Global Pulse

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  • WHO head will oversee evacuation of passengers, crew from hantavirus-stricken cruise ship

    WHO head will oversee evacuation of passengers, crew from hantavirus-stricken cruise ship

    In a coordinated global response to an unprecedented hantavirus outbreak on a Dutch-flagged Antarctic cruise ship, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Spain on Saturday to lead the safe evacuation of more than 140 passengers and crew currently aboard the MV Hondius. The vessel, which has been linked to three fatalities and five confirmed infections among passengers who previously disembarked, is scheduled to dock off the coast of the Canary Islands’ Tenerife in the early hours of Sunday.

    Tedros is set to travel to Tenerife alongside Spain’s top health and interior officials to oversee the disembarkation process, which has been planned in close consultation with European public health agencies. In a public post on X, the WHO chief confirmed that no one currently aboard the vessel has developed observable hantavirus symptoms, adding that the organization remains committed to active monitoring, cross-border coordination, and transparent updates for both member states and the general public. “So far, the risk for the population of Canary Islands and globally remains low,” he emphasized.

    Spain’s activation of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism has put a specially equipped medical evacuation plane, designed to handle high-consequence infectious diseases, on standby for the operation. Per a letter from Dutch foreign and health ministers to the Dutch parliament, if any passenger or crew member falls ill during or after disembarkation, the aircraft will transport the affected person to specialized care on the European mainland immediately. Once they leave the ship, all people on board will be moved to a fully isolated, cordoned-off quarantine area to prevent potential spread. After medical screening, asymptomatic non-Dutch nationals will be repatriated by their home countries – both the U.S. and U.K. have already confirmed they will deploy charter flights to retrieve their citizens. Asymptomatic Dutch passengers and crew will complete a six-week home quarantine under continuous monitoring by local Dutch health services, and the Netherlands has offered temporary quarantine accommodation for other nationalities if needed, given the vessel’s Dutch registration.

    The outbreak has triggered a massive global contact tracing effort spanning four continents, as public health officials work to track more than two dozen passengers who left the MV Hondius before the hantavirus infection was officially confirmed. The first passenger death on the ship occurred on April 24, but health authorities only formally confirmed hantavirus in a passenger sample on May 2 – a two-week gap that left more than 20 passengers from 12 countries disembark at various ports without proper contact tracing protocols.

    One notable case that sparked global public concern involved a KLM flight attendant who fell ill after sharing a flight with an infected cruise passenger. The passenger, a Dutch woman whose husband had died from the virus on the ship, was too sick to complete her April 25 flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she later died. On Friday, the WHO announced the flight attendant had tested negative for hantavirus, a result that WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said should ease unfounded public fears. “The risk remains absolutely low. This is not a new COVID,” Lindmeier noted.

    As of Friday, public health agencies have reported new suspected cases in two locations. U.K. health authorities confirmed a third British former passenger is suspected of having hantavirus, currently located on the remote British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha, where the cruise ship stopped in April. No update has been released on the individual’s condition. In Spain, a woman in the southeastern province of Alicante who shared a flight with the deceased Dutch infected passenger is currently being tested for the virus after developing symptoms consistent with hantavirus infection.

    Two British former passengers have already tested positive for the virus: one is hospitalized in the Netherlands, and the second is receiving care in South Africa. South African health officials are currently tracing all contacts of passengers who disembarked in the country, with a particular focus on passengers who took an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg. U.S. state health authorities are also monitoring a small number of U.S. residents who were passengers on the cruise and have already returned home; none have developed symptoms to date.

    Hantavirus, the pathogen at the center of the outbreak, is most commonly transmitted to humans through inhalation of air contaminated by rodent droppings, and does not spread easily between people. However, the specific strain detected in this outbreak – Andes virus – has been documented to spread between people in rare cases, prompting heightened precautionary measures from global health authorities. Symptoms of hantavirus typically develop between one and eight weeks after exposure to the virus.

  • What to know about British elections that hammered Starmer’s Labour Party

    What to know about British elections that hammered Starmer’s Labour Party

    LONDON – Just 18 months after Keir Starmer’s centre-left Labour Party swept to power ending 14 years of Conservative rule, the British prime minister is fighting for his political future after a catastrophic showing in the UK’s 2025 local and regional elections. The final vote counts, certified Saturday, delivered a string of humiliating defeats for Labour: the party lost more than 1,000 local council seats across England, and was ousted from government in Wales after holding power there for 27 consecutive years. Meanwhile, hard-right anti-immigration party Reform UK, led by veteran nationalist figure Nigel Farage, secured a historic breakthrough, picking up nearly 1,300 seats across England, claiming second place in Wales and making unexpected inroads in Scotland. The elections were widely framed as an informal midterm referendum on Starmer’s leadership, and the final outcome delivered a clear, unforgiving rejection from voters that has sent shockwaves through Westminster. Below are the five most critical lessons emerging from the poll results.

