonesia’s Kalimantan region, cutting visibility to as low as just 1 to 10 meters in the most affected areas. This reduced visibility has already sparked multiple traffic collisions and forced flight delays across the region.

    Broadcast television footage from impacted areas shows streets, residential and commercial buildings, and public infrastructure completely obscured by thick gray smoke. Motorists have been forced to drive with full headlights activated during broad daylight, and outdoor photos show residents of all ages, including school-age children, wearing protective face masks to limit smoke inhalation.

    Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency explained that a strengthening El Niño weather pattern and an unusually long, dry dry season have created ideal conditions for the fires to spread rapidly out of control. The dense smoke plume generated by the blazes has drifted across the maritime border into Malaysia, where the eastern state of Sarawak has borne the brunt of the cross-border pollution. As of Friday, one Sarawak district registered “very unhealthy” air quality readings, while eight additional districts posted scores that fall into the unhealthy range. In response, the Sarawak state government has ordered the closure of nearly 600 schools, disrupting learning for roughly 200,000 enrolled students.

    On Indonesia’s side of Borneo, Central Kalimantan Police Chief Iwan Kurniawan confirmed that investigators have already taken 12 suspects into custody over the past week. The detainees are linked to allegations of arson and illegal land clearing to prepare ground for agricultural or plantation development, the common driver of annual fire seasons in the region. “Every forest and land fire incident in Central Kalimantan is investigated,” Kurniawan said, noting that authorities are still working to map the full scope of fire causes and hold all responsible parties accountable.

    Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni, who toured fire-ravaged areas near the Central Kalimantan provincial capital of Palangka Raya earlier this week, doubled down on the government’s pledge of harsh enforcement. “Whoever they are, big or small, without exception, anyone who destroys nature and forests will face strict legal action,” Antoni said.

    Across social media, affected residents have shared widespread accounts of physical distress, reporting ongoing breathing difficulties and growing anxiety about long-term respiratory and cardiovascular health risks from prolonged exposure to the hazardous smoke.

    The scale of this year’s fire season has already far outpaced early 2024 activity. In the 24-hour period ending Friday, Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry detected 11,908 hot spots nationwide, almost double the 6,352 hot spots recorded just one day prior. Independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas reports that roughly 182,000 hectares (450,000 acres) of land were consumed by fire in July alone — an area nearly twice the size of the total scorched across the first six months of the year. To date, the total burned area across Indonesia this fire season has reached approximately 285,000 hectares (704,000 acres).

    Transboundary haze has become a recurring annual crisis for Southeast Asia, particularly during intense El Niño cycles that extend dry seasons across Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan regions. Indonesian authorities have long confirmed that most wildfires in the region are deliberately ignited by parties seeking to clear forest and peatland inexpensively for commercial plantation development, most often for palm oil and pulpwood production. This annual fire activity repeatedly blankets large swathes of Indonesia and neighboring countries in hazardous air pollution that endangers public health across the region.

    Associated Press reporters Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed reporting to this article.

  • Australian travellers bound for Fiji to be hit with new tourism tax, travel industry slams ‘broken promise’

    Australian travellers bound for Fiji to be hit with new tourism tax, travel industry slams ‘broken promise’

    One of the most beloved overseas holiday spots for Australian travelers is set to become costlier starting next month, after Fiji’s government approved a new tourism-focused tax as part of its 2026-27 national budget. The new 5% levy, scheduled to take effect on September 1, applies to large tourism operators — including accommodation providers, cruise lines, and tour companies — with annual turnovers exceeding FJ$2 million, equal to roughly AU$1.3 million.

    Fiji remains a top 10 most popular international holiday destination for Australian tourists, and industry leaders from across the Australia and New Zealand travel sectors have raised urgent warnings that the additional tax burden will ultimately be passed on to visiting travelers. Critically, the levy applies to all trips starting on or after September 1, including bookings that were finalized and paid for long before the new tax was approved, a provision that has drawn fierce condemnation from major travel industry associations.

    Dean Long, chief executive of the Australian Travel Industry Association, issued a scathing rebuke of the policy, arguing that its structure and rollout demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of how the global travel booking system operates. Once a traveler pays for a holiday package, the price is locked in, Long explained, meaning the retrospective application of the new levy leaves operators and travelers in an untenable position. Sending an additional bill after a booking has already been paid is not legitimate tax policy, he said, but rather a broken promise to travelers who chose Fiji as their holiday destination in good faith.

    Long added that the unclear rollout will create widespread confusion for travelers with pre-booked trips starting after the September 1 implementation date, and that both consumers and local travel businesses will bear the cost of the policy’s flaws. Julie White, chief executive of the Travel Agents’ Association of New Zealand, echoed these criticisms, noting that the only fair outcome would be to exempt existing pre-paid bookings from the new levy through a grandfathering clause.

    Fijian officials have defended the new measure, explaining that all revenue generated by the levy will be specifically allocated to support Fiji Airways, the country’s national flag carrier, which is still working to rebuild its operations and financial stability after devastating disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials project the levy will generate approximately FJ$70 million, equal to AU$44.7 million, to fund the airline’s recovery.

  • Remains found of American mountain climber who died in an avalanche on Pakistan’s Broad Peak

    Remains found of American mountain climber who died in an avalanche on Pakistan’s Broad Peak

    Nearly two months after a catastrophic avalanche swept away an international mountaineering expedition on Pakistan’s Broad Peak, search operations have concluded with the recovery of the last missing climber, 39-year-old American mountaineer Mallory Geis. Pakistan Alpine Club president Irfan Arshad Khan confirmed Friday that a crew of local volunteer searchers located Geis’ remains, bringing closure to the massive search operation launched after the July 31 incident that claimed the lives of all 10 members of the expedition.

    Geis, a resident of San Antonio, Texas, had embarked on the Broad Peak expedition as her first attempt to summit one of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 meters, which stands at 26,247 feet above sea level. Earlier this year, she shared her ambitious life shift on social media: she had closed her local Pilates studio to step into what she called “a giant leap of faith into the unknown to see where life goes.” She added at the time that she suspected her future would hold “lots of helmets, harnesses, and crampons,” leaning fully into her passion for high-altitude climbing.

    In the weeks following the avalanche, Geis’ family released a public statement honoring her memory, describing her as “a bright light who was loved deeply by family and friends.”

    The ill-fated expedition was led by Nirmal Purja, a Nepal-born former British Army soldier better known to the climbing community as Nims Dai. Purja earned global fame for his groundbreaking 2019 achievement of scaling all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in a record-breaking 189 days, a feat that was later chronicled in the popular Netflix documentary *14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible*. Purja’s speed record was ultimately broken by another climber in 2023.

    High-altitude climbing expeditions in northern Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, where Broad Peak is located, carry inherently high risk. Avalanches, falling ice and rock, severe altitude sickness, and rapidly shifting weather patterns make fatal accidents a common occurrence for climbing teams operating in the region.