Global Pulse

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  • A pair of spacecraft draw closer to Mercury after nearly decade-long voyage

    A pair of spacecraft draw closer to Mercury after nearly decade-long voyage

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — After nearly 10 years traversing more than 6 billion miles of interplanetary space, a joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury hit a major milestone Thursday: two integrated science probes separated from their shared cruise carrier, moving into the final phase of their journey to the solar system’s smallest and innermost planet.

    The separation procedure, executed according to pre-planned timelines, left flight controllers at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) German operations center waiting two tense hours for radio confirmation of the successful maneuver, given the 124-million-mile (200-million-kilometer) communication delay between Earth and the spacecraft. The entire critical operation was streamed live to the public from the control room, drawing viewers across the globe eager to follow the historic planetary mission.

    “This is a brilliant moment,” said Geraint Jones, the mission’s lead project scientist, following confirmation of the separation.

    Known collectively as BepiColombo, the conjoined probe stack is on track to enter gravitational orbit around Mercury in December 2025, with the two individual craft set to split apart shortly after orbit insertion to begin their coordinated science campaign. As of Thursday’s separation, the mission still had 2 million miles (3.3 million kilometers) remaining before it reaches its target destination, with one final planetary flyby of Mercury scheduled for January 2025 — a maneuver that already delivered unprecedented, high-resolution images of the planet’s cratered surface and ancient volcanic plains during earlier passes.

    First launched in 2018 from Earth, the BepiColombo mission honors Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, the Italian mathematician who made key contributions to NASA’s 1970s Mariner 10 mission, humanity’s first flyby mission to Mercury. To date, only one other spacecraft has ever orbited Mercury: NASA’s Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after four years of study. Even so, the small planet — barely larger than Earth’s Moon — remains one of the most poorly understood bodies in the inner solar system.

    “How tiny Mercury is and still it holds some of the biggest mysteries of our solar system,” mission manager Santa Martinez noted earlier this week, ahead of the separation maneuver. Jones echoed that sentiment, adding, “There’s a huge amount still left to be learned.”

    BepiColombo’s winding 6-billion-mile journey was designed to gradually slow the craft enough to be captured by Mercury’s gravity, requiring nine gravitational flybys of inner solar system planets to shed velocity. Once science operations begin next spring, the ESA-led Mercury Orbiter and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter will operate from separate, distinct altitudes to map the planet’s surface, probe its unusually dense iron core, map its global magnetic field, and investigate unusual geologic features including shallow depressions researchers suspect form when solar radiation vaporizes volatile minerals directly from surface rocks.

    Mercury is a world of extraordinary extremes: surface temperatures at the equator can climb above 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), while permanently shadowed craters at the poles remain perpetually frigid and hold deposits of water ice. The harsh, radiation-heavy environment required specialized engineering to protect the craft’s sensitive instruments. Ignacio Tanco, ESA’s chief of mission operations, compared the thermal conditions the probes will endure to working with a searing hot pizza oven constantly positioned directly behind the spacecraft.

    The $2 billion mission is primarily funded and led by ESA, with JAXA contributing the magnetospheric orbiter and supporting operations. Science data collection and analysis is set to begin in full by spring 2026, with researchers expecting to resolve long-standing questions about Mercury’s formation, internal structure, and unusual surface features.

    This reporting, from The Associated Press, is supported by the AP Fund for Journalism and private philanthropic foundations, with AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • Sri Lankan opposition rallies against government’s proposed judicial reform

    Sri Lankan opposition rallies against government’s proposed judicial reform

    Hundreds of opposition politicians, legal professionals, labor organizers and human rights advocates marched through the streets of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on Thursday, rallying against a contentious constitutional amendment that would expand the nation’s highest courts and extend the mandatory retirement age for top judges. Protesters gathered at the city’s central railway station to voice their demands, waving placards and banners emblazoned with slogans including “Don’t touch the judiciary” and “Halt reforms that erode judicial independence.”

    The demonstration comes 12 days after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s administration tabled the proposed judicial reform legislation in Sri Lanka’s Parliament, where the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) party has held an overwhelming two-thirds majority since national elections in 2024. Under the terms of the amendment, the retirement age for senior supreme and appellate court judges would be raised by two years, and additional judicial seats would be created on the country’s top courts.

