Global Pulse

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  • Kylie Minogue says cancer experience ‘still with me’

    Kylie Minogue says cancer experience ‘still with me’

    Global pop icon Kylie Minogue has bared her soul in a revealing new three-part Netflix documentary, confronting two decades of lingering trauma from her breast cancer diagnosis and opening up about the harsh media mistreatment that marked the early days of her career.

    Twenty years after receiving the life-altering news that she had breast cancer, the Australian superstar said the emotional weight of that experience continues to shape her life to this day. When recalling the moment she got her diagnosis, Minogue described an overwhelming state of disbelief that left her scrambling to process uncharted territory. “Where do I even start? Shock,” she told BBC London in an interview about the project. “You’re trying to understand something you’ve never thought about before. It’s a crash course. It’s very deep and extended and it’s still with me today in many ways.”

    Having called London her home for more than 30 years, Minogue also pulled back the curtain on the unflattering side of her early rise to fame, when she made the transition from starring on the hit Australian soap opera *Neighbours* to building her global music career. Revisiting old interview footage from that era for the documentary remains a distressing experience, she said, recalling the relentless, unkind scrutiny that left her feeling deeply humiliated as a teenage newcomer to the spotlight. “When I see some of that footage back, I’m still as confounded as I was even as a 19-year-old,” she shared. “Sometimes it felt like just humiliation and having to sit within that frame and handle it.”

    Minogue noted that the aggressive, demeaning treatment she endured as a young star would be unlikely to unfold the same way in the modern entertainment industry, but she acknowledged that contemporary public figures face a new set of intense pressures stemming from social media platforms.

    For years, Minogue repeatedly turned down offers to make an in-depth documentary about her life and career, saying she was never ready to confront her most painful memories on screen. This time, however, she realized the moment had come to lay her full story bare. “I’ve been asked many times and I always said no,” she explained. “If not now, when?”

    Completing the project required her to push past lingering anxiety and embrace vulnerability to revisit chapters of her life she had long avoided. “In the end, I just had to take the plunge and really open myself up a little more,” she said.

    Beyond looking back at past struggles, the pop star also shared her plans for the future: she hopes to return to acting down the line while continuing to create new music, a craft she described as both “a best friend” and “a saviour” that has carried her through her hardest days. Minogue also left fans with an exciting tease, hinting that she could return to perform at London’s iconic Hyde Park following her standout 2024 set at the venue. “I’ll see you again at Hyde Park,” she said, before adding with a playful smile, “I said that like I’m assuming I’m going to play Hyde Park again. Maybe I will. It was amazing.”

    The documentary marks the most comprehensive look at Minogue’s decades-long career and personal journey ever created, giving fans an unprecedented glimpse into the resilience that has defined one of pop music’s most enduring stars.

  • Richard Marles accuses Coalition of creating submarine ‘capability gap’

    Richard Marles accuses Coalition of creating submarine ‘capability gap’

    A sharp political clash over Australia’s national defence policy has erupted after Defence Minister Richard Marles launched a scathing attack on the former Liberal-National Coalition government, accusing it of neglecting critical planning for the nation’s ageing Collins-class submarine fleet and leaving a dangerous capability gap that the current Albanese Labor government is now forced to address. The confrontation came during a major policy address delivered by Marles at the Lowy Institute on Tuesday, where he positioned the Albanese government as the true steward of Australian national defence while dismantling the long-held public perception that conservative parties are the more competent actors on security issues.

    At the center of the dispute is the government’s scaled-back, reworked approach to the A$11 billion life-of-type extension (LOTE) program for Australia’s six Collins-class conventionally powered submarines, which are set to remain in service until the delivery of nuclear-powered submarines secured under the trilateral AUKUS security pact with the United States and the United Kingdom. Following an independent defense review, the Albanese administration has abandoned the original full fleet overhaul plan inherited from the Coalition, instead adopting a flexible, conditions-based strategy that cuts back unnecessary engineering overhauls, reduces scheduling risks, and focuses upgrades exclusively on high-priority capabilities including core weapons systems and combat infrastructure.

