Global Pulse

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  • Trump threatens to ‘bomb the shit’ out of Oman in Hormuz dispute

    Trump threatens to ‘bomb the shit’ out of Oman in Hormuz dispute

    In a startling public comment made during an interview with Fox News on Monday, former President Donald Trump issued an unprecedented violent threat against Oman, a longstanding U.S. ally in the Middle East, stating that his administration would launch devastating bombing strikes on the country if it obstructs Washington’s efforts to reach a deal with Iran to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz. The strategic waterway has remained fully closed to most commercial shipping since Trump launched what the original reporting describes as an illegal military campaign against Iran in late February. The threat comes amid ongoing talks between Tehran and Muscat over a potential framework for joint oversight of the strait, a negotiation that has put Oman directly in the crosshairs of U.S. pressure.

    When pressed by the Fox News interviewer about the bilateral Iran-Oman discussions, Trump responded bluntly: “if Oman gets in the way” of reopening the strait, “we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” This is not the first time Trump has targeted Oman over the strait dispute, as Trita Parsi, a senior analyst with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed out, noting the U.S. leader previously issued threats against the nation when it put forward compromise proposals for strait governance.

    To date, the U.S. military’s large-scale military operations against Iran have failed to force the reopening of the strait, despite the depletion of massive U.S. munitions stockpiles. Military sources speaking to The Military Times confirmed that the U.S. has deployed nearly its entire inventory of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) in the campaign, with no breakthrough to show for the expenditure of firepower.

    The ongoing closure of the strait, which accounts for roughly a fifth of global oil trade, has triggered fresh upward pressure on global energy prices. Shipping data compiled by maritime analytics firm Kpler, cited in a Monday Reuters report, shows that commercial traffic through the waterway came to a near-complete halt over the most recent weekend: only five commodity-carrying vessels transited the strait on Saturday, with no transits registered at all on Sunday. Before the start of Trump’s military campaign, an average of 130 vessels passed through the key chokepoint on a daily basis.

    Market reactions have followed swiftly. During trading hours on Monday, Brent crude oil prices climbed above $89 per barrel, while data released by the American Automobile Association (AAA) shows that the average retail price of gasoline across the United States has now risen to $4.06 per gallon, up five cents from the $4.01 average recorded just one week prior.

    Adding to regional tensions, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Iranian hardline leadership, which has seen the conflict unfold in its favor so far, has developed a confidential strategy to escalate hostilities. According to the report, Iran used a June ceasefire with the U.S. to rebuild its military capabilities and prepare for larger-scale offensive operations. Citing intelligence from Arab sources, the outlet noted that Tehran’s core strategic goal is to impose sufficiently high costs on the U.S. military to deter future large-scale attacks like the 12-day conflict Tehran endured last year and the ongoing current hostilities.

  • Why Indian law students don’t want top judge at their graduation ceremony

    Why Indian law students don’t want top judge at their graduation ceremony

    A simmering controversy surrounding India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant has boiled over into open protest, with students from two of the nation’s most elite legal institutions rejecting his planned appearance as convocation chief guest, following months of growing anger over his reported remarks about unemployed youth and a perceived dismissal of police brutality against student protesters.

    The current standoff traces its roots back to May, when Indian legal outlet LiveLaw published remarks attributed to Kant that labeled certain unemployed young people as “cockroaches” and “parasites” who infiltrate media, social platforms, and activist circles to attack established institutions. Though Kant later clarified the comments were taken out of context, arguing he had only targeted individuals holding fake academic degrees, the damage to his standing among India’s youth was already done. The incendiary remark directly inspired the creation of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a viral satirical online movement that has grown to millions of young supporters and organized weeks of mass protests in central Delhi demanding education reform and accountability for leaked government exam papers.

    Tensions escalated dramatically on July 20, when a CJP-led parliamentary march was met with a harsh crackdown by Delhi police and paramilitary forces. Footage shared widely online showed security officials beating unarmed student protesters with batons and wooden sticks, and dispersing crowds with tear gas. In a historic first for crowd control in India’s capital, at least four protesters sustained pellet gun injuries, shocking the nation and drawing global media attention. The protests ultimately achieved a key victory when Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on July 25, as the CJP had demanded he take moral responsibility for repeated exam paper leaks. However, fallout from the crackdown continues to roil the country’s legal and political spheres.

    On July 22, a lawyer brought forward a petition requesting an urgent hearing into allegations of police excesses during the crackdown, sharing video evidence of brutality. Indian media reports claim Kant responded by saying “don’t waste our time” and rejecting the request to review the footage, stating “we don’t have time”. The comment drew immediate backlash from opposition parties, senior legal figures, and youth activists. The following day, outgoing final-year students at Hyderabad’s Nalsar University of Law, one of India’s top-ranked legal institutions, sent an official email to college administration urging them to revoke Kant’s invitation to serve as chief guest at their upcoming convocation. Traditionally, having the nation’s top jurist preside over a law school convocation is considered a high honor for aspiring lawyers, but students argued that accepting degrees from a figure dismissive of police brutality against protesters contradicts the values of justice they were taught during their studies. The demand quickly gained traction, earning support from roughly 450 of the university’s 1,400 total students, including many underclassmen.

