A dangerous wildlife incident has disrupted operations at a Japanese steel manufacturing facility after a brown bear launched an unprovoked attack on site Tuesday, leaving one man with direct injuries and three additional people hurt in the chaos. As of the latest updates, the aggressive animal has not been captured and is still roaming within the secured boundaries of the factory compound, prompting urgent safety warnings for all workers at the location. Local emergency response teams have been dispatched to the site to conduct a systematic search for the bear, while factory management has implemented temporary restricted access to areas of the plant that are considered high-risk. The extent of the victims’ injuries has not yet been released to the public, but authorities have confirmed that all injured people have received emergency medical care following the attack. Wildlife experts note that such bear incursions into industrial spaces in Japan have become more frequent in recent years as habitat overlap between humans and wild animals increases, highlighting growing challenges for balancing industrial activity and wildlife conservation in rural and semi-rural industrial zones. Safety officials are urging all on-site personnel to remain vigilant and report any sightings of the animal immediately to response teams, who are working around the clock to apprehend the bear before another incident can occur.
作者： admin
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Peabo Bryson, R&B singer behind Beauty and the Beast, dies aged 75
The world of music and film is mourning the loss of iconic R&B singer Peabo Bryson, whose smooth, powerful vocals defined some of the most beloved Disney soundtracks in modern cinematic history. Bryson, best known for recording the Grammy-winning classics *Beauty and the Beast* and *A Whole New World*, passed away at the age of 75 on Tuesday evening.
In a formal statement released to the public, Bryson’s family confirmed that he died peacefully while surrounded by close family and loved ones at his side. While no official cause of death has been made public, the singer suffered a major stroke over the weekend prior to his passing and had been receiving ongoing medical care following the health event.
Bryson’s career spanned an extraordinary five decades in the entertainment industry, launching his first charting hits in the 1970s and continuing to produce beloved work well into the 2010s. Beyond his globally recognized Disney collaborations, he built a robust solo catalog of fan-favorite tracks that include *Feel the Fire*, *Reaching for the Sky*, *I’m So Into You*, *If Ever You’re In My Arms Again*, and *Can You Stop the Rain*. For generations of listeners, his work became the backdrop to life’s most meaningful moments, from romantic milestones to quiet moments of comfort.
“For more than five decades, Peabo’s extraordinary voice served as the soundtrack to some of life’s most cherished moments,” his family shared in the statement. “His music carried generations through joyful celebrations, great love stories and enduring moments of comfort and inspiration, creating a legacy that will forever live in the hearts of those who loved him and the countless lives he touched through song.”
Bryson’s most decorated professional achievements came from his iconic Disney collaborations, which earned him two Grammy Awards across 1992 and 1993. His 1992 duet of *Beauty and the Beast* with Celine Dion, recorded for the animated classic of the same name, took home the award for Best Pop Performance by a Group or Duo With Vocals. The following year, his duet *A Whole New World* with Regina Belle, created for Disney’s *Aladdin*, won the same Grammy category, along with the award for Song of the Year. Both tracks remain cultural touchstones that define the golden age of Disney animation for millions of fans worldwide.
“While our hearts are broken, we find comfort in knowing how deeply Peabo was loved and how many lives were touched by his voice and his generous spirit,” the family added. “His legacy and music will live on for generations to come.”
Just weeks before his passing, Bryson remained active in his career. In mid-May, he took the stage for a joint concert with fellow R&B star Jeffrey Osborne in Georgia, United States. He had also planned a series of performances later this year as part of his *Golden Touch Tour*, a celebration marking his 50 years working in the music industry. As recently as April, Bryson celebrated his 75th birthday with friends and family, sharing photos from the joyous gathering with his followers on social media.
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Women say they were raped and ransomed by fighters in Sudan’s ongoing war
As Sudan’s brutal civil war stretches into its fourth year, survivors are breaking a long-standing cultural taboo to expose a horrific pattern of widespread sexual violence, abduction, and extortion being carried out by the country’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group blamed for the majority of these abuses. In on-the-record interviews with the Associated Press, three survivors shared graphic, harrowing accounts of their captivity, shining a new light on a crisis the United Nations has labeled one of the most defining characteristics of Sudan’s ongoing conflict.