    The oldest of the fleet, HMAS Farncomb – launched almost 30 years ago – will be the first vessel to enter the LOTE program later this month, with work split between shipyards at Osborne in South Australia and Henderson in Western Australia, carried out by the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC). The work will retain and restore the submarine’s core base components while modernizing critical combat and weapons systems. Upgrades to the fleet’s optronics systems were previously shelved by the current government to align with the tailored, risk-mitigated approach. Marles also confirmed the revised program will accelerate modernization work on HMAS Rankin, the newest submarine in the Collins-class fleet.

    “This approach will reduce engineering risk by sustaining existing systems where appropriate, while continuing to upgrade critical capabilities that keep our fleet operationally effective,” Marles said in his address. “It will ensure our Collins-class submarines remain a potent, highly capable undersea deterrent for Australia today and for years to come.”

    Beyond the submarine program, Marles used the speech to outline the government’s broader defence agenda, highlighting progress on accelerating the delivery of new Mogami-class frigates and major investments in Ghost Bat and Ghost Shark, two domestically developed autonomous defense vehicles. He pushed back aggressively against decades of Conservative branding on defence, arguing that Labor has always been Australia’s natural party of national defence, pointing to the legacy of former Labor prime ministers including Chris Watson, Andrew Fisher, John Curtin, and Gough Whitlam in building Australia’s independent defence capacity and national sovereignty.

    “Labor’s historical focus on defence comes from the fact that our armed forces, national security, and defence capability sit at the very heart of Australian national sovereignty,” Marles said. “The character of any nation is defined in large part by what it is able to do militarily. Sovereignty is the foundation of nationhood, of the idea of Australia itself – and Labor has always been the party of the Australian project.”

    He went on to criticize the conservative vision of Australian federation, noting that original conservative leaders sought only to unite six British colonies into a single British entity focused on free trade, with little interest in advancing an independent Australian national identity. Turning to the Coalition’s nine years in office under prime ministers Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison, Marles called the previous government “the worst defence government in Australia’s history”, pointing to its failure to address the rapid expansion of Chinese naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific. He added that the current government maintains “serious concerns” over recent Chinese actions against Philippine civilian and government vessels in the South China Sea.

    “For decades, the Liberals have enjoyed a huge brand advantage when it comes to defence policy,” Marles said. “But the gap between perception and reality is sometimes a chasm. All leaders face the danger of believing their own publicity – and in defence, that has made the Liberals fundamentally lazy.”

    On the future submarine program, Marles reiterated that the previous government’s mismanagement had left a critical capability gap for Australia’s most important maritime military platform. “By this point, careful, long-range planning for extending the life of the Collins-class fleet should have been well underway,” he said. “Unfortunately for Australia, the Liberals failed to prepare and implement a thoughtful, coherent LOTE plan for the submarines.”

    The debate comes as global security uncertainty intensifies following the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, which Marles said has placed new, urgent focus on Australia’s defence capabilities, national resilience, and sovereign independence. In 2024, the Collins-class fleet was officially listed as a “Product of Concern” by the federal government, triggering increased direct ministerial oversight of the upgrade program to address delays and capability risks.

  • Pakistan deployed 8,000 troops, a Chinese air defence system and warplanes to Saudi Arabia: Report

    Pakistan deployed 8,000 troops, a Chinese air defence system and warplanes to Saudi Arabia: Report

    In a significant reinforcement of its long-standing security alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a full fighter jet squadron, and a advanced Chinese-built air defense system to the Gulf nation, according to a exclusive Reuters report published on Monday. This incremental buildup of Pakistani military personnel and hardware in the kingdom began in early April, marking one of the most tangible commitments to the bilateral mutual defense accord signed just months prior.

  • Starbucks Korea sacks CEO over controversial ‘Tank Day’ promotion

    Starbucks Korea sacks CEO over controversial ‘Tank Day’ promotion

    A major marketing misstep has roiled South Korea this week, ending with the abrupt dismissal of Starbucks Korea’s top executive after a coffee tumbler promotion was widely linked to the country’s deadly 1980 Gwangju Uprising crackdown, triggering mass boycott calls and harsh condemnation from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

    Launched on Monday, the annual national commemoration of the 1980 pro-democracy uprising, the limited-time “Tank Day” promotion for the chain’s new Tank Series insulated tumblers quickly ignited public anger. For many South Koreans, the “tank” branding was an unforgivable nod to the military tanks deployed by former dictator Chun Doo-hwan’s authoritarian regime to crush the 18 May 1980 pro-democracy protests in Gwangju. The incident, a foundational moment in South Korea’s transition to democracy, left hundreds of protestors dead, and subsequent probes confirmed widespread atrocities including extrajudicial killing and sexual violence committed by regime troops.

