Global Pulse

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  • Mexico officials say Teotihuacán gunman carried material related to US mass shooting

    Mexico officials say Teotihuacán gunman carried material related to US mass shooting

    On April 21, 2026, a premeditated shooting at one of Mexico’s most iconic tourist landmarks, the ancient Pyramid of the Moon in the Teotihuacán archaeological complex, left one person dead and 13 others injured, prompting a swift response from national authorities who have moved to reassure the public ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup.

    According to official details released by Mexican leadership at a Tuesday press briefing, the attacker was 27-year-old Mexican national Julio César Jasso Ramírez. When he carried out the attack, he brought a loaded handgun, dozens of extra ammunition cartridges, a knife, and printed materials referencing notorious violent incidents that have occurred around the world. Top law enforcement officials confirmed that Jasso Ramírez planned and executed the attack entirely on his own, with no connections to larger extremist groups or organized criminal networks. After a standoff with responding law enforcement, the attacker ultimately died by suicide on the site.

    The dead victim of the attack was identified as a 32-year-old Canadian tourist. Thirteen other people ranging in age from 6 to 61 were injured in the shooting; seven of those injured suffered gunshot wounds, including two minor tourists from Colombia and Brazil. Responding officers included a member of Mexico’s National Guard and a local municipal police officer, who scaled the steep steps of the ancient pyramid to corner the attacker. The National Guard member shot Jasso Ramírez in the leg in an attempt to disable him before the attacker turned the gun on himself.

    Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that preliminary investigations show the attacker displayed clear signs of unaddressed psychological distress and had been radicalized by prior high-profile mass shootings carried out abroad. State of Mexico Attorney General José Luis Cervantes Martínez confirmed that among the attacker’s belongings, investigators found documents, imagery and written materials referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in the United States. One eyewitness tourist told Reuters that Jasso Ramírez explicitly referenced the Columbine attack during the shooting, which took place exactly 27 years to the day after the 1999 massacre.

    Investigators added that the attack was far from impulsive. Jasso Ramírez had made repeated trips to the Teotihuacán complex, located roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of Mexico City, in advance of the attack, and arrived at the site shortly before noon local time on Monday. Witness cell phone footage captured from the scene captured the chaos of the incident: visitors can be seen scrambling for cover as multiple gunshots ring out, while Jasso Ramírez can be heard making threats against crowds of tourists.

    In the aftermath of the attack, the entire Teotihuacán archaeological site — a UNESCO World Heritage Site that draws roughly 1.8 million visitors annually — was closed to allow for forensic investigation and security adjustments. President Sheinbaum announced the site will reopen to visitors on Wednesday with newly implemented enhanced security protocols. The president also acknowledged that prior to the attack, most Mexican archaeological sites including Teotihuacán did not have entrance security checkpoints in place. In response, she has ordered immediate security upgrades at all tourist and archaeological sites across the country, including the installation of permanent metal detectors at Teotihuacán and other high-traffic landmarks.

    With less than two months to go before the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Mexico City on June 11, President Sheinbaum moved quickly to reassure domestic and international audiences that security for the global tournament will be fully guaranteed. The president noted that she has already held in-depth talks with FIFA organizers to review logistics and security planning for the tournament. She emphasized that Mexico remains a safe destination for travelers, pointing to the 16 million international visitors that entered the country between January and February of 2026 as evidence of the country’s ongoing ability to welcome tourists safely.

  • Delicate extraction: Malaysia offers rare earths alternative to China

    Delicate extraction: Malaysia offers rare earths alternative to China

    Against a backdrop of growing global anxiety over China’s control of the global rare earths market, Australian mining giant Lynas is expanding its rare earth refining operations in eastern Malaysia, positioning itself as a leading alternative supplier for the critical minerals that underpin modern technology and clean energy.

  • Domestic workers legally recognised in Indonesia after ’22-year struggle’

    Domestic workers legally recognised in Indonesia after ’22-year struggle’

    After more than two decades of stalled negotiations and persistent grassroots advocacy, Indonesia’s parliament has finally enacted a groundbreaking law that formally recognizes and protects the rights of the nation’s 4.2 million domestic workers, a workforce overwhelmingly made up of women.

    For years, this critical segment of the Indonesian labor force existed in a legal gray area: prior to this new legislation, domestic workers were not officially classified as workers under national labor regulations, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and poverty with no formal recourse. An estimated 90% of all domestic workers in Indonesia are women, many of whom have long faced systemic marginalization in informal work arrangements that lack basic social protections.

    The Domestic Workers Protection Law, which was first introduced to legislative chambers back in 2004, delivers sweeping new guarantees for domestic workers across the country. Under the new framework, workers will be legally entitled to paid rest days, public health insurance coverage, and formal pension benefits. The legislation also bars recruitment and placement agencies from withholding any portion of workers’ wages as placement fees, and imposes an outright ban on child domestic labor, making it illegal to hire any person under the age of 18 for full-time domestic work.

    Emotional reactions greeted the final passage of the bill, with many long-time advocates and domestic workers describing the moment as the fruition of a decades-long fight for dignity. “It feels like a dream,” Ajeng Astuti, a domestic worker, told BBC Indonesian. “This is our 22-year struggle as marginalized women to gain protection.” Jumiyem, a domestic worker based in Yogyakarta, echoed that sentiment, saying “We’ve been longing for this [law], and now we can feel it.”

    The legislation faced repeated setbacks over its 22-year journey to passage: after its initial introduction in 2004, the bill hit one legislative roadblock after another, with parliamentary discussions put on hold for more than a decade before being revived for debate in 2020. Now that the bill has been signed into law, national regulators have one year to develop detailed implementing regulations that will lay out how the new protections will be enforced across the country.

    Before the new law, even as domestic workers played an unseen but foundational role in Indonesian households and the broader national economy, millions remained completely outside the protection of existing labor laws. Most worked in informal arrangements with no written employment contract, many logging 12-hour or longer workdays for substandard wages, and reports have documented children as young as 12 being pushed into full-time domestic work.

    While human and labor rights organizations have widely praised the law as a historic step forward for worker protections, they caution that the work to secure dignity for domestic workers is far from finished. Lita Anggraini, a representative of Jala PRT, one of Indonesia’s leading domestic worker advocacy groups, told AFP that widespread public education campaigns will be critical to inform employers of their new legal obligations under the law.

    Advocacy groups point to ongoing systemic abuse that the new law must address: between 2021 and 2024, Jala PRT documented more than 3,300 reported cases of violence against domestic workers, including instances of severe physical assault and ongoing psychological abuse. The new legal framework marks the first major national effort to curb these abuses and bring millions of marginalized workers under the protection of the law.

  • Alicia Gardiner: Australian actor to take stand in hearing over alleged breast twist assault

    Alicia Gardiner: Australian actor to take stand in hearing over alleged breast twist assault

    A high-profile Australian television actor is scheduled to take the witness stand this week as a legal hearing examines a contentious assault allegation stemming from a pro-Palestinian protest inside Victoria’s Parliament House in Melbourne.

    Alicia Gardiner, widely recognized for her long-running role on the hit series *Offspring* and more recent appearances in *Deadloch*, stands accused of intentionally twisting a female parliamentary staff member’s breast on the afternoon of May 7, 2024. The incident unfolded moments after a group of protestors were removed from the building’s public gallery for demonstrating against the Israel-Hamas conflict. Security body-worn camera footage played in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday captured the crowd chanting slogans including “free free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea” as they were escorted out of the parliamentary complex.

    Prosecutors claim the alleged assault took place just after 1 p.m. near the door to the state’s legislative chamber, where the staff member was stationed. One witness testifying at the hearing told the court he pushed back a woman in blue—who prosecutors identify as Gardiner—when she attempted to enter the restricted chamber area. He told the court he then observed her in a physical tussle with his colleague, the alleged victim. The witness added that moments after the confrontation, police protective services officers arrived on the scene, and when he checked on his colleague afterward, she appeared visibly shaken and shocked by the encounter.

    Gardiner has repeatedly denied that she intentionally assaulted the staff member. Her defense lawyer, Angeline Centrone, told the court Wednesday that any physical contact between her client and the complainant was accidental. Centrone explained that Gardiner had raised her hands to steady herself amid the chaotic crowd crush that followed the protest dispersal, and any contact with the staff member was an unintended result of that movement.

    The ongoing hearing, overseen by Magistrate Malcolm Thomas, continued Wednesday with Gardiner expected to give her own testimony to the court later that afternoon. No verdict has been delivered as the proceedings are still underway.

  • How Sheila the three-wheeler dodged danger on a record 14,000-mile journey to tip of South Africa

    How Sheila the three-wheeler dodged danger on a record 14,000-mile journey to tip of South Africa

    For most adventure seekers, a cross-continental road trip requires a sturdy, four-wheeled vehicle built to handle punishing terrain and extreme conditions. But for British car enthusiast Ollie Jenks and his Canadian friend Seth Scott, the appeal of their latest challenge lay in its sheer absurdity. What started as a wild proposal from Scott quickly became a once-in-a-lifetime expedition that would push the pair, and their vintage three-wheeled car, to the absolute limit.

    The pair’s bold plan? Drive a half-century-old British-built Reliant Robin — a tiny three-wheeled vehicle originally designed for 1970s local grocery runs — from London all the way to Cape Town, South Africa. The 14,000-mile route would cut through 22 countries, traversing tropical jungles, rugged mountain ranges and scorching deserts along the way, all in pursuit of a new world record for the longest journey ever completed in a three-wheeled vehicle. For Jenks, the ridiculousness of the idea was exactly what made it impossible to turn down. “It was so ridiculous I couldn’t say no,” Jenks recalled of Scott’s initial pitch.

    The Reliant Robin holds a unique cult status in British culture. Though production of the model ended in the early 2000s, it remains a beloved icon, largely thanks to its famous role as the Trotter brothers’ beat-up yellow van in the hit UK sitcom *Only Fools and Horses*. Even so, the small, underpowered vehicle is widely considered one of the least suitable cars for a multi-thousand-mile transcontinental expedition — and that was exactly the point for Jenks and Scott.

    Dubbed “Sheila,” the silver Reliant they selected for the trip was one of the last models ever produced, acquired specifically for the adventure. When the pair set off in October, they brought little more than a spare can of fuel, a handful of essential supplies strapped to Sheila’s tiny roof, and a healthy dose of blind optimism that they would somehow reach South Africa. In a blunt assessment of the vehicle’s capabilities, Jenks noted: “No power steering, no air con, and it doesn’t do well up hills or down them. It is the most unsuitable car for probably any journey. We made friends with the designer of this car, and he’s scared to take it any more than 20 miles.”

    Undeterred by warnings from even the car’s own designer, Jenks and Scott pressed ahead with the four-and-a-half month expedition, which cost an estimated $40,000 to $50,000, funded through a mix of sponsor support and crowdfunding. The pair documented every step of the journey on their Instagram page, fittingly titled “14,000 miles, 3 wheels, 0 common sense,” which quickly attracted a following of nearly 100,000 people tracking their progress.

    The journey was far from smooth. The pair arrived in Benin in the middle of an attempted coup d’état, passed through northern Nigeria just as the U.S. launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in the region, and required a 300-mile military escort through a separatist conflict zone in Cameroon. “Imagine this car in a military convoy,” Jenks joked.

    Beyond political and security hazards, the pair faced constant danger on the road, including a heart-stopping moment when an overtaking bus nearly crushed Sheila against a Congolese cliff face. True to the Reliant’s reputation for unreliability, the vehicle suffered countless breakdowns across the continent’s rough, unpaved roads. Wheel springs needed replacing within the first two weeks of the trip. The gearbox failed in Ghana, leaving the pair stuck with only fourth gear for hundreds of miles. Clutch and distributor issues plagued the vehicle in Cameroon, before the expedition nearly ended entirely when Sheila’s engine blew out.

    Against all odds, the kindness of local strangers and global Reliant Robin enthusiasts kept the dream alive. A local contact arranged for a new gearbox to be shipped to Ghana, while UK-based Reliant fans sourced and sent a replacement engine to Cameroon. On multiple occasions, locals helped tow the broken-down car to garages, often on improvised vehicles like cattle trucks. Mechanics across Africa spent hours welding, hammering and repairing Sheila to keep her running, many shaking their heads at the sheer madness of the pair’s mission.

    For all the hardship and setbacks, the journey also delivered the breathtaking moments the pair had dreamed of. Sheila crawled across towering mountain passes and vast arid deserts, traversing terrain no Reliant Robin had ever reached. The three-wheeler even joined a safari, rolling alongside galloping giraffes, passing endangered rhinos, and posing for photos beside a massive African elephant.

    More than 120 days after setting off, Sheila rattled into Cape Town last month, her engine having overheated in the Namibian Desert and running on borrowed power for the final 1,000 miles of the trip. For onlooker Graeme Hurst, a South African car enthusiast who followed the expedition on Instagram and traveled to see the pair arrive, the journey is a modern underdog story. “I see the farcical kind of comical nature of it … but also the sheer admiration. I mean, they have utter tenacity,” Hurst said.

    In Cape Town, Sheila was given a temporary spot in a luxury car showroom, where she drew more attention than the gleaming Porsches and Mercedes parked around her, her broken side window, petrol-stained windshield, bent rims and countless dents and scratches a testament to her incredible journey. For now, Sheila will rest in South Africa for a full, well-deserved servicing before her final voyage: she will be driven to Kenya, shipped to Turkey, and eventually transported back to the UK, where she will take up permanent residence at the London Transport Museum.

    After arriving in Cape Town, Jenks said he felt a deep sense of triumph, mixed with overwhelming relief to finally escape the car’s tiny two-seat cabin. “It was like driving a motorized coffin,” he joked.

  • Who is calling the shots in Iran?

    Who is calling the shots in Iran?

    A sudden diplomatic reversal following recent US-Iran talks in Islamabad has laid bare the dramatic new power dynamic reshaping Iran in the wake of six weeks of coordinated US-Israeli military strikes. On April 17, Iranian foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi took to the social platform X to announce that the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz was “completely open,” a signal that Tehran was prepared to show flexibility on two sticking points in negotiations: uranium enrichment limits and Iranian support for regional proxy armed groups.

    Within days, however, that public outreach was completely reversed following backlash from Iran’s most powerful institution. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander newly appointed as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, filed a formal complaint criticizing Araghchi for deviating from the negotiating mandate set by the IRGC leadership. The entire Iranian negotiating delegation was recalled to Tehran, state-run media launched scathing attacks on Araghchi, warning that his public statement had handed then-US President Donald Trump a political opening to falsely declare victory in the conflict, and the Iranian government issued a new declaration that the Strait of Hormuz was closed.

    This high-profile public clash is not an isolated misstep, argues King’s College London defense studies associate professor Andreas Krieg in analysis shared via The Conversation. It is the clearest visible indicator of a permanent power shift that has transformed Iran’s political order: the IRGC now holds total control over all state decision-making, while civilian and traditional religious institutions have been reduced to little more than a ceremonial facade.

    The decapitation strikes that opened the US-Israeli military campaign eliminated decades of entrenched Iranian leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening day attack, alongside dozens of his most senior colleagues. Where Iran was once described as a sovereign state with an exceptionally powerful militia, Krieg argues the new reality is the opposite: Iran is now a powerful militia with a state, structured entirely around the IRGC as its core governing authority.

    Traditional centers of Iranian power, including the elected civilian government and the senior Shia clergy, have been pushed to the margins as mere front organizations. Even the newly appointed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ali Khamenei, functions only as a symbolic legitimizing figure. Multiple reports confirm Mojtaba Khamenei sustained severe injuries in the strike that killed his father, and he plays no active role in governing the country.

    The undisputed holder of power in contemporary Iran is IRGC leader Ahmad Vahidi, a founding member of the corps with decades of experience in Iranian security and politics. The IRGC was founded immediately after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his allies distrusted the existing conventional military and state bureaucracy to protect the new revolutionary order. Over the subsequent 47 years, the IRGC expanded far beyond its original mandate as guardians of the revolution, evolving into an all-encompassing network that spans every sector of Iranian life: it operates a conventional military force, a domestic intelligence apparatus, a multi-billion dollar transnational economic conglomerate, and a regional expeditionary network that projects Iranian power across the Middle East.

    Its domestic arm, the Basij militia, enables mass social control across Iran’s population, while the elite Quds Force manages the IRGC’s network of proxy armed groups across Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other regional states. Far from dismantling this network, decades of international sanctions against Iran actually strengthened it: sanctions pushed the IRGC to build a sprawling web of front companies for illicit trade and patronage networks that enriched IRGC-aligned elites, creating a parallel state that gradually outgrew the formal civilian government in both power and influence.

    The IRGC’s organizational structure is built around a “mosaic defense doctrine,” a decentralized network design with a centralized core that sets strategic direction, surrounded by semi-autonomous cells that can continue operating even after decapitation strikes that eliminate top leadership. This structure was explicitly designed to allow the IRGC to keep functioning even when facing large-scale military attacks targeting its command structure, a design that has been vindicated by recent events.

    After IRGC chief Mohammad Pakpour was killed on the opening day of the conflict, Vahidi— a former Iranian interior minister and founding IRGC figure— stepped into the top role in an emergency appointment. He has since consolidated full control over Iranian governance as civilian institutions have been hollowed out by war losses. With the new supreme leader incapacitated and the clergy sidelined, Vahidi and his coalition of hardline IRGC commanders and security council allies, including Ali Akbar Ahmadian and Zolghadr, now set all negotiating mandates and red lines for ongoing ceasefire and nuclear talks with the United States.

    The IRGC’s non-negotiable red lines are well-defined: it will not abandon its uranium enrichment program entirely, it will preserve its ballistic missile program and its regional network of proxy groups (known as the “axis of resistance”), it demands full lifting of international sanctions and the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian overseas assets. Only narrow technical details, such as enrichment level limits, sanctions lifting timelines, and the formal language of any final agreement, are open to negotiation.

    The decimation of pragmatic Iranian political figures in Israeli strikes has cleared the last remaining obstacles to IRGC control. Former Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani, a leading pragmatic voice, was killed by an Israeli strike on March 16, leaving no prominent opposition to the IRGC’s hardline agenda. While the war accelerated the IRGC’s consolidation of power, Krieg notes this shift was decades in the making: the IRGC spent generations entrenching its influence across Iranian institutions, capturing economic assets, and building up its coercive capacity. The war only provided the final opportunity to eliminate competing power centers, most notably the senior clergy, and solidify total control.

    This new power structure has profound implications for ongoing US-Iran negotiations. US negotiators are not bargaining with independent civilian diplomats; every Iranian negotiator operates on a short leash held directly by the IRGC leadership. Any progress in talks cannot be measured by public statements from Iranian diplomats, but only by what the IRGC is actually willing to implement in practice.

    The US-Israeli decapitation strategy failed to break the IRGC’s structure, and the hardline network now finds itself emboldened, as it recognizes the White House is desperate to secure a diplomatic exit from the conflict. Krieg argues that assumptions the IRGC will quickly capitulate to US demands are unfounded wishful thinking.

    Recent events have confirmed that the IRGC now governs Iran as a militia with a state, using the formal civilian and religious institutions of the Islamic Republic as a public outer layer. While there remains space for negotiation to reach a mutually acceptable agreement, the US administration must approach talks with a clear-eyed understanding of the IRGC’s non-negotiable red lines, and the resilience of a hardened network that has repeatedly demonstrated it can absorb severe punishment and maintain control.

  • PGA Tour mulls pathway back for golfers as LIV plots survival

    PGA Tour mulls pathway back for golfers as LIV plots survival

    The global golf landscape has been thrown into fresh turmoil in recent days, following widespread reports that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the primary backer of the breakaway LIV Golf circuit, will only guarantee financial support through the end of the current season. With an estimated $5 billion already poured into the four-year-old tour, a major funding gap would open if the circuit continues operations beyond this point, sparking intense speculation over LIV’s long-term future and triggering parallel moves from both LIV and its rival, the PGA Tour.

    Amid this uncertainty, the PGA Tour has confirmed it is actively exploring pathways to allow players who defected to LIV Golf to return to the premier tour. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp shared details of the ongoing discussions during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show Monday, noting that the organization has already approved the return of five-time major champion Brooks Koepka, who rejoined after reaching out to request reinstatement once his LIV contract concluded.

    “Brooks came back onto the tour because he made a phone call and said, ‘Look, I’m out of my contract. I’m ready to come back,’” Rolapp told listeners. “So we’re thinking about it. We’ll react when we have an opportunity to react. I’m interested in whatever makes the PGA Tour better.”

    The question of return looms largest for marquee LIV players whose contracts are set to expire soon, including two-time major winner Bryson DeChambeau. It remains unclear whether DeChambeau would opt to return to the PGA Tour, given the steep financial penalties the tour has imposed on returning players like Koepka. The popular star, whose YouTube channel regularly draws more than two million views per video, could also choose to only compete in golf’s four major championships, which grant eligibility to top-ranked players regardless of tour affiliation. According to a recent report from The Athletic, DeChambeau is demanding as much as $500 million to renew his contract with LIV, a asking price that underscores the high stakes of LIV’s current fundraising push.

    For its part, LIV Golf is scrambling to implement a survival strategy as it confronts the potential end of Saudi backing. LIV CEO Scott O’Neil has reaffirmed to staff that the circuit will continue operations at “full throttle” through the current season, while acknowledging that the organization will almost certainly need to secure new external funding to continue long-term.

    One of the central strategies O’Neil has promoted is selling minority equity stakes in LIV’s 12 existing franchise teams, a move designed to unlock new capital while deepening local connections to fan bases and sponsor networks. This week, LIV took another step in that localization strategy with a high-profile rebrand: the team formerly led by Brooks Koepka, Smash GC, has been renamed “OKGC” to align with new captain Talor Gooch, a native of Oklahoma City.

    A LIV Golf statement called the rebrand “a significant step in LIV Golf’s strategy to connect its teams to home markets, creating stronger identities and deeper relationships with fans, partners and communities. As the league continues to grow globally, OKGC highlights the growing impact of localized, domestic team identities within the LIV Golf franchise model.” This follows earlier rebrands that tailored teams to specific regional markets, including the Korea-based Korean Golf Club and South Africa’s all-local Southern Guards.

    Even with this plan, however, analysts note that selling team equity is unlikely to come close to covering the massive spending LIV has drawn from Saudi backers to date. In January, Bloomberg reported LIV was targeting valuations as high as $300 million per team, but no public valuation of the franchise roster has been released, leaving the actual amount of capital that could be raised through equity sales uncertain.

    O’Neil has outlined other potential avenues to sustain the circuit, including forming strategic partnerships with established national open tournaments and doubling down on high-growth regional markets where LIV has drawn record crowds, most notably Australia and South Africa. In the United States, the circuit still retains high-profile backing, with its next tournament scheduled to take place at Trump National Golf Club, the owned course of former U.S. President Donald Trump, located just outside Washington, D.C.

  • ICE detains wife of US Army soldier at immigration appointment

    ICE detains wife of US Army soldier at immigration appointment

    A controversial incident playing out in El Paso, Texas has thrown a harsh spotlight on the overlapping tensions between US immigration enforcement policy and the treatment of military families, as an active-duty Army sergeant’s spouse has been taken into federal immigration custody — the second such case involving a service member’s family member this month alone.

    On April 14, Deisy Rivera Ortega, the wife of 28-year Army veteran Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after the couple attended a scheduled interview for a parole-in-place program, a federal initiative designed specifically to let immediate family members of US military personnel remain in the country while their immigration applications are processed. What was supposed to be a routine step toward legal permanent residency turned into a chaotic separation that has left Serrano distraught and searching for answers.

    “They just took my wife away,” Serrano shared in an interview with the BBC, describing the disorienting moments after the arrest. The long-serving soldier, who completed a deployment to Afghanistan and was born a US citizen in Puerto Rico, said he has been unable to settle since the detention, alternating between frantic online research for legal resources and anxious, aimless drives to cope with the stress. “I’m searching on the internet how I can help my wife. If not, I’m walking in the house back and forth. Or jumping in my car and just driving for four hours.”

    According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records, Rivera Ortega is currently being held at an El Paso-area detention facility. DHS has characterized her as a “criminal illegal alien” from El Salvador, citing her 2016 illegal entry into the US as a federal offense. But her attorney, Matthew James Kozik, and court documents paint a more nuanced picture of her immigration history. After crossing the Rio Grande Valley border in 2016, Rivera Ortega filed a formal asylum claim, court records show. While an immigration judge ordered her removal to El Salvador in December 2019, the same ruling granted her withholding of removal under the UN Convention Against Torture, a protection that barred the government from sending her back to El Salvador on the grounds that she would face significant physical harm there. The ruling also explicitly granted her legal permission to reside in the US while waiting for long-term relief.

    Under the second Trump administration, DHS has expanded a policy of “third-country removals,” which allows the agency to deport undocumented individuals to countries other than their nation of origin. Kozik told reporters that ICE has notified the legal team it intends to deport Rivera Ortega to Mexico, a move Kozik calls completely unlawful and unjust. “She was following the prescribed law of what someone is supposed to do,” he said, arguing that her arrest is “arbitrary and capricious.”

    The couple’s official marriage certificate, provided by Kozik, confirms they were married in June 2022 in Westbury, New York, making Rivera Ortega the immediate family member of an active-duty service member — a status that should have qualified her for the parole-in-place program she was applying for when she was detained. Serrano recalled that the couple was told the meeting was a routine interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles parole applications. After officials flagged an unspecified issue with the filing, the couple was escorted down a hallway, where ICE agents were waiting to take Rivera Ortega into custody as Serrano watched.

    “It took me a minute, two minutes to react,” he recalled. “And then I started to ask, ‘what is going on, what happened, where are they taking her?’” That encounter was the last time Serrano has seen his wife, and as of this report, the next legal steps for the couple remain unclear. Despite the trauma of his wife’s detention, Serrano says he still retains pride in his nearly 28 years of military service, even as he acknowledges the Army has no control over the immigration agency’s actions. “I love the Army,” he said. “If I had to do it again…I’d go in and do it again.”

    This incident marks at least the second time ICE has detained a military spouse in the month of April. Earlier this month, the agency detained 22-year-old Annie Ramos, the newly married wife of Army Sergeant Matthew Blank. Ramos, an undocumented Honduran immigrant who was brought to the US as a child, was held for five days before ICE released her to her husband. The back-to-back cases have sparked renewed criticism of immigration enforcement policies that separate active-duty military families, who are already tasked with defending US national security.

  • Indonesia orangutan forest cleared for ‘carbon-neutral’ packaging firm

    Indonesia orangutan forest cleared for ‘carbon-neutral’ packaging firm

    A landmark joint investigation by Agence France-Presse (AFP) and non-profit investigative outlet The Gecko Project has uncovered massive deforestation of critically endangered orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo, linked to a supply chain that produces purportedly carbon-neutral packaging for major global consumer brands.

    The clearing, which took place across nearly 30,000 hectares of biodiverse rainforest in Central Kalimantan Province — an area almost three times the size of Paris — has unfolded between 2016 and 2024, according to satellite imagery analysis, government audit documents, trade records, and on-the-ground reporting from the investigation team. The timber is sourced from government-permitted industrial plantations, processed at Indonesia’s Phoenix Resources International (PRI) mill, and then shipped to pulp and paper manufacturer Asia Symbol, a subsidiary of Singapore-based multinational conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle (RGE).

    For years, RGE has positioned itself as a leader in sustainable supply chain management: the conglomerate pledged to eliminate deforestation from its operations by 2015, secured a $1 billion sustainability-linked loan in 2024, and is actively lobbying to regain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which labels products as responsibly sourced. Asia Symbol, which supplies packaging to global pharmaceutical giant Haleon — maker of household brands Panadol and Sensodyne — also maintains a public no-deforestation policy.

    The investigation’s findings directly contradict these high-profile sustainability pledges. Analysts traced pulp from plantations that cleared old-growth rainforest, home to the last remaining populations of Bornean orangutans, all the way to Asia Symbol’s production facilities in China. Satellite data confirms that thousands of hectares of natural forest have been cleared to make way for fast-growing acacia and eucalyptus plantations operated by Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP), one of the top suppliers to the PRI mill. Trade data and ship tracking confirm that PRI has regularly shipped pulp to Asia Symbol’s Chinese mills since January 2025, with one 2024 shipment even celebrated with a formal welcome ceremony and ceremonial cannons at the Chinese port of Rugao.

    The environmental and human cost of the clearing has been severe for local communities. Indigenous and local residents who have relied on the Bornean rainforest for generations have lost access to traditional farming land and hunting grounds, with displaced residents forced to relocate to find work. Many families report that promised compensation for seized land has never materialized. Intact tree cover that once absorbed heavy rainfall has been removed, leading to a sharp increase in frequent and destructive flooding across the region. Local residents also report rising concerns over water pollution from plantation runoff, making once-safe river water unsafe to drink.

    “My eyes well up remembering how it was,” Agau, 69-year-old secretary of Humbang Raya village located inside the IFP concession, told AFP investigators. “It’s hard to find anything like it used to be. Our lives, our livelihood here, depend on the forest that we have. That is our only hope.” Ika Magdalena, a pregnant mother of three who lost her farm to the concession, added: “They’ve already damaged our crops, and they don’t want to take responsibility. It breaks our hearts, but they just stay silent.”

    Local government officials defended the concession, noting that IFP has not committed any formal violations of Indonesian forestry law and contributes tax revenue and reforestation funds to the region. But environmental campaigners say the permits prioritize corporate profit over community and ecological health, with almost none of the economic benefits of the concession reaching local residents. “Communities lose sources of livelihood, both food and income, and there are no alternative options,” said Bayu Herinata of the Central Kalimantan branch of Indonesian environmental group WALHI.

    In response to the investigation’s findings, Asia Symbol stated that it is committed to its no-deforestation policy and has launched a focused review of its sourcing from the PRI mill, noting that the complexity of global supply chains “creates real due diligence challenges.” The company also claimed that its carbon-neutral packaging produced for Haleon did not include pulp from the PRI mill, but failed to provide evidence of how it segregates pulp from different sources. IFP and PRI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from investigators.