The first survivor, a 38-year-old woman whose identity is being protected in line with standard reporting practice for sexual assault victims, fled her besieged home in el-Fasher, Darfur, in September 2024, just weeks before RSF forces captured the city in an assault the UN has confirmed bears the hallmarks of genocide. Her husband, a soldier, had already been killed in fighting, and her brother had been shot and critically wounded, requiring urgent medical care that could not be accessed in the embattled city. As the pair traveled to seek safety, RSF fighters ambushed their convoy.
Fighters separated women and children from male passengers, searching all men for shoulder marks that would indicate past military service. Everyone was forced to strip completely. When fighters moved to execute her wounded brother, the woman volunteered herself to take his place. She was bound, beaten, and thrown into the back of a truck alongside four other abducted women and teenage girls, who were then driven to an isolated, abandoned desert village.
For two days, the 38-year-old and the other captives were held naked, unfed, and bound in an open shelter, unable to move and forced to lie in their own waste. Multiple RSF fighters repeatedly raped the women, entering the shelter to select victims, assault them, and rebind them afterwards. “I was thinking about ending my life,” the survivor recalled, wiping away tears during the interview.
On the second day of captivity, her captors demanded a $1,500 ransom for her release. They gave her a mobile phone, ordering her to drain her bank account and contact relatives for additional funds. She transferred all she had, roughly $200, before being forced to reach out to her cousin on Facebook. After the cousin sent a second payment, fighters tortured the woman in front of him over a call, pressing a heated metal object into her fingernails to force more money. By the time she was released, her family had paid a total of roughly $700. Today, she remains haunted by the fates of the other women who could not raise their ransoms. Rights activists confirm most captives who cannot pay simply disappear in captivity.
Her account is not an isolated case. A second survivor, 30, was abducted from a Khartoum market in 2024 after the RSF seized control of the capital. She was held in a remote compound for two weeks, forced to cook, clean, tend cattle and bathe fighters, and raped every single night. Even after her relative in the United States paid a $1,250 ransom, her captors initially refused to release her. Only the unexpected compassion of one fighter, who smuggled her out under cover of night, secured her freedom. “They never missed a day … I have nightmares,” she told the AP.
The third survivor, abducted near Dilling in South Kordofan, was held for nine days, beaten and raped, before her family paid for her release in September 2024.
International bodies and conflict analysts have confirmed these individual stories reflect a growing national crisis. The United Nations has documented that sexual assault rates have skyrocketed since the war between the RSF and Sudan’s regular military began in 2023, and that most documented abuses are linked to the RSF, with hotspots including Khartoum, Darfur, Gezira state, and increasingly, expanding conflict zones in South Kordofan. While all warring parties have been accused of sexual violence by the UN and human rights groups, the RSF has been linked to the vast majority of incidents. The RSF has not responded to repeated requests for comment on allegations of abduction, sexual assault, and ransom demands.
The UN has also confirmed that the abduction of women for sexual slavery, followed by ransom demands for their release, has become systemic. Ransoms can reach as high as $10,000 per captive. Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit conflict monitoring organization, shows reported incidents of ransom-linked abductions, including those involving sexual violence, have jumped nearly 195% since the war began through May 2025, with the RSF identified as the perpetrator in most cases. Sudanese conflict analyst Mohamed Younis predicts these crimes will only become more common as the RSF fragments following a series of high-level defections from the paramilitary group’s leadership.
For survivors and their families, the harm extends far beyond the physical and psychological trauma of assault. Local aid workers say raising ransom money pushes already vulnerable families into crushing poverty, forcing them to sell gold reserves, vehicles, and even homes to secure the release of their loved ones. Local support organizations like Bait Al Mohaba, which works with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, report they lack the funding to provide critical support, including life-saving medical treatment for survivors.