    Critics across the political and civil society spectrum argue the reforms are a deliberate power grab designed to stack the judiciary with government-aligned justices and undermine judicial autonomy. Opposition lawmaker Ajith Perera condemned the proposed amendment as a “draconian” overreach that ignores the will of the Sri Lankan people. Perera claimed the government drafted the legislation without any consultation with legal professionals, sitting judges or other key stakeholders, framing it as an attempt to manipulate the judicial branch for partisan political gain.

    The NPP government has pushed back against these claims, arguing the changes are a core part of a broader effort to address chronic backlogs that have left millions of Sri Lankans waiting years for court rulings. Administration officials emphasize the reforms will not weaken judicial independence, and are targeted exclusively at improving access to justice for ordinary citizens.

    No date has yet been scheduled for parliamentary debate on the bill, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass. With the ruling party already controlling more than that threshold, the amendment is widely expected to advance if put to a vote.

    The current political standoff comes in the wake of a dramatic political shift in Sri Lanka. Dissanayake won a presidential election in September 2024, followed by a landslide parliamentary victory for his NPP that ousted the country’s long-dominant traditional political establishments. The 2024 election results were widely interpreted as a voter rejection of the old political order, after decades of mismanagement and corruption left Sri Lanka facing a catastrophic economic crisis in 2022 that left millions unable to access food, fuel and medicine.

    Since taking office, Dissanayake’s administration has launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, opening new investigations into alleged graft and mismanagement by previous governments. Dozens of former senior political and government officials are currently the subject of these probes.

  • Latest school shooting in Thailand may spur calls in Asia for more active safety drills

    Latest school shooting in Thailand may spur calls in Asia for more active safety drills

    In the wake of a fresh school shooting incident in Thailand this week, policymakers and education authorities across Southeast Asia are ramping up discussions around expanding active shooter preparedness drills at educational institutions, a response to a growing regional trend of gun-related violence on campus.

    On Thursday, just one day after the Thai shooting, students in San Rafael, Philippines, joined thousands of schools across the country in participating in the annual Nationwide Simultaneous School Safety Drill. The exercise, organized by the Philippine Department of Education alongside multiple national public safety agencies, is designed to test emergency response protocols and strengthen overall school security against a wide range of threats.

    “It’s a new reality in the country,” stated Jonvic Remulla, Secretary of the Philippine Department of the Interior and Local Government, on the sidelines of the San Rafael drill. “We are preparing for all kinds of emergencies, from human-induced to weather-induced events. All of us should be ready.”

    The renewed push for preparedness follows a close call on Wednesday in Thailand’s Kamphaeng Phet province, roughly 120 miles north of Bangkok. According to local Thai media reports, a 14-year-old student opened fire multiple times on his school campus before being subdued by staff and authorities. No bystanders or students were injured in the incident, but it has reignited urgent conversations about school safety across the region that has already seen multiple deadly student-led school attacks in recent months.

    Just four months prior, in August 2024, both Thailand and the Philippines recorded fatal school shootings perpetrated by teen students. On August 7, a 14-year-old gunman carried out an attack at his high school and family home in Nonthaburi province, just outside Bangkok, that left eight people dead and more than 20 others wounded before the shooter died by suicide. Eleven days later, on August 18 in the southern Philippines, a 14-year-old student armed with two pistols killed a classmate on a high school campus before taking his own life. Two months before that, in June, two teenage students aged 14 and 15 opened fire at a high school in the central Philippines, leaving three students dead and at least 20 more injured. Both suspects were taken into custody following the attack.

    Regional gun violence data underscores the severity of the threat facing both nations. Multiple independent firearms surveys rank Thailand first in Southeast Asia for per capita gun ownership, while the Philippines holds the unenviable top position for per capita gun-related deaths in non-conflict settings across the region.

    The San Rafael drill brought together education officials, local government leaders, and representatives from disaster response and law enforcement agencies to simulate real-world emergency scenarios and evaluate response coordination. The core of the exercise was a 30-minute full-scale lockdown drill, followed by a structured debrief and evaluation with stakeholders from the Office of Civil Defense, Bureau of Fire Protection, Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, and Philippine National Police.

