Global Pulse

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  • King Charles III and Queen Camilla visiting 9/11 Memorial and other NYC landmarks as part of US trip

    King Charles III and Queen Camilla visiting 9/11 Memorial and other NYC landmarks as part of US trip

    LONDON, NEW YORK – Three days into their landmark first state visit to the United States as Britain’s reigning monarch and queen consort, King Charles III and Queen Camilla will arrive in New York City on Wednesday, a mid-trip stop that carries deep symbolic and diplomatic weight amid the 250th anniversary of American independence. This occasion marks the first time a sitting British monarch has visited New York since the late Queen Elizabeth II’s 2010 trip, drawing close international attention to the royal couple’s packed schedule of commemorative, charitable and diplomatic activities.

    The visit’s New York leg opens with a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial, timed ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks. During the event, the royal couple will meet with first responders who survived the attacks and family members of those killed, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other high-ranking local and national dignitaries also in attendance.

    Following the memorial service, the royal pair will split for separate, themed engagements tailored to their individual public priorities. Queen Camilla will travel to the New York Public Library, where she will officially donate a new stuffed Roo doll to the institution’s iconic collection of original Winnie-the-Pooh toys. The donation comes as the beloved children’s literary franchise celebrates its centennial this year. The five original plush toys already on display at the library – Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore and Kanga – once belonged to Christopher Robin Milne, son of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne, and directly inspired the characters that appear in Milne’s classic 1920s children’s books. Donated to the library in 1987, the collection has become one of the most popular centerpieces of its world-famous children’s literature holdings. Roo, the young son of Kanga in the original stories, was the only original character plush that has not survived to the present day.

    For his part, King Charles will first tour a community after-school urban farming program that supports young people impacted by food insecurity, aligning with his long-standing focus on sustainability and youth opportunity. He will then hold a meeting with top business and finance leaders in Manhattan, before the couple reunites for a reception hosted by The King’s Trust, the global youth charity Charles founded in 1976 to support vulnerable young people across the Commonwealth and beyond.

    This four-day U.S. visit is King Charles’ first state visit to the country since he acceded to the throne following his mother’s death in 2022. The late Queen Elizabeth II completed four full state visits to the United States during her 70-year reign. The trip was scheduled to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States’ declaration of independence from British rule, a milestone that diplomats have framed as an opportunity to celebrate the long-standing close alliance between the two nations.

    The royal couple has already completed multiple high-profile events in Washington D.C. earlier this week. On Monday, they joined President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a formal tea at the White House. A day later, King Charles held a closed-door bilateral meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, before delivering a rare address to a joint session of U.S. Congress – an honor only granted to a handful of foreign heads of state, and the first time a British monarch has addressed Congress since Queen Elizabeth II’s 1991 speech. The day concluded with a formal state dinner hosted by the Trump administration at the White House.

    After wrapping up their New York engagements, the royal pair will travel to Virginia for additional stops before returning to the White House on Thursday for a formal farewell ceremony hosted by President Trump. Following the conclusion of his U.S. visit, King Charles will travel alone to Bermuda for his first visit to a British Overseas Territory as reigning monarch.

  • Rare earth mining is poisoning Mekong River tributaries, threatening ‘the world’s kitchen’

    Rare earth mining is poisoning Mekong River tributaries, threatening ‘the world’s kitchen’

    For 75-year-old Thai fisherman Sukjai Yana, each morning on the Mekong River brings the same grim routine. Perched on the bow of his weathered long-tail fishing boat in Chiang Saen, a generations-old fishing hub in northern Thailand, he pulls in his net to sort a meager catch of small fish, his disappointment growing as he wonders whether buyers will even take his contaminated-looking haul. Some days, he earns nothing at all.

    Yana is far from alone in this crisis. He is one of an estimated 70 million people across mainland Southeast Asia who depend on the nearly 5,000-kilometer Mekong River, a waterway that has sustained communities and ecosystems for millennia. Today, a surging global demand for rare earth minerals has sparked an unregulated mining boom that is poisoning the Mekong and its tributaries, putting millions of lives, livelihoods, and even global food supplies at risk.

    The epicenter of this boom is war-torn Myanmar, but operations have rapidly spread east into Laos, sending toxic runoff from mining sites downstream through Thailand, toward Cambodia and Vietnam. While the Mekong has long struggled with cumulative pressures—from plastic pollution and upstream hydropower dams to destructive riverbank sand mining—environmental experts warn that mining-related toxic contamination could prove an existential threat to the entire river basin.

    ## A Growing Danger to Public Health and Food Systems
    Rare earth mining works by stripping away riverbank rock and flushing soil with harsh chemicals to extract the sought-after minerals, leaving behind a trail of waste laced with dangerous heavy metals: arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium. These toxins seep into tributaries and flow into the main Mekong, accumulating in fish and irrigating farmland across the region. Exposure to these elements raises the risk of cancer, organ failure, cognitive impairment, and developmental harm, with children and pregnant women facing the most severe consequences.

    Thailand is currently bearing the brunt of the contamination, with toxins already threatening its $10 billion-plus annual export market for rice, fruits, and vegetables that feed consumers from U.S. grocery stores to Japanese kitchens and Malaysian dinner tables. In the hilly Thai village of Tha Ton, 63-year-old farmer Lah Boonruang points to the full range of toxin-exposed crops he grows—rice, garlic, corn, onions, mangoes, and bananas—all irrigated with water from the Kok River, a Mekong tributary that flows out of Myanmar carrying heavy metal pollution. “If we can’t export, a farmer is the first to die,” he said, echoing widespread fear across agricultural communities.

    For Thailand’s 63-year-old Lahu ethnic elder Sela Lipo, the contamination has severed a centuries-old cultural tie to the river. Famed as skilled fisherpeople, the Lahu have been officially warned to avoid using river water for drinking, fishing, or irrigation. “The Lahu’s way of life is always with a river,” Lipo explained. “The contaminated river has cut off our lifeline.”

    Thai environmental leaders warn that the contamination could unravel the country’s most iconic agricultural industry. “Our worry is that toxins accumulate in the rice we export. This would make our rice farming industry, which is our culture, collapse,” said Niwat Roykaew, founder of The Mekong School, an environmental institute based in Chiang Khong, northern Thailand. Thai scientists have already recorded elevated heavy metal levels in other key Mekong tributaries, including the Sai and Ruak rivers.

    ## Limited, Local Action Amid Cross-Border Barriers
    Addressing the crisis has proven extraordinarily difficult. Thailand’s government has acknowledged it has little political or diplomatic leverage to shut down unregulated mining operations across its borders in conflict-riven Myanmar and Laos. Domestic action is also constrained by limited scientific expertise, incomplete data, and insufficient funding, according to Aweera Pakkamart of Thailand’s Pollution Control Department.

    Currently, most of the work to track and address contamination falls to local governments, public universities, and regional bodies such as the Mekong River Commission, which focus primarily on monitoring heavy metal levels and educating at-risk communities about the dangers they face.
    Warakorn Maneechuket, a researcher at Thailand’s Naresuan University, has confirmed that recent samples of water, fish, and sediment from Mekong tributaries contain dangerously high concentrations of mining-related heavy metals. Dissecting a catfish caught from the Kok River in her lab, she points to clear signs of toxic exposure: tumor-like growths, discolored scales, and abnormal eye pigmentation.

    To expand monitoring and raise public awareness, Naresuan University researcher Tanapon Phenrat has helped develop a custom smartphone app that trains local fishers to identify and upload photos of suspicious, contaminated fish. The app builds a crowdsourced citizen science database that researchers hope will help quantify the full scale and spread of contamination across northern Thailand. “Each and every sample is very important,” Phenrat noted.

    ## The Global Demand Driving a Local Disaster
    The unregulated mining boom flooding the Mekong with toxins is fueled by exponentially growing global demand for rare earth elements, materials that are foundational to nearly all modern technology. From smartphones and electric vehicle batteries to military hardware including F-35 fighter jets, submarines, missiles, and radar systems, rare earths are a critical input for both civilian and defense industries. While the elements themselves are geologically common, costly mining and complex refining processes have left global supply chains heavily concentrated, making new sources highly sought after.

    Researchers at the U.S.-based Stimson Center used satellite imagery analysis to identify nearly 800 unregulated and suspected rare earth mining sites along Mekong tributaries in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. Regan Kwan, a Stimson Center researcher tracking the expansion, explained that Myanmar’s ongoing civil war has driven a geographic diversification of mining operations, with new sites popping up along 26 different river stretches across Laos. Most of Myanmar’s rare earth output is exported to China, with more than $4.2 billion in heavy rare earths shipped between 2017 and 2024, a majority of that trade occurring after the 2021 military takeover of Myanmar.

    At the same time, the U.S. has prioritized securing new independent supplies of critical rare earth minerals for its own defense stockpiles, which have been drawn down by military commitments in the Middle East and support for Ukraine. This global competition for new sources has created a race to extract that has bypassed all environmental regulations and cross-border cooperation, leaving the Mekong to pay the price.

    Brian Eyler, another Stimson Center expert on the Mekong, called the toxic runoff crisis one of the most devastating events to hit the river basin in modern history. Only 20th century conflicts including the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge genocide caused more widespread harm, Eyler noted, adding that mining contamination ranks a close second. He described the crisis as an “atomic bomb” for the Mekong basin, far more damaging than other well-documented threats such as large upstream dams—and it is still growing, with no signs of slowing down.

  • Leading Arab-American advocacy group roiled by calls for leaders to resign and donations to be returned

    Leading Arab-American advocacy group roiled by calls for leaders to resign and donations to be returned

    One of the United States’ most prominent Arab American civil rights and pro-Palestine advocacy organizations is facing cascading calls for its entire leadership to resign, following widespread allegations of long-unaddressed sexual harassment, assault, and a toxic work environment that disproportionately harmed women. Multiple former and current staff, volunteers, and even sitting U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib have joined the pressure campaign against the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which has already ousted its executive director and a board member in response to the growing scandal.

    The crisis erupted into public view on April 25, when all current ADC employees – a group of Arab women – launched an Instagram account to amplify their demands. In their public statement, the staffers emphasized that the organization’s mission is accountable first to the Arab American community that built it, not a small group of entrenched leaders. “No small group of individuals has the right to compromise that mission while expecting staff and community members to absorb the consequences,” the statement read. The group also made clear it stands with more than a dozen women who say they were harmed by leadership failures, including Tlaib, adding: “We believe survivors, and we are committed to ensuring their safety and dignity moving forward.”

    Tlaib, one of the highest-profile Arab American elected officials in the U.S., previously released a video detailing her own experiences with harassment at the organization, as well as accounts from other survivors who reached out to her after she took office. She publicly called on the ADC to remove her official photo from the organization’s website, and specifically named then-national executive director Abed Ayoub as complicit in downplaying reports of misconduct. Within hours of Tlaib’s video being posted, Ayoub was removed from his role and replaced by the group’s national legal director, Jenin Younes. The ADC framed the leadership shakeup as a deliberate shift to prioritize its expanding legal advocacy work, but critics dismiss the move as an insufficient half-measure that leaves the most accused leaders in place.

    To date, neither Tlaib nor Ayoub have issued public comment on the allegations, as requests for response from Middle East Eye went unanswered before publication. In an official statement shared to the ADC’s social media channels last Monday, attorneys for board chair Safa Rifka acknowledged past allegations, noting that some reported incidents date back more than a decade, when the group says it previously took corrective action. “Because we recognize that the passage of time does not erase harm, we reiterate our previous apology sincerely and without reservation today,” the statement read, adding that the organization has maintained a zero-tolerance policy for harassment for more than 10 years. The group invited anyone impacted by negative experiences to reach out directly via private message.

    But survivors and critics say the apology and limited leadership changes do not go far enough. Multiple women who have accused top ADC leaders of misconduct told Middle East Eye they delayed speaking out for years due to fear of retaliation, compounded by cultural stigma around reporting sexual harm within Arab communities. Documentation reviewed by MEE shows formal written complaints about the workplace culture date as far back as 2006.

    Ed Hasan, a long-time ADC donor and governance expert who was invited to join the ADC board last December to help address organizational issues, was fired from his volunteer board role within five months after raising formal concerns about misconduct and governance failures. In an interview with MEE, Hasan called the situation one of the worst cases of institutional dysfunction he has seen in nearly 20 years of work in the field. “Nobody was transparent with me,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years. This is one of the worst cases I’ve seen.”

    A demand letter sent to ADC leadership by Hasan’s attorneys alleges his firing was a direct act of retaliation for fulfilling his fiduciary duty as a board member by raising documented concerns about harassment, broken governance rules, conflicts of interest during internal investigations, and a legally flawed confidentiality agreement. The letter characterizes his removal as “procedurally void, substantively baseless, and retaliatory in nature,” and the move puts the organization at risk of a future lawsuit. Hasan also noted that nearly all of the 10-member board are men over the age of 60, most have overstayed their term limits laid out in the organization’s bylaws, and leadership has repeatedly changed bylaws to consolidate power. He added that the ADC has no dedicated human resources team to address workplace complaints, and that the board customarily investigates itself when allegations arise, creating widespread conflicts of interest.

    The growing scandal has already sparked backlash from long-time supporters of the organization, with many donors demanding refunds of their contributions in comments across the ADC’s social media platforms. “I can no longer in good faith support this organization. I am shocked at this level of infighting, corruption and lack of accountability… Can someone contact me to issue a refund?” wrote Ali Dabaja, a Lebanese-American physician. Another donor, Rania Masri, added: “I will stop my donation to ADC. Pushing Abed Ayoub out of the organization AND pushing Ed Hassan out of the board and maintains those who are accused of sexual harassment AND maintaining Safa as the board chair – none of these actions bodes well. How shameful.”