Aid funding gaps have been exacerbated by policy changes from the U.S. government: the previous Trump administration cut all $370 million in funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which provided critical support for survivors of gender-based violence in more than 25 countries including Sudan. The cut was based on unsubstantiated claims of coercive abortion ties in China that UNFPA has repeatedly rejected. While Sudan still receives more than $220 million in U.S. humanitarian funding for other needs this year, no replacement funding has filled the gap left by the UNFPA cut.
Today, the 38-year-old survivor lives in a Khartoum displaced persons camp, reunited with her wounded brother, but still struggling to rebuild her life. She sustained internal bleeding and fluid buildup from her assault, but cannot afford the life-saving surgery she needs. She carries heavy debts to the relatives who helped pay her ransom, some of whom have since been killed in the war; she says she vows to repay the money to their children, or donate it to charity in their names, just to find peace. She has turned to supporting other survivors in the camp, mentoring women and girls who have endured similar trauma, and holds onto the hope that the graphic photos she took of her battered body after her release will one day serve as evidence to hold her attackers accountable. “I thought about seeking justice one day,” she said.
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A wall of nametags at a South Korean park testifies to adoptees’ longing for their birth mothers
Against a misty, rain-dampened backdrop in Paju, a South Korean city just miles from the North Korean border, dozens of Korean adoptees who grew up across North America and Europe recently gathered at a former U.S. military base to add their names to a quiet, powerful memorial. Their goal: after decades apart, to leave a trace that a birth mother still searching for them might find.
The site, Omma Poom Park — its name translates to “mother’s embrace” in Korean — is home to a growing cobblestone monument covered in mesh, where adoptees hang handcrafted ceramic name tags that carry their details. As of the recent gathering, more than 900 tags hang like unmailed, waiting letters, a quiet testament to the mass separation of children from their parents that created what experts call the world’s largest adoptee diaspora.
Each hand-painted tag includes the adoptee’s full name, year of birth, and place of birth in Korea. Color coding marks the decade an adoption was finalized: most tags are red or sky blue, matching the peak decades of foreign adoption from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. White tags are reserved for adoptees who died without ever being reunited with their biological families. Among the dozens of tags, one laminated handwritten note flutters, left by anonymous birth parents searching for a daughter they named Bora: “You are not alone. You have a mother and a father. I’m so sorry and I love you.”
The history of foreign adoption from South Korea stretches back to the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, when the first wave of children sent abroad were mixed-race kids born to Korean women and U.S. soldiers, who were widely stigmatized as outcasts in Korean society at the time. Adoption numbers surged in the 1970s, when the country’s former military dictatorship pushed for large-scale foreign placement of full-Korean children, most often born to unwed mothers or families living in extreme poverty. From the 1970s through the mid-2000s, thousands of Korean children were sent to Western homes every year, with adoption numbers peaking at more than 6,600 placements annually in the 1980s, as the authoritarian government sought to reduce domestic population pressure.
After a yearslong advocacy campaign led by Paju-based photographer Lee Yong-nam and adoptee support nonprofit Me & Korea, Omma Poom Park opened to the public in June 2025. Lee, now 72, first became invested in adoption justice after spending decades searching for a Black-Korean childhood friend who was adopted to the United States as a child. “Adoptions continued unchecked and now the pain is surfacing,” he explained of the adoptees who travel to the park to add their names to the wall, most of whom are younger than the war generation that first saw widespread adoption.
On a neighboring hill overlooking the park, a converted former U.S. Army building operates as a dedicated museum that holds nearly 1,000 adoptee profiles, each featuring a photo, birth details, and a personal message to the adoptee’s birth mother.
One of those profiles belongs to Angela Lee-Pack, who was adopted by a family in Ontario, Canada, in 1971 when she was just 2 years old. Growing up, Lee-Pack endured severe abuse at the hands of her adoptive mother, including being locked in a closet without food, and later experienced further abuse in a second foster home before leaving at 15 and struggling for years to build a stable adult life. “I think about you every day and only wish the best for you,” she wrote to her biological mother. “I hope one day I will be able to know who I am.”