    Kant has repeatedly pushed back against media reports, clarifying he never rejected hearing the petition and only requested it be filed through proper legal channels. The Supreme Court has since begun hearing the case, which also includes concerns that police may misuse facial recognition technology to target and harass protest participants. But student anger persisted, and the controversy expanded last week after Manan Kumar Mishra, chairman of the Bar Council of India and a sitting Member of Parliament from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, issued a drastic threat: he announced that no graduating Nalsar student would be permitted to enroll with the Bar Council to practice law until further notice, and demanded the university turn over a list of students leading the campaign against Kant.

    The threat triggered an immediate and widespread backlash, including an unprecedented rebuke from Chief Justice Kant himself, who stated that students hold a constitutional right to protest, and that the Bar Council had no authority to interfere in what he described as “a dialogue between law students and me”. Facing mounting pressure, Mishra backtracked within hours, announcing on social media platform X that the Bar Council would close all proceedings against the 2026 Nalsar graduating class, after concluding they had not participated in any disruptive activity. He later issued a public apology to students, writing, “If anything connected with the present controversy, any of my words, or letter, has hurt the feelings of our law students, I sincerely regret and apologise for the same.”

    Mishra’s apology failed to calm tensions, however. Over the weekend, students and alumni from a second leading Indian law school, Bengaluru’s National Law School of India University (NLSIU), released an open letter condemning Mishra’s comments, announcing they would not accept him as a convocation guest, and expressing full solidarity with Nalsar’s demand to uninvite Chief Justice Kant. They added that they also opposed Kant’s planned appearance at their own convocation for the same reasons.

    On Sunday, Kant issued a new clarification, telling The Times of India that he had never formally accepted the Nalsar convocation invitation, so “the question of me attending does not arise”. Even with this latest development, analysts widely agree the controversy is far from over. Student resentment over the chief justice’s reported comments has been building for months, and the ongoing protests at India’s most prestigious legal institutions highlight the deep divide between India’s youth and its established judicial and political leadership. The fallout from the CJP protests continues to reverberate across the country’s highest legal bodies and premier academic institutions, signaling that calls for reform and accountability from India’s younger generation are unlikely to fade.

  • This school teaches Senegal’s brightest girls to push back against patriarchal norms

    This school teaches Senegal’s brightest girls to push back against patriarchal norms

    Nestled on Senegal’s historic Goree Island, just off the capital Dakar’s coast, the Mariama Ba Boarding School stands as a radical experiment in gender empowerment – one that is reshaping the trajectories of a small but growing group of young Senegalese women, even as broader systemic barriers to gender equality persist across the country.

    For Ndeye Awa Diop, admission to the school at age 12 marked a complete reversal of the life she had been raised to expect. Growing up in a rural Senegalese community, Diop was taught the traditional expectations imposed on girls in this majority-Muslim West African nation: remain quiet, defer to elders, and be seen rather than heard. So shy she could not meet others’ eyes, Diop spent her first weeks at the school homesick and too afraid to raise her hand in class. Seven years later, the 19-year-old serves as president of the student body, on the cusp of graduation, and ready to pursue a career as an international business lawyer. “I learned to be a leader,” Diop said, adding that the sisterhood of her classmates carried her through the hardest early days. For Diop, who is the first girl from her village to earn a spot at the school, the shift in mindset has been profound: unlike most young Senegalese women of her age, starting a family is not her immediate priority. “To be a strong woman is not to be afraid to be alone,” she said.

    Senegal has made notable public progress toward gender equity in recent decades. Progressive national legislation requires that women make up half of all political parties’ candidate slates, and formal law guarantees women equal access to land ownership, at least on paper. In primary education, girls’ enrollment rates now outpace those of boys, a major milestone for a region where girls’ access to schooling has long lagged. Yet deep-rooted cultural and economic barriers keep millions of girls from reaching their potential. When household finances are stretched, families almost always prioritize keeping boys in school over girls, even when girls demonstrate stronger academic performance. Girls often miss classes once they reach menstruation due to lack of proper hygiene infrastructure, and early marriage and teenage pregnancy drive many out of school before graduation. Today, fewer than 20% of Senegalese girls complete high school, and national literacy data shows just 84 literate women for every 100 literate men. “The current challenge isn’t access to school for girls, but rather the completion of schooling up to secondary level and, of course, the transition to the job market,” explained Maissa Abdellaoui, a girls’ education specialist with UNICEF.

    Against this backdrop, the Mariama Ba school was founded in 1985 by Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, named for one of the nation’s most iconic female writers. Mariama Ba, the school’s namesake, was a trailblazing author whose work explored the tension between traditional Senegalese life and modern women’s aspirations, openly criticizing the nation’s widespread practice of polygamy and deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. Though she was a lifelong advocate for gender equality and a three-time divorcee at a time when divorce for women was virtually unheard of, Ba rejected the label of feminist, which she viewed as a Western import.

    The school itself is housed in a former French military barracks on Goree Island, a site of profound historical weight: as Africa’s westernmost point, it was once the largest hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Today, the car-free island is a serene space of cobblestone streets, and the school’s courtyards bloom with bougainvillea, baobabs and palm trees, with the constant sound of ocean waves and birdsong in the background. Selectivity is extreme: each year, just 35 girls are admitted from 150 top-performing applicants who qualify to take the entrance exam, and all tuition and boarding costs are fully covered by the Senegalese government. The school boasts a 100% high school graduation rate, a statistic unheard of across the rest of the nation.