    ## Starmer’s leadership is hanging by a thread
    Despite the overwhelming rejection at the polls, Starmer has repeatedly rejected calls to step down, arguing that his resignation would plunge the UK into unnecessary political instability. So far, the prime minister has avoided an immediate open challenge to his leadership: most senior cabinet members have issued public statements of support, and the party’s most high-profile potential contenders – including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, former deputy leader Angela Rayner and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham – have all remained publicly silent on any leadership bid. But pressure is building quickly from within the Labour parliamentary party: a growing number of backbench lawmakers are now calling on Starmer to announce a formal timeline for his departure before the end of 2025. Under UK political rules, parties can replace a sitting prime minister mid-term without triggering an early general election, making a leadership transition logistically possible. “There has to be a timetable,” veteran Labour MP Clive Betts told the BBC, while fellow legislator Tony Vaughan called for an “orderly transition of leadership.” To demonstrate a quick shift in direction, Starmer announced two senior appointments Saturday, bringing veteran figures from previous Labour governments back into senior roles: former prime minister Gordon Brown was named a special envoy for global finance, and former deputy leader Harriet Harman was appointed as an advisor on women and gender equity. Starmer is set to deliver a major policy speech Monday in a bid to rebuild momentum, ahead of the government’s upcoming legislative agenda announcement, which will be delivered by King Charles III at the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday.

    ## Reform UK claims a historic political breakthrough
    The 2025 local elections marked a turning point for Reform UK, Farage’s hard-right anti-establishment party that has positioned itself as a populist alternative to the UK’s long-dominant major parties. Running on a platform centered on aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-establishment appeals, the party flipped hundreds of council seats in working-class northern English communities – including Sunderland – that have been solid Labour strongholds for decades. It also made significant gains at the expense of the Conservative Party in traditionally right-leaning areas such as Essex, east of London. Farage hailed the results as a “historic change in British politics,” saying he was confident the voters who switched to Reform were not just casting a protest vote, but making a long-term ideological shift. “Voters who have come to us are not doing it as a short-term protest,” Farage said. The party currently holds just 8 of the 650 seats in the UK House of Commons, and it remains unclear whether it can translate this local success into gains in a future national general election.

    ## The United Kingdom’s constitutional unity faces growing pressure
    The election results also highlighted growing regional divides across the UK, with pro-independence parties set to take power in both of the country’s semi-autonomous regional governments in Scotland and Wales – though neither has placed an immediate independence referendum on their agenda. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which has held power in Edinburgh since 2007, secured another term in government, but fell short of an outright parliamentary majority, making a new independence referendum unlikely in the near term. Labour and Reform UK tied for a distant second place in the Scottish Parliament. In Wales, Plaid Cymru – the Welsh nationalist party that aims to secure full independence from the UK but has no immediate plans to hold a vote – won the most seats in the Senedd, Wales’ devolved legislature. Though it fell short of a majority, it is widely expected to form a new governing administration. Reform UK took second place, while incumbent Labour fell to a disappointing third place, with outgoing Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan losing her own seat.

    ## Economic frustrations are at the root of Labour’s collapse
    As with most sitting governments facing voter backlash, the state of the UK economy lies at the heart of Labour’s poor showing. After ending 14 years of Conservative rule marked by austerity policies and the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Starmer’s government has struggled to bring down the cost of living and stimulate growth, hampered by ongoing global economic headwinds from the war in Ukraine and escalating geopolitical tensions involving Iran. Starmer has also alienated many of the party’s core left-wing supporters with proposed cuts to welfare spending, several of which were reversed after open rebellions from Labour lawmakers. Some senior Labour figures argue that the government’s progressive achievements – including new renter protections and an increase to the national minimum wage – have been overlooked by voters, with many pinning the blame on Starmer, who has been criticized as an uninspiring leader whose tenure has been marred by repeated scandals. The most high-profile of these was his failed attempt to appoint Peter Mandelson, a longtime party insider with ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as UK ambassador to Washington. But outgoing Barnsley Council leader Stephen Houghton, whose Labour administration was ousted by Reform UK in last week’s vote, said the problem ran far deeper than Starmer’s leadership. “This has been coming for 30 years around the country, in post-industrial communities, coastal communities, that have been left behind,” Houghton said. “You can change prime ministers all day long. If you don’t change policy, it’s not going to change.”

    ## The UK’s decades-old two-party system is collapsing
    Last week’s results confirm what political analysts have warned about for years: the UK’s long-standing two-party system, dominated for more than a century by Labour and the Conservatives, is fracturing beyond repair. The Conservatives also suffered massive losses in the local elections, leaving both major parties bleeding support to smaller, ideologically driven groups. Voters now have a far broader range of options than in previous decades, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and pro-independence nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. But the biggest gains went to populist insurgent parties: Reform UK and the Green Party. Led by self-described “eco-populist” Zack Polanski, the Greens have expanded their policy focus beyond environmental action to include social justice and support for Palestinian statehood, and the party picked up hundreds of council seats from Labour in urban centers and university towns, taking control of multiple local authorities. Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics, said the results make it almost certain that the next UK general election, scheduled to take place by 2029, will not deliver an outright majority to any single party. “So then you’re in the world of, after the election, two or three big minority parties trying to work out how they would govern,” Travers said – an outcome that has long been considered “very un-British.”

  • Indonesian rescuers find 1 body after volcano eruption as search continues for 2 more

    Indonesian rescuers find 1 body after volcano eruption as search continues for 2 more

    JAKARTA, Indonesia — A week of tragic misadventure on one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes entered its second day Saturday, after rescuers recovered the body of a local Indonesian hiker killed in Mount Dukono’s latest eruption, while search efforts continue for two missing Singaporean climbers amid ongoing volcanic unrest.

    The three fatal and missing hikers were part of a group of 20 people who deliberately ignored official safety restrictions to scale the 1,355-meter (4,445-foot) peak on Halmahera, a remote eastern Indonesian island, when Dukono erupted early Friday. The blast sent a dense ash plume 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the sky, trapping the entire group before they could descend to safety.

    Iwan Ramdani, head of the local Search and Rescue Office, confirmed that the recovered victim, a local hiker identified only as Enjel, was found Saturday afternoon roughly 50 meters (165 feet) from the volcano’s main crater. As of Saturday evening, the two Singaporean climbers’ locations remain undetermined, with rescue teams navigating persistent volcanic activity to continue their search.

    By hours after the initial eruption, 17 members of the climbing group had been successfully pulled to safety. The evacuated group includes seven Singaporean nationals and two Indonesian hikers who later joined rescue operations to share critical details about the victims’ planned routes before the blast. Ten of the 17 survivors sustained minor burn injuries from the eruption.

    Over 100 rescue personnel, supported by aerial drone reconnaissance, restarted the search at dawn Saturday, concentrating their efforts on a 700 square-meter (7,500 square-foot) zone where investigators uncovered new potential clues during initial sweeps. The operation has been complicated by the volcano’s unstable terrain and repeated fresh eruptions that force teams to pause and pull back repeatedly.

    “Every step of this search requires careful calculation and a deliberate, well-planned evacuation strategy,” Ramdani explained in a video statement. “We have to constantly factor in the risk of sudden volcanic escalation, as well as the safety of every member of our rescue team. The main challenge is that we are racing against ongoing eruptions. When conditions are declared safe, we advance closer to the crater, but if a new eruption begins, we have to immediately pull all personnel back to safety.”

    Indonesia’s national volcanology agency recorded multiple fresh eruptions between early and late Saturday, including new ash plumes reaching 3,000 meters (nearly 10,000 feet) above the crater. Monitoring posts near the peak also spotted lava bursts overnight Friday into Saturday.

    Mount Dukono has been classified at the second-highest alert level for volcanic activity since 2008, and officials established a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) exclusion zone around the active crater in December 2024. Local authorities formally closed all hiking routes to the peak in early 2025, and strengthened the ban in the wake of Friday’s tragedy.

    Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency has warned that anyone entering restricted volcanic zones could face legal penalties, and has urged all hikers and tour operators across the country to abide by official safety guidelines. Similar exclusion and access restrictions are currently in place for dozens of other active volcanoes across Indonesia that are also experiencing elevated activity.

    As a sprawling archipelago nation home to more than 270 million people, Indonesia sits along the Pacific Ocean’s geologically active “Ring of Fire,” and hosts more than 120 active volcanoes within its borders.

  • Macao university hosts smart tourism symposium featuring innovation

    Macao university hosts smart tourism symposium featuring innovation

    On Friday, the University of Macau (UM) launched the 2026 Smart Tourism Symposium, a high-profile gathering that united leading academic scholars and C-suite industry executives from the global tourism and hospitality sectors to explore cutting-edge advancements in the field.

    Titled “Smart Tourism Symposium 2026: Innovation and Impact”, the event centered its discussions on three core pillars: technological breakthroughs reshaping visitor experiences, large-scale transformation and upgrading of traditional tourism frameworks, and expanded collaboration between academic institutions and private industry players. Attendees delivered targeted insights designed to strengthen Macao’s ongoing push to establish itself as a leading international tourism and leisure hub, according to official statements from the organizing university.

    In his opening address at the symposium, UM Vice-Rector Ge Wei emphasized the unique value of cross-sector dialogue hosted by the institution. He shared his expectation that the connections and ideas forged at the event would inject fresh, transformative energy into the development and innovation of smart tourism across Macao, while also providing critical support for the long-term sustainable upgrading of the city’s core tourism economy.

    Rob Law, deputy director of UM’s Asia-Pacific Academy of Economics and Management, expanded on Macao’s strategic positioning for future tourism growth. He noted that the special administrative region benefits from substantial developmental advantages, rooted in its integration within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, its unbroken connectivity to the broader Chinese mainland, and its open access to global tourism markets.

  • Hungary’s Péter Magyar is set to be sworn in as prime minister, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule

    Hungary’s Péter Magyar is set to be sworn in as prime minister, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule

    BUDAPEST, Hungary — In a historic shift that reshapes Hungary’s political landscape and its role in the European Union, Péter Magyar took the oath of office as Hungary’s new prime minister Saturday, walking through the doors of Budapest’s iconic neo-Gothic Parliament building to formally close 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s nationalist-populist governance.

    Magyar’s newly formed center-right Tisza Party delivered a historic upset last month, defeating Orbán’s long-ruling Fidesz in a landslide election that sent shockwaves across Central Europe. Tisza secured a governing majority of 141 seats in the 199-seat national parliament — a result unmatched by any single party in Hungary’s post-Communist era. Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP alliance, which held 135 seats in the previous legislature, will now occupy just 52 seats, with the far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party taking the remaining six. For the first time since Hungary established its first post-Communist parliament in 1990, Orbán will not participate in the inaugural session. Following his election defeat, Orbán announced he would step away from the prime minister’s office to focus on rebuilding his right-wing political base.

    The 45-year-old Magyar, a former insider within Orbán’s party who only launched Tisza in 2024, campaigned on a promise of radical systemic change. A core pillar of his platform is rooting out systemic official corruption, which he has repeatedly argued has stifled economic opportunity for ordinary Hungarians for more than a decade.

    To mark the end of the Orbán era, Magyar has called on Hungarians across the country to join an all-day “regime-change celebration” outside Parliament on the day of his inauguration. After delivering his oath of office at approximately 3 p.m. local time, Magyar is scheduled to address the gathered crowd to outline his administration’s early priorities. Budapest’s liberal mayor Gergely Karácsony has also organized a public celebration along the banks of the Danube River Saturday evening, inviting all Hungarians to mark the political transition. In a social media post, Karácsony framed the gathering as a tribute to Hungarians who had faced repercussions under Orbán’s rule — including dismissed teachers, targeted journalists, persecuted minority groups and marginalized religious communities. “We can finally leave this era behind us — but first, let us remember the everyday heroes and express our gratitude with a farewell to the system,” Karácsony wrote.

    Among the new administration’s most pressing foreign policy priorities is repairing Hungary’s frayed relationship with the European Union, a tie Orbán pushed to the breaking point through years of confrontational rhetoric, repeated vetoes of key EU policy decisions and a gradual geopolitical alignment with Russia. Unlocking roughly €17 billion ($20 billion) in frozen EU development funds, withheld from Hungary during Orbán’s tenure over widespread rule-of-law and corruption violations, sits at the top of Magyar’s policy agenda. The injection of funds is widely viewed as critical to jumpstarting Hungary’s stagnant economy, which has seen little to no growth over the past four years. As a tangible signal of his government’s commitment to realigning with EU institutions, Tisza officials confirmed the EU flag will be raised once again on Parliament’s facade — 11 years after Orbán’s administration ordered it removed.

    Political analysts say the election of Magyar and the collapse of Orbán’s long-standing hold on power marks a dramatic shift not just for Hungary, but for the entire European Union. For years, Orbán’s open defiance of EU norms and frequent vetoes of bloc-wide policies on climate, migration and sanctions against Russia gridlocked EU decision-making, and his exit is expected to ease long-running political tensions within the 27-member bloc.

  • Putin denounces Nato at scaled back Victory Day parade

    Putin denounces Nato at scaled back Victory Day parade

    On May 9, Russia marked its most sacred national holiday — Victory Day, commemorating the Soviet Union’s historic defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II — with a drastically modified parade on Moscow’s Red Square that reflected the ongoing realities of the four-year-plus full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For the first time in nearly 20 years, no modern military hardware rolled across the iconic square, a change framed by Russian officials as a practical response to battlefield demands and heightened security risks amid the ongoing conflict.

    The event, held under tightened security protocols prompted by concerns over potential Ukrainian drone attacks, still saw thousands of uniformed military personnel march past the reviewing stand, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was joined by a small contingent of visiting world leaders. Unlike the 2025 80th anniversary parade, which drew high-profile attendees including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, only three foreign leaders attended this year’s ceremony: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith, and Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim. In a notable development, North Korean soldiers also took part in the march, a visible sign of the deepening military ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

    Putin opened his annual address by honoring the sacrifices of Soviet World War II veterans, before framing his so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine as a direct continuation of that generation’s legacy. “The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today,” Putin told the assembled crowd. He went on to frame the conflict as a defensive struggle against a Western-backed threat, claiming: “They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the whole bloc of Nato. And despite this, our heroes move forward.”

    The Russian leader extended his praise to Russian civilians contributing to the war effort, highlighting the work of factory workers, scientists, military engineers, war correspondents, medical workers, and educators. “No matter how military tactics change, the future of the country is being provided for by the people,” he added. Following the address, traditional ceremonial cannon salutes rang out across Red Square, and a military brass band performed, before Russian state media broadcast footage of Russian soldiers deployed on the front lines in Ukraine to viewers at home.

    Across the rest of Russia, Victory Day celebrations were muted and uneven. Pre-parade events were held earlier in far-eastern cities including Vladivostok, where thousands of locals joined the traditional Immortal Regiment march, carrying portraits of relatives who fought in World War II. While some regional parades did include military vehicles, Russian state media confirmed that most were vintage World War II-era models rather than modern weapons systems. Many smaller cities and towns across the country canceled public parades and large-scale celebrations entirely amid security concerns.

    Russian officials have openly defended the decision to scale back the Moscow parade, arguing that the country’s active military equipment is needed far more on the Ukrainian front lines than in a ceremonial display. “Our tanks are busy right now. They are fighting. We need them more on the battlefield than on Red Square,” Russian MP Yevgeny Popov told the BBC earlier in the week, echoing comments from other government figures who cited the “current operational situation” as the core reason for the changes.