Lee-Pack has traveled to South Korea twice to search for her birth mother, posting flyers across Seoul and the southern city of Jeonju. During her first trip in 2019, a man contacted her believing she was the daughter of his late uncle. The lead gave her hope, but it slowly and painfully unraveled: eventually, the man tracked down a woman in her 70s whose background matched Lee-Pack’s adoption records, but she denied ever giving up a child and refused to meet. Lee-Pack collapsed in her hotel room and cried for hours. “Every time I look in the mirror I wonder who she is and what she looks like,” she said. “The thoughts never end.”
For Nicole Rieth, who was adopted to a family in Michigan at 4 months old in 1989, becoming a mother of two sons pushed her to launch her own search for her birth mother. Her adoption records note that she was the third child of a Seoul couple who surrendered her shortly after birth in 1988, citing extreme financial hardship at a time when the government was aggressively pressuring families to limit their number of children. Rieth first began her search in 2024, but letters sent by her adoption agency to her birth mother’s last known address went unanswered. She is now continuing her search through South Korea’s National Center for the Rights of the Child, a government agency, in the hopes that her sons will one day know the cultural heritage she never got to grow up with.
“I kind of don’t allow myself to hope because the whole journey has been a roller coaster of hoping, finding something out, and diving down into hopelessness, getting a glimmer of a maybe,” Rieth said. “And yet I want to exhaust every effort … so that there are no regrets.” For her, the act of putting her name on the wall at Omma Poom is not about forcing a relationship with her birth mother. “I’ve just always wanted to know who I looked like, because I’ve never had that before,” she explained.
Decades of unregulated adoption have left deep, lasting scars on both adoptees and their biological families. At the peak of foreign adoption, South Korean authorities largely turned a blind eye to rampant systemic fraud, including illegal procurement of children from hospitals and orphanages and deliberate falsification of children’s origins to speed up international placements. Tens of thousands of children were falsely labeled as abandoned orphans to make them eligible for adoption, leaving generations of adoptees with no clear information about their identity, family history, or the circumstances of their separation. On the other side, birth mothers were often pressured to surrender children born out of wedlock, some were separated from their children without their full consent, and many spent decades searching only to learn their children were sent overseas with falsified paperwork.
The recent gathering at Omma Poom came just weeks after a group of birth mothers formally asked South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to open an investigation into the illegal adoptions of their children, joining hundreds of existing fraud and abuse claims filed by adoptees across the globe.
Jalyn Smith, who was adopted to Michigan in 1993, had her adoption agency locate her birth mother in 2021. According to adoption records, the woman had surrendered Smith after separating from Smith’s biological father — but she declined to meet or have any contact. Five years later, Smith is continuing her search, and chose to add her name to the memorial wall. “Hanging it up, I felt proud,” Smith said. “I feel proud to be part of this community, though it comes with a lot of conflicting feelings of sadness and anger and grief.”
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Senior SA doctors use ‘professional development’ fund for expensive watches, iPads and trips to Disneyland
An explosive investigation by South Australia’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has exposed widespread misuse of a taxpayer-backed professional development fund, revealing that senior medical practitioners across the state have claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in lavish, personal expenses through the program.
Launched to cover legitimate professional development costs for registered consultants, practicing doctors and medical registrars, the scheme allows eligible clinicians to claim up to $23,000 in reimbursements every calendar year. Official data shows that between April 2025 and April 2026 alone, SA Health allocated $64 million in public funds to the initiative, which was designed to help clinicians stay updated on evolving clinical practices and maintain high standards of patient care.
Instead of supporting legitimate training and education, the ICAC probe uncovered a pattern of brazen abuse, with senior medics filing claims for a litany of personal luxury items and leisure trips that have no connection to professional development. Among the most staggering abuses documented by investigators: one senior medical officer claimed reimbursement for a single luxury watch priced at $23,000, and accumulated a total of $49,000 in reimbursements for four luxury watches over a three-year period. The same clinician also submitted a $68,600 claim for a range of Apple consumer devices, including four watches, five iPads and four smartphones. Other outlandish claims documented in the report include a $3,400 five-day Disneyland trip for four people, $23,000 in flights and accommodation for the French Alps to attend an entirely online conference, a $12,000 personal wellness retreat in Bali, a $7,340 premium workbag and a $1,260 luxury fountain pen.