    Environmental advocates say the case exposes a pattern of greenwashing by RGE, which has faced repeated allegations of deforestation and land conflict over the past decade. The company’s attempt to regain FSC certification stalled last year following allegations that affiliate staff attacked an Indigenous community, and a 2023 acknowledgement of deforestation in two other supply chain concessions never resulted in the promised policy changes. “Their commitments are nothing more than greenwashing to convince their buyers that they are cleaning up their act,” said Grant Rosoman, senior forest campaign advisor for Greenpeace International.

    Robin Averbeck, forest programme director at the Rainforest Action Network, added that RGE has leveraged its unfulfilled sustainability pledges to access billions of dollars in discounted green financing from global banks. “The findings of this investigation indicate that RGE is still very much in the business of deforestation,” Averbeck said.

    Following the release of the investigation, UK-based Haleon announced it would cut all ties with Asia Symbol. While the company stated its own internal investigations found no evidence of deforestation-linked material in its supply chain, it said it was “nevertheless very concerned by the allegations” and has ordered its suppliers to exclude all material from Asia Symbol and any other plantation linked to deforestation risk.

    Indonesia consistently ranks among the countries with the highest annual tree cover loss globally, according to Global Forest Watch. Deforestation in the country not only threatens endangered species like the Bornean orangutan and undermines global climate goals, but also increases the risk of deadly natural disasters. Last year, deforestation-fueled floods and landslides killed more than 1,000 people across Sumatra, a disaster the Indonesian government publicly acknowledged was worsened by forest loss, yet no major policy changes to curb deforestation have been implemented nationwide.

  • Virginia approves redistricting, giving Democrats edge in midterms

    Virginia approves redistricting, giving Democrats edge in midterms

    The national partisan fight over congressional redistricting reached a pivotal turning point in Virginia, where voters have greenlit a Democratic-backed ballot amendment that threatens to upend the fragile balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of November’s midterm elections.

    The vote comes in the wake of a years-long nationwide push by former President Donald Trump and national Republicans to aggressively redraw district lines across the country, a strategic move designed to lock in conservative control of the chamber through partisan gerrymandering. The first major shake-up of this effort came when Texas became the first state to implement a mid-decade redistricting shift under pressure from Trump, a change that projected to hand Republicans a structural advantage in five additional congressional seats.

    In response to the Republican power grab, Democratic leaders in blue states launched countermeasures to adjust their own maps to balance out the partisan skew. Last year, California voters backed a campaign led by Governor Gavin Newsom to abandon the state’s previously independent district lines in what Newsom framed as a necessary “fight fire with fire” move. That referendum, approved by California voters in November, delivered Democrats a competitive edge in five new districts, directly countering the gains Republicans secured in Texas.

    Now, Virginia’s approval of its own redistricting amendment has the potential to flip the partisan balance of congressional power on a national scale. Currently, Democrats hold 6 of the state’s 11 House seats, and the new redrawn map is projected to flip as many as four currently Republican-held seats, potentially pushing the state’s Democratic delegation to as many as 10 out of 11 total seats.

    Notably, the referendum has made history in Virginia: according to data from the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project, it is by far the most expensive ballot measure in the state’s history, with both proponents and opponents raising a combined total of more than $80 million (£59 million) as of earlier this month, reflecting how high the stakes of the national redistricting battle have become.

    In his first public remarks on the outcome of Virginia’s vote, Trump sounded the alarm on Monday, arguing that a Democratic takeover of the House majority in the midterms would “be a disaster” for the country. In a striking reversal of his own party’s aggressive gerrymandering efforts across the country, Trump added, “I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is, but it’s not good.”

    Under standard U.S. redistricting rules, states redraw their congressional maps once every 10 years following the release of updated decennial U.S. Census population data. However, Trump’s push for mid-decade adjustments upended this longstanding norm, triggering a tit-for-tat cycle of map changes from both major parties as they fight to gain every possible advantage ahead of the 2024 midterms. Republicans currently hold a narrow, razor-thin majority in the House, and historical trends consistently favor the opposition party — in this case, Democrats — during midterm election cycles, making every competitive district a critical prize for both sides.

    Under current U.S. law, partisan gerrymandering — the practice of shaping district boundaries to intentionally favor one political party — is only illegal when it is drawn along discriminatory racial lines, leaving the current tit-for-tat partisan map changes largely unchallenged in courts.