    Over six years of secondary education, students follow a tightly structured daily routine: wake before dawn, shower, prayer, breakfast, classes, study hall, and an early end to the day to prepare for the next. Alongside rigorous academic training, students take art classes, compete in sports, and attend regular talks with prominent female leaders – many of whom are alumni of the school itself. Headmistress Ramatoulaye Diagne Sarr explains that this strict discipline is intentional: the school exists to train the next generation of female leaders that Senegal will depend on in coming years. In one recent humanities class, 15-year-old students led a heated, thoughtful discussion of the history of slavery – a topic that feels deeply personal given the school’s location – guided by teacher Paul Felix Thiao. “Often in society, we see that men tend to dominate women,” Thiao said. But places like the school show that “if we give them more freedom, if we give them more opportunities, they can go far.”

    Despite the school’s transformative impact on its students, challenges to widespread female empowerment remain acute across Senegal. UN data shows that women own just 2% of the nation’s agricultural land, make up the majority of the country’s informal, unprotected workforce, and Senegalese law still formally recognizes only men as heads of household. For 18-year-old student Marie Diop, navigating these cultural norms is a daily struggle. “In Senegal, people’s mentality remains very, very, very strict regarding women’s independence,” she said. “In fact, each day you are fighting a battle to make people understand that … women have the capacity to manage, to be in charge.” Even within the school, structural inequities persist: while every headmistress in the school’s history has been a woman, the majority of teaching staff are still men.

    Alumni of the school say the experience upended the expectations they grew up with, and many now return to serve as mentors to current students. Matel Sow, 27-year-old head of the school’s alumni association, grew up in a small village in eastern Senegal, and had to convince her father to let her attend the school. Today, she holds degrees from Dakar’s prestigious Cheikh Anta Diop University and the University of Texas, and works as an associate at the nonprofit International Budget Partnership. Over time, Sow said her father shifted his perspective, telling her: “You can do what you want, I trust you, as long as you stay true to your core values and roots” of tradition and religion. As a working mother of a two-year-old girl, Sow said she has built an equal partnership with her husband that has helped her navigate the competing pressures of work and family.

    While the Mariama Ba school’s track record is impressive, experts emphasize that it remains the only institution of its kind in Senegal, and that systemic change is needed to extend the same opportunities to all girls. Abdellaoui, the UNICEF specialist, praised the school’s model but noted that the nation’s most vulnerable girls – those from low-income rural communities outside Dakar – still lack access to this level of support. Headmistress Sarr acknowledged that the majority of current students come from the capital region, leaving room to expand access to more girls from across the country. Even so, Sarr said the school serves a critical purpose as a proof of concept: it shows what girls can achieve when given the resources and support to thrive, serving as a model for girls across the nation “who are hesitating, who think it’s impossible to climb the ladder.”

  • Donor fatigue guts demining in Asia, as active conflicts draw away funding

    Donor fatigue guts demining in Asia, as active conflicts draw away funding

    Deep in the former Khmer Rouge strongholds of rural Cambodia, En Poy was tending to his family’s cattle decades ago when he stumbled on a rusted relic of 20th century warfare: a forgotten land mine. When he picked it up, the explosive detonated, robbing him of one arm and one eye. But instead of turning away from the danger that altered his life, Poy turned his trauma into purpose, joining Cambodian Self Help Demining – a local nonprofit working to clear millions of tons of unexploded ordnance left from decades of conflict that still litter the country’s countryside.

    Today, decades after Poy survived that first blast, the organization he dedicated his life to is on the brink of collapse. Foreign donors, the primary source of funding for demining work across Southeast Asia, are rapidly redirecting resources away from the region’s long-standing explosive legacy to address urgent humanitarian needs in active conflict zones including Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan. Simultaneously, a global surge in defense spending driven by modern warfare has squeezed overall budgets for foreign humanitarian aid, leaving legacy demining projects starved for resources.

    The funding crisis was exacerbated by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2024 restructuring of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a 90-day freeze on all new foreign aid disbursements, which halted all American demining support to Cambodia temporarily. While funding has since restarted, the disruption has left long-term projects uncertain.

    Poy knows the cost of this funding shift firsthand. He survived a second land mine explosion that left shrapnel embedded across his face and body, and killed three of his demining colleagues. Now, he travels across Cambodia’s high-risk regions to educate local communities on how to avoid accidental encounters with explosives, but he questions how much longer his work can continue. “If one day donors stop funding my organization, I would definitely be sad because we haven’t finished our job,” he said. “There are still a lot of landmines left over.”

    Cambodia’s ongoing crisis is far from unique. The deadly legacy of the Vietnam War spilled across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, leaving millions of tons of unexploded ordnance across all three nations that continues to kill and maim civilians decades after the fall of Saigon. For Cambodia, which also endured the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign of terror that killed an estimated 1.7 million people, the problem is particularly acute: it ranks among the most heavily land-mined countries on Earth. Laos holds the grim title of the most heavily bombed country per capita in history, while Vietnam continues to grapple with the long-term toxic fallout of chemical weapons used during the war.

    Across the three nations, legacy ordnance has killed roughly 90,000 people and injured nearly twice that number since the end of all major conflicts. Explosives buried under agricultural fields, grazing pastures and developing construction zones block the development of new roads, schools and housing, trapping rural communities in cycles of poverty. Children, who often mistake rusted ordnance for scrap metal or toys, account for more than 40% of all civilian casualties from land mines globally since 1999, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a nonprofit monitoring initiative.