ICAC Commissioner Emma Townsend noted that the widespread misuse of funds stems from a critical lack of clear guidelines defining what qualifies as eligible professional development spending. “There is no doubt that the lack of clarity has contributed to the wide range of claims identified during the evaluation, including examples that, on the surface, appear to blur the lines between professional and personal development,” Townsend said in the commission’s official report. She emphasized that while ongoing professional development is an essential pillar of a high-functioning public health system, large-scale public investment requires accountability to the community. “However, with significant public investment comes a responsibility to ensure those funds are used for their intended purpose and deliver value to the public health system and community,” she added.
In response to the findings, the ICAC has put forward a series of targeted recommendations to curb future abuse, centered on introducing clear, binding definitions of eligible professional development activities and strengthening oversight of the claims approval process. SA Health Chief Executive Robyn Lawrence confirmed that the department accepts all of the commission’s recommendations, noting that the vast majority of participating medical officers use the funding appropriately for legitimate professional development. “However, SA Health accepts all the recommendations outlined in the report, which will provide our medical officers with greater clarity over appropriate professional development spending and ultimately increase protection against corruption, misconduct and maladministration,” Lawrence said.
Work to update the scheme’s guidelines was initially paused pending the outcome of the ICAC review, but Lawrence confirmed preliminary discussions with the South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association began last year to develop clear guidance for line managers reviewing professional development funding applications.
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Rubio says US will only provide sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for nuclear concessions
In remarks before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out an uncompromising new set of terms for any future agreement with Iran, tying any rollback of US economic sanctions exclusively to Tehran’s full surrender of its nuclear enrichment program. The hardline position directly rejects Iran’s longstanding demand that economic relief, including the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held abroad, be included as a core component of any phased ceasefire deal.
Rubio emphasized that the existing sanctions regime against Iran is directly tied to its nuclear activities, particularly its production of highly enriched uranium. “If they agree to give up those things, there will be sanctions relief,” he told committee members, adding that Tehran must commit to either accepting strict, long-term limitations on its enrichment work or abandoning the program entirely.
The top US diplomat noted that Iran has recently signaled a willingness to discuss elements of its nuclear program that it had previously refused to negotiate, though he declined to share specific details of any backchannel discussions. His account conflicts sharply with an official statement issued by Tehran just last Friday, which flatly denied that any nuclear negotiations are currently underway.
Rubio’s comments also make clear that the US is in no position to release the billions in frozen Iranian assets that Tehran has demanded as a prerequisite to extending a current ceasefire. Last week, Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reiterated that the release of these funds is a “legal right” of the Iranian people, and Iranian state media has made clear that any ceasefire agreement will not be finalized without concrete economic concessions from the West.
Beyond the nuclear file, Rubio also issued a firm rejection of Iran’s reported plans to impose tolls on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global chokepoint for oil and natural gas shipments. “They have to announce very clearly, ‘The straits are now open, we’re not charging a toll’”, Rubio said, adding that Washington also demands Iran stop firing on passing commercial vessels and assist in removing mines that US officials claim Iran has placed across large stretches of the waterway. Iran has not yet publicly responded to Rubio’s claims about mined waters.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states may only claim up to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, split between territorial waters controlled by Iran and Oman. International law explicitly bars coastal states bordering international straits from restricting transit or charging tolls on vessels passing through the waterway. Even so, legal experts interviewed by Middle East Eye note that Iran could find loopholes to impose charges – framing them as “piloting fees” or “service charges” – if it secures cooperation from Omani authorities.