    Within hours of the promotion going live, Starbucks Korea pulled the campaign. Shinsegae Group, the South Korean conglomerate that holds a 67.5% controlling stake in the local Starbucks franchise (US-based Starbucks Corporation divested its remaining operational stake in 2021), moved quickly to address the public fury: it issued a formal apology for the “inappropriate marketing” and announced the immediate termination of CEO Sohn Jeong-hyun.

    Company officials initially attempted to clarify that the Tank Series was just one of several new tumbler lines rolled out as part of a broader promotion running from 15 to 26 May, with the “tank” label meant to reference the containers’ advertised “spacious volume” for large coffee servings. The explanation did little to calm public anger. Critics also pointed to a second, equally incendiary detail in the promotional material: a Korean phrase “tak on the table!” The word “tak” matches the onomatopoeia used in a notorious 1987 police statement about the death of student activist Park Jong-chul, who died in police custody after being tortured. Police infamously claimed Park collapsed after an interrogator slapped the table — a lie that fueled the 1987 pro-democracy movement that ultimately ousted Chun’s regime.

    Public reaction was swift and fierce across South Korean social media. “I can’t believe they thought they could pull off something like this and people would just let it slide… it’s utterly absurd and infuriating,” one X (formerly Twitter) user posted early Tuesday. Thousands of users shared calls to boycott both Starbucks Korea and all Shinsegae Group affiliates.

    President Lee joined the widespread condemnation, writing in his own X post that the campaign “insults the victims and the bloody struggle” of Gwangju residents. “What on earth were they thinking, knowing how many lives were taken that day and how seriously that set back our country’s justice and history?” Lee wrote. “I am outraged by such a low-class merchant’s inhumane behaviour, which denies our country’s values of basic human rights and democracy.”

    For South Korea, 18 May is far more than a historical date: it is recognized annually as a sacred day of national remembrance for the pro-democracy movement, etched into public consciousness as a core national trauma that paved the way for the country’s democratic transition. The 1980 uprising became a unifying rallying cry for pro-democracy activists over seven years, leading to the 1986 June Democracy Movement that forced Chun Doo-hwan to step down and cemented democratic rule in South Korea.

    Shinsegae Group chairman Chung Yong-jin echoed the public anger in his own official statement Tuesday, calling the marketing campaign “an inexcusable mistake that trivialised the suffering and sacrifices of all those who have dedicated themselves to the democracy of this country”. Chung pledged to launch a full investigation into the event’s internal approval process and implement a top-down re-examination of all marketing review protocols across every Shinsegae affiliate. The remaining 32.5% stake in Starbucks Korea is held by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, and US-based Starbucks has no operational involvement in the South Korean chain following Shinsegae’s 2021 buyout.

  • US: At least three dead in attack at San Diego mosque

    US: At least three dead in attack at San Diego mosque

    On a Monday afternoon in Southern California, emergency dispatchers flooded with calls of an active shooter at the Islamic Centre of San Diego triggered a massive law enforcement response, leaving three people dead – including an on-site security guard – and sending shockwaves through the local Muslim community. Dozens of patrol cars and emergency vehicles descended on the mosque complex, which is formally recognized as the largest Muslim place of worship across San Diego County, according to the institution’s official website.

    Local officials quickly confirmed the unfolding situation via social media. “I am aware of the active shooter situation at the Islamic Center of San Diego,” Todd Gloria, mayor of San Diego, posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that first responders had already deployed to the site to secure the area and safeguard local residents.

    Within hours of the initial response, San Diego Police Chief confirmed during a formal press briefing that two teen suspects were located dead inside a vehicle parked just a few blocks from the mosque. The chief noted that preliminary evidence indicates both suspects died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and that law enforcement is officially treating the attack as a bias-driven hate crime. Shortly after clearing the scene, the San Diego Police Department announced the active threat had been fully neutralized, with no further danger to community members remaining in the area.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom received full briefings on the developing incident from state and local law enforcement, according to his press office. “We are grateful to the first responders on the scene working to protect the community and urge everyone to follow guidance from local authorities,” the governor’s office shared in a post on X.