    Demining is not a quick or simple process. Teams first conduct extensive surveys to map contaminated areas, then clear dense vegetation inch by inch before using metal detectors and specialized equipment to locate and safely destroy explosives. Progress is measured in square meters cleared per day, and work must pause entirely during heavy rain. Crucially, explosives do not become less dangerous as they age: as rust and corrosion degrade their casings, they become even more sensitive to movement and more likely to detonate accidentally.

    “These things don’t really become less dangerous with time. They become more dangerous as they deteriorate,” said Charles Ray, a Vietnam War veteran who served as the first post-war U.S. consul general in Ho Chi Minh City and later as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia. Ray noted that U.S. funding for demining has long served as a tangible gesture of reconciliation after the war. “By funding demining, the U.S. proved it cared,” he said. “We’re not just this behemoth that comes in with our military machine and breaks things, we can also help nations rebuild.”

    Data from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor shows that total global funding for humanitarian demining reached $4.3 billion between 2020 and 2024. Only one-fifth of that funding came from national governments of affected countries, with the remaining 80% coming from foreign aid, led by the United States, Germany, the European Union, Norway and Switzerland.

    Maria Vardis, a senior official with the U.N. Mine Action Service, explained that new outbreaks of conflict have created unprecedented demand for demining support globally, as active combat leaves large swathes of new territory contaminated with explosives. In 2024 alone, Ukraine received one-third of all global humanitarian demining funding – more than any other country, the monitor found. Other active conflict zones including Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan have all seen increased funding allocations, leaving older, smaller-scale projects in Southeast Asia with steep cuts. Germany is currently considering further reductions to foreign aid to free up more budget for defense spending and military support to Ukraine.

    Complicating the issue further, new land mines are still being laid across Southeast Asia amid ongoing low-level conflicts, including the civil war in neighboring Myanmar and periodic border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand. “Funding does fluctuate year to year, but in the big picture, even in the face of cuts by many governments, the big crises continue to be funded, but smaller and older mine action projects are struggling,” Vardis said.

    For U.S. funding in the region, the Trump administration’s policies have created long-term damage beyond immediate budget cuts, said Danae Hendrickson of Legacies of War, a U.S.-based advocacy group focused on addressing the war legacy in Southeast Asia. She noted that U.S. demining aid to the region has fluctuated wildly under Trump, setting “a really dangerous precedent for what can be done.”

    Congressional documents show U.S. funding for war legacy programs in Vietnam dropped to $56.5 million in 2024 from $197 million allocated the previous year. In July 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced $130 million in new demining assistance for Southeast Asia, but provided no detailed breakdown of allocations.

    Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, said last year’s U.S. aid freeze halted demining projects across Vietnam and eroded decades of hard-built trust between Washington and Hanoi. “The lasting damage is to the hard-earned trust between the two former enemies,” he said. A U.S. State Department spokesperson, however, told the Associated Press that American assistance is “not charity” and that humanitarian demining will continue to align with U.S. foreign policy interests globally.

    In Cambodia, the immediate outlook is grim. Official data from the Cambodian Mine Action and Victimization Assistance Authority shows that between 1992 and 2025, demining teams have cleared roughly 1.2 million land mines and 3.2 million other pieces of unexploded ordnance across the country. Even after 30 years of work, an estimated 1,749 square kilometers (675 square miles) of contaminated land remains uncleared as of 2024, with thousands more unexploded weapons still unaccounted for.

    Bill Morse, president of the U.S.-based Landmine Relief Fund which supports Cambodian Self Help Demining, estimates millions of ordnance may still be buried across the country. Just an hour’s drive from Siem Reap’s world-famous Angkor Wat temple complex, demining teams with the organization recently inched slowly through a contaminated field, locating a Soviet-designed anti-personnel mine just meters from a major highway leading to a new Chinese-funded airport. A second team was called to a nearby cassava farm to destroy an unexploded mortar round and rocket-propelled grenade.

    Morse said the organization could be forced to cease all operations by September 2025 due to massive donor cuts. “We have simply run out of donors,” he said. “If people want to pull their money away, that’s a decision that they have to make. But when they do, people will die here.”

  • A physics graduate, a soccer player, a teen who couldn’t swim: They died in the Ceuta migrant surge

    A physics graduate, a soccer player, a teen who couldn’t swim: They died in the Ceuta migrant surge

    On the rugged North African coastline, where Morocco meets the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, a deadly wave of irregular migration unfolded last month, leaving dozens dead, countless families shattered, and exposing the deep-rooted drivers pushing people to risk everything for a chance at a better life in Europe. What began as viral misinformation spread across social media platforms snowballed into the deadliest migration crisis between the two nations in modern memory, with more than 70,000 aspiring migrants – from Morocco and beyond – flooding across the border breakwater by swimming or climbing over barriers.

    Official data puts the confirmed death toll at at least 90, but human rights organizations argue the actual number of fatalities is far higher, and dozens of families still wait to recover the remains of their loved ones, trapped in bureaucratic limbo between Moroccan and Spanish authorities. Nearly all surviving migrants have been returned to Morocco, and both governments have since ramped up border security measures, placing blame on unregulated social media rumor-mongering and sophisticated human smuggling networks. But for the migrants who joined the surge, the choice was rooted in systemic economic despair: chronically high unemployment and stagnant low wages that leave even skilled workers unable to access basic needs or build stable futures.

    The human cost of this crisis is etched into the stories of three men who did not return. Thirty-one-year-old Ayoub Akbili, a resident of Tangier just an hour from the border town of Fnideq, had never considered irregular migration before. A college graduate with a physics degree, he could not secure work in his field and was forced to take a job at a local auto parts factory, earning roughly $421 a month – slightly above Morocco’s national median salary. While Morocco’s macroeconomic outlook is relatively robust, with projected 4.5% growth this year driven by ambitions to become a regional automotive manufacturing hub, policymakers have failed to translate that growth into inclusive, well-paying jobs for young, educated workers.

    It was while working his 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift that Akbili saw viral Facebook posts claiming the Ceuta border was open to new crossings. Desperate to earn enough to pay for his mother’s urgently needed hernia surgery, he made the split-second decision to go, persuading his roommate and relative Abdelhakim Saadaoui to join him. The pair paid $129 – equivalent to two months’ rent for a local apartment – for a driver to take them to the border perimeter. When they arrived, Saadaoui recalled, the scene was total chaos: crowds of people stretching as far as the eye could see, moving toward the frontier like a swarm of ants. Moroccan police deployed stun grenades and tear gas to disperse the crowd, and Saadaoui chose to turn back. Akbili pressed on.

    The two stayed in contact by phone until Akbili suddenly stopped answering calls. A Moroccan Interior Ministry document obtained by the Associated Press confirms Akbili died just before midnight on July 31, his death classified as “unnatural” caused by severe head trauma after a fall from a cliff. He was buried quickly in his hometown of Khenifra, but his cousin Zakaria Akbili questions the official account, noting his cousin’s phone and wallet remained intact on his body – a detail he says contradicts the claim of a fatal cliff fall, and he is calling for a full independent investigation.

    For 28-year-old Hamza Haibouri, a second-division professional soccer player with Morocco’s Kenitra Athletic Club, the draw of Europe was the chance to turn his athletic talent into a stable, successful career. Haibouri, who had visited France as a child and dreamed of returning to play at a higher level, was vacationing in the coastal town of Martil, 40 kilometers from Ceuta, when he saw the crowds heading for the border and decided to join. A deeply religious man who had played soccer professionally his whole adult life, he had not been able to secure a playing contract all year, and relied on the roughly $540 a month he had earned in previous seasons to get by. His club’s official fan club later announced his death during the crossing attempt.

    The youngest victim, 19-year-old Abdelouahed Iken, was still finishing high school in the southern Moroccan city of Agadir when he saw glossy social media posts from a friend who had migrated to Italy, showing off a comfortable, prosperous life abroad. When rumors of an open border spread, Iken told his mother he was traveling to his home village, but instead journeyed more than 850 kilometers north to Ceuta with a group of friends. Unable to swim, he bought a cheap life jacket for the water crossing, but surviving friends told his family they watched him struggle in the currents before drowning. His family first learned of his death through a Facebook post, and are still fighting to bring his body home.

    For many Moroccans, Europe remains a symbol of opportunity, stability, and upward mobility that feels out of reach at home. Migrants who successfully establish lives overseas often return with visible markers of success – designer clothing, new cars, European currency – making them objects of both admiration and envy for those who stay. The economic impact of migration is already significant: Moroccan government data shows remittances from overseas Moroccans hit $6.6 billion in the first half of this year alone, accounting for more than 3% of the country’s entire gross domestic product.

    Yet for the families of those who died, the tragedy is compounded by bureaucratic gridlock and prohibitive costs to recover their loved ones’ remains. Family members report being asked to pay up to 2,500 euros in repatriation fees to bring bodies back from Ceuta, a sum far out of reach for most working-class Moroccan families. While the AP could not independently confirm the exact fee amount, repatriation requires multiple official documents: authorization from the Moroccan consulate, a transit permit from Spanish mortuary authorities, a sealed coffin, and a medical certificate confirming the death was not caused by a contagious disease.

    A spokesperson for Ceuta’s regional government told the AP Friday that all required paperwork for repatriation has been completed, but Moroccan national authorities have not accepted the documents to allow transfer. The Moroccan government did not respond to multiple AP requests for comment on the delay, cost allocation, or potential government assistance for grieving families. Forensic officials in Ceuta have completed autopsies for all 82 migrants whose bodies were recovered on Spanish soil, but family members still face long waits and bureaucratic hurdles. Haibouri’s sister completed DNA testing to confirm his identity, and was only given his identification and driver’s license – authorities refused her request to see her brother’s body, and she has been told the repatriation process will take 20 days or more. “You can’t imagine the families’ suffering,” said Bilal Ratib, Haibouri’s childhood friend.

    Morocco’s Trade Union Network for Migration has issued an urgent call for both governments to cover all repatriation costs and cut through red tape to return bodies to their families. Back in Tangier, Akbili’s roommate Saadaoui still struggles with the loss. He moved out of the apartment they shared, unable to bear living without his friend. “He was telling me at the border, ‘I will never come back,’” Saadaoui recalled. “And indeed, he will never come back.”