The current diplomatic impasse comes against a backdrop of massive political upheaval in Iran following the outbreak of war. Early in the conflict, Israeli assassinations killed longtime Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials who had previously led nuclear talks with Western powers, including former national security advisor Ali Larijani. The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was severely wounded in an Israeli strike that killed most of his family, and has not appeared in public since the conflict began. He currently communicates with Iranian leadership and negotiators through an indirect, secure messaging system, and has only addressed the Iranian public via written press statements. Rubio told senators that US intelligence assesses the new supreme leader is taking an increasingly active role in guiding Iran’s negotiating positions. “I think there are indications out there that he is increasingly engaging at some level,” Rubio said.
Earlier in the conflict, former US President Donald Trump noted that negotiations with Tehran were complicated by political uncertainty, saying Washington did not have a clear picture of who held decision-making power in the country amid the post-assassination leadership reshuffle.
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Protesting teachers in Mexico topple player statues days before World Cup
Just days before Mexico City hosts the opening match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup co-hosted by Mexico, the United States and Canada, a high-profile labor protest has disrupted the capital’s pre-tournament calm and drawn global attention. On Tuesday, June 2, dissident teachers from Mexico’s national teachers’ union CNTE took to Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s iconic tree-lined central promenade dotted with skyscrapers, to push their unmet labor demands.
The stretch of the avenue had been lined with 5-meter-tall plastic statues of international football players, installed as part of pre-World Cup public celebrations. Using ropes, the protesting teachers pulled down three of the giant statues, stripped off the player uniforms draped on the mannequins and set the garments on fire. Graffiti in bright red paint was scrawled across one of the toppled nude mannequins reading “Long live the CNTE”, while another bore the message: “If there isn’t a solution, the ball won’t roll.” Notably, the statue decked out in Mexico’s national team kit remained standing through the action.
In a sign of the escalating tension between the dissident union wing and authorities, police had already deployed tear gas and sound grenades to break up a separate CNTE march on Monday near Mexico City’s historic Zocalo plaza, the site of the official World Cup Fan Fest. By Tuesday, crews were still reinforcing the perimeter of the plaza with metal barricades to prevent further disruptions. Tuesday’s statue-toppling action itself shut down key thoroughfares, compounding the chronic traffic congestion that plagues the Mexican capital. Notably, on-site police forces made no attempt to intervene to stop the protesters’ action.
The dissident CNTE faction, which has organized rolling protests across the country in recent weeks, is demanding a 100% increase to base teacher salaries and is vehemently opposing planned federal pension reforms. The group has already rejected a 9% pay increase that government negotiators agreed to with the union’s mainstream, government-aligned national leadership. Protesters have issued a clear warning: if the administration does not address their demands by the tournament’s opening match on June 11, they will stage mass demonstrations that disrupt the opening festivities.
Juan Pablo de la Cruz, a 44-year-old teacher participating in Tuesday’s protest, defended the group’s disruptive tactics, drawing a direct parallel between the statue action and the government’s labor policies. “If (President Claudia Sheinbaum) calls toppling some statues a crime, what would she call the act of taking away our rights? We need to be more firm,” he told reporters.
For her part, President Claudia Sheinbaum characterized the Tuesday protest as peaceful in public remarks, and a formal statement from her administration extended an invitation to the dissident union to resume negotiations to resolve the dispute. As the World Cup’s opening draw closer, the standoff between teachers and the government casts uncertainty over the smooth running of the global tournament’s opening activities in Mexico.
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Scientists find yeast in ancient Iceman’s guts — and make bread
More than five millennia before the present day, long before the final stones were placed on Egypt’s Great Pyramids, a Bronze Age traveler now known to the world as Ötzi the Iceman was fatally shot with an arrow through the back while crossing the Alpine tundra along the Austria-Italy border. His frozen corpse lay undisturbed deep in glacial ice for 5,300 years, until two German hikers accidentally uncovered his remarkably preserved mummy in Italy’s South Tyrol region in 1991.