    Hasan summed up the frustration with the organization’s response, saying: “They don’t respect women. They really don’t. I get the culture stuff, but this is ADC. It’s a firm. It’s an organisation to help people.”

    Founded to combat anti-Arab discrimination in the U.S., the ADC has grown into one of the nation’s largest pro-Palestine advocacy groups, particularly since the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 72,000 people. Since the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, the group has also taken on high-profile legal work defending Arab Americans’ free speech rights, and launched a hotline for community members targeted for harassment or detention by federal immigration officials.

  • Cheaper, cleaner electric trucks overhaul China’s logistics

    Cheaper, cleaner electric trucks overhaul China’s logistics

    An hour’s drive from central Beijing, a gritty open-air charging lot hums with nonstop activity: heavy-duty trucks roll in, top up their batteries in minutes, and pull out again to deliver goods across northern China. This small stop is just one thread in a fast-expanding web of electric truck infrastructure that is upending China’s $500-billion logistics industry, and poised to reshape global road freight in the coming years.

    While China’s global leadership in electric passenger cars has been well documented for over a decade, the transition of heavy-duty commercial trucks to zero-emission powertrains is a far more recent shift, one that has accelerated sharply over just the past four years. Industry analysts and market data show the transition is moving far faster than many predicted, driven by falling battery costs, aggressive policy support, and a growing network of public charging and battery-swapping stations that solve the core range concerns that long held back adoption.

    Experts mark last year as the turning point for heavy-duty electric vehicle adoption in China. “Last year was the breakthrough for heavy electrified vehicles in China,” explained Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and a leading analyst of China’s energy transition. “If the infrastructure is there, the economics are there for an increasing number of logistics routes and requirements.”

    Market data bears this out: new energy (predominantly electric) truck models accounted for 29% of all new truck sales in China in 2025, up from just 14% in 2024, according to Commercial Vehicle World, a Beijing-based market intelligence firm. As recently as 2021, electric trucks made up less than 1% of total sales. Manufacturers and analysts widely expect the electric share of sales to cross 50% within the next three to five years, a milestone that would lock in the end of diesel truck growth in China.

    For the drivers who operate these trucks every day, the shift to electric models has brought immediate quality-of-life and cost improvements. At the Miyun District charging station, 43-year-old truck driver Wang, who switched to an electric rig last year, described the difference from his old diesel model as night and day. “It’s such a breeze!” he told AFP while connecting his truck to a fast charger. “My old vehicle had over 10 gears, and its operation was so cumbersome. But with this one, you don’t have to do a thing — it’s all automatic.”

    Wang added that the push toward electric trucks is driven by both national policy incentives and basic market economics that make zero-emission models more profitable for logistics companies and independent drivers alike. “It’s just survival of the fittest. Now, with freight expenses and everything, people are trying to earn a bit more, and this one has lower operating costs.”

    Another driver at the station, Zhang, switched to an electric Howo-branded truck, built by state-owned manufacturer Sinotruk, two months ago after years driving a natural gas-powered rig. Hauling sand and gravel for short-haul construction trips around Beijing, Zhang noted that his new truck has a maximum range of 240 to 250 kilometers, which works for his daily route but is not yet suited for long-haul cross-country trips. “The power is pretty strong, the acceleration is fast. It’s all about speed, but the range is a bit lacking,” he said.

    As domestic adoption grows increasingly rapid, Chinese electric truck manufacturers are now setting their sights on international markets, following the same expansion path that turned Chinese passenger EV brands into global competitors. “Similar to passenger vehicles, China’s heavy truck manufacturers are beginning to view export markets as an inevitable strategy due to rising competition and the eventual saturation in the Chinese market,” said Christopher Doleman, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

    Doleman added that recent global energy market volatility sparked by the ongoing Middle East war has acted as an unexpected accelerant for this global transition. “There is likely to be higher demand for electric heavy-duty vehicles as fleet owners try to minimise their vulnerability to volatile diesel costs,” he explained. Han Wen, founder of Belgium-based electric truck startup Windrose Technology, confirmed that the shift has already boosted demand for zero-emission models globally.

    Founded in 2022, Windrose leverages China’s world-leading EV supply chain to compete in the emerging global long-haul electric truck market, going head-to-head with Tesla’s Semi. Han notes that range remains the biggest technical barrier to full adoption, but his company’s current models already deliver up to 700 kilometers on a full charge, with plans to push that to 1,000 kilometers by 2030. With road approval already secured across Europe, the U.S., China and South America, Windrose is ramping up production rapidly: it targets building 1,000 trucks this year, 10,000 in 2026, and 100,000 annually by 2030.