  • A looming rock collapse threatens a Swiss village as thawing permafrost destabilizes the Alps

    A looming rock collapse threatens a Swiss village as thawing permafrost destabilizes the Alps

    Perched in the dramatic Alpine landscapes of Switzerland’s Bern canton, the postcard-perfect village of Kandersteg — home to 1,300 residents, surrounded by jagged peaks, receding white glaciers and lush green valleys, with the faint, familiar chime of cowbells drifting across mountain air — now faces an imminent existential threat tied to a rapidly changing climate. A massive unstable rock formation known as Spitze Stei, perched thousands of feet above the village, is at growing risk of collapse, a disaster that experts warn could match the scale of last year’s devastating landslide that destroyed the nearby community of Blatten.

    The growing risk of large-scale mountain collapses across the Swiss Alps is directly linked to rising global temperatures, which are driving the steady thaw of permafrost — the permanently frozen layer of soil, sediment and rock that acts as natural cement binding mountain slopes together — and shifting glacier dynamics. Climate scientists warn that as this frozen infrastructure melts, once-stable alpine terrain becomes increasingly prone to catastrophic movement.

    For residents of Kandersteg, the threat hangs over daily life, balanced between cautious calm and the unavoidable uncertainty of natural forces. “You are aware that it’s happening, but not afraid,” said long-time local Brigitte Jüni, noting that cantonal and federal authorities have implemented every feasible precaution to protect the community. “But then it’s nature. It’s nature and you never know,” she added.

    The scale of the potential collapse is staggering: geologists estimate the unstable portion of Spitze Stei holds between 15 and 20 million cubic meters of rock. Should the entire formation collapse at once, it would bury large parts of Kandersteg’s valley under debris. However, constant real-time monitoring of the rock’s movement and preparedness efforts have eased some anxiety among locals. Experts also note that a gradual, incremental breakdown of the formation is far more likely than a single massive collapse. Evacuation routes and emergency protocols are already finalized and updated regularly to ensure residents can move to safety if warning signs escalate.

    Many locals draw a clear distinction between their current situation and the 2025 disaster in Blatten, located in the nearby Loetschental valley. In that event, a huge mass of rock and ice broke free from a warming glacier, thundering down the mountainside just weeks after the entire village was evacuated as a precaution. The entire settlement was coated in thick mud, leaving almost no structures undamaged. “This isn’t the same case as in Blatten. It’s a different situation,” said local resident Rudolf Isler. “We are not afraid of the Spitze Stei rock. It’s been many years seeing stones falling from up there. The problem here is about global warming and rising temperatures.”

    Markus Stoffel, a professor of climate change and natural risks at the University of Geneva, explained the scientific mechanism behind the growing risk: “In the mountains and in the unconsolidated debris, there is lots of ice. Once this ice is melting, it removes the binding that holds the slope together. These mountain slopes will become increasingly unstable.”

    The threat to Kandersteg is part of a broader pattern of escalating natural hazard risk across the European Alps, driven by human-caused climate change. Climate advocates warn that if current warming trends continue, entire Alpine communities may need to be relocated in coming decades. “Climate change means landslides or avalanches will become more common,” said Nathan Solothurnmann, a climate and energy expert for Greenpeace Switzerland. “Maybe even one day we will have to abandon certain valleys or certain villages because it’s becoming impossible to live there. Or the measure you will need to take to protect infrastructure is so expensive, the efforts are so big, that it’s not worthwhile anymore living there.”

  • Arsenal primed for Premier League title defence as rivals face questions

    Arsenal primed for Premier League title defence as rivals face questions

    The new English Premier League campaign is set to kick off this weekend, and the landscape of England’s top football division has shifted dramatically into an unexpected new state. For the first time in 20 years, Arsenal will start the season as defending champions, a status the North London club has not held since the 2004-05 season. The Gunners will open their title defence at the Emirates Stadium on Friday against newly promoted Coventry City, and the mood around the camp is unwaveringly confident heading into the new campaign.

    Last season marked a historic turning point for Arsenal. After spending two decades chasing a first top-flight title since the legendary Invincibles campaign, Mikel Arteta’s side ended Manchester City’s long run of dominance, finishing seven points clear of the defending champions to claim the crown. That seismic shift in the league’s balance of power has left Arsenal well-placed to chase back-to-back titles, a feat the club has not achieved since the 1930s.

    Far from resting on their 20-year breakthrough success, Arsenal’s hunger for more silverware has only been amplified by recent near-misses. A penalty shootout defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in the 2025 Champions League final still stings for the squad, and Arteta has used that disappointment to reinforce the team’s drive for more trophies. The Gunners further reinforced their status as title favourites with an emphatic 3-0 victory over Manchester City in last weekend’s Community Shield, the traditional season-opening curtain raiser. Two new signings – Newcastle midfielder Bruno Guimaraes and winger Christos Tzolis – both impressed in that win, proving depth has been added to an already title-winning squad.

    Arteta made clear that the entire squad remains as motivated as ever to replicate last season’s success. “The desire comes because I want to live that moment again,” he said. “We know the difficulty of the task. We know that it’s going to demand something special and we are ready for it.”

    The contrast in pre-season mood between Arsenal and Manchester City could not be starker. For the first time in 10 years, City head into a campaign without Pep Guardiola at the helm, after the Spanish manager brought his record-breaking tenure to an end at the close of last season. Guardiola delivered six Premier League titles in seven seasons and 20 major trophies overall during his 10 years at the Etihad Stadium, but he failed to claim the league in his final two campaigns in charge.

    Replacing the most successful manager in the club’s history is former Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca, who stepped into the role this summer. Maresca does have silverware on his resume, having won the UEFA Conference League and Club World Cup during his time at Stamford Bridge, but his tenure at Chelsea ended abruptly after less than two years, cut short by tensions with club leadership and fan criticism of his defensive playing style. He now faces the unenviable challenge of matching Guardiola’s unprecedented success, while also completing the rebuild of an ageing squad that the former manager began before his departure.

    City have invested heavily in their squad refresh, splashing £116 million ($157 million) on Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson. However, the sale of Rodri – the linchpin of City’s midfield for years and a World Cup winner with Spain – to Barcelona has dealt a major blow to Maresca’s plans ahead of his first league campaign in charge. While Maresca acknowledges the scale of the task facing him, he says constant comparisons to Guardiola do not add extra pressure, calling the role an honour. “After 10 games, if we have got 10 points, 20 points, 30 points. People will be comparing it to Pep after 10 games. It doesn’t put pressure on me,” Maresca said. “Someone asked me if it’s the impossible job to follow him. Maybe, but at the same time it’s a privilege.” City open their 2025-26 campaign at home to Bournemouth on Sunday.

    Beyond Arsenal and City, a host of other top clubs are positioning themselves to challenge for the title, all with new managers and major question marks to answer. Liverpool, champions in 2024-25, endured a disastrous second season under Arne Slot, dropping to a disappointing fifth place that saw the manager sacked at the end of the campaign. Andoni Iraola, who earned widespread acclaim for his work at mid-table Bournemouth, has taken over the reins at Anfield. He faces immediate challenges, including the departure of club icon Mohamed Salah and ongoing concerns over veteran defender Virgil van Dijk’s dip in form.

    Chelsea have also turned to a new manager this summer, hiring Xabi Alonso, who is seeking to rebuild his reputation after a disastrous eight-month spell at Real Madrid. Alonso’s 2023-24 domestic double with Bayer Leverkusen made him one of the most sought-after coaches in Europe, but his move to Real Madrid failed to live up to expectations. He has already made a major investment at Chelsea, breaking the British transfer record to sign England midfielder Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for £117 million. Still, lifting the Blues back into title contention will be no small task after Chelsea finished a disappointing 10th last season.

    At Old Trafford, Michael Carrick has taken the Manchester United manager job on a permanent basis after an impressive interim spell following the sacking of Ruben Amorim. Carrick’s steady leadership lifted United to a third-place finish last season, including impressive wins over both Arsenal and Manchester City along the way. The club’s next target is a first Premier League title since 2013, a goal that will be difficult to achieve against an Arsenal side that has firmly established itself as the team to beat across the coming 10 months of the campaign.

  • Australia has dropped Jake Weatherald for second Test match against Bangladesh

    Australia has dropped Jake Weatherald for second Test match against Bangladesh

    Ahead of the second men’s Test match against Bangladesh in Mackay, Australia’s national cricket selectors have made a single adjustment to their 13-man squad, dropping underperforming opening batter Jake Weatherald and recalling veteran left-hander Matt Renshaw to take his place. The like-for-like swap means star middle-order batter Marnus Labuschagne, who has also struggled for consistent run-scoring in recent outings, has retained his place in the side, escaping selection cuts.

    Weatherald had earned a consistent spot in Australia’s Test lineup starting from the 2023 Ashes series against England, featuring in six consecutive Test matches. However, his overall performance during that stretch failed to meet selection standards, managing only one half-century across 11 innings and posting a modest batting average of just 20.36. His form deteriorated further in Australia’s surprising first-Test defeat to Bangladesh in Darwin last week, where he scored 23 runs in the first innings before recording a third-ball duck in the second.

    While Weatherald proved a reliable opening partner for star opener Travis Head during the Ashes campaign, he failed to convert starts into substantial scores in every innings following that series, ultimately exhausting his goodwill with selectors. In his place, 30-year-old Renshaw gets a long-awaited recall to the Test side, more than a year and a half out from his last international appearance.

    Renshaw first broke into Australia’s Test setup a decade ago as a gritty, defensive opening batter, and over the course of his domestic career he has evolved into a dynamic, adaptable batter capable of contributing in all three formats of international cricket. He last featured for Australia in a Test match during the 2023 tour of India, where he stepped into the middle order late in a match after regular opener David Warner was ruled out due to concussion. Ahead of the first Test against Bangladesh, Renshaw turned in impressive performances in team training camp, earning him the recall over other domestic contenders.

    Australian head coach Andrew McDonald spoke openly following the first Test defeat about the pressure on Labuschagne to turn his form around, confirming the decision to retain him in the squad. McDonald noted that the batter had been working on adjustments to his batting technique, and those changes held up even under intense match pressure during the Darwin Test – a positive sign for his future output. “You can try to make these changes, and then when you get put under extreme pressure in the middle, sometimes those changes don’t hold,” McDonald explained. “So it was good to see them hold up, but it is 31, he’s disappointed at that missed opportunity. He needs some big runs.”

    The first Test defeat to Bangladesh kicks off a demanding 12-month stretch for Australia’s men’s Test side, which is scheduled to play a total of 21 Test matches across various home and away series in the coming year.

  • Ralph Carr: Defence barrister claims guilty rape verdict ‘obvious’ miscarriage of justice

    Ralph Carr: Defence barrister claims guilty rape verdict ‘obvious’ miscarriage of justice

    High-profile Australian sports and entertainment agent Ralph Carr, 66, whose full legal name is Ralph Carnovale-Carra, is currently fighting his recent rape conviction, with his legal team arguing before the court that the jury’s guilty verdict represents a clear miscarriage of justice.

    Last month, a jury at Victoria’s County Court found Carr guilty of two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault against a woman in her 20s. The trial heard that the pair, who had known each other previously, met in early 2023 to discuss potential job openings at Carr’s company, Ralph Carr Management. After a night of drinking and cocaine use, the alleged assault took place at Carr’s home.

    This week, Carr returned to court as his defence team launched a formal application to stay his sentencing proceedings until his appeal against the conviction is finalized. Defence barrister Dermot Dann KC, who has 35 years of experience working as a trial lawyer, told the court this marked the first time he had ever applied for a sentence stay in a rape case. Calling the conviction the clearest miscarriage of justice he had encountered in his decades-long career, Dann emphasized that the legal team made no apologies for launching the appeal or the stay application. “We have a man who maintains his innocence… a man who is going through hell in prison,” Dann told the court, adding that anyone who reviewed the victim’s testimony would be deeply concerned and uncomfortable with the guilty verdicts.

    Dann outlined multiple trial irregularities he argues leave the jury’s verdict unsafe and open to overturn by the Court of Appeal. Key among his criticisms are what he calls significant inconsistencies across the victim’s multiple accounts of the incident. These include conflicting descriptions of the body positions during the assaults, the duration of the rapes, and what Dann labels “recent inventions” – additional allegations that Carr masturbated in front of the victim and apologized after the attack, claims that did not appear in earlier testimony. He also noted unaddressed discrepancies between the victim’s evidence and testimony from other witnesses, as well as gaps in the prosecution’s handling of objective evidence in the case.

    Another key piece of exculpatory evidence Dann highlighted is a text message Carr sent to the victim the day after the alleged incident. In the message, Carr asks the victim “what happened” and notes that police had contacted him to respond to a disturbance report at his West Melbourne residence. Dann stressed that prosecutors have not attempted to frame the message as incriminating conduct, leaving it as clear evidence of Carr’s lack of awareness of any criminal act.

    The defence also brought forward evidence from Carr’s psychiatrist, Jacqueline Rakov, who testified that the 66-year-old’s mental health has deteriorated severely during his three weeks in custody, with Carr describing his experience as “living in hell.”

    Dann argued that there is a reasonable prospect the Court of Appeal will rule the guilty verdict cannot stand, making this exactly the case where the court’s power to stay sentencing should be exercised.

    Prosecutors pushed back against the application, with Crown prosecutor Matthew Fisher telling the court the prosecution side is deeply concerned by Dann’s arguments. Fisher suggested that Dann’s strong public statements may be an attempt to garner media attention rather than present a substantive legal argument. Presiding Judge Frank Gucciardo also pushed back on Dann’s remarks, noting that the barrister’s strong personal opinion may be overstating the defence’s position and questioned whether such commentary was appropriate in court.

    The appeal hearing is ongoing, with no ruling on the stay application delivered as of yet.

  • Student killed in Philippines Catholic school shooting

    Student killed in Philippines Catholic school shooting

    A devastating double fatality at a Catholic junior high school in the southern Philippines has marked the second school shooting to hit the Southeast Asian nation in just two months, leaving local communities in shock and reigniting debates over youth access to violent digital content. Local officials confirmed on Tuesday that a student attending the campus in Zamboanga City killed a fellow classmate with an illegally smuggled firearm before taking his own life. Zamboanga City Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso told local radio reporters that the teenage perpetrator managed to sneak a .45-calibre pistol into his classroom undetected. The shooter first opened fire on a seated teacher, who narrowly escaped injury when all shots missed the target. He then moved to an adjacent classroom, where he fired at and fatally wounded another student before dying by suicide, Olaso added. According to reporting from Agence France-Presse, local media have circulated purported livestream footage of the attack that appears to capture the incident from the shooter’s first-person perspective, showing the gun barrel moving down a school hallway. Local law enforcement and emergency response teams have since secured the campus, confirming that the situation is fully under control and there are no further active threats to students or staff. This latest tragedy comes exactly two months after a separate school shooting in Tacloban City, located in the Philippines’ central region, that killed three students and left 20 more injured. That attack was carried out by two teenage boys, and investigators discovered that one of the suspects had repeatedly played a violent sandbox video game called Gorebox. Following the Tacloban City incident, Philippine authorities implemented a national ban on Gorebox, and the country’s Senate launched a formal investigation into the link between violent digital media and youth violence. The Philippines is not alone in grappling with this growing crisis across Southeast Asia. Governments throughout the region have moved in recent months to draft new restrictions on minor access to social media platforms, citing a range of documented harmful effects on adolescent mental health and behavior. Earlier this August, a teenage attacker in Thailand killed eight people and himself in a school shooting, with local investigators confirming the perpetrator regularly consumed graphic violent content through social media platforms. This string of back-to-back school violence incidents has put policymakers across the region under growing pressure to enact stricter regulations on violent digital content, while communities mourn the latest lives lost to youth perpetrated gun violence.