Global Pulse

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  • Trial begins for 4 Indonesian service members charged over acid attack on activist

    Trial begins for 4 Indonesian service members charged over acid attack on activist

    On Wednesday, a high-stakes military trial got underway in Jakarta for four Indonesian military intelligence personnel, charged with carrying out a brutal acid attack on a leading human rights advocate that has reopened long-simmering national debates over unaccountable violence within the country’s armed forces. The defendants include three navy marines and one air force officer — Sgt. Edi Sudarko, First Lt. Budhi Hariyanto Widhi Cahyono, Capt. Nandala Dwi Prasetya, and Air Force First Lt. Sami Lakka — all assigned to the Strategic Intelligence Agency of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI). They face charges of aggravated premeditated assault stemming from the March 12 attack, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment if the court returns a guilty verdict. The target of the attack was Andrie Yunus, a 27-year-old human rights lawyer and senior campaigner with KontraS, the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, one of Indonesia’s most prominent human rights organizations.

    The attack unfolded as Yunus rode his motorcycle through central Jakarta on the evening of March 12, when assailants threw a vial of hydrochloric acid directly at his face. Prosecutor Mohammad Iswandi told the court that the assault left Yunus with chemical burns covering 20% of his body and permanent damage to 40% of his right cornea, resulting in total loss of vision in that eye. Iswandi confirmed that Yunus has undergone multiple emergency and reconstructive surgeries and remains in ongoing recovery, preventing him from attending the opening session of the trial. “The actions of the defendants who threw chemical liquid on Andrie Yunus, resulting in the loss of sight in his right eye and severe burns with no hope of complete recovery, were inappropriate actions for members of the TNI,” Iswandi told the court. Prosecutors have framed the attack as a coordinated act driven by personal motive, alleging the four assailants carried out the assault “to teach him a lesson and deter him from making disparaging remarks about the TNI.” Two of the defendants suffered minor acid splashes to the face and eyes during the attack, and all four declined to enter objections to the charges after prosecutors read the full indictment. Presiding judges have scheduled the next session of the trial for May 6, when witness testimony will begin.

    The handling of the case has drawn sharp criticism from domestic and international human rights groups, which have raised objections to both the official personal-motive narrative and the decision to try the defendants in a closed military court rather than an open civilian tribunal. Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia, argues that authorities have deliberately narrowed the scope of the investigation to only the four accused, offering no transparency into potential higher-level involvement. Hamid noted that there is no documented personal or professional connection between Yunus and the four defendants, and evidence shows official military assets were used to carry out the attack. “It is difficult to accept that state facilities were used solely for personal revenge,” Hamid said, warning that opaque handling of the trial risks eroding already fragile public trust in Indonesia’s military accountability mechanisms.

    Yunus has long been a leading voice against military impunity in Indonesia, campaigning for security sector reform and expanded civil liberties. Last year, he was a prominent organizer of widespread protests against proposed revisions to Indonesia’s military law that would expand the TNI’s role in domestic civilian governance, and colleagues confirm he has faced repeated threats and intimidation tied to his advocacy work. The attack and subsequent trial have drawn immediate comparisons to the 2004 assassination of Munir Said Thalib, the iconic human rights advocate and founder of KontraS, who was poisoned with arsenic on a flight to Amsterdam. While a handful of low-level actors were convicted in Munir’s murder, activists have long argued that the masterminds behind the killing were never identified or prosecuted, leaving the case a persistent symbol of military impunity in the country.

    Widespread public and civil society pressure to uncover the full chain of command behind the attack on Yunus has prompted a response from Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who took office with pledges to strengthen institutional accountability. Prabowo has pledged to hold all those responsible to account and confirmed he is considering establishing an independent fact-finding commission to investigate any unaddressed links to the attack. For rights advocates, the outcome of Yunus’s trial will serve as a critical test of the TNI’s stated commitment to accountability more than 25 years after the fall of longtime dictator Suharto. Following Suharto’s ouster in 1998, the Indonesian military formally withdrew from domestic politics, and a series of reforms were implemented to strengthen civilian oversight of the armed forces. But activists say persistent cases of unaccountable violence against critics and human rights campaigners show those reforms have yet to deliver on their promises.