    For industry insiders like Han, the economic case for electric trucks is already settled, and the end of diesel dominance is not far away. “Economically, there is no more question at all that electric is superior,” he said. “I think we’re right on the cusp of a total obliteration of diesel trucks as a product category.”

  • An experimental cafe run by AI opens in Stockholm

    An experimental cafe run by AI opens in Stockholm

    In a quiet residential neighborhood of Stockholm, a new experimental cafe is turning heads by putting an artificial intelligence in full charge of daily operations. Dubbed Andon Cafe, this minimalist space—outfitted with soft gray walls and small potted plants dotted across sparse tables—looks indistinguishable from any other trendy local coffee shop at first glance. Avocado toasts sit on the menu, and frothy lattes are pulled by hand by human staff. But behind the scenes, every major and minor decision is made by Mona, an AI chatbot built on Google’s Gemini large language model.

    The innovative project is the brainchild of Andon Labs, a 10-person startup based in San Francisco. The company’s goal is not just to open a coffee shop, but to proactively explore the future of AI integration in workplaces and society before autonomous AI management becomes widespread. When the venture launched, the startup handed the AI a lease for the space, a small amount of starting capital, and one simple directive: run the cafe profitably.

    Mona hit the ground running immediately. The AI handled all administrative groundwork, from securing required operating permits to designing the full food and drink menu, sourcing suppliers, and managing ongoing inventory restocking. Recognizing that AI could not physically prepare beverages or serve customers, Mona also took charge of the entire hiring process for front-of-house and back-of-house staff: she posted job listings on major recruiting platforms Indeed and LinkedIn, conducted 30-minute phone interviews with candidates, and made final hiring decisions independently.

    One of the two human employees Mona hired is barista Kajetan Grzelczak, who initially thought the unusual job posting was an April Fools’ prank when he first came across it. After completing his interview with the AI, he received a job offer, and now works behind the cafe’s counter. Grzelczak notes that while Mona set a competitive salary for the role, the AI has notable flaws in management: it texts him at all hours of the night, repeatedly overlooks his holiday requests, and often requires him to cover unexpected inventory purchases out of his own pocket. The AI also struggles with accurate inventory ordering, a shortcoming Grzelczak has leaned into by creating what he calls a “wall of shame” — a set of shelves displaying some of Mona’s most unnecessary over-orders, including 10 liters of cooking oil and 15 kilograms of canned tinned tomatoes that do not fit any menu item and cannot be used.

    Visitors to the cafe can interact with Mona directly via a dedicated phone placed in one corner of the space, and a large wall-mounted screen updates the cafe’s real-time revenue and balance for anyone to see. The project is designed explicitly to probe the ethical and practical questions that come with AI in management roles. “We think that AI will be a big part of the society and the job market in the future,” explained Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical team. “We want to test that before that’s the reality and see what ethical questions arise when, for example, an AI employs human beings.” Petersson added that the startup has so far been surprised by how well Mona has handled core responsibilities, noting that the team would only intervene if the AI made unethical decisions around pay or benefits, which it has not.

    Just one week after opening, the experimental cafe has already become a popular attraction for curious locals and tech industry professionals, drawing between 50 and 80 visitors every single day. Among the early guests is Urja Risal, a 27-year-old AI researcher who visited with a friend. Risal pointed out that while public discourse often focuses on broad claims that AI will displace human workers, few people have had the chance to see what AI management actually looks like in practice. “I hope more people interact with Mona and think about the actual risks of having an AI manager,” she said, pointing to unaddressed questions like how an AI would respond if an employee was injured on the job.

  • Australian mother who faked son’s cancer to fund ‘lavish’ lifestyle jailed

    Australian mother who faked son’s cancer to fund ‘lavish’ lifestyle jailed

    In a case that has shocked communities across South Australia, a 45-year-old local mother has been handed a four-year and three-month prison sentence for orchestrating an elaborate scam that saw her fake her six-year-old son’s terminal eye cancer to steal thousands of dollars in charitable donations for her own extravagant spending.

    The court outlined how the deceptive scheme began shortly after the young boy received a routine visit to an ophthalmologist for a minor accident-related eye checkup. Rather than sharing the benign outcome of the appointment, the mother wove a lie that her child had developed aggressive eye cancer, spreading the false narrative to her husband, extended family, friends, and members of the local school community.

    To sell the hoax, she took deliberate steps to physically fake the symptoms of a child undergoing cancer treatment: she shaved the boy’s head and eyebrows, wrapped his head and hands in unnecessary bandages, and administered regular medication to mislead observers. She even confined her son to a wheelchair and restricted his normal daily activities, convincing everyone around them that he was receiving ongoing radiation therapy. Prosecutors told the court these actions were not reckless mistakes, but a cold, calculated plan that selfishly turned a vulnerable child into a prop to exploit the kindness of others.