    “Through this exercise, we want our schools to be number one in awareness — to be able to recognize these kinds of threats and respond through drills and exercises: what to do, where to go, and how responders would be able to perform their roles and do their part,” explained Malcolm Garma, Undersecretary of the Philippine Department of Education.

    Thailand has already moved forward with similar preparedness initiatives following its August deadly attack. Just last month, schools across Thailand held active shooter response drills, with footage released by Thai public broadcaster Thai PBS showing first responders guiding students at Bangkok’s Sarawittaya School through life-saving protocols, including how to barricade classroom doors with stacked desks and chairs to block an active shooter from entering.

    Regional security analysts note that the recent string of incidents is expected to push more Southeast Asian governments to mandate regular active shooter drills across all primary and secondary education institutions, as part of broader efforts to curb gun violence and protect student populations.

  • UN report details foreign networks fueling war in Sudan

    UN report details foreign networks fueling war in Sudan

    BRUSSELS – Nearly two years into the brutal civil war pitting Sudan’s regular army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a new United Nations investigation confirms that transnational foreign networks have dramatically escalated the violence, turning what began as a power struggle into a humanitarian catastrophe that has killed tens of thousands and pushed millions to the brink of starvation. The conflict, which erupted in April 2023, has already left at least 59,000 people dead according to the latest UN accounting, forced roughly 13 million to flee their homes, and pushed entire regions of the northeast African nation into catastrophic food insecurity approaching full-scale famine. In a public summary of the investigation released Thursday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk outlined clear evidence that cross-border networks anchored in companies based in the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, and Chad have funneled critical resources to the RSF, including weapons, military training, and foreign contractor personnel. “The mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that a transnational network supplied the Rapid Support Forces with weapons, logistics, training and foreign personnel, including Colombian contractors involved in advanced weapons and drone systems,” the summary reads. The investigation specifically highlights that individuals and corporate entities connected to, operating from, or formally registered in the United Arab Emirates hold a central role in these networks, overseeing recruitment, financing, transportation, and deployment of foreign military contractors to provide direct military support that benefits the RSF. Abu Dhabi has repeatedly and publicly denied all accusations that it provides military backing to the paramilitary group, a position it has maintained even amid growing international scrutiny. While the report’s most concrete findings focus on support to the RSF, investigators also note that externally supplied drones have expanded the Sudanese army’s aerial strike capabilities, adding that additional research into external support for the military remains ongoing and preliminary. Beyond mapping external support, the UN probe documents widespread attacks on civilian targets that may qualify as war crimes committed by both warring parties. Investigators specifically tied foreign-trained fighters to two brutal massacres carried out in 2025 at the Zamzam internally displaced persons camp and the city of El Fasher. More than 100,000 residents have fled El Fasher since the violence erupted there, and surviving witnesses describe RSF fighters systematically gunning down unarmed civilians in their homes and on city streets, leaving corpses scattered across urban areas. Subsequent analysis of commercial satellite imagery has provided visual evidence suggesting RSF units have attempted to conceal the killings by disposing of remains in unmarked mass graves or through open burning. When it comes to cooperation with the UN investigation, the report notes that authorities in Chad, Colombia, and the United Arab Emirates engaged with investigators, but no substantive response has been received from governments in Ethiopia, Libya, South Sudan, and Somalia. Panama, whose offshore finance sector has long faced global accusations of large-scale industrial money laundering, requested additional time to provide a formal response. Notably, neither Sudan’s official military leadership nor the RSF have agreed to cooperate with the UN probe. The UN findings align with an earlier Associated Press investigation published in July that uncovered evidence Colombian mercenaries had been recruited to train child soldiers to fight for the RSF. Human rights organizations have further alleged that these Colombian fighters were recruited by a state-linked firm based in the UAE, a claim the UAE continues to reject alongside broader accusations of military support to either Sudanese warring party. In line with its findings, the investigative panel has called on the UN Security Council to expand and extend the existing arms embargo imposed on Sudan, stressing that all cross-border flows of weapons, financing, personnel, and advanced military technology that sustain the conflict must be cut off to create space for peace talks. The United States has already thrown its support behind new multilateral action, circulating a draft Security Council resolution in August that was reviewed by the Associated Press. The draft resolution condemns the steady influx of external military aid, weapons, and ammