Global Pulse

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  • Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

    Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

    The mysterious death of 15 elephants in southern Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem has sparked urgent debate and widespread concern over the intersection of commercial agriculture, illegal chemical use, and wildlife conservation in one of Africa’s most critical elephant habitats. The deaths, which occurred over a one-month window between June 24 and July 24 this year, have left wildlife officials, local farmers, and conservation experts divided over the root cause, with a leading official theory pointing to accidental cyanide poisoning from pesticides used on surrounding tomato crops.

    Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) chief veterinary officer Dr. Isaac Lekolool confirmed that cyanide traces were detected in stomach samples collected from the deceased elephants. While the agency has not ruled out deliberate poisoning as a possibility, Dr. Lekolool noted that the unusual cluster of deaths is unprecedented in the region, describing it as an almost one-off event. The current working hypothesis is that the elephants were exposed to the toxin through agrochemicals applied to commercial tomato farms in the nearby Kimana area, a fertile corridor that links Amboseli National Park to Tsavo National Park further south.

    “It could be unintentional. Maybe people are trying to do some controls of pests on their crops, and that could have been maybe a source,” Dr. Lekolool explained.

    This corridor sits at the heart of the broader Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles the Kenya-Tanzania border and hosts more than 2,000 migratory elephants that travel the route annually in search of food and water. The Kimana area’s tomato farms rely on glacial streams from nearby Mount Kilimanjaro for irrigation, turning the region into a productive agricultural hub that supplies produce to markets as far as Nairobi and beyond. But access to unregulated toxic chemicals has long been a problem in the area, according to food safety researchers.

    A 2024 report from Kenyan food safety initiative Route to Food already documented the use of illegal cyanide-containing insecticides by Kimana smallholder farmers. Report author Wangunyu Njuguna explained that while these hazardous compounds are banned for agricultural use in Kenya, they are easily smuggled across the unpatrolled border from Tanzania, where weaker regional regulatory enforcement creates gaps for illegal trade.

    “The biggest problem is we’re not enforcing similar standards in the region,” Njuguna said. “There is no-one checking what I go and buy across the border, so I can just go buy anything and walk through the border and no-one stops me.”

    Highly toxic unregulated agrochemicals are already widespread across Kenyan smallholder farms, with previous studies linking the substances to chronic human disease. While national laws ban the most dangerous compounds, weak enforcement has meant little accountability, and almost no scrutiny of how these chemicals impact nearby wildlife populations.

    However, the official pesticide poisoning theory has faced sharp pushback from conservationists, local landowners, and farmers who coexist with Amboseli’s wildlife, who say the narrative does not align with years of on-the-ground experience and observed animal behavior.

    Renowned elephant conservationist Paula Kahumbu, who has studied Kenyan elephant populations for nearly 30 years, argues that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that crop pesticides killed the 15 animals. “We haven’t got enough detailed information to have confidence in this claim that it’s due to pesticides in crops,” Kahumbu told the BBC. “Some information has been released to the public but it’s not adding up. Those elephants have to eat a huge amount to kill them.”

    Other conservation experts, who requested anonymity, pointed out a key inconsistency: male elephants are far more likely to risk raiding agricultural crops than females and calves, yet only one of the 15 dead elephants was an adult male. Local landowner representative Daniel Nina, who has lived alongside wildlife in the region for decades, also questioned why only elephants were affected if the poison came from crop pesticides.

    “We have stayed with this wildlife for decades and have never experienced this,” Nina said. “So that’s why we are wondering why it is happening today.” He added that previous poisoning incidents in the region affected crop-raiding zebras, antelopes, and wildebeest alongside elephants, a pattern that did not hold in this case. “How does cyanide kill the elephants and leave behind the zebras, antelopes and wildebeests, which are eating the grass together?” he asked.

    The mystery of the 15 elephant deaths comes as long-simmering human-wildlife conflict intensifies across the Amboseli ecosystem, driven by growing agricultural expansion into critical elephant migration routes. Local tomato farmer Stephen Michael told the BBC that elephant incursions are a regular threat to livelihoods, with one recent raid costing him more than $1,500 in lost cabbage and tomato crops alone.

    Frank Pope, CEO of leading conservation organization Save the Elephants, explained that the biggest threat to Amboseli’s elephant population is no longer ivory poaching – it is competing land use. Fertile, water-rich areas that attract smallholder farmers are the exact same corridors that elephants have used for migratory purposes for centuries, and as more farms and tourist lodges are built along these routes, conflict becomes inevitable.

    To date, no conclusive cause of death has been confirmed, and the lack of clarity has left communities and conservationists worried that ongoing risks remain for both the surviving elephant population and local residents who may be exposed to unregulated toxic chemicals through food and water.

  • ‘My grandmother subjected my baby to female genital mutilation behind my back’

    ‘My grandmother subjected my baby to female genital mutilation behind my back’

    Last week, Colombia etched its name into regional history as the first Latin American nation to formally outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), a milestone grassroots activists and Indigenous organizers have spent decades fighting to achieve. The groundbreaking ban passed with unanimous support in Colombia’s Congress, closing a long chapter of advocacy to eliminate a dangerous, largely hidden practice that has persisted in the country’s Indigenous Emberá community for generations.

    FGM is defined by global health authorities as the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, or any other non-medically justified injury to female reproductive organs. The procedure, which is almost always carried out in unsanitary, secret conditions, carries immediate and lifelong health risks: severe hemorrhaging, chronic infection, complications with menstruation and childbirth, and permanent loss of sexual function. According to the World Health Organization, more than 230 million girls and women currently alive across the globe have undergone FGM, with the vast majority of cases concentrated in African nations.

    For Carla Quiñonez, a 30-year-old Emberá activist who has led local campaigns against FGM, the fight for the ban is deeply personal. When Quiñonez’s own daughter was just six months old, the infant’s great-grandmother subjected her to the procedure without the family’s full consent. When the baby was returned, Quiñonez found her feverish, swollen, and bleeding, crying uncontrollably. When Quiñonez confronted her grandmother, the older woman dismissed the harm, claiming the procedure was normal and ordering her to keep it secret. “She said that men mock women who retain their clitoris,” Quiñonez recalled. The nearest formal health clinic was hours away, so Quiñonez’s mother, a traditional midwife, attempted to ease the infant’s pain with medicinal plants, but the baby was left with permanent trauma.

    As Quiñonez grew older, she began to connect a pattern of unexplained early childhood deaths among Emberá girls to the hidden practice. She remembers a young female cousin born healthy under her mother’s care who died just three days after birth, with community elders blaming the death on “jai,” a so-called ancestral illness. Today, Quiñonez is convinced the baby actually died from complications of FGM. Experts and activists agree that official case counts vastly underrepresent the true scale of FGM in Colombia. Between 2020 and June 2026, only 240 cases were officially recorded, 90% of which involved girls under six years old. But Dr. Diana Ramos Mosquera, a pediatrician working at Pereira’s San Jorge University Hospital in northwestern Colombia, calls the official number just “the tip of the iceberg.” While examining girls seeking care for unrelated conditions, Dr. Ramos has repeatedly found evidence of scarring, burning, and mutilation. She once treated a young girl whose vaginal opening was fully sealed by the procedure, a complication that would have prevented her from menstruating or having intercourse in adulthood that required major reconstructive surgery.

    Dr. Ramos frames FGM as a brutal form of gender-based violence that leaves lifelong physical and psychological scars, but she emphasizes that addressing it requires more than just punitive measures. She argues that widespread cultural education is critical, noting that many community members who carry out the procedure genuinely believe it is beneficial and harmless, rooted in long-held tradition.

    The Emberá community, which counts around 300,000 members across Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama, is the only group in Latin America where FGM remains widely practiced. Scholars have put forward several theories for the practice’s persistence in the community. One hypothesis traces its origins to enslaved people brought to Colombia from West African nations where FGM was common, a theory that aligns with the practice’s higher prevalence in Colombian departments (Risaralda, Chocó, and Valle del Cauca) that border or host large Afro-Colombian populations. Other explanations cite a centuries-old community legend about the birth of an intersex child that left elders with a widespread fear that an uncut clitoris will grow into a penis. Still others point to deeply entrenched patriarchal beliefs that frame women who can experience sexual pleasure as more likely to be promiscuous.

    Juliana Domico, legal representative and chief Indigenous councilor for the National Confederation of the Peoples of the Great Emberá Nation of Colombia, rejects the common claim that FGM is a protected cultural tradition. “Our culture is our clothing, our crafts, our dances and our language, not a practice that kills. Culture does not kill,” she emphasized. Domico was a key political advocate for the ban, which follows years of internal organizing within the Emberá community to end the practice. She says she now hopes the new legislation will be translated into targeted public policy with sufficient funding for community outreach and enforcement.

    Quiñonez, who has faced repeated threats for her advocacy—mostly from male community leaders—says traditional power structures have long slowed progress toward ending FGM. While the ritual itself is traditionally kept hidden from men, discussions about reform must often be held with male community leaders, since many Emberá women only speak the Indigenous Emberá language and have not learned Spanish, cutting them off from accessing state support or medical care. That barrier is often compounded by stigma and judgment from non-Indigenous health workers, Quiñonez says. When she brought her daughter to a hospital for a urinary tract infection caused by FGM complications, a nurse berated her as a “savage” and threatened to remove her daughter from her care and place her in state foster care. Since then, Quiñonez says she has avoided formal hospitals, opting to treat her daughter at home with traditional medicines and over-the-counter medication.

    Despite the many obstacles, Quiñonez says gradual change is already underway within the Emberá community, with more women now openly discussing the harms of FGM for the first time. She says she was deeply moved when one elderly grandmother who had carried out FGM on her own granddaughters reflected on the practice, admitting she had never acted out of malice, only wanting to protect her granddaughters from criticism by men.

    Opening these conversations is painful, Quiñonez acknowledges: many older women who underwent FGM as children have never known any other bodily experience, and talking about the harm opens old wounds. One day, she will have to talk to her own daughter about what happened to her as an infant, a conversation she says will be difficult, but unavoidable. “All of us deserve to understand our bodies and to talk about them without shame,” she says. Activists across the country now hope the historic ban will not only deter future cases, but also open the door for widespread public education, improved access to medical care for survivors, and deeper cultural change to end the practice for good.

  • ‘I was slut-shamed’ – Indian women ‘cockroach’ protesters doxxed and abused

    ‘I was slut-shamed’ – Indian women ‘cockroach’ protesters doxxed and abused

    In one of the largest anti-government mobilizations India has seen in recent years, a youth-led grassroots movement called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) successfully leveraged social media to organize demonstrators, galvanize public support and ultimately push India’s federal education minister to step down. What began as a hybrid movement of in-person marches and Instagram content quickly turned ordinary young women into some of the movement’s most visible faces – but their participation has come at a devastating personal cost, with dozens facing sustained, gendered online harassment, violent threats and privacy violations, a new BBC investigation has found.