Since that landmark discovery, Ötzi has been stored at a constant -6°C, replicating the frigid conditions of his glacial tomb to preserve his body for ongoing research. As one of the most intact ancient human mummies ever found, he has provided scientists with an unparalleled view of daily life, diet, and health during the Neolithic period. Now, a new study published Wednesday in the journal *Microbiome* has uncovered a surprising twist: Ötzi’s remains host active ancient and modern microbial communities, including four strains of cold-adapted yeast living in his gut, skin, and the meltwater that leaches from his partially thawed body.
Lead researcher Mohamed Sarhan, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, told reporters that the presence of surviving yeast was completely unexpected. “What we didn’t expect to find was yeast,” Sarhan explained in an interview with Agence France-Presse. All four isolated yeast strains are adapted to survive sub-zero temperatures, a rare trait most commonly seen in yeast communities native to extreme environments like Antarctica. Researchers say this confirms the yeast colonized Ötzi’s body after his death, rather than being part of his original living gut microbiome. Genetic testing showed that the yeast’s DNA damage levels are consistent with ancient microorganisms embedded in the Iceman’s tissues, leading the study team to conclude colonization occurred shortly after Ötzi died and froze.
“These yeasts have accompanied Oetzi on his long journey through the millennia,” said study co-author Frank Maixner in a public statement about the findings. After isolating the yeast strains, the team replicated them in cold laboratory conditions stored in a standard refrigerator. When word of the yeast discovery spread, the team faced the inevitable question: could this 5,000-year-old yeast be used to bake bread?
Initial baking attempts failed, but after three months of tweaking growing conditions and fermentation techniques, the team produced what Sarhan described as a “very, very good sourdough” loaf. When asked about future experiments, Sarhan joked that brewing beer with the ancient yeast is already “on the list” of upcoming projects. Beyond the novelty of baking with ancient yeast, the discovery holds serious practical applications for environmental science. After Ötzi was first discovered in 1991, conservation teams treated his body with phenol, a common chemical preservative used to stop fungal growth on cadavers. The team found that the isolated yeast can consume and break down phenol, meaning related strains could one day be used to remediate phenol contamination in polluted soil and water systems.
The yeast discovery is not the only groundbreaking insight from the new analysis of Ötzi’s microbiome. Researchers also identified a strain of gut bacteria in Ötzi’s intestines that is virtually absent in the gut microbiomes of people living in industrialized nations today. The same bacteria has only been found in isolated indigenous tribes across Africa and South America, and in 3,000-year-old preserved feces recovered from a Bronze Age salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria — one of the few other existing samples of ancient human gut microbes. Sarhan noted that Ötzi and the Bronze Age salt miners ate far more fiber and whole grains than the average modern person, a dietary difference that likely explains the presence of this now-rare bacteria.
The study upends the long-held view of Ötzi as a static “frozen time capsule” of Neolithic life, instead framing his mummy as a dynamic, ongoing complex ecosystem that continues to evolve thousands of years after his death. Researchers note that it remains too early to confirm whether the active yeast communities are causing any long-term degradation to Ötzi’s remains, and have called for additional long-term study to monitor microbial activity in the mummy.
Not all independent experts have fully accepted the study’s conclusion that the yeast has been active in Ötzi’s body for millennia. Nikolay Oskolkov, a researcher at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis who was not involved in the new study and previously discovered ancient fungus in Ötzi’s gut, called the finding that the Iceman’s microbiome is not “frozen” scientifically interesting. However, he cautioned that yeast samples were only collected in 2010 and 2019, meaning there is limited evidence to confirm the yeast has been multiplying continuously over thousands of years. Oskolkov argued the yeast may be relatively recent colonizers of the mummy’s body rather than long-term inhabitants that survived with Ötzi since the Copper Age.
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Prominent Greek shipping mogul willing to pay Iranian transit toll in Hormuz
At the high-profile Posidonia shipping conference held in Athens this Tuesday, a leading figure in global shipping has thrown the global maritime community into debate with an unexpected stance on a contentious Middle East waterway issue. Evangelos Marinakis, a Greek shipping tycoon whose fleet of more than 150 vessels spans oil tankers, LNG carriers and bulk carriers, and who also owns prominent European football clubs Nottingham Forest and Olympiacos, says he is willing to pay a transit toll to Iran to keep the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz open. The $100,000 to $200,000 per-vessel fee, scaled to a ship’s size and cargo volume, is a far better outcome than facing disruptive delays and security risks, he argued, adding that the collected funds could help Iran offset damage it has suffered from ongoing US-Israeli military action against the country.