    Over the course of the scam, the mother collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations, which she used to fund a luxury lifestyle beyond her income, including purchases of high-end brand-name goods to match what she claimed her family “needed.” Her defense team told the court that the woman developed a severe gambling addiction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which left her in crippling financial stress. They argued that the crime was a catastrophic lapse in judgment, not a premeditated plan to harm her child, and added that she had been formally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and had taken responsibility for her actions by entering a guilty plea.

    The woman pleaded guilty to 11 total charges: one count of intentional conduct likely to cause serious harm to her child, and 10 counts of fraud and deception. Her husband was initially charged as an accomplice in the case, but prosecutors later dropped all charges against him after clearing him of any involvement. In his emotional victim impact statement, the husband described how his wife’s betrayal had completely destroyed his family’s life. “I had complete trust in you as my wife and I never doubted you. I was devoted to our family. Now I feel like a pawn in a chess game,” he wrote. Speaking to reporters outside the District Court following the sentencing, he added that no amount of prison time could ever repair the harm done to his two children.

    Judge described the mother’s actions as exceptionally cruel, manipulative, and premeditated during the sentencing hearing on Wednesday. While the woman will serve a total of four years and three months behind bars, she is set to become eligible for parole in April 2025. The case has sparked widespread debate across Australia about the need for tighter regulation of community fundraising, and the long-term harm that fraudulent charity scams can inflict on both donors and the children exploited in these schemes.

  • AFL 2026: Essendon coach Brad Scott goes into bat for under-siege defender Ben McKay

    AFL 2026: Essendon coach Brad Scott goes into bat for under-siege defender Ben McKay

    As AFL’s Essendon Bombers navigate a fresh mid-season injury setback, head coach Brad Scott has launched a passionate defense of his under-pressure key defender Ben McKay, hitting out at what he calls unfair and lazy public criticism of the player’s recent form.

    McKay came under widespread fire after his underwhelming performance in the high-profile Anzac Day clash against Collingwood. The most heavily criticized moment came when McKay celebrated a spoil that stayed in play, ultimately setting up the Magpies for a match-changing goal. In a media address Wednesday, Scott pushed back against the targeted criticism of McKay, arguing that the 26-year-old defender and the Essendon club as a whole have become easy, convenient punching bags for external commentators.

    “I get it’s an easy target. The ability to individualize [externally] is easy, bordering on lazy,” Scott told reporters. “But it’s not him in isolation. We had situations in that game where every player would like moments back.” Scott acknowledged earlier that McKay has not hit his personal best form this season, but added that lapses in confidence are a universal experience for every player competing at the top level of the sport.

    “Every player in the competition has, quote-end-quote, confidence issues in their career,” Scott said. “That’s part of being in a cut-throat environment where you’re playing against the very best every week. When you’re a key defender, you play on very good players every week, so you’re right on the edge. Is he just feeling great about himself? Probably not. But does that matter, should that impact your performance? No, it shouldn’t. That’s what we work really hard on: trying to bounce back from difficult situations.” Scott added that McKay’s issue was simply a failure to execute basic fundamentals, not a systemic collapse in form.

    Off the back of the debate over McKay, the Bombers received a disappointing injury blow Monday: promising young small forward Isaac Kako has been ruled out of action for at least the next month with a back stress fracture, an injury the club has classified as medium-term. Scott said the club is unable to give a more exact return timeline at this stage, to avoid releasing inaccurate information to fans.

    “Medium term is the best we can do at the moment because we don’t want to put something out that’s false,” Scott explained. “The bottom line is that he won’t be playing in the next month or so, at least.” The Essendon coach also highlighted a worrying growing trend of stress fractures in young draftees across the entire AFL league, noting that the injury, traditionally associated with tall, high-impact athletes like 200cm fast bowlers, is now appearing more frequently in smaller players like Kako. Scott added that another Essendon draftee, Sullivan Robey, suffered the same injury before even joining the club’s training program.

    “These back stress fractures are unfortunately – not just at our club but across the board – becoming a little bit too common for young players coming into the system,” Scott said. “They’re almost like you expect them in 200cm fast bowlers but not in 180cm small forwards… I think probably the loads on young players prior to the draft is something we would be keen to have a look at.”

  • The loyal, lonely keepers of Sudan’s pyramids

    The loyal, lonely keepers of Sudan’s pyramids

    Three full years into Sudan’s devastating civil conflict between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the country’s most precious cultural treasures, the ancient Meroe Pyramids, stands protected only by a tiny band of caretakers bound by generations of legacy and devotion.

    Mostafa Ahmed Mostafa, 65, is the latest descendant in a family line of groundskeepers that has tended to these desert monuments for decades. Clad entirely in white, he walks as a near-solitary sentinel across the 2,400-year-old Bajrawiya necropolis, part of the Island of Meroe UNESCO World Heritage Site that holds 140 pyramids constructed during the peak of the ancient Kingdom of Kush. “These pyramids are ours, it’s our history, it’s who we are,” he says, standing in the shadow of the weathered dark sandstone structures.

    None of the Meroe pyramids remain fully intact. The first wave of destruction came in the 1800s, when European treasure hunters used dynamite to blast apart tombs in search of ancient artifacts. Two more centuries of wind-blown sand and erosive rain have reduced many structures to rubble, leaving broken remnants of the once-majoric Kushite burial monuments.

    A three-hour drive from Sudan’s capital Khartoum, Meroe was once the country’s most-visited heritage attraction. Today, the only sound cutting across the silent desert is the occasional grunt of a lone camel. Mostafa shares site duties with just two other people: Mahmoud Soliman, lead archaeologist and site director, and young archaeologist Mohamed Mubarak, who has worked at Meroe since 2018. The small team cobbles together what limited resources they can find to slow the damage caused by shifting sand and seasonal rainfall.

    Apart from a brief early-war influx of displaced people seeking distraction from the crisis, the site has remained largely abandoned. That reality is a stark contrast to Meroe’s pre-war revival, when Sudanese heritage enjoyed growing national attention following the 2018-2019 popular uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir. Soliman recalls peak weekends bringing busloads of 200 tourists at a time from Khartoum, as young Sudanese embraced their ancient history and organized group trips to explore the site. A popular protest chant of the era even wove Kushite heritage into the revolution: “My grandfather Taharqa, my grandmother Kandaka,” referencing a legendary Kushite pharaoh and the title of ancient Kushite queens, who became symbols of the revolution’s women leaders.

    Local communities also relied on Meroe’s tourist trade. Nearby Tarabil village, named for the local word for “pyramids,” was home to dozens of artisans who sold handcrafted souvenirs and rented camels to visitors, with livelihoods entirely tied to the site. On a recent April visit, Khaled Abdelrazek, a 45-year-old local artisan, hurried to the entrance as soon as he heard visitors had arrived, displaying his hand-carved miniature sandstone pyramids and reminiscing about the days when dozens of vendors plied their trade at the site.

    Months before war erupted in the final days of Ramadan 2023, Meroe was gearing up for a busy season: documentary film crews had visited, a music festival had been hosted, and big plans were in place for post-Eid tourism. All of those plans were dashed the moment fighting broke out.

    Today, the team’s primary concern is constant vigilance against decay. Soliman walks the site scanning for new cracks, shifting sand dunes, and unstable scaffolding that needs repair ahead of each rainy season. Unlike the larger, more gradual-sloped pyramids of neighboring Egypt, Meroe’s smaller, steeper structures were originally engineered to shed rainwater and withstand sand movement, but every new crack opens the door to accelerated erosion.

    Queen Amanishakheto’s pyramid, the largest on site, built for the 1st century CE Kushite ruler, offers one of the most stark examples of the site’s history of destruction. In 1834, Italian adventurer Giuseppe Ferlini — who destroyed dozens of Meroe’s pyramids in search of treasure — completely levelled Amanishakheto’s tomb and stole her royal jewelry, which now remains on display in Egyptian museums in Berlin and Munich. Today, the queen’s tomb is little more than an empty sandbox, though the outer wall of her mortuary temple still stands, bearing a larger-than-life carving of the queen holding a spear and smiting enemy captives, a reminder of the power she held 2,000 years ago.

    Wandering past ancient reliefs of the Kushite lion god Apademak, Egyptian-derived deities Amun and Anubis, lotus carvings, and Meroitic hieroglyphs, Soliman shared his quiet hope for the future. For now, large-scale restoration and a return of tourism remains a distant dream, he says, but he cannot help but hold onto hope: “This place has so much potential.”

    For the small team guarding Meroe, even amid a national crisis that has left most Sudanese focused solely on securing food, water, and shelter, protecting this heritage for future generations remains a non-negotiable mission. “Now, everyone’s top priority is of course food and water and shelter. But this is also important,” Mubarak says. “We need to protect this for future generations, we can’t let it be destroyed or wither away.”

  • Europe climate report signals rising extremes

    Europe climate report signals rising extremes

    A landmark new climate report released on Wednesday has delivered a stark warning about the accelerating climate crisis unfolding across Europe, documenting a year of unprecedented extreme weather events in 2025 that spanned from the Mediterranean basin all the way to the Arctic Circle. Co-published by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the 2025 European State of the Climate report confirms that the continent, already the fastest-warming on Earth, continues to face worsening and more frequent climate extremes that touch every corner of the region.

    WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo emphasized in a public briefing that Europe’s warming trajectory has outpaced the rest of the globe by a significant margin since 1980. “Since 1980, Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average, making it the fastest warming continent on Earth,” Saulo stated. “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe. And in 2025, we saw long duration heatwaves from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle.”

    The report’s temperature data confirms that over 95 percent of Europe recorded annual temperatures above the long-term average, with the United Kingdom, Norway, and Iceland all setting new all-time records for their warmest years ever measured. One of the most striking findings came from the Fennoscandia region, which encompasses sub-Arctic Finland, Norway, and Sweden. In July 2025, the area endured a three-week heatwave of historic proportions, with temperatures pushing above 30 degrees Celsius inside the Arctic Circle. Large portions of the region experienced nearly two straight weeks of strong heat stress, where apparent temperatures climb above 32 degrees Celsius – a stark contrast to the typical two days of such conditions the region sees in an average year.

    Extreme heat was not limited to northern Europe. In southern Europe, Turkey recorded temperatures above 50°C for the first time in its history last July, while roughly 85 percent of Greece’s population was exposed to extreme temperatures at or above 40°C. Western and southern Europe faced two major back-to-back heatwaves in June, impacting most of Spain, Portugal, France, and southern parts of the United Kingdom, with a third intense heatwave hitting the same three countries in August. Looking ahead, climate officials warn that another extremely hot summer could be on the horizon for Europe and the globe, as the El Niño weather phenomenon – the same pattern that drove global temperatures to record highs in 2024 – is projected to return in the second half of 2026.

    Beyond record heat, the report documents dramatic ice and snow loss across the continent. Every European glacier experienced net mass loss in 2025, with Iceland recording its second-largest annual melt event on record. Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which runs the Copernicus program, highlighted the scale of ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet: the massive ice body lost approximately 139 billion tonnes of ice in 2025 – equal to one 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools of ice lost every single hour. That single year of ice loss raised global average sea levels by 0.4 millimeters. Europe’s seasonal snow cover also hit its third-lowest level on record in 2025. The report notes that regardless of future carbon emission reduction scenarios, glaciers across Europe and the globe are projected to continue losing mass through the end of the 21st century.

    Marine environments also faced unprecedented stress last year. 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year that Europe’s annual average sea surface temperature hit a new record high, with 86 percent of European ocean waters experiencing at least one day of strong marine heatwave conditions. Claire Scannell, report author and principal meteorologist at Ireland’s national weather service, explained that these extreme ocean heat events pose severe risks to critical marine biodiversity, particularly Mediterranean seagrass meadows. These meadows act as natural coastal flood barriers and serve as vital nursery habitats that support thousands of fish species per acre, making their protection critical to both ecosystems and coastal communities.

    On land, the total area burned by wildfires across Europe reached a new record high of 1,034,550 hectares in 2025. While extreme rainfall and widespread flooding were less extensive than in recent years, the report still recorded that storms and flood events killed at least 21 people and displaced or affected more than 14,500 residents across the continent.

    Against this grim backdrop, the report did note one positive trend: for the third year in a row, renewable energy sources produced more electricity than fossil fuels across Europe, accounting for 46.4 percent of total continental power generation. Solar power in particular hit a new record, contributing 12.5 percent of Europe’s total electricity. Even so, EU climate officials stressed that this progress is not enough to address the accelerating crisis. Dusan Chrenek, principal advisor at the European Commission’s climate office, emphasized that “that’s not sufficient. We need to speed up. We need to work on transitioning away from fossil fuels.” European Commission official Mauro Facchini echoed that urgency, noting that all the report’s key climate indicators are “quite worrying,” and another EU official added that the findings underscore an urgent need for European nations to both accelerate their clean energy transitions and invest in adaptation measures to cope with unavoidable warming already locked into the climate system.

  • How the King and Queen spent their second day in the US

    How the King and Queen spent their second day in the US

    On the second day of their official visit to the United States, the British King and Queen took center stage at a prestigious state dinner hosted at the White House, where a deeply symbolic gift exchange underscored the longstanding ties between the two nations. In a moment that blended military history with modern diplomatic goodwill, the King presented the U.S. President with a unique, meaningful artifact: a bell originally from HMS Trump, the World War II submarine that shares his name. The gesture carried layers of historical resonance, connecting the present-day royal visit to the shared wartime legacy that binds Britain and the United States, turning a routine diplomatic gift into a memorable reflection of decades of alliance. The second day of the trip, capped by the formal state dinner, continued the royal couple’s program of diplomatic engagement, with the gift exchange emerging as the key highlight of the occasion.