    CJP’s defining strategy blended traditional street protest with digital activism: short-form satirical videos, meme content and on-the-ground first-person posts spread across Instagram, drawing hundreds of thousands of views and turning casual content creators and student participants into movement leaders. The movement’s peak demonstration, held July 20, saw thousands of protesters attempt to march to India’s parliament to demand policy changes, before security forces intervened with tear gas and baton charges. Official Delhi police figures put the total injured at 60 protesters and 118 police personnel, but CJP has disputed this count, claiming far more demonstrators were harmed than the government has acknowledged. In the aftermath of the demonstration, police have opened formal criminal cases against dozens of identified movement participants. But for many of the women who posted protest content online, a separate, unregulated campaign of abuse has unfolded far from official police channels.

    The BBC spoke with four anonymous female activists who participated in the protests, reviewing hundreds of pages of screenshots of abusive messages, edited deepfake images and threatening communications to document the scope of the harassment. All four requested anonymity out of safety concerns for themselves and their families.

    One 20-something content creator, who attended her first protest on July 20 and shared first-person accounts of the baton charge to her Instagram followers after the protest site’s internet was cut off, described unrelenting slut-shaming and personal attacks after she publicly questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s post-protest comments – in which Modi claimed he “forgave” young demonstrators and urged society not to harshly punish them. “I thought I was just helping organize aid and share what I saw, I didn’t even think of it as political,” she told the BBC. She estimates she has deleted thousands of abusive messages and blocked hundreds of accounts, but harassment continues. For her, the abuse has amplified a constant fear that is familiar to many women in India: “As a woman here, you grow up with fear. It follows you online when you speak out, too,” she said, adding that her mother has refused to read comments on her posts for months, unable to bear the vitriol directed at her daughter.

    A 20-year-old first-time protester, who regularly posts light-hearted fit-check videos, shared a quick joke clip ahead of the July 20 march saying she was “going to get beaten by cops” – a clip that was picked up by national television and spread widely across social media, leading doxxers to identify her home college and flood her inbox with threats. “I was just recording what happened around me, I never thought it would go that far,” she said. Abusers sent her anonymous messages threatening to report her to police for arrest and assault, called her degrading sexual slurs, and issued threats that “your turn will come.” The pressure extended far beyond online spaces: relatives contacted her parents demanding she delete all her protest content, and she has now archived nearly all of her protest-related posts out of fear for her family’s safety. “I worry less about what happens to me than what they might do to my parents,” she explained.

    A Muslim student activist, who has long shared outspoken political content online, described a sharp uptick in targeted abuse after the CJP protests, amid India’s growing religious polarization. She has since made her Instagram account private and muted most other social platforms, but offensive content about her continues to circulate. Abusers edited her photos to falsely depict her in sexually suggestive situations to shame her, morphed her image to label her an “anti-national terrorist”, and used anti-trans slurs to insult her while falsely claiming she was a paid protester. Her father, a working journalist, has pleaded with her to stop speaking out, warning that her Muslim identity makes her an easy target for state action. “My parents have watched other Muslim activists arrested and investigated, and we live in constant dread,” she said. Despite the harassment, she remains firm: “I still believe going to the protest was the right thing to do. I just understand the cost far better now.”

    A West Bengal-based student activist who helped organize supply drives and an Instagram fundraiser for protesters said the abuse began after police started detaining demonstrators in her state in late July. Abusers flooded her fundraiser post with spiteful comments and sent her sexual threats in private messages, forcing her to delete the post entirely. She changed her public social media name, locked her account and blocked messages from strangers to avoid being doxxed. What has shocked her most is the clear gender double standard: her male peers expressed the same political views online, but none faced the gendered, sexualized abuse she endured. “When women speak up, the attack always turns to our gender. I just keep asking why women can’t hold the same opinions as men online without being targeted,” she said.

  • Fortescue shares hit by Morningstar downgrade over project cost blow outs

    Fortescue shares hit by Morningstar downgrade over project cost blow outs

    For millions of Australian workers holding superannuation savings, a key mining investment tied to their retirement accounts faces fresh downward pressure after independent rating agency Morningstar cut its fair value assessment for Fortescue Metals Group by 4% this week.

    The new fair value estimate for Fortescue shares now sits at AU$15.50, a marked downward adjustment that comes ahead of the miner’s highly anticipated full-year financial results release, scheduled for August 24 on the Australian Securities Exchange. At the time of the downgrade, Fortescue was positioned to open trading at AU$18.08 – a full 16% above Morningstar’s calculated intrinsic value of the stock.

    The core catalysts behind the downgrade tie directly to two major headwinds facing the iron ore producer: near-term forecasts for slowing global steel sales that would pressure commodity demand, and persistent, spiraling cost overruns at the company’s high-profile Iron Bridge magnetite project located in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

    The Iron Bridge project was designed to extract low-grade ore and process it into premium magnetite concentrate using energy-intensive methods, positioned adjacent to Fortescue’s existing operational mine, rail network and port infrastructure – advantages that were supposed to keep costs contained. But since the project’s initial 2019 budget of AU$4 billion, total projected costs have ballooned to AU$6.2 billion, as the company has struggled to ramp up production at the magnetite processing plant.

    Just last month, Fortescue was forced to take a AU$1.1 billion pre-tax impairment write-down on the project’s value and abandon its long-held target of reaching full production capacity by 2028. That sudden write-down signaled to markets just how severe the ongoing challenges at Iron Bridge have become.

    In the analysis note released alongside the downgrade, Morningstar analyst Jon Mills outlined that overlapping headwinds have already eroded near-term profitability for the miner. “Cost inflation and lower volumes meant unit cash costs rose 19 per cent in the quarter, to US$19.40 per metric ton, while problems at Iron Bridge persist,” Mills wrote. He added that the current market premium on Fortescue shares is driven by investor expectations that elevated iron ore prices, hovering around US$100 per metric ton, will hold steady for longer than Morningstar’s projections anticipate.

    Beyond the immediate downgrade, Morningstar has reaffirmed its “no-moat” rating for Fortescue, concluding the company does not hold a durable competitive advantage over its largest industry rivals. Comparing Fortescue’s margins to global mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto and Vale, Mills noted that Fortescue’s profit margins land well below industry leaders, placing the company in the second half of the global iron ore cost curve at roughly the 75th percentile. “This is a primary driver of our no-moat rating,” Mills explained.

    As millions of Australians hold Fortescue shares indirectly through their superannuation balances, the downgrade has drawn attention to potential downside risk for retirement savings tied to the volatile iron ore sector, with market participants now looking to the upcoming full-year results for further clarity on the miner’s path forward.

  • ‘I feel like I dug my own grave’: The workers caught in the AI transition

    ‘I feel like I dug my own grave’: The workers caught in the AI transition

    For over two decades, the Philippines has held the unofficial title of the world’s call center and business process outsourcing (BPO) capital, a success story that lifted millions of Filipinos into the expanding middle class and reshaped the country’s modern economy. But today, the rise of generative artificial intelligence is posing an existential challenge to this cornerstone of the nation’s growth, leaving thousands of workers jobless and forcing policymakers and industry leaders to rethink a decades-old economic model.

    Lisa, a single mother and content writer who requested anonymity due to a confidentiality agreement tied to her severance pay, spent 15 years building her career in the Philippine outsourcing sector. After graduating college, she cut her teeth as a freelance writer before joining a multinational firm, following the well-trodden career path taken by generations of young Filipinos seeking stable, well-paying work. For years, she managed her workload without AI, meeting all her deadlines and seeing no need to integrate the new technology into her process. Just one month before her probationary role was set to become permanent, eight months into her new position, she was laid off.

    In the months leading up to her redundancy, Lisa says she and her teammates were assigned to edit AI-generated content created by an outside public relations firm, refining output to match the company’s unique brand voice. In essence, their own expertise was used to train the AI system that ultimately replaced them. “I feel like I dug my own grave,” Lisa told the BBC. “We were the ones who trained the artificial intelligence that replaced us.” She is far from alone in this experience.

    Mary, another former content writer whose name has also been changed to protect her identity, shared a similar trajectory. Her employer promoted AI as a tool to boost productivity, but in practice, it added extra layers of work: AI-generated content was often factually inaccurate, requiring teams to spend more time editing and verifying information than they spent creating original copy. Like Lisa, Mary was ultimately made redundant after helping integrate the new technology into the company’s workflow.

    The Philippine BPO industry grew from a niche emerging market offering in the early 2000s to a national economic powerhouse. Positioned as an English-speaking alternative to India, successive Philippine governments offered generous tax incentives, invested in critical digital and office infrastructure, and actively courted multinational firms looking to cut operational costs by offshoring administrative, creative and customer service work. Today, global industry leaders including Accenture, Concentrix and Teleperformance operate sprawling campuses across Manila and other major urban centers, employing roughly 1.9 million Filipinos and generating $40 billion in annual revenue, equal to around 10% of the country’s entire gross domestic product.

    But new data makes clear just how vulnerable this $40 billion industry is to AI-driven automation. The International Labour Organization estimates that more than one in four Filipino workers — 12.7 million people overall — hold roles that are exposed to automation from generative AI, the highest share of any country in Southeast Asia. While the organization notes that many roles will evolve rather than disappear entirely, the service-focused nature of most BPO work leaves the Philippine sector disproportionately at risk of mass displacement.

    Jack Madrid, president of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), confirms that AI adoption is accelerating rapidly across the industry, with more than two-thirds of his organization’s members already running active AI pilot programs. “Agentic AI has the potential to automate at a much more accelerated pace,” Madrid explained. “Obviously, there’s a layer of jobs that are automatable or have been automated.” He added, however, that most affected workers have been redeployed to other roles within their companies, arguing that current hiring slowdowns stem as much from cooling global demand and uncertainty around long-term AI deployment as from automation itself. Even so, he acknowledges the scale of the challenge, saying, “We cannot do enough to be prepared. The importance of reskilling cannot be overstated.”

    Major BPO operators have publicly framed AI as an augmenting tool rather than a replacement for human workers. Teleperformance, the world’s largest call center operator and one of the Philippines’ biggest private employers, says AI will take over routine customer interactions, allowing human agents to move into higher-value, more complex roles. The company has committed to retraining its existing workforce to adapt to these new positions. Accenture has similarly said generative AI will reshape nearly all roles rather than eliminate jobs, and has pledged to invest billions of dollars in AI capabilities and employee training. Concentrix, the largest BPO firm operating in the Philippines, says its AI systems will remain under human oversight and has also committed to upskilling workers to work alongside new technologies.

    Despite these public commitments, many local managers harbor quiet concerns about mass worker displacement, according to Paul Quintos, a researcher at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Many would prefer to slow the pace of AI adoption, but face overwhelming pressure from foreign clients to integrate the technology into their services. “There’s tremendous pressure from foreign clients to adopt AI,” Quintos explained. “It’s a major cost-cutting measure.” Philippine BPO firms compete fiercely with rivals in India and other low-cost markets for multinational contracts, and clients now increasingly expect providers to not only offer cheap labor but also embed AI into their service offerings to cut overhead costs.

    Quintos also notes that what is often framed as AI-driven restructuring may sometimes be “AI washing”: companies attribute layoffs to technological change to mask broader responses to slowing demand or poor economic performance. Attributing redundancies to AI allows firms to frame cost-cutting restructuring as progressive technological adoption rather than a reaction to weak market conditions.

    Labor advocates point out that existing Philippine employment laws offer clear guidelines for redundancy processes, but provide almost no framework for how companies should introduce AI to workplaces or consult workers on technological changes. Compounding this vulnerability is the fact that the Philippine BPO sector is almost entirely non-unionized, leaving most workers with no formal voice in decisions around how new technologies are deployed that will fundamentally shape their careers.

    Philippine government officials acknowledge that the country is already playing catch-up to prepare its workforce for the AI transition. “To be completely honest, I think we’re slightly behind. We have to catch up,” said Leandro Aguirre of the Philippines Department of Information and Communications Technology. “We have to double our efforts to put our people in a position where they will not be displaced but actually thrive in this growing AI race.”

    The government has pledged to upskill more than 300,000 BPO workers, but Aguirre admits the country may need to abandon its decades-long reliance on foreign offshoring work to build a more resilient digital economy. “We relied heavily on foreign direct investment,” he said. “But I think we also need to focus on local talent and local companies.” The government’s long-term goal is to nurture homegrown Philippine AI firms that can create high-value, stable jobs for local workers that cannot be easily automated or offshored. Aguirre rejects calls for sweeping new AI-specific legislation, arguing that existing labor, privacy and consumer protection laws can be adapted more quickly through targeted regulatory guidance, adding that “the benefits of AI have to trickle down to people. It can’t just benefit employers.”

    For 20 years, the Philippine BPO model has been one of the emerging world’s great economic success stories, turning a large, English-speaking workforce into a globally competitive industry that delivered broad-based prosperity. AI may not completely end that model, but it is already rapidly reshaping it — and without aggressive action to reskill workers and reorient the country’s economic strategy, it risks leaving hundreds of thousands of workers behind.

  • How a generation of record-setting guides died in a disaster that killed a climbing legend

    How a generation of record-setting guides died in a disaster that killed a climbing legend

    The global mountaineering community is in mourning after a devastating avalanche on Pakistan’s Broad Peak claimed the lives of six elite Nepali mountain guides — climbers whose decades of trailblazing achievements redefined high-altitude mountaineering and transformed the world’s perception of Sherpa guides, who were long reduced to being unseen supporting aides. Among those lost was Nirmal “Nims” Purja, the 43-year-old British-Nepali climber who led the 10-person international expedition to the 12th highest peak in the world, and who remains globally celebrated for his historic speed ascent of all 14 of the planet’s 8,000-meter-plus peaks in just over six months, a feat documented in a popular Netflix feature film.

    The other five victims included some of the most decorated climbers in the Nepali mountaineering community. Forty-six-year-old Kili Pemba Sherpa had only just completed his own 14 eight-thousanders journey in early July, earning the sport’s most coveted Grand Slam title. Long before that crowning achievement, he had already cemented his legacy as a member of Purja’s 2021 team that pulled off the first-ever winter ascent of K2 — the world’s second-highest peak, widely regarded as far deadlier and more unpredictable than Mount Everest, which had resisted all winter attempts for decades. Renowned among peers for his humility and relentless dedication to his clients, Kili Pemba summited Everest 15 times, including two trips where he guided double-leg amputees to the peak. Gyanendra Shrestha, a Nepali government official who witnessed one of these ascents from base camp, called the feat “the toughest task for any guide” and noted Kili Pemba completed it with extraordinary care.

    Thirty-seven-year-old Pur Bahadur Gurung, another victim, had scaled 12 of the 14 8,000-meter peaks and held one of the rare International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA) certifications, a qualification held by only 100 Nepali guides. Earning this certification requires massive financial investment, years of training, and profound passion for the sport, making Gurung’s loss all the more staggering for Nepal’s mountaineering sector. In 2024, he was also part of the expedition that discovered a century-old boot on Everest, believed to have belonged to pioneering British climber Andrew Irvine, who disappeared on the mountain in 1924.

    The three remaining guides who perished also left indelible marks on the sport: Gyaljen Sherpa, who pulled off the unprecedented feat of scaling the world’s third-highest peak, Kanchenjunga, three times in a single climbing season; 36-year-old Nima Sherpa, who summited four eight-thousanders in 2026 alone; and 20-something Nawang Thindu Sherpa, one of Nepal’s most promising rising young guides. Collectively, the six climbers notched dozens of Everest summits between them and achieved many firsts once considered impossible: 8,000-meter ascents without supplemental oxygen, winter ascents of the world’s deadliest peaks, and feats that opened new possibilities for the entire global climbing community. Beyond their individual records, their careers have reshaped global recognition of Nepali Sherpa guides, moving the world beyond the outdated view that frames them only as support staff rather than elite climbers and pioneers in their own right.

    In recent years, Pakistan’s remote Karakoram mountain range has emerged as a major overseas operating base for Nepali Sherpa guides, a shift widely credited to Purja’s trailblazing 14 peaks project that put Pakistan’s climbing opportunities on the global map for international mountaineers. Each spring, Nepali guides lead commercial expeditions up Nepal’s famous Himalayan peaks. When the monsoon season hits Nepal from June to September, many move to Pakistan’s far north, which is home to five of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks. Unlike Nepal’s well-developed climbing infrastructure — which features established lodges, well-marked routes, and a robust helicopter rescue network spread across high-altitude outposts — Pakistan’s Karakoram range is vastly remote, with almost no pre-existing infrastructure. Guides working there must fix their own ropes, cut steps into glacial ice, and establish all their own camps from scratch, making every expedition a test of raw mountaineering skill that only the most experienced guides can take on. Rescue operations are also far more challenging in the isolated region, with very few viable landing zones for rescue helicopters even at base camp, let alone at higher altitudes. For all these logistical hurdles, however, demand for climbing trips to Pakistan’s Karakoram has grown steadily in recent years, as more international and Nepali climbers seek to complete their own 14 peaks journeys.

    Iswari Paudel, acting president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, noted that Purja’s groundbreaking success gave both Nepali guides and international climbers the confidence to pursue Pakistan’s legendary peaks. “Nims’ success gave many [guides] and foreigners the courage to believe that this mountaineering crown was truly possible,” Paudel explained. “This has made Pakistan a major overseas base for Nepali Sherpas. And while helping foreign climbers fulfil their dreams, many guides have themselves completed the 14 peaks.”

    Ben Ayers, a longtime Everest correspondent for Outside Magazine, called Purja an iconic climber and “undisputedly amongst the best of his generation.” He added that Purja’s work helped usher in a new era of mountaineering that democratized access to high-altitude climbing for more people, but also accelerated the commercialization of the sport that inherently increases risk.

    Himal Gautam, spokesman for Nepal’s tourism department, described the tragedy as an “unprecedented loss” for Nepal’s close-knit mountaineering community, a sentiment echoed across the country and the global climbing world. While the disaster has already sparked renewed calls to strengthen safety regulations for high-altitude expeditions in Pakistan, industry experts and analysts agree it is unlikely to produce long-term changes to high-altitude adventure tourism. Inherent, unavoidable risk is a core part of the appeal of high-altitude mountaineering for both guides and clients, researchers note. Past major tragedies on Himalayan peaks, including the 2014 Everest ice avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas and the 2008 K2 disaster that claimed 11 lives, did not lead to sustained shifts in the industry. “Generally, these tragedies cause a moment of concern… but then things go back to how they were. It’s difficult to say with any conviction that any accident in the mountains is ‘preventable’ as the inherent danger is so high… and that’s part of the appeal,” Ayers said. Medhavi Gulati, a researcher specializing in high-altitude mountaineering, added that “often, it’s the dangers and risk of death that attracts people.” Veteran mountaineer and writer Alan Arnette echoed this view, noting “I doubt the Broad Peak incident will have a significant impact, given history. I hope I’m wrong.”

  • Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha ready for new challenge at Colo-Colo in Chile after World Cup success

    Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha ready for new challenge at Colo-Colo in Chile after World Cup success

    After a standout World Cup campaign with Cape Verde that captured the hearts of soccer fans across the globe, 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha has finally landed the high-profile transfer he always believed he deserved, officially joining Chile’s most decorated club, Colo-Colo, in a landmark move this week.

    Vozinha, whose real name is Josimar Évora Dias, spent the vast majority of his 20-plus-year professional plying his trade for smaller outfits in lower-tier European leagues, most recently turning out for Chaves in Portugal’s second division. But through years of toiling outside the top flight, he never lost conviction that he was built to compete for a major club on one of soccer’s bigger stages.

    His trajectory shifted dramatically after the 2022 FIFA World Cup, where a string of elite performances against global powerhouses including Spain, Uruguay, and Argentina earned him a spot in the tournament’s Best XI and turned the little-known shot-stopper into a worldwide viral sensation. In the weeks following his breakout run, his social media following skyrocketed from less than 50,000 followers to nearly 30 million, opening the door to offers from clubs across multiple continents.

    Colo-Colo first announced the agreement to sign Vozinha in late July, but bureaucratic delays pushed back his official arrival in Santiago. Even with multiple suitors courting him after the World Cup, the 40-year-old says the Chilean top-flight side was always his unambiguous first choice. Speaking at his official unveiling to local media on Tuesday, he explained: “The decision was very clear. Despite playing in smaller leagues for clubs that weren’t exactly giants, deep down I always told myself I was a ‘big club’ player. So when Colo-Colo came calling, there was no doubt. From day one, I knew where I wanted to play. I received many offers, but Colo-Colo was always the priority.”

    Finalizing the transfer required overcoming an unexpected regulatory obstacle, however: Chilean Football Federation rules mandate that all players display their legal surname on their match jerseys. For Vozinha — a nickname meaning “granny” in Portuguese that he has used his entire career — forcing him to abandon the moniker would have been a disappointing change. The federation ultimately granted a special exception to let him keep the famous nickname on his kit, a decision Vozinha called meaningful beyond just soccer. “It is the name I have used my entire life. In Cape Verde, it holds great significance and a rich history, and now it does globally as well,” he said. “If my grandmother were alive today, I think she would be proud. I hope to keep using it for the rest of my career as a tribute.”

    Vozinha touched down at Santiago’s international airport on Sunday, greeted by a raucous crowd of hundreds of Colo-Colo fans waving flags, holding homemade welcome signs, and beating drums in celebration of their new signing. He completed his mandatory medical examination on Monday, signed his contract shortly after, and joined his new teammates for his first training session with the club on Tuesday. If all goes according to plan, he could make his competitive debut as early as this coming Sunday, when first-place Colo-Colo takes on Unión La Calera in Chile’s top division.

    Reflecting on his journey from lower-league stalwart to global star, Vozinha says his World Cup run remains the biggest moment of his career to date, but joining Colo-Colo marks the highlight of his club career. “The World Cup was the best thing that ever happened to me in football, but that is in the past now. Being here representing Colo-Colo — a massive club with a rich history — is the highlight of my club career,” he said. Looking ahead to his new chapter in South American soccer, the 40-year-old says he is ready to put in the work to help his new side chase silverware. “Playing in the World Cup comes with immense pressure. I played against the best national teams in the world, and now I just want to work hard and help this team achieve its goals.”

  • ‘The fire’s right there’ – Families recount fleeing Washington state wildfires

    ‘The fire’s right there’ – Families recount fleeing Washington state wildfires

    A cluster of fast-moving wildfires sweeping through Spokane, Washington has left a trail of widespread destruction, tearing through hundreds of residential structures, forcing more than 60,000 people to flee their homes and upending the lives of countless local families.

    For many residents, the disaster unfolded with little warning, catching them off guard even in a region long accustomed to seasonal wildfire risk. Amy Mulligan, one of the thousands displaced, was going about a routine afternoon in her backyard last weekend, listening to an audiobook and making final preparations for her five-year-old child’s upcoming birthday party when she first detected the faint tang of smoke in the air.

    Accustomed to periodic wildfire activity across the Spokane area, Mulligan did not immediately panic. She climbed up to her home’s deck to investigate and spotted plumes of thick black smoke billowing in the distance, but a quick check of her phone’s emergency alert system showed no active warnings. Dismissing the risk, she assumed local fire crews already had the blaze under control.

    Minutes later, that calm evaporated completely. Her brother-in-law rushed to her home with urgent news: a nearby neighborhood was under mandatory evacuation. When Mulligan stepped outside again, the fire was no longer a distant threat. The smoke was already rolling over the ridge behind her property, and neighbors were rushing to escape, speeding away in their vehicles while shouting urgent warnings to get out immediately.

    “That activity started to really scare me because that was different than in the past,” Mulligan recalled in an interview. She, her husband, and their two children grabbed a small handful of essential belongings, jumped into their car, and fled the area. Stuck in gridlock evacuation traffic, the couple’s nine-year-old daughter succumbed to panic, hyperventilating and crying as she watched the fire advance around them. It took sustained calming breathing exercises in the car to help her manage her terror as the family inched toward safety.

    Seventy-year-old James Main and his wife were among the many residents who received no official warning at all before the fire reached their neighborhood. “Normally, things would come on your phone and say, ‘Hey, this area, you know, you’ve got fire, level three fire, or anything. There was zero warning for this whole deal,” Main said. He first spotted the blaze, and within just 30 minutes, realized the situation was catastrophic. As he scrambled to pack for evacuation, he experienced a sudden wave of debilitating anxiety that left him frozen. “I kind of froze up for just a few minutes. I think it was like an anxiety attack,” he said. “I’ve never had one before, but I think I had one then.”

    When the couple finally got into their truck to escape, they found their route shrouded in thick, pitch-black smoke that cut visibility to nearly nothing. “We don’t know if we’re heading out of a fire or into a fire because we can’t freaking see,” Main recalled.

    As of Tuesday afternoon, three separate wildfires have scorched more than 10,000 acres across the Spokane region, according to the state’s official wildfire tracking system. The largest of the blazes, the Old Trails fire that destroyed both Mulligan’s and Main’s homes, remains active. Authorities have arrested a suspect on suspicion of setting the Old Trails fire intentionally through arson.

    Remarkably, as of the latest update, no fatalities have been reported across the three wildfires. But the destruction left in their path is staggering: more than 700 homes and other structures have been reduced to ash and rubble. When Main returned to his property after the fire passed to survey the damage, nothing remained of his home beyond charred foundations, smoldering ash, and blackened tree trunks poking through the debris. When asked what the future holds for him and his wife, he answered simply: “We don’t know.”

    For Mulligan, the loss of her home is devastating, but the pain of losing irreplaceable personal mementos cuts far deeper. Her home now is nothing but ash, but the items that brought her to tears are not the structure or its furniture – they are the heirlooms that no insurance payout can ever replace, and no government damage tally ever counts. Among those lost treasures is a family ring passed down to her from her grandmother. The ring had been given to her grandmother by Mulligan’s grandfather on their 49th wedding anniversary, a gesture the grandmother always believed her husband planned because he knew he would not live to see their 50th – a prediction that came true that same year.

    “She had always said she thought that he knew, and that’s why he went ahead and got her this ring. And she had given it to me,” Mulligan said, pausing to hold back tears. “And it’s gone.”

    In the coming weeks and months, thousands of displaced Spokane residents like Mulligan and Main will grapple with the overwhelming work of rebuilding their lives from scratch, after a single day of raging wildfires turned their sense of security and familiar lives upside down.

  • Le Clos’ home destroyed by fire after he sets Commonwealths record

    Le Clos’ home destroyed by fire after he sets Commonwealths record

    South African swimming legend Chad le Clos, who just etched his name into the record books as the most decorated athlete in Commonwealth Games history, has revealed that just one night after his historic achievement, a devastating blaze destroyed his long-time Cape Town apartment and claimed the life of one of his neighbors.

    Last week in Glasgow, Le Clos secured his 21st all-time Commonwealth Games medal when he and his South African teammates claimed bronze in the men’s 4x100m medley relay. The 34-year-old’s third medal of the 2026 Games pushed him past Australian swimmer Emma McKeon to claim the top spot on the all-time Commonwealth Games medal table, adding to a silver he won in the mixed 4x100m medley relay and another bronze in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay earlier in the competition.

    Only days after this career milestone, Le Clos shared the tragic news on his official Instagram account, opening up about the shock of losing the Sea Point apartment he had called home for more than a decade. “It has taken me a while to process this heartbreaking tragedy,” he wrote. “On the evening of 30 July, amid breaking the all-time Commonwealth record, a fire started in my apartment block, which quickly spread to my home. Sadly my home, where I’ve lived for more than a decade, burnt down and there is nothing left to salvage.”

    Local reports confirm the blaze killed a 93-year-old resident of the building, who had been Le Clos’ neighbor for many years. The Olympic champion paid tribute to the victim in his post, extending his deepest sympathies to the man’s family and loved ones. “No words can truly ease a loss like this, but I hope the family knows that the thoughts of an entire community are with them,” the Durban-born athlete said.

    Le Clos also reached out to other residents whose properties and lives were upended by the fire, emphasizing the strength of Sea Point’s close community bonds. “To my fellow neighbours whose homes and lives have been severely affected by this fire, please know that you are not alone. This is a tight-knit community and it is in moments like these that we lean on one another,” he added.

    In response to the disaster, Le Clos has launched a fundraising initiative to support displaced and affected neighbors as they work to rebuild their lives. This tragedy comes on the heels of one of the proudest moments of Le Clos’ decades-long competitive career, which includes one of the most iconic upsets in Olympic swimming history. At the 2012 London Games, a 20-year-old Le Clos dethroned American swimming icon Michael Phelps to win gold in the 200m butterfly — an event Phelps had not lost since 2001, during a career that would earn him 14 Olympic gold medals.

    Le Clos first competed at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 in Delhi, where he earned his first medal in the competition at just 18 years old. Across five editions of the multi-sport event, he has now collected 7 gold, 5 silver, and 9 bronze medals to secure his place in Commonwealth history. Over his entire professional career, Le Clos has also earned four Olympic medals, 16 world championship titles, and 10 African regional titles, cementing his status as one of South Africa’s most successful competitive swimmers of all time.

  • US revokes Brazilian ambassador’s visa, official says, as diplomatic tensions escalate

    US revokes Brazilian ambassador’s visa, official says, as diplomatic tensions escalate

    A deepening rift between the United States and Brazil has taken a sharp new turn, with the U.S. State Department confirming it has revoked the visa of Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil’s sitting ambassador to Washington. The tit-for-tat escalation comes just weeks ahead of Brazil’s upcoming general elections, and follows a direct snub from Brasilia last month that blocked entry for two senior U.S. diplomatic officials.

    The sequence of disputes began when the Brazilian government refused to issue visas for Riley M Barnes, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Samuel Samson, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the same department, who had planned a late-July visit to Brazil. U.S. authorities framed the trip as a routine mission focused on discussions of freedom of expression, religious freedom, and election integrity. But Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva leveled a serious accusation: the officials intended to meddle in Brazil’s electoral process, a claim the U.S. has repeatedly dismissed as entirely baseless.

    Complicating the context of the blocked visit, the two U.S. officials were scheduled to meet Flávio Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressional candidate and son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. The former president is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted of orchestrating a coup attempt to overturn his 2022 election loss to Lula.

    In recent remarks to a gathering of diplomats, Flávio Bolsonaro claimed Brazil’s electronic voting machines shared a supplier with Venezuela’s electoral system, citing an old Central Intelligence Agency report on purported electoral fraud in the South American nation. He later walked back the comment, clarifying that he did not intend to question Brazil’s electoral integrity and instead called for greater international observer presence. The claims have nonetheless been thoroughly refuted by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. Independent electoral experts have long held that Brazil’s domestic-built electronic voting system is one of the most secure and transparent electoral frameworks in the world.

    Flávio Bolsonaro, who is running for Senate in the 2026 elections, has drawn high-profile international endorsements from Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amplifying his profile on the global conservative stage.

    A senior U.S. State Department official emphasized that the visa revocation does not amount to a formal expulsion of Ambassador Viotti, a move that would mark a full diplomatic rupture between the two nations. However, the action is the most visible escalation in a string of disagreements that have built up between the two governments over recent months. Earlier disputes include the U.S. reimposing import tariffs on Brazilian goods and Washington’s decision to label Brazilian criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, moves that drew sharp pushback from Brasilia.

    Brazil has also retaliated in another diplomatic standoff: the Lula administration has refused to grant approval for Daniel Perez, the nominee put forward by former U.S. President Donald Trump to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Brazil. Perez, a Florida state representative and close ally of current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was announced as the nominee on June 1 without the customary pre-announcement consultation with Brazilian authorities, a breach of standard diplomatic protocol that left Brasilia feeling openly disrespected.

    President Lula has been a vocal critic of the State Department under Rubio’s leadership, condemning what he frames as growing and unwarranted U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, including the department’s open endorsement of conservative candidates in regional elections. The BBC has reached out to the Brazilian government, the Brazilian embassy in Washington, and the U.S. State Department for additional comment on the latest visa dispute, but has not yet received responses from all parties.

    As both countries navigate this escalating diplomatic standoff, all eyes are turning to Brazil’s upcoming elections, with growing international concern over how the tit-for-tat disputes will impact bilateral relations and the integrity of the electoral process in one of the world’s largest democracies.