  • King Charles to stress UK-US cultural, trade ties in New York

    King Charles to stress UK-US cultural, trade ties in New York

    As the four-day state visit of Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the United States enters its third day, the British monarch will center his Wednesday itinerary in New York on reinforcing the deep cultural and economic bonds that have long defined the UK-US relationship, at a moment when the two allies’ so-called “special relationship” faces growing friction. The visit, which opened in Washington D.C. with a warm formal greeting from President Donald Trump for the royal couple, has been overshadowed from the start by escalating tensions over the ongoing conflict involving Iran. The New York leg of the tour will kick off with a solemn act of commemoration: the King and Queen will lay a wreath at the 9/11 Memorial, marking 25 years since the 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. In an address to the U.S. Congress delivered the previous day, Charles reflected on the global impact of that tragedy, noting “This atrocity was a defining moment for America and your pain and shock were felt around the whole world.” He added, “We stood with you then. And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” framing his speech as a call for unified action among Western powers. Following the wreath-laying, Charles is set to meet with 9/11 first responders and family members of those killed in the attacks. A lifelong advocate for environmental action and sustainable land management, the King will then tour an urban sustainable farming initiative that combines food access work with youth mentorship to address systemic food insecurity in New York City. While the King visits the agricultural project, Queen Camilla will carry out a separate engagement at the New York Public Library, where she will mark the 100th anniversary of A.A. Milne’s beloved fictional character Winnie-the-Pooh. She is expected to present the library with a custom-made plush toy of Roo, Pooh’s young friend from the Hundred Acre Wood. Later in the day, King Charles will gather with transatlantic business leaders — including investors, startup founders and industry executives — at an event dedicated to highlighting the deep interconnectedness of the British and American economies. This engagement comes at a sensitive moment: just weeks earlier, Trump threatened to walk back a bilateral trade agreement that currently mitigates the impact of U.S. tariffs on British goods, in a rebuke of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to back the U.S.-led war effort against Iran. The final public event of Charles’s New York schedule will be a reception celebrating the work of The King’s Trust, the monarch’s long-running youth charity, while also showcasing the output of British and American cultural industries. Tight security measures have been implemented across New York for the royal visit, coming just days after an alleged assassination attempt targeting Trump at a Washington D.C. press gala. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s leftist mayor, will not hold a private meeting with the King but will join him for the 9/11 commemoration ceremony. So far, British officials have expressed satisfaction with the ceremonial welcome extended to Charles and Camilla during their time in the U.S., which has included a 21-gun salute, a military flyover by U.S. fighter jets, and a formal state banquet hosted at the White House. Trump has adopted a warm, jovial tone toward the royal couple, even joking that his Scottish-born mother had a teenage crush on Charles. This amicable tone stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s sharp public criticism of Starmer over the UK’s refusal to join the Iran conflict, a disagreement that created diplomatic friction in the lead-up to the state visit. In his landmark address to Congress — the first by a British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II spoke to the body in 1991, delivered amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of American independence from British rule — Charles sought to smooth over existing disagreements between the two nations. “Whatever our differences, whatever disagreements we may have, we stand united in our commitment to uphold democracy,” he told assembled lawmakers. He emphasized that the modern UK-US partnership “was born out of dispute, but no less strong for it,” framing the alliance as resilient enough to withstand temporary policy rifts.

  • Critically endangered antelopes return to Kenya from Czech zoo

    Critically endangered antelopes return to Kenya from Czech zoo

    NAIROBI, Kenya — In a landmark milestone for global endangered species conservation, four critically endangered mountain bongos have touched down in Kenya, marking the next step in their journey back to the wild forests that have been their species’ native home for centuries. The rare antelopes, recognizable by their striking striped coats, have spent decades under protective care at Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, a legacy of conservation emergency measures taken in the 1980s.

    Today, mountain bongos are classified as critically endangered by global conservation bodies, with fewer than 100 individuals remaining in their natural wild habitat across Kenya, according to official Kenyan government data. The species’ sharp population decline stems from two major threats: rampant poaching and devastating outbreaks of infectious disease. The 1980s rinderpest outbreak that swept through regional wildlife populations killed thousands of bongos, pushing the species to the brink of extinction. In a bid to save the genetically distinct lineages that survived the outbreak, conservationists relocated dozens of bongos to European zoos, where they could be protected and bred safely.

    The four newly arrived bongos traveled to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenya’s main air hub, aboard a KLM cargo flight, secured in climate-controlled wooden crates designed to minimize stress during the long journey. They were officially welcomed at the airport by Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife Rebecca Miano, who framed the arrival as a symbolic and practical “homecoming of the majestic bongos.”

    This relocation marks the third repatriation of zoo-bred mountain bongos to Kenya in recent years, following the last successful transfer in February 2025. Before the antelopes can be released into their natural wild habitat, they will undergo a mandatory period of quarantine and gradual acclimatization to prepare them for life outside captivity. After this adjustment period, they will be transferred to the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, a protected facility that already hosts 102 bongos as part of the species’ national recovery program.

    The conservancy, which manages Kenya’s National Mountain Bongo Recovery and Action Plan in close partnership with the national government, developed the repatriation project with a clear core goal: expanding the species’ existing gene pool through cross-breeding between newly arrived individuals and the conservancy’s current population. Conservation experts emphasize that increasing genetic diversity is the single most critical step to building long-term resilience for the small, vulnerable bongo population.

    Kenyan-born conservation filmmakers and explorers Jahawi and Elke Bertolli, who have long documented mountain bongo conservation efforts, shared their insight with the Associated Press on the significance of this arrival. Beyond boosting genetic variation, they noted, the bongo species plays an underrecognized key role in maintaining the health of Kenya’s montane forests — ecosystems that form the backbone of the country’s freshwater supply, serving millions of people across the region.

    Nicol Adamcova, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Kenya, emphasized that the successful repatriation is a product of decades of collaborative partnership between the two nations. “This relocation reflects our shared long-standing commitment to protecting global biodiversity and reversing the decline of species on the brink of extinction,” she said.

    Prime Cabinet Secretary Mudavadi echoed that sentiment, highlighting what cross-sector, cross-border collaboration can achieve when aligned around a common conservation goal. “This milestone is proof of what we can deliver when policy, science, and international partnership come together for conservation,” he said. “I commend every stakeholder involved in this work, and I can assure you that the Kenyan government remains unwavering in its support to strengthen conservation frameworks and ensure our nation’s rich biodiversity continues to thrive for generations.”