    Federal law enforcement resources have also been mobilized to support the investigation: CNN confirmed Monday that the FBI is assisting local authorities with the probe into the deadly attack.

    This shooting comes amid a documented sharp upward trend in anti-Muslim violence across the United States. A report released last month by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) revealed that Islamophobic attacks across the country surged to a 15-month high in April of this year. The organization linked this surge in targeted violence to shifting U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically pointing to the Trump administration’s military strike on Iran that began in late February. Khuram Zaman, founding director of the Center for Security, Technology and Policy at MPAC, previously told Middle East Eye that the strike marked a clear turning point in hate crime statistics: “The one factor we can identify in March is that at the end of February, the war in Iran started, and that is what we think is the delineation between what we saw before in 2025 versus what we’re seeing here.”

  • Tasmanian government apologises over stolen body parts scandal

    Tasmanian government apologises over stolen body parts scandal

    A decades-long breach of trust involving unauthorized retention and display of human body specimens at a University of Tasmania museum has come to a head, with the Tasmanian state government issuing a formal apology to affected families for the profound harm caused by the unethical practices.

    The scandal traces its roots back to 1966, when the RA Rodda Pathology Museum was founded at the university’s Hobart campus to support medical education and research. For 25 years, ending in 1991, forensic pathologists secretly sourced 177 human tissue and organ specimens from coroner-ordered autopsies, transferring the samples to the museum without ever obtaining consent from the deceased’s next of kin or the coroners overseeing the cases. Coroner Simon Cooper’s 2024 investigation confirmed that the vast majority of these specimens were provided by the late Dr Royal Cummings, a prominent forensic pathologist, with the practice also carried out by his predecessors and successors. In many instances, pathologists actively sought out specimens for the museum collection, a deliberate violation of ethical and legal protocols.

    Concerns about the museum’s collection first emerged in 2016, when three bone specimens were flagged as potentially obtained without family consent. The allegations prompted the state coroner to launch a full formal investigation in April 2023, with the final damaging findings released in September 2024. All 177 problematic specimens had already been removed from public display back in 2018, years before the investigation concluded.

    On Tuesday, a number of affected family members gathered in Tasmania’s parliament to hear the health minister’s formal apology. Minister Bridget Archer addressed the lasting harm of the unethical practices, which ended 35 years ago but have continued to inflict trauma on surviving relatives. “Although these historical practices ended 35 years ago, the deep impact this has had on the families and loved ones of the deceased continues to this day,” Archer told parliament. “It’s important to remember that these were not just body parts or specimens or human remains. They were people.”

    Many family members have carried decades of grief after learning their loved ones’ remains were held without permission. Cheryl Springfield’s 14-year-old brother David Maher died in a 1976 car crash; she described learning of the retained specimens as a lifelong nightmare. While she welcomed the apology, she stressed that it could not undo the harm. “It’s in the right direction, but it’s not going to fix it all,” she told local media. Similarly, John Santi, whose 19-year-old brother Tony died in a 1976 motorcycle accident, said his family buried his brother 50 years ago, only to discover decades later that his brain had been stolen for the museum collection. “We buried him 50 years ago, only to find out 50 years later that these people had stolen his brain,” Santi told Australian Associated Press.

    Shortly after the government’s apology, University of Tasmania Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Health Professor Graeme Zosky also issued an acknowledgment of the wrongs committed, noting that university staff had already met with dozens of affected families. “While we recognise an apology cannot fix the hurt and distress families have felt, we are sorry,” Zosky said.

  • Timeline of recent US-Cuba relations amid heightened tensions in Trump’s second term

    Timeline of recent US-Cuba relations amid heightened tensions in Trump’s second term

    In the wake of a early-year Venezuelan military operation that resulted in the capture of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the United States has steadily escalated diplomatic and economic pressure on Cuba, the Latin American nation long led by a communist government, according to reporting from multiple senior U.S. and international sources. The escalating standoff has put bilateral relations, already fraught after more than 60 years of enmity, at a critical turning point, with the U.S. Justice Department now moving toward a criminal indictment of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, a step that could send regional tensions soaring.

    A potential indictment against Castro would require approval from a federal grand jury before it can be formally filed, three anonymous sources familiar with the ongoing investigation confirmed to the Associated Press. Three insiders noted that the preliminary charge is tied to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 downing of two aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based Cuban exile group, an incident that left four people dead. At the time of the shootdown, Castro served as Cuba’s defense minister, and he retains behind-the-scenes influence over Cuban governance despite stepping down from official office years ago. The Cuban government has not issued any public response to multiple requests for comment on the pending investigation, which was first reported by CBS.

    This push for legal action comes amid a year of rapidly shifting friction between the Donald Trump administration and Havana, unfolding concurrently with a fragile, uneasy ceasefire in the U.S. military conflict with Iran. To contextualize the fast-moving developments, here is a chronological breakdown of key milestones in U.S.-Cuba relations over the first five months of the year:

    On January 4, just 24 hours after the Venezuelan operation that removed Maduro from power, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly warned that Cuba’s ruling government “is in a lot of trouble.” That same day, Trump renewed his long-stated public call for the United States to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory owned by Denmark.

    A week later on January 11, Trump issued a direct public ultimatum to Cuba, Maduro’s closest regional ally, as the island braced for potential domestic unrest following Maduro’s ousting. “Cuba needs to make a deal BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote in a social media post. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel pushed back sharply on the threat, arguing that the U.S. government, which he criticized for turning even human lives into a commercial transaction, has no moral standing to judge Cuba’s actions.

    On January 30, Trump signed a new executive order imposing punitive tariffs on any goods imported from nations that export or supply petroleum to Cuba. Policy analysts widely agree the move will further damage Cuba’s already fragile economy, which has been strained by decades of U.S. sanctions.

    On February 26, one day before the U.S. launched its full-scale military campaign against Iran, Trump unexpectedly announced that Washington was holding high-level talks with Cuban officials and floated the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba,” though he offered no further details on what such a framework would entail. He confirmed Rubio was leading discussions with senior Cuban leadership, noting that the decades-long adversarial relationship between the two nations was approaching a pivotal moment. That same month, Raúl Guillermo “Raúlito” Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson and a rising figure in Cuban politics, held a secret closed-door meeting with Rubio on the sidelines of the Caribbean Community summit in St. Kitts.

    It was not until March 13 that Díaz-Canel publicly confirmed the backchannel talks, marking the first official acknowledgement of negotiations between the two governments amid a crippling national energy crisis. He said in a public statement that the discussions “were aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences between our two nations. International factors facilitated these exchanges.” Two weeks later on March 31, a Russian oil tanker that had been sanctioned by the U.S. docked in Cuba, delivering the first shipment of fuel to the island in three months.

    Through early April, Díaz-Canel repeatedly rejected U.S. pressure to step down, stating in an April 12 interview with NBC’s *Meet the Press* that Washington has no legitimate justification for either a military invasion of Cuba or an attempt to remove his government from power. He warned that any U.S. military incursion would carry heavy costs and destabilize the entire Caribbean region. On April 16, during a mass rally in Havana marking the 65th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution’s formal declaration of socialism, Díaz-Canel called on the Cuban people to prepare for potential external aggression. “The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression,” he told the crowd of hundreds of supporters. “We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it, and if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it.”

    The following day, news broke of a new round of in-person talks between a U.S. delegation and senior Cuban government officials, marking a renewed push for diplomatic progress. This meeting was the third confirmed discussion between U.S. representatives and Rodríguez Castro, and a senior State Department official had met with the Cuban envoy earlier that month, a department official confirmed on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations. The official declined to name the members of the U.S. delegation, while a second U.S. official clarified that Rubio was not part of the delegation that traveled to Havana.

    On April 23, Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Ernesto Soberón Guzmán told the AP that Havana would reject any U.S. ultimatums requiring the release of political prisoners as a condition of continuing talks, stating that all internal Cuban matters related to detentions “are not on the negotiating table.” The release of political prisoners has been a core demand from U.S. negotiators in the first formal bilateral talks held on Cuban soil in a decade. A week later on April 28, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic-sponsored bill that would have forced Trump to lift the U.S. energy blockade against Cuba without prior congressional approval. The vote underscored unified Republican support for Trump’s unilateral exercise of U.S. military and diplomatic pressure across multiple global hotspots, including Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba.

    By May 7, senior U.S. officials moved to quell widespread speculation about an imminent U.S. military strike on Cuba, despite repeated public threats from Trump that “Cuba is next” and hints that U.S. warships deployed to the Middle East for the Iran conflict could sail to Cuba after concluding their operations. The sources, who are involved in the ongoing preliminary talks with Cuban authorities, also told the AP that U.S. negotiators are not optimistic that Havana will accept a sweeping U.S. offer that includes tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, two years of free Starlink internet access for all Cubans, agricultural support, and infrastructure investment. The proposal comes with strict policy conditions that the Cuban government has rejected for decades, though officials noted that Havana has not yet formally turned down the offer even after new Trump administration sanctions took effect.

    One week later on May 14, both U.S. and Cuban officials confirmed that CIA Director John Ratcliffe had traveled to Havana for high-level meetings with Cuban officials, including Rodríguez Castro. Ratcliffe held discussions with Rodríguez Castro, Cuban Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuba’s national intelligence service, covering intelligence cooperation, economic stability, and regional security issues. A CIA spokesperson later confirmed the meeting to the AP. A day after that visit, the AP first reported that the Justice Department was moving forward with plans to seek a grand jury indictment against Raúl Castro, the latest development in a rapidly shifting standoff between the two nations.

  • Professional mourners mix tribal tradition with Kenya’s widespread Christianity

    Professional mourners mix tribal tradition with Kenya’s widespread Christianity

    Along a sunbaked roadside in Kisumu, western Kenya, the body of 64-year-old Tom Ochieng Mima lies in state, dressed in crisp formal funeral garments. Gathered under white canvas tents, hundreds of attendees sit on lightweight plastic chairs, their voices rising and falling in a raw, haunting blend of hymn-like singing and unfiltered weeping. A cluster of mourners sways in unison, waving leafy branches and striking them against the dusty earth in a steady, rhythmic pattern. To an outside observer, this scene reads as a conventional, deeply emotional community funeral — until the context comes into light.

    None of these performing mourners ever met Mima, nor do they have any personal connection to his grieving family. They are part of a growing, unique trade in western Kenya’s poorer regions: professional mourners, hired to channel open, visceral grief in accordance with long-held Luo cultural customs. For many practitioners, this unlikely occupation offers a rare source of consistent, livable income in an area plagued by widespread economic uncertainty.

    Unlike many skilled trades that require years of formal training, professional mourning is open to anyone who can connect deeply with emotion and extend genuine empathy to grieving families, according to Francis Oyoo, a two-year veteran of the field. Oyoo typically takes on one to two funerals per month, earning roughly $80 per assignment — a modest sum that is nevertheless enough to cover his basic living costs. For Oyoo, the work is rooted in personal experience: he entered the profession after losing his uncle in a sudden accident, and now draws on his own unresolved grief to connect with the families he serves. When channeling emotion for a stranger’s funeral, he says he simply calls to mind the loved one he lost, letting that natural pain flow out.

    James Ajowi, another professional mourner at Mima’s service, has been practicing the trade for more than two decades. His own journey into the work was shaped by grief as well: a few years ago, he lost his daughter to a progressive lung disease, and he says his personal experience of devastating loss has only deepened his commitment to comforting other grieving people. “It’s as if she was preparing me for this work,” Ajowi explained.

    For bereaved families like Mima’s, the presence of these hired mourners brings unexpected and profound comfort, even though they never knew the deceased. In western Kenya, funerals are major community gatherings, designed to be loud, crowded, and collective affairs that bring together neighbors and loved ones to mourn as one. “They support us. They show us love,” said Lawrence Ouma Angira, Mima’s nephew, who was raised by his late uncle. “They help fill the emptiness left by his passing, and they comfort us — they understand what it means to lose someone you love.”

    Anthropologists explain that the role of professional mourners grows out of a centuries-old fusion of Luo traditional beliefs and modern Christianity that defines cultural life in the region, where Luo communities are concentrated around the shores of Lake Victoria. For the Luo, mourning serves a dual purpose: it is not just a space to express personal grief, but a ritual that protects the community from harmful evil spirits, explained Charles Owour Olunga, an anthropologist who studies Luo cultural practices. Collective singing, weeping, and rhythmic movement by large groups of mourners works to drive away negative forces surrounding a death. While unrelated hired mourners (most often women) are a traditional fixture of funeral rites across many regions of Africa and Asia, Olunga noted that it is relatively unusual for men to participate in the practice alongside women. Beyond expressing grief, the professional mourners also help manage crowds and maintain order at large funerals.

    The professionalization of this ancient ritual, however, is a relatively new development, tied directly to the forces of urbanization and growing commercialization across rural Kenya, Olunga said. “We are moving away from the fully authentic, community-led version of the rite, but we are still holding tight to the core of the tradition. These professional mourners add depth and color to the existing ritual process.”

    This blend of ancient Indigenous tradition and mainstream Christianity is a defining feature of religious life across western Kenya. Research from the University of Nairobi notes that the region is home to a large number of African-initiated churches, religious movements that emerged as a local response to the strict prohibitions on Indigenous ritual imposed by early colonial Christian missionaries. These churches allow followers to hold both Christian beliefs and honor long-held traditional cultural practices, creating a unique religious tapestry.

    For the professional mourners themselves, the theological nuances of this blended faith matter far less than the core purpose of their work: building collective connection around grief, and bringing comfort to people when they need it most. “Death is painful,” Oyoo said. “But I also find strength in knowing that one day, I too will die — and people will gather for me.”

    This report is part of Associated Press religion coverage, produced in collaboration with The Conversation US through funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP holds sole responsibility for all content.

  • Japanese prime minister travels to meet South Korea president for second leg of hometown summits

    Japanese prime minister travels to meet South Korea president for second leg of hometown summits

    TOKYO/SEOUL – Six months after launching their unprecedented series of personal diplomatic engagements, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi prepared to convene their fourth bilateral summit on Tuesday, this time on South Korean soil. The meeting, held in Lee’s hometown of Andong, marks a groundbreaking milestone: the first time incumbent leaders of the two neighboring nations have exchanged reciprocal visits to their personal hometowns, a gesture crafted to build personal rapport and accelerate the gradual warming of a relationship long overshadowed by historical tension.

    Andong, a quiet southeastern South Korean city, draws global cultural attention for its 500-year-old traditional folk village, a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves centuries of Korean Confucian culture and folk tradition. This choice of venue follows a similar precedent set in January, when Takaichi hosted Lee in her own hometown of Nara, Japan’s ancient imperial capital centuries before modern political divisions shaped the two nations’ relationship.

    The summit comes at a moment of heightened global geopolitical volatility, with rising tensions across the Middle East, shifting power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, and evolving security threats that have pushed both Seoul and Tokyo to prioritize cooperative engagement over historical disputes. Ahead of the meeting, South Korea’s presidential office emphasized that the gathering would center on deepening personal trust between the two leaders, while Takaichi told reporters Tuesday morning that the talks would focus on expanding cooperation “under the severe geopolitical conditions such as situations in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.”

    Official agenda items for the one-day summit span a range of shared priorities: expanded economic and energy collaboration, coordinated responses to the ongoing conflict in Iran, and further progress in bilateral relationship-building. Observers and regional policy experts note there are no immediate contentious issues blocking progress, leading to widespread expectations that the meeting will proceed smoothly and keep the bilateral relationship on its current positive trajectory.

    Choi Eunmi, a leading Japan specialist at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, explained the shifting approach driving the current warming of ties: “The two countries put more emphasis on agenda for cooperation than contentious issues. They would now think scenes of constantly fluctuating relationship or eventually negative bilateral ties won’t be helpful to anyone now.”

    The current progress in Seoul-Tokyo relations represents a dramatic shift from decades of friction. Both countries are major liberal democracies and key U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, but relations were repeatedly strained for generations by unresolved grievances rooted in Japan’s 35-year colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula, which ended with Japan’s defeat in World War II. A sustained turn toward cooperation began in 2023, when the predecessors of Lee and Takaichi took deliberate steps to set aside intractable history disputes, framing closer alignment as a necessary response to shared regional challenges: growing U.S.-China strategic competition, global supply chain fragility, and North Korea’s accelerating nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

    When Lee and Takaichi assumed office last year, many regional analysts predicted cooperation would stall. Takaichi carried a long public reputation as a right-wing security hawk, while Lee, a political liberal, was widely expected to shift South Korea’s foreign policy toward engagement with North Korea and China, moving away from alignment with the U.S. and Japan. Instead, the two leaders have doubled down on cooperation, even adopting unprecedented, informal diplomatic gestures to build personal chemistry.

    Two months before Takaichi took office, Lee made a landmark move by choosing Japan as the first destination for his inaugural bilateral overseas summit. In January, at the close of their Nara meeting, the pair shared an informal jam session: Takaichi, a lifelong heavy metal fan who played drums in college, led the pair in drumming along to global K-pop hits including BTS’s chart-topping track “Dynamite.”

    Lee has publicly noted that he and Takaichi share a core belief that sitting national leaders must prioritize pragmatic problem-solving over partisan or nationalist posturing common among ordinary politicians. But many observers argue the impetus for deeper cooperation also stems from new global pressures that were less acute for previous administrations, including the return of Donald Trump to U.S. leadership with his signature “America First” policy, and widespread global economic disruption stemming from the ongoing Iran war.

    Both South Korea and Japan hold hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial and investment commitments to the U.S. economy. Yet Trump’s aggressive tariff policies and transactional approach to security alliances have eroded long-standing trust in U.S. commitment among political and business elites in both Seoul and Tokyo, pushing the two neighbors to build more robust bilateral coordination of their own.

    Despite the current positive momentum, experts caution that the bilateral relationship remains fragile, and unresolved historical issues could trigger sudden setbacks. Disputes over Japan’s colonial-era forced mobilization of Korean laborers and sexual enslavement of Korean “comfort women” have not been permanently resolved, the two governments have simply agreed to set aside public debate on the issues to avoid derailing cooperation.

    As Choi noted: “Both countries aren’t talking about how to resolve and prevent recurrences of conflicts over those issues and we don’t know when they could occur again.”

    Associated Press reporter Mari Yamaguchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.

  • Mother with $320k stolen Lego haul stashed in her shed learns court fate

    Mother with $320k stolen Lego haul stashed in her shed learns court fate

    In a case that has captured public attention across South Australia, a 34-year-old mother of three has avoided a custodial prison sentence despite being convicted for possessing a massive cache of stolen Lego worth an estimated $320,000, hidden in the garden shed of her former Adelaide home.

    Dai Truong, a Vietnamese national currently residing in Devon Park, entered guilty pleas last week to four criminal charges brought against her: one count of unlawful possession of stolen property, and three separate counts of dealing with property without the owner’s consent. The charges stem from a police search warrant executed at Truong’s former Dudley Park residence on March 31 this year. When officers arrived at the property, they uncovered an enormous stockpile of unopened, brand-new Lego sets spanning popular franchises from Star Wars to Disney, all stashed out of sight in the backyard shed.

    The sheer scale of the stolen haul was extraordinary: authorities required 15 full pallets and two large horse boxes to transport all the seized Lego sets away from the property. While the court did not receive evidence detailing the full origin of the entire massive cache, Truong confessed to direct involvement in three individual thefts carried out at the same Kmart location, and admitted that all the Lego found in her shed was stolen property.

    Court documents outline that Truong carried out the three small-scale thefts weeks apart from one another, sneaking Lego boxes out of the Kmart branch at Marion Shopping Centre by hiding them in the bottom storage compartment of her child’s pram. She only took a small number of sets per incident, and the combined value of these three thefts amounts to just $1,774 – a tiny fraction of the total $320,000 worth of Lego seized by police.

    One week after entering her guilty pleas, Truong appeared before Port Adelaide Magistrates Court for sentencing. Despite prior warnings that a prison term was a likely outcome, Magistrate Aaron Almedia opted to grant a home detention order instead of immediate custody, allowing Truong to serve her sentence at her current Devon Park residence.

    For the charge of unlawful possession covering the entire cache, Truong received an initial seven-month prison sentence, which was reduced to four months and six days to account for her early guilty pleas. In addition to the home detention order, the magistrate ordered Truong to pay $1,774 in compensation to Kmart Marion to cover the value of the three sets of Lego she directly stole, plus an additional $1,112 in victim-of-crime levies to the court.