Marinakis’ position immediately puts him at sharp odds with major global and domestic political actors, including the Trump administration and his own home country’s government. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made the country’s official stance clear in a May interview with the Financial Times, stating that Iran has no right to impose any form of toll on transit through the strait. The split among Greece’s most powerful shipping leaders further highlights deep divisions over how to handle the escalating crisis in the strategic waterway: just days after Marinakis’ remarks, fellow Greek billionaire shipowner George Procopiou pushed back against the idea of an Iranian toll at the same Posidonia forum, invoking Greek maritime tradition of breaking blockades to defend his opposition. Procopiou’s firm Dynacom has been one of the rare shipping operators continuing to send vessels through the strait amid ongoing regional conflict, reaping the benefits of skyrocketing freight rates driven by security risk premiums.
This debate comes as Iran has formally pushed to secure the right to charge transit tolls as part of any potential negotiated end to the current regional conflict, and has already moved to build diplomatic support from Oman, the only other state that shares territorial waters over the Strait of Hormuz. Geographically and legally, the situation is uniquely complex: at its narrowest point, the strait measures just 21 nautical miles across, while international law under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows coastal nations to claim territorial water rights up to 12 nautical miles. UNCLOS explicitly prohibits states bordering international straits from restricting transit or charging tolls for passage through their territorial waters in such key global waterways. However, legal experts interviewed by Middle East Eye note that Iran could still structure charges under alternative labels such as compulsory piloting fees or administrative service fees if Oman agrees to cooperate, creating a legal workaround for the policy. Multiple industry sources have already confirmed that some vessel operators have quietly paid unofficial transit fees to Iran in Chinese yuan in recent months.
With Greek shipping families controlling roughly 20% of the world’s total merchant fleet, the split among the country’s top industry leaders carries major implications for global energy trade and supply chain stability. Nearly 20% of the world’s daily oil consumption and a large share of global LNG trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making any disruption or new transit cost a shock that would ripple through global energy and commodity markets. The U.S. government has already issued a firm rejection of any Iranian attempt to impose transit charges, leaving shipping operators caught between conflicting legal, political and commercial pressures as they navigate one of the world’s most strategically critical waterways.
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Batch of Allen’s Inside Outs recalled over plastic fears
A popular confectionery line from Australian candy brand Allen’s has been pulled from retail shelves across Australia and New Zealand, after an equipment malfunction at a third-party production facility led to confirmed plastic contamination in some units of the product.
The recall, which covers 130g sealed bags of Allen’s Inside Outs lollies, was launched as a proactive consumer protection measure following the incident, according to parent company Nestlé. The equipment failure at the contract manufacturer’s production site caused small fragments of plastic to break loose and enter the candy batch during manufacturing, the company confirmed in an official statement published on its website.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), the regional bi-national food safety regulator, has issued a public warning advising any consumer who purchased the affected batch to avoid consuming the product and return it to the point of purchase for a full, no-questions-asked refund. The recalled products carry a best-before date of 30 June 2027, and fall under seven specific batch identification numbers: 6072T941, 6073T941, 6074T941, 6075T941, 6085T941, 6086T941 and 6088T941.
Nestlé spokesperson Andrew Lawrey emphasized that consumer safety remains the company’s top priority in responding to the incident. “This recall is a precautionary action, taken in line with our rigorous quality standards,” Lawrey said, adding that company teams moved rapidly to alert food safety authorities and retail partners immediately after the contamination issue was identified. “If you have purchased any of these products, please return it to the place of purchase for a full refund.”
As of the latest update, no consumer injuries or adverse health incidents linked to the contaminated batch have been reported. The recall is currently ongoing, with major supermarkets already removing the affected stock from store shelves.