    Tourism Minister Miano added that the addition of genetically diverse individuals to the bongo breeding program is a transformative step forward. “Strengthening the species’ genetic resilience through increased diversity puts us on a stronger path to pulling this iconic animal back from the edge of extinction,” she said.

  • Japan zoo staffer allegedly dumps wife’s body inside incinerator

    Japan zoo staffer allegedly dumps wife’s body inside incinerator

    One of Japan’s most beloved tourist attractions, Asahiyama Zoo, has been forced to postpone its highly anticipated summer season reopening after a shocking local scandal emerged. A serving employee at the northern Japanese facility has confessed to Japanese law enforcement that he disposed of his wife’s remains in the zoo’s on-site incinerator, local media outlets have confirmed.

    Originally, the zoo — located in Asahikawa, Hokkaido — was scheduled to welcome back visitors this Wednesday, just in time for Japan’s annual Golden Week holiday, one of the busiest travel periods of the year. The facility had already closed its doors on April 8 for a routine three-week seasonal maintenance break, with all preparations on track for the summer opening. However, the ongoing criminal investigation has pushed the reopening to at least Friday, and city officials have not ruled out further unannounced closures if investigators require extended access to the grounds.

    The sequence of events began when a friend of the missing woman filed a missing person report with local police. After launching an inquiry, authorities were stunned when the zoo employee confessed to his alleged crime, telling investigators he had used the zoo’s incinerator — which is normally used only to cremate deceased animal carcasses from the facility — to dispose of his wife’s body. Last week, investigative teams carried out a full search of the zoo grounds to collect evidence, according to local reporting.

    First opened to the public in 1967, Asahiyama Zoo has grown into one of Japan’s most popular zoological attractions, drawing more than one million annual visitors. It has earned widespread acclaim for its innovative enclosure design, including glass domes and overhead viewing cages that give guests the chance to observe animals in close, immersive settings that are rare at other Japanese zoos.

    Addressing reporters at a press conference held on Tuesday, Asahikawa Mayor Hirosuke Imazu described the situation as an unparalleled crisis for the city and its flagship attraction. “No one could have predicted this,” Imazu told the gathered media. “I am overcome with immense anxiety, and I am facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.”

    City authorities have issued a formal apology for the last-minute disruption to visitor travel plans, noting that the ongoing investigation requires the facility to remain closed. Officials also added that they are continuing preparations to welcome guests as soon as the investigation allows, and they hope tourists will still choose to visit the zoo once it reopens. “We are making preparations to welcome you, so we hope that as many people as possible will come to the park,” Imazu added.

  • Sudan’s war leaves Khartoum with unexploded mines and other weapons

    Sudan’s war leaves Khartoum with unexploded mines and other weapons

    Three years into Sudan’s devastating civil conflict between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, a hidden, slow-burning crisis is endangering thousands of civilians who have begun returning to recaptured areas of the capital Khartoum: tens of thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance (UXO), including landmines, undetonated bombs, shells, grenades and rockets, scattered across residential neighborhoods, public spaces and vital infrastructure.

    Khaled Abdulgader experienced this threat first-hand last year, when he intervened to stop children playing with an unknown object he later learned was an explosive, mistaking it for a football. The device detonated in his hand, leaving him with two fingers amputated and deep shrapnel wounds to his chest. Even as he recovered, Abdulgader tried to frame his experience as a grim stroke of luck, saying, “I feel like, ‘Thank God it was just my hands.’” He is far from alone in his injury: official and aid data counts hundreds of Sudanese killed or maimed by accidental UXO blasts since the current war broke out, and children account for a shockingly high proportion of casualties.

    United Nations figures document 59 UXO-related casualties across Khartoum state in 2024, more than half of which were children. In just the first three months of 2025 alone, 21 of the 23 recorded UXO casualties were children. This deadly contamination is not an entirely new problem for Sudan: decades of successive conflicts across the country have left a total of 7,700 square kilometers of contaminated land — an area roughly equal to 7,700 standard football fields. But more than half of this current contamination stems from the 2023-present war, which has spread explosive hazards to previously unaffected areas including central Khartoum. Aid groups have documented that both warring parties, the Sudanese army and the RSF, laid extensive mines during their battle for control of the capital.

    Khartoum today remains a city visibly scarred by fighting: abandoned, burned-out buildings pocked with bullet holes line empty streets, but a growing wave of displaced residents is choosing to return home. According to the UN, roughly 1.7 million people have come back to Khartoum state since the army retook control of the capital last year, many of whom have no prior experience navigating the threat of unexploded ordnance. On a reporting trip through Khartoum’s streets, Associated Press journalists observed a military explosive specialist responding to a resident’s report of a suspected RPG tail fragment in a residential home, a tiny reminder of the danger lurking underfoot.

    Over the past 11 months, demining teams have cleared approximately 7.8 million square meters of land in Khartoum state, recovering and disposing of more than 36,000 explosive items, including hundreds of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Recovered ordnance that can be safely transported is destroyed in isolated areas away from populated neighborhoods, while larger or unstable devices are detonated on site. But the scale of the task is enormous, and demining is an inherently painstaking process: each trained demining worker can only safely clear between 10 and 15 square meters of land per day. Juma Abuanja, team leader for Sudanese demining organization Jasmar, warned that full clearance will take years of sustained work. “The presence of land mines and other explosive ordnance is of great concern to everybody,” Abuanja said.

    One of Jasmar’s ongoing projects is clearing a popular public park in Khartoum, one of at least seven known minefields across the state that range from downtown locations to outer suburbs and critical bridge crossings. The 123,000-square-meter clearance operation began last August and is scheduled to wrap up in May 2025; to date, teams have found more than 160 explosive devices, including both anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Before clearance work began, at least one civilian was killed in an accidental blast in the park, which is now cordoned off and marked with prominent danger warnings. On a recent workday, demining team members took a mid-shift break under park trees, shedding their heavy protective vests and face shields to escape Khartoum’s scorching desert heat.

    Sudan’s transitional government says it is doing everything possible to mitigate the UXO risk, but faces crippling shortages of funding and personnel, a crisis amplified by the ongoing war. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, told the AP that authorities are rolling out public awareness campaigns through mosques, market gatherings, radio, podcasts and school educational materials to teach civilians how to identify and report unexploded ordnance. But multiple injured civilians interviewed by the AP said they had never encountered any of these warnings, which launched in late 2024. Compounding the problem, many civilians are hesitant to report suspected ordnance to authorities: a 2025 Human Rights Watch report documented that Sudanese security forces have detained civilians in recaptured areas on unproven allegations of collaboration with the RSF, leaving many afraid they will face questioning or prosecution if they report explosive remnants of war in their communities. For others, the danger is unrecognizable until it is too late.

    For 18-year-old Mogadem Ibrahim, the fatal mistake came when he picked up a piece of metal outside his Omdurman home last August, assuming it was scrap car part. When the device stuck to his hand and he pulled it free, it exploded. The blast shredded his left hand, costing him multiple fingers and leaving him unable to continue his work as a day laborer to support his family. “I feel depressed and worthless. I was supporting my family and now I’m sitting here and doing nothing,” he told the AP.

    As Sudan’s war enters its fourth year, the slow, dangerous work of clearing ordnance and protecting returning civilians continues, with no quick end to the crisis in sight. This reporting is part of AP’s Africa Pulse coverage, supported by the Gates Foundation; the AP maintains full independent editorial control over all content.

  • As Gaza is destroyed, a VR project preserves what Israel tried to erase

    As Gaza is destroyed, a VR project preserves what Israel tried to erase

    What began as a homesick graduate student’s quiet quest to reconnect with his long-unseen home has evolved into a powerful act of cultural preservation and political resistance, born from the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza.

    In 2022, Naim Aburaddi, a Gaza-born PhD candidate in media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, had not set foot in his native enclave for seven years, blocked from returning by Israel’s decades-long military siege. Cut off from the places that shaped him, Aburaddi, a scholar of media representation, turned to emerging technology to bridge the distance. He shipped a 360-degree camera to Gaza, where a local journalist friend guided it through the spaces Aburaddi ached to revisit: bustling Gaza City souks, crowded public squares, a 1,000-year-old Turkish bathhouse, and the beloved Mediterranean shoreline. After six months of slow transit through blocked borders, the camera captured footage that allowed Aburaddi to step back into Gaza — if only virtually, bypassing Israel’s total control over the enclave’s entry and exit. When the footage arrived, Aburaddi wept.

    Joined by Ahlam Muhtaseb, a media studies professor at California State University San Bernardino, and the research team at X-Real Lab, the small personal project quickly expanded. Between July 2022 and July 2023, the team hired Gaza-based videographer Ahmad Hasaballah to capture thousands of additional 360-degree clips, building an immersive extended reality (XR) experience that would allow displaced Palestinians across the West Bank and around the world to reconnect with a home many had never been able to visit. For generations of Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Nakba, who have been barred from returning to their ancestral lands, and for audiences around the world who only know Gaza through media narratives focused exclusively on conflict, the experience offered something unprecedented: an unfiltered, first-person look at everyday Palestinian life, on Palestinian terms.

    Then, on October 7, 2023, everything changed. Following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people, Israel launched a full-scale military offensive on Gaza that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. Multiple human rights organizations, leading genocide scholars, and United Nations officials have formally concluded that Israel is committing genocide in the besieged enclave. One by one, the ordinary, beloved sites captured in the project’s pre-war footage began to be destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations. Hasaballah fled to southern Gaza for safety, and the team’s 360-degree camera was buried under rubble after an Israeli attack. Hasaballah’s father was killed in the same strike.

    Stunned by the scale of destruction that had erased much of the life they had documented, Aburaddi and Muhtaseb paused the project for months. Only in early 2024 did they realize the archive they held was something far more precious than they had ever imagined: the largest existing collection of 360-degree footage of pre-genocide Gaza, a time capsule of Palestinian daily life and cultural heritage that had survived an campaign intent on erasing it.

    “We had wanted to show the culture and the history. We never thought in our wildest dreams, in nightmares, that we were capturing history, and that everything we were creating and we were capturing was going to be like a memory,” Aburaddi told Middle East Eye.

    Aburaddi named the project *The Phoenix of Gaza XR*, a name he says honors the resilience of Gaza’s people: “The people in Gaza, again, will be like a phoenix that will rise from under the rubble and they will rebuild Gaza again.”

    Since early 2026, the immersive exhibit has toured universities and community spaces across the United States, inviting visitors to don VR headsets and step into Gaza as it existed before the 2023 war. Visitors can stand on the side of a street in a Gaza refugee camp as a skateboarder zooms past, wander the halls of the 1,500-year-old Church of Saint Porphyrius, admire the architecture of the Great Omari Mosque, or wander the stone alleys of Gaza City’s historic markets. They can stand beside children wading in the Mediterranean, listen to the hum of daily traffic, watch farmers harvest figs, grapes, and dates, or sit in a car winding along the beachfront Al-Rashid Street. Where the team captured 360-degree still photography instead of video, visitors can observe two elderly men reading the Quran in a mosque courtyard, as a young boy prepares for prayer at a nearby water fountain.

    By mid-October 2023, just weeks after the war began, many of these iconic sites were already destroyed or severely damaged. The Church of Saint Porphyrius, which had sheltered hundreds of Palestinians fleeing Israeli airstrikes, was bombed by the Israeli military on October 19, 2023, killing 18 civilians and destroying much of the historic structure. Today, many of the ordinary people captured in the pre-war footage are missing, dead, or displaced.

    Unlike traditional news footage that separates audiences from the reality of life in Gaza, the immersive sensory experience of the XR exhibit forces visitors to confront the contrast between the vibrant, ordinary life that existed before October 2023 and the total devastation that followed. “It made me wonder how and what it would be like if we were in that situation,” a 19-year-old Hunter College student who visited the exhibit told Middle East Eye.

    The project expanded further months into the war, when the team recovered the buried 360-degree camera from rubble and asked local Gaza journalist Yahya Sobeih to revisit the same sites the team had documented a year earlier, capturing the destruction left by Israeli attacks. Princeton University’s IDA B Wells Data Lab joined to support the expanded work, and the exhibit now offers visitors the option to compare the pre-war sites with their current state, walking among the rubble and debris that remain. Shardi Marji, a New York-based activist who has helped organize tour stops for the exhibit, called it a transformative work of art that compels action: “You are transported to the place to bear witness to what was destroyed,” she said.

    For Ali Bashar, a 26-year-old New York visitor who said he had become desensitized to endless war footage from Gaza, the immersive experience was impossible to look away from. “I felt I could watch it over and over and still learn or see something new,” he said.

    Leading experts on genocide emphasize that the crime of genocide is defined not only by mass death, but by the intentional effort to erase a people’s history, culture, and connection to their land. In an October 2024 report titled *Genocide as Colonial Erasure*, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese noted that Israel’s campaign in Gaza has been marked by multiple forms of targeted erasure: domicide, the destruction of homes; urbicide, the destruction of urban spaces; scholasticide, the destruction of educational institutions; medicide, the destruction of healthcare systems; cultural genocide, the destruction of cultural heritage; and ecocide, the destruction of Gaza’s natural environment. “As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life,” Albanese wrote. *The Phoenix of Gaza XR* lays bare the scale of this intentional erasure.

    Muhtaseb, speaking to a crowd of more than 100 visitors at Hunter College in April 2026, explained that the project’s purpose has shifted from its original goal to now act as deliberate resistance to erasure. Originally, it was designed to counter one-dimensional media narratives that only frame Gaza as a site of conflict, erasing the ordinary joy, culture, and humanity of its people. Today, it is a bulwark against the total erasure of that life. Muhtaseb paused, overcome with emotion, as she told the crowd that Sobeih, the journalist who captured the post-attack footage, was assassinated by Israeli forces in May 2025. The 32-year-old had been sitting in a restaurant celebrating the birth of his daughter Sana when he was killed. He is one of roughly 270 journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. After his death, his wife Amal, a professional photographer, insisted on joining the project to carry on his work.

    For Aburaddi, the project is the fulfillment of the goal that led him to study media in the first place: challenging harmful stereotypes about his home. Raised in a one-room tent in a Gaza refugee camp, he grew up watching international media misrepresent his people and their homeland. After leaving Gaza for journalism studies in Turkey in 2014, he focused his academic work on Palestinian media representation. Today, beyond its role as public education and resistance, the project has practical value for legal and reconstruction efforts: the 360-degree archive is already being consulted by Amnesty International for war crimes investigations, and the team is collaborating with urban designers at Brown University and computer engineers at Boston University to build 3D models of destroyed historic sites to support future reconstruction of Gaza.

    Since the project launched in 2022, it has been presented to audiences in Uganda, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and more than 50 colleges and community spaces across the United States. After completing a tour of East Coast US universities in mid-April 2026, with stops at Hunter College, Brown University, and MIT, a special screening was held at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Fisk Planetarium later that month. The exhibit is set to travel to South Africa in June 2026, with future stops planned in Japan and Spain.

    “Here we are preserving these memories. We are preserving them in virtual reality, in immersive media, where Israel cannot attack them, and a lot of people across the world can visit and access, and we are preserving this for the next generation,” Aburaddi said. “They were able to attack the locations, they were able to kill a lot of people, but they couldn’t kill the memory.”

  • Olympic breakdancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn loses lecturing gig at Macquarie University amid staff redundancies

    Olympic breakdancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn loses lecturing gig at Macquarie University amid staff redundancies

    The Australian breakdancer who became a global viral sensation after her zero-score performance at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games’ inaugural breaking competition has reportedly lost her long-held academic position amid sweeping cost-cutting at one of Australia’s top higher education institutions.

    Rachael Gunn, professionally known by her stage name Raygun, catapulted to worldwide notoriety last summer when her routine at the Paris Games — which included novelty moves inspired by hopping kangaroos, wriggling snakes, and the popular 20th-century party dance the sprinkler — earned no points from judges. The clip of her performance spread rapidly across social media, spawning thousands of memes and turning the relatively little-known breakdancer into a household name overnight.

    Before her Olympic debut, Gunn had built a 10-plus-year academic career at Sydney’s Macquarie University, where she worked as a lecturer in media and popular culture. She earned her PhD from the institution in 2017, with a doctoral thesis examining the gender politics of Sydney’s underground breaking culture. Her research agenda has long centered on the cultural politics of street dance, including a commissioned study for the City of Sydney analyzing the experiences of street dancers performing in public urban spaces.

    According to new reporting from the *Australian Financial Review*, Gunn is among the staff cut in Macquarie University’s latest round of program redundancies, which is part of broader cost-saving initiatives sweeping Australia’s higher education sector. The report notes that widespread declines in international student enrollment — a key source of revenue for Australian universities — have pushed dozens of institutions to eliminate roles to balance their budgets, with Macquarie’s Arts department the latest to undergo restructuring.

    A spokesperson for Macquarie University declined to confirm or comment on details of Gunn’s employment status, citing longstanding institutional policy to protect the privacy and legal rights of individual staff members. “This is our standard practice for legal and privacy reasons,” the spokesperson reiterated to media.

    Gunn’s redundancy comes months after her Olympic performance drew public criticism from Australian Senator Gerard Rennick, who used her profile to attack publicly funded academic programs he deemed unproductive. In a public Facebook post following the Games, Rennick questioned how many “obscure and pointless courses” Australian universities offered with taxpayer subsidies, adding, “It also goes to show just because you have a PhD in something doesn’t mean you are any good at it.”

    In the months following her viral Olympic moment, Gunn capitalized on her newfound global fame by launching a venture on the celebrity personalized content platform Cameo, where she charges fans approximately AU$70 for custom greeting videos. The platform allows supporters of public figures from sports, entertainment, and politics to purchase one-of-a-kind personalized messages directly from creators.

  • Can Griezmann end his Atletico love story in style?

    Can Griezmann end his Atletico love story in style?

    As Atletico Madrid gears up for a high-stakes first leg of the UEFA Champions League semi-final against Arsenal, all eyes in European football are fixed on Antoine Griezmann – the club legend who will bring his decades-long Atletico Madrid career to a close at the end of the 2024-2025 season to join MLS side Orlando City.

    The depth of the bond between Griezmann, the club, and long-time manager Diego Simeone was laid bare in an unscripted, rare moment before Atletico’s quarter-final clash against Barcelona. With the packed media room waiting for questions to begin, Simeone opened the press conference with an emotional, unscheduled tribute to the departing forward that left Griezmann visibly surprised.

    “I want to thank you for your hard work and your humility,” the Argentine manager said. “You are an admirable person in a society where young people need role models like you. Thank you for everything you have given us, everything you continue to give, and everything you still will.”

    While Orlando City had pushed for Griezmann to make the move to the United States earlier in the year, the 2018 FIFA World Cup winner with France insisted on staying in Madrid through the end of the campaign. The choice has allowed him to say a proper goodbye to the fanbase that has supported him through two spells at the club, where he has racked up 494 senior appearances and 212 goals to become Atletico’s all-time top goalscorer.

    Griezmann’s entire senior club career has been spent in Spain’s La Liga. He launched his professional journey at Real Sociedad in 2009, before a near-transfer that changed the entire trajectory of his career: in 2013, while still at Real Sociedad, he came agonizingly close to joining Arsenal under Arsene Wenger, as he revealed in his autobiography. After waiting through the entire transfer window for the move to materialize, Arsenal pulled out of the deal hours before the window closed. When the London side expressed interest again years later, Griezmann turned them down outright, still stinging from the earlier snub. A year later, he signed with Atletico Madrid for a reported €30 million fee, a move that would define his legendary career.

    After joining Atletico in 2014, Griezmann made a high-profile switch to Barcelona in 2019, only to return to Atletico on loan in 2021, before making the transfer permanent 12 months later. Despite the messy, unpopular nature of his first departure, his return won fans over entirely: he apologized for the exit, reconnected with the supporter base, and rebuilt his legacy as the heart of the club.

    As BBC Sport columnist Guillem Balague notes, Griezmann’s significance to Atletico extends far beyond his goal tally. He is widely regarded as the embodiment of everything the club stands for: perfectly matching Simeone’s ideal of a player who combines world-class talent with relentless work rate, total team commitment, and a willingness to prioritize collective success over individual glory. For an entire generation of Atletico fans, Griezmann *is* the club, and his leadership has lifted every player around him throughout his tenure.

    Unlike many modern legends whose legacies are defined by a long list of major trophies, Griezmann’s legacy is built on character and consistency rather than silverware. During his time at the club, he lifted the UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup, and Spanish Super Cup, but his lasting impact comes from his alignment with Atletico’s underdog identity. Even when he left for Barcelona, he has since said he felt like he had left home, a testament to how deep his connection to the club runs.

    After Atletico secured their semi-final spot by beating Barcelona in the quarter-final, Griezmann gave fans one more unforgettable moment: as the rest of the squad headed down the tunnel after the final whistle, he ran back out onto the pitch at the Metropolitano Stadium to the roar of the crowd, applauding the stands before dancing and celebrating with his teammates, soaking in the moment with the fans who supported him through every chapter of his tenure.

    Now, with one of the biggest matches of his final season looming against Arsenal – the club that almost signed him 12 years ago – Griezmann is eyeing a fairytale ending. Neither Atletico nor Arsenal have ever won the Champions League; Atletico fell at the final hurdle in 1974, 2014, and 2016, and Griezmann has said that lifting the trophy this year would “heal a very deep wound” for the club.

    With his Atletico career winding down, the question remains: will the semi-final against Arsenal be the final chapter of Griezmann’s Champions League story, or will he carry Atletico through to the final in Budapest for one last shot at the biggest prize in European football?

  • ‘Empowered’: UAE’s exit from Opec appeases Trump, delivers blow to Saudi Arabia

    ‘Empowered’: UAE’s exit from Opec appeases Trump, delivers blow to Saudi Arabia

    The United Arab Emirates’ planned departure from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries next month is far more than a simple energy policy shift. Analysts and regional diplomats frame the move as both a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia’s longstanding dominance of the cartel and a calculated geopolitical gesture to the United States, underscoring how the ongoing war on Iran has deepened historical divides in the Gulf rather than uniting regional powers against a common foe.

    On its face, the split stems from years of simmering disagreement between the UAE and Saudi Arabia over OPEC production quotas. For decades, Riyadh has championed supply caps to keep global oil prices elevated, a strategy aligned with its economic priorities: as a nation of 35 million people with more than double the UAE’s proven oil reserves, it relies on sustained high per-barrel prices to fund domestic spending and infrastructure.

    The UAE, by contrast, has long pushed for looser production rules. With just 1 million citizens sharing the country’s oil revenue, and massive investments in expanded extraction infrastructure that have left it with OPEC’s largest spare production capacity relative to current output, the Emirates has opted for a volume-focused strategy. Many of its economic planners argue that leaving oil in the ground carries growing long-term risk, as the global energy transition could erode the value of fossil fuel reserves over the next decade.

    “The UAE is the OPEC country with the largest amount of spare capacity compared to production,” explained Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst and head of research at Global Risk Management. “You can argue that this is the right economic calculus because what’s inside the ground might not have the same value that it will in five or ten years.”

    Yet while these policy divides stretch back years, experts note that a major shift had already occurred before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Once famous for warning oil traders they would be “ouching like hell” if they bet against its supply-cut commitments, Saudi Arabia has recently pivoted to a strategy of recapturing global market share, backing massive production increases that aligned it much closer to the UAE’s position. That makes the timing of the exit a clear signal that geopolitics, not just energy economics, are driving the decision.

    “The policy differences between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been there for a long time, but Saudi Arabia has pivoted to taking back market share, and the war has actually made their old argument less salient. This exit is much more political,” said Greg Priddy, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest.

    In recent months, the UAE has steadily deepened its security and diplomatic alignment with the U.S. and Israel, even as other regional powers have taken more cautious stances on the Iran war. Earlier this month, Axios reported that Israel deployed an Iron Dome air defense system and supporting technicians to the UAE amid repeated Iranian drone and missile attacks on the Gulf state. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which has supported the U.S. war effort while backing Pakistani-mediated talks to de-escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran, the UAE has lobbied aggressively behind the scenes and in public for the U.S. to continue military operations, and has worked to block diplomatic outreach that could bring an end to the conflict.

    Leaving OPEC now, as the Trump administration weighs whether to pursue a negotiated deal with Iran or escalate military action, aligns directly with a longstanding Trump administration criticism of the cartel as an anti-competitive body that “rips off” global consumers. Analysts have even raised the possibility that the exit is part of a broader trilateral bargain between the UAE, U.S. and Israel.

    “It is possible that this break could also be the result of some sort of ‘deal’ between the UAE and Israel and the US, wherein they helped defend the UAE from Iran in exchange for delivering a major blow to Opec, which Trump has long sought,” Ellen Wald, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and leading expert on Gulf energy politics, wrote in a recent public post. Wald added that she would not be surprised to see a formal U.S.-UAE defense agreement announced in the near future.

    The move also fits into the UAE’s preparations for prolonged regional volatility. Recent reporting confirms that UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Abu Dhabi is prepared for the war to last up to nine months, and the country has already approached the Trump administration to request a currency swap line to protect access to U.S. dollars in the event that its foreign reserves are depleted amid sustained conflict.

    Beyond alignment with the U.S., the exit is widely viewed as a major escalation of the UAE’s long-running regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia, which has dominated OPEC’s agenda since the cartel’s founding 65 years ago. As the two largest Gulf powers, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi harbor ambitions to project regional influence, and their competing interests have already spilled into multiple conflicts: Saudi Arabia launched strikes against UAE-backed forces in Yemen just before the Iran war began, and the two states back opposing factions in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Most recently, Middle East Eye revealed that Saudi-paid weapons shipments from Pakistan began arriving in eastern Libya in March to support commander Khalifa Haftar, in a bid to pull his faction away from the UAE’s sphere of influence.

    While many hoped the Iranian attacks on Gulf states would push the two rivals back into a united bloc, the war has instead accelerated their competition, and the UAE’s exit from OPEC creates an irreversible shift in the regional balance of power.

    UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei has framed the move as a long-planned objective that was simply timed correctly amid the current chaos, noting that “the timing in our view is right because it has a minimum impact on all of the producers.” Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University who has followed the UAE’s debate over leaving OPEC for years, agreed that the war created a unique opening for the dramatic move.

    “They finally did it, probably because of the war. Everything is up in the air, and there is an opportunity to make dramatic decisions,” Haykel said. “In practical terms, the Emiratis have very considerable spare capacity. If they want to play the role of market regulator like the Saudis have, they can do it. This empowers them in a big way.”

    Energy analysts largely agree the timing is strategically shrewd. Competing blockades of the Strait of Hormuz by the U.S. and Iran have all but halted traditional Gulf oil shipping, cutting the UAE’s exports from a pre-war 3.5 million barrels per day to roughly 1.9 million barrels per day, all of which are now exported via the Fujairah pipeline that bypasses the Strait. That means any additional spare capacity the UAE brings online will not immediately flood the global market, avoiding a sudden price crash that would trigger widespread backlash. Even after the war ends, analysts note that major supply disruptions from the conflict have left global oil inventories depleted enough to absorb higher UAE exports without major disruption.

    In the longer term, however, experts warn the departure of OPEC’s third-largest producer could spell the end of the 65-year-old energy alliance. “This is a big blow to OPEC,” Rasmussen said. “We could be writing its obituary.”

    This report draws on independent analysis from Middle East Eye, a publication specializing in coverage of the Middle East and North Africa.

  • Tropical forest loss eases after record year: researchers

    Tropical forest loss eases after record year: researchers

    A new report from joint research teams at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland has delivered a mixed assessment of global tropical forest conservation: while the pace of primary tropical rainforest destruction dropped 36% in 2025 from the previous year’s all-time high, loss rates remain alarmingly elevated, and climate-worsened wildfires have emerged as a persistent, dangerous new threat to decades of conservation progress.

    Researchers documented 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) of primary tropical rainforest lost in 2025, a decline that equals 11 football fields of forest cleared every minute. By area, that total is roughly the size of Denmark, and it remains 46% higher than average annual loss rates recorded a decade ago. When compared to the benchmark needed to hit the global 2030 goal of halting and reversing forest loss, current deforestation rates are still 70% above the required target.

    Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of WRI’s Global Forest Watch platform, called the single-year drop of this scale an encouraging sign of what targeted policy can achieve. But she cautioned that part of the decline stems from a natural lull after 2024’s unprecedented extreme fire season. That note of caution is echoed by broader warnings from the research team: climate change-fueled wildfires have become a “dangerous new normal” that could erase recent hard-won conservation gains, especially as a new El Niño event is forecast to arrive in the second half of 2026, which is expected to push global temperatures even higher and amplify the risk of extreme drought, heatwaves, and large-scale wildfires.

    Matthew Hansen, director of the University of Maryland’s GLAD Lab, which analyzes satellite forest data, emphasized that one year of progress is not enough to secure long-term tropical forest conservation. “A good year is a good year, but you need good years forever if you’re going to conserve, for example, the tropical rainforest,” Hansen said during a media briefing on the report.

    The bulk of 2025’s slowdown can be traced to aggressive policy action in Brazil, home to the world’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon. Under the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office in 2023, Brazil has reinvigorated national anti-deforestation enforcement, relaunched a comprehensive anti-deforestation action plan, and increased penalties for illegal environmental activity. Data shows Brazil’s non-fire related forest loss dropped 41% from 2024 levels, hitting the lowest rate recorded since tracking began. Even so, agriculture remains the single largest driver of deforestation globally, and Brazil’s forests still face pressure from clearing for soy cultivation and cattle ranching, while several Amazonian states have recently passed local legislation that weakens federal environmental protections.

    Other nations have also seen success from strong policy intervention. Neighboring Colombia recorded a 17% drop in forest loss, hitting its second lowest annual rate since 2016, driven by new government policies and land-use agreements that limit unregulated clearing. In Indonesia, forest loss rose 14% in 2025 but remains far below the peak levels seen 10 years prior, while government action in Malaysia has stabilized deforestation rates. However, tropical forest loss remains critically high across other regions, including Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, and Madagascar, where weak policy enforcement and unregulated land clearing continue to drive widespread destruction.

    Across the globe, total tree cover loss fell 14% in 2025, but fires remain a growing driver of destruction. Fires accounted for 42% of all tropical tree cover loss last year, and over the past three years, fires have burned twice as much tree cover globally as they did two decades ago, according to the report. While most tropical fires are human-caused for land clearing, climate change has intensified natural fire cycles in northern and temperate forest regions. Last year, Canada experienced its second worst wildfire season on record, with blazes consuming more than 5.3 million hectares of forest.

    “Climate change and land clearing have shortened the fuse on global forest fires,” Hansen said. “They are turning seasonal disturbances into a near-permanent state of emergency.”