    The 2026 celebrations unfolded against the backdrop of a temporary truce announced days earlier by then-U.S. President Donald Trump, after which Russia and Ukraine agreed to a three-day ceasefire covering the Victory Day holiday period. While the ceasefire largely held during parade events, both sides had already exchanged numerous accusations of widespread violations across frontline positions in the days leading up to the holiday. Kyiv had initially called for a longer indefinite truce starting May 6, a proposal Moscow did not agree to, setting the terms for the limited three-day cessation of hostilities.

  • Dozens of artists bring new life to a gigantic former ironworks on UNESCO’s world heritage list

    Dozens of artists bring new life to a gigantic former ironworks on UNESCO’s world heritage list

    In the southwestern German town of Völklingen, sitting just kilometers from the French border, a one-of-a-kind artistic collaboration has kicked off against a backdrop of industrial history. Dozens of urban creatives from 17 nations have gathered at Völklingen Ironworks — a decommissioned 19th-to-20th century iron production facility preserved as one of Europe’s most extraordinary industrial heritage sites — to launch the 2026 Urban Art Biennale, an event that continues a 15-year tradition of pairing contemporary street and graffiti art with the ironworks’ sprawling, atmospheric abandoned spaces.

    As a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1994, Völklingen Hütte holds unique global significance: it is the only fully intact integrated ironworks from the 19th and 20th centuries remaining intact across Western Europe and North America. Industrial iron production halted here in 1986, and the entire site has been preserved exactly as it stood when operations shut down, with no major new constructions added after the mid-1930s. Today, the 6-hectare (nearly 15-acre) site operates as a public museum, where visitors still navigate a maze of cold furnaces, towering chimneys, and original warning signs marking hazards like crushing risks that once faced workers.

    For event organizers and participating artists, the ironworks is far more than a novel exhibition space — it is the foundational origin of street and urban art itself. “This location is at the core of street art and graffiti art,” explained Ralf Beil, general director of the Völklingen Hütte museum. “It all began in industrial places like this. Artists love this place and they do works for the Völklinger Hütte, in the Völklinger Hütte, with the Völklinger Hütte.”

    This year’s biennale features 50 commissioned site-specific works, each tailored to the ironworks’ unique industrial character, with a deliberate rejection of commercialized art to prioritize pure, place-driven creation. Standout works range from provocative installations to large-scale interventions that play off the site’s layers of history. France-based artist Tomas Lacque has created an installation featuring a small van, a mound of tires, children’s toys, and debris coated entirely in a layer of paint. Placed in a cavernous hall that once housed active iron furnaces, the piece evokes the imagery of fossil fuel-powered transportation frozen and covered in ash, echoing the way ancient Roman Pompeii was preserved after volcanic eruption.

    Spanish artist Ampparito has intervened directly into the site’s architecture, painting the phrase “no hay nada de valor” — translated as “There is nothing of value here” — in massive white lettering across the roof of one of the ironworks’ huge industrial sheds. The work is designed to be viewed from a 148-foot (45-meter) high viewing platform, turning a structural element of the former factory into a large-scale conceptual statement.

    Other contributors include Dutch artist Boris Tellegen, better known by his artistic moniker Delta, who installed a massive black-and-green wooden sculpture that anchors and illuminates one of the ironworks’ interior halls. The France-based collective Vortex-X, which specializes in upcycling salvaged industrial materials, stretched sweeping arcs of white industrial fabric across an entire hall for their work titled *Memory in transit*, creating a dynamic installation that evokes movement and the passage of time at the dormant site.

    Participating artists have emphasized the unique tension and beauty of creating contemporary work in a space that retains the grit and memory of its working past. British artist Remi Rough, who contributed small, sharply clean and clinical paintings that intentionally contrast with the site’s weathered texture, noted the unexpected aesthetic appeal of the abandoned facility: “It’s so dusty and it’s so old, but it’s beautiful, you know, there’s beauty in decay. I think what I’ve done makes you kind of just perceive it in a bit of a different way.”

    Danish artist Anders Reventlov echoed the respect many creators hold for the site’s working history, saying he felt humbled by the opportunity to create work in a space that was once a brutal workplace. “As somebody told me … it was hell to work here. Now it’s not hell. It’s like a nice place, people walking around, there are bees, there are beautiful flowers, but yeah, we still remember the history and that’s super important.”

    Beil emphasized that the biennale’s commitment to site-specificity rules out pre-made commercial works, keeping the focus entirely on art that responds to this one-of-a-kind location. “This is an installation for the space,” he said. “This is pure art.”

    The 2026 Urban Art Biennale opens to the public on Saturday and will run through November 15, welcoming visitors to explore the intersection of contemporary urban art and 20th-century industrial heritage.

  • Chaos marks the Venice Biennale after the jury quits over Israeli and Russian participation

    Chaos marks the Venice Biennale after the jury quits over Israeli and Russian participation

    The world’s most prestigious contemporary art event, the Venice Biennale, opens its 2025 edition this Saturday, marking one of the most politically charged and chaotic iterations in the exhibition’s decades-long history. What was meant to be a celebration of global artistic vision has been upended by geopolitical conflict after the awards jury stepped down en masse to protest the inclusion of Israeli and Russian national pavilions, leaving no Golden Lion awards granted by official adjudicators. Compounding the friction, large-scale public demonstrations have been staged outside the two contested pavilions, amplifying tensions that have split the global arts community.

    While the jury framed its protest around its stance that only nations facing International Criminal Court investigations for alleged human rights violations should be excluded from awards consideration, the move has drawn further debate, with many critics arguing the United States should have been held to the same standard. Renowned British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor, one of the most high-profile voices in the protest, summed up the widespread frustration driving the unrest: “We are pushing back against the politics of hate and war that have plagued our world for far too long.”

    In a sudden shift to an open, audience-driven selection process, visitors will now step into the jury’s role, casting votes for two top honors: best national pavilion from the 100 participating countries, and best participant in the Biennale’s central curated exhibition, titled *In Minor Keys*. Modeled after the fan-voted Eurovision Song Contest, the results will remain under wraps until the exhibition’s closing day on November 22.

    Amid the political upheaval, the 2025 Biennale carries a historic legacy: it is the first major central exhibition curated by an African woman, the late Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, who passed away one year ago before the show could be completed. Five collaborating curators stepped in to bring Kouoh’s vision to life, a vision centered on amplifying underrepresented minority perspectives from across the globe. The exhibition greets visitors with a towering, red feather-sculpted costume embroidered with glass beads, rooted in the Black Masking carnival culture of New Orleans, a tradition born from cultural practices brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans. In total, Kouoh selected 110 artists and collectives to participate, staying true to her core mission of carving out space for creators who are often sidelined by mainstream arts institutions. “She dedicated her practice to making space for every voice to shine, and that ethos runs through every corner of this exhibition,” explained co-curator Marie Helene Pereira.

    Leading the slate of nationally curated pavilions, Britain’s representative, Turner Prize-winner Lubaina Himid, brings a deeply personal exploration of immigration, belonging and what it means to build a home in an adopted country. Titled *Predicting History: Testing Translation*, the presentation features vivid, brightly colored canvases that depict couples navigating the everyday dilemmas of being a newcomer. Himid, who was born in Zanzibar and has lived in Britain for more than 70 years, broke down the core tension of one standout work: “We have two architects debating where to build. One argues that building a permanent structure would prove they have contributed to the nation’s culture. The other says no – we need to build something we can escape from if we have to leave tomorrow.”

    Off the main exhibition grounds, the Vatican has stepped in to offer visitors a quiet spiritual escape from the surrounding chaos with its pavilion, the *Mystic Garden*, installed on the grounds of the Discalced Carmelite order adjacent to Venice’s central train station. Guests wander through working vineyards, past a fruiting pomegranate tree and beds of fragrant herbs, wearing headphones that deliver a curated soundscape: reimagined compositions by 12th-century abbess, mystic and composer St. Hildegard of Bingen, reworked by contemporary artists including Brian Eno and Patti Smith. “Music helps us turn inward and connect with what Hildegard called the symphony that God placed within every life,” explained Father Ermanno Barucco, prior of the Carmelite order overseeing the installation.

    Austria’s pavilion has become one of the most talked-about presentations on the Giardini grounds thanks to its unflinching, provocative performance art, which uses unorthodox materials to critique overtourism and the commercialization of Venice. Outside the pavilion, a naked female performer hangs from a giant brass bell, acting as a human clapper that rings the instrument with every movement. Inside, another nude performer rides a Jet ski in circles inside a large water tank, a visual metaphor for Venice’s transformation into nothing more than a crowded amusement park for international tourists. In one of the exhibition’s most controversial pieces, a third nude performer breathes through a scuba regulator while submerged in a tank of filtered toilet water pulled from nearby facilities, for a project titled *Seaworld Venice*.

    Against the backdrop of calls for boycott, Israeli pavilion artist Belu-Simion Fainaru, a Romanian-born Israeli, has centered his installation on the tension between love and war, rooted in Jewish mysticism. Water drips slowly from suspended glass tubes into a central pool, pausing every cycle for exactly 42 seconds – a reference to the 42-day divine creation of the world in Jewish mystical tradition. Locks of love, similar to those placed by romantic couples on European bridges, hang across the pavilion walls, engraved with the commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself” in Hebrew and the hopeful phrase “This too shall pass.” Fainaru pushed back against calls to exclude Israel, framing his own participation as a political act in favor of dialogue: “I oppose boycotts, and I stand for open conversation. That is my political statement. The jury’s move to exclude Israel from awards is nothing less than discrimination.”

    Closing out the slate of standout national presentations, the Estonian pavilion centers the unrecognized labor of women through a durational, living artwork. Artist Merike Estna is working on-site throughout the entire six-month run of the Biennale to complete a large-scale wall painting inside a converted former church that now operates as a community gymnasium. The layered history of the space mirrors Estna’s artistic practice, which builds deeply textured surfaces through repeated, spontaneous applications of paint over time. The daily act of painting is intentional, meant to draw attention to the underappreciated everyday work that sustains communities and the planet. Curator Natalia Sielewicz described the project as “the everyday feminism of sustaining life, of sustaining our planet.”

  • Magyar to become Hungary’s ‘regime change’ PM

    Magyar to become Hungary’s ‘regime change’ PM

    After 16 years of nationalist leadership under Viktor Orban, Hungary is on the cusp of a historic political shift this Saturday, as pro-European conservative Peter Magyar prepares to be sworn in as the country’s new prime minister, fulfilling his campaign promise of widespread “regime change”.

    Magyar, a 45-year-old former insider of Orban’s government who rose to prominence as a fierce critic of the long-serving leader, secured a landslide victory in the April 12 parliamentary election. His Tisza Party captured 141 of the 199 seats in Hungary’s national legislature, granting the party a commanding two-thirds majority — a threshold large enough to rewrite the country’s constitution and push through the sweeping anti-corruption and institutional reforms Magyar campaigned on.

    A core pillar of Magyar’s policy agenda is rolling back the structural changes Orban implemented over his tenure to consolidate state control over key independent sectors, including the judiciary, mainstream media, and academia. Orban, a 62-year-old leader who built close political ties with both former U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, centered his rule on building what he called an “illiberal democracy” that rolled back many liberal democratic rights in the Central European nation of 9.5 million people. Following his election defeat, Orban announced last month that he would step back from legislative politics — leaving the parliamentary seat he won vacant, a break from his continuous participation in parliament since Hungary’s 1990 democratic transition. He has stated he will now focus on reorganizing his conservative nationalist political camp.

    Top of Magyar’s immediate policy priorities is unlocking billions of euros in European Union cohesion funds that Brussels has frozen over longstanding concerns about rule of law erosion under Orban’s government. Last week, ahead of his inauguration, Magyar held high-stakes talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels to move the process forward.

    The inauguration proceedings will kick off at 10 a.m. local time (8 a.m. GMT) during the new parliament’s opening inaugural session, with the ceremony live-streamed on large public screens installed around the Budapest parliamentary building. Lawmakers will hold a formal vote to confirm Magyar as prime minister in the afternoon, after which he is expected to deliver remarks to assembled supporters gathered outside the legislature.

    Magyar’s new administration has already signaled a clear break from Orban’s government in terms of representation. Lawmakers are set to confirm hotelier Agnes Forsthoffer as the new parliament speaker, one of dozens of women tapped by Tisza for senior leadership roles. Other historic nominations include Vilmos Katai-Nemeth, a lawyer set to serve as social and family affairs minister — Hungary’s first ever visually impaired cabinet member — and Krisztian Koszegi, a Roma history teacher nominated for deputy parliament speaker. Saturday’s inauguration ceremonies, both inside and outside parliament, are intentionally crafted to carry strong symbolic meaning: the event features branding and music that honors Hungary’s EU membership, the country’s large Roma minority community, and ethnic Hungarian populations living in neighboring nations.

    Hungary faces steep structural challenges entering the new era, including years of stagnant economic growth and declining quality of core public services that analysts say will require long-term overhauls. Expectations among Hungarian voters are exceptionally high, with broad public goodwill toward the new government matched by pressure to deliver tangible changes quickly. “There is a lot of patience and goodwill toward the new government, but the expectations are through the roof and need to be met in the short-term as well,” Andrea Virag, strategy director at the Budapest-based liberal think tank Republikon Institute, told Agence France-Presse.

    As part of his “regime change” agenda, Magyar has already called on Orban-aligned President and other senior allies of the former leader to resign from their posts. He has also urged Hungarian authorities to block Orban’s close associates from moving financial assets abroad ahead of the leadership transition.

    Virag noted that the inclusive framing of the inauguration is intentional: it underscores Magyar’s mission of national unity and reconciliation after years of polarizing, divisive politics under Orban. “Magyar seeks to show that he represents a form of national unity and reconciliation after Orban’s politics of division,” Virag said. “With the festivities he also wants to show that it was not a mere change of government, but a start of a new era.”

    Notably, the new parliament will mark the first time since 1990 that left-of-center and liberal opposition parties will have no representation in the legislature, following the election results.

  • Vatican sending new signals of openness but limitations in outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics

    Vatican sending new signals of openness but limitations in outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics

    Twelve years of Pope Francis’ pontificate brought unprecedented shifts in how the Catholic Church approaches LGBTQ+ believers, and now, under Pope Leo XIV, the Vatican is sending mixed, carefully calibrated signals about the future of pastoral outreach to this community, pairing new openness to listening with firm limits on doctrinal change.

    This week, LGBTQ+ Catholic advocates celebrated a milestone: an official Vatican working group report released as part of post-Francis synodal reform efforts included first-person testimonies from two openly gay, married Catholics detailing their experiences of faith, harm from the church’s longstanding negative teachings on homosexuality, and self-acceptance. The report, a non-binding synthesis of expert deliberations on contentious post-reform issues, marks the first time an official Vatican document has centered such detailed personal narratives from LGBTQ+ Catholics.

    One man, a Portuguese native, shared his journey of coming to terms with his sexuality, marrying his husband, and the ongoing harm he faced at the hands of church leaders — including insensitive comments from a spiritual director and pressure to undergo conversion therapy, the thoroughly discredited practice that claims to change sexual orientation. The second witness, an American man, criticized mandatory counseling he received from Courage International, a Catholic pastoral group that urges people with same-sex attraction to practice celibacy. “My sexuality isn’t a perversion, disorder, or cross; it’s a gift from God,” he wrote in his testimony.

    In response to the critical depiction of its work, Courage issued a statement Friday pushing back against what it called a false portrayal, denying it has ever participated in reparative therapy. “Courage has suffered calumny and detraction before, but usually from secular outlets,” the group said. “It is a great sadness and an additional wound to our members to have this false and unjust depiction in a Vatican document.”

    For leading American Jesuit advocate Father James Martin, who has spent decades pushing for greater church outreach to LGBTQ+ people, the development reflects strong continuity with Pope Francis’ agenda. “If the Catholic Church has begun to listen to LGBTQ Catholics as part of its methodology, the church has already moved forward in a significant way,” Martin noted, adding that the publication of the testimonies alone represents a major step forward in mending the rift between the church and the LGBTQ+ community.

    But the shift has already drawn fierce pushback from conservative Catholic leaders. Bishop Joseph Strickland, the former bishop of Tyler, Texas who was removed from his post by Francis, called the report “deeply alarming,” arguing it directly contradicts unchanging church teaching that defines homosexual activity as “intrinsically disordered.” In an online post titled “An Emergency in the Church,” Strickland argued that church teaching on homosexuality comes not from human prejudice, but from divine revelation. “To suggest that the sin does not consist in the same-sex relationship itself is not merely confusing language. It is a direct assault upon Catholic moral doctrine and upon the words of Scripture itself,” he wrote.

    The most contentious flashpoint in this new era remains the question of blessings for same-sex couples, an issue that has already split the global church and put the Vatican at odds with progressive regional bishops, most notably in Germany. In 2023, under Francis, the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued the declaration *Fiducia Supplicans*, which allowed priests to offer spontaneous, non-liturgical blessings to individual same-sex people, while clarifying such blessings cannot be confused with sacramental marriage, which the church defines as a lifelong union between one man and one woman. The declaration triggered widespread conservative backlash, including coordinated dissent from a bloc of African bishops, forcing the Vatican to clarify that blessings must be brief, around 10 to 15 seconds, and cannot be interpreted as approval of a same-sex union itself.

    Earlier this year, Germany’s Catholic bishops and a prominent lay organization issued their own national guidelines for implementing *Fiducia Supplicans* that go beyond the Vatican’s parameters. While the guidelines acknowledge the requirement for non-liturgical, spontaneous blessings, they frame the blessings as being for the couple’s relationship rather than just the individual people, and outline formal criteria for celebrations including liturgical readings, pre-event preparation, and congregational acclamation, prayer and song.

    During a return flight from a recent visit to Africa, Pope Leo made clear the Holy See disagrees with the German framework, and this week a 2024 letter articulating that position was published publicly. Signed by Vatican doctrine chief Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the letter argues that the German guidelines’ inclusion of acclamation mirrors the structure of formal marriage rites, and “in this sense effectively legitimizes the status of these couples, contrary to what is stated” in the 2023 *Fiducia Supplicans* declaration. Fernández also noted that the guidelines’ focus on ceremony details like location, aesthetic design and music effectively creates a liturgical event that contradicts the Vatican’s limits. The letter stops short of an outright veto, offering only formal observations rather than punitive action.

    Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin recently noted that talk of sanctions against German priests who adopt the national guidelines is “premature,” adding that ongoing dialogue between Rome and the German bishops is the preferred path. “The hope is never to have to resort to sanctions, that problems can be resolved peacefully, as should be the case in the church,” Parolin said. Pope Leo met this week with German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who has encouraged priests in his archdiocese to use the national guidelines for pastoral care.

    In the same airborne press conference that addressed the German dispute, Leo laid out his broader approach to the issue, making clear that he views core church teachings on social justice, equality and religious freedom as far more important than doctrines around sexual morality, signaling he does not intend to prioritize debates over LGBTQ+ issues during his pontificate. On the question of same-sex blessings, however, Leo confirmed he will not go beyond the limits set by Francis, reaffirming the Vatican’s opposition to regional efforts that deviate from the Holy See’s existing stance.

    For many LGBTQ+ Catholic advocates, Leo’s measured approach is still a welcome change. Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a group that advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church, praised Leo’s framing of priority issues. “It is good to hear from the pope that he is making a decisive turn away from the church’s obsession with sexual matters,” DeBernardo said. He added that Leo’s non-confrontational response to the German guidelines — declining to condemn church leaders, framing disagreement as not a cause for schism — marks a positive shift. “Both the new moral emphasis on social issues instead of sexuality, and the fostering of a more collegial church are good news for LGBTQ+ Catholics,” DeBernardo said.

    Martin echoed that balance, arguing there is no contradiction between the Vatican’s retention of existing limits on same-sex blessings and the synod’s new call to listen to LGBTQ+ Catholics. “Both ‘Fiducia’ and the synod report are steps forward in the church’s ministry to LGBTQ people,” he told the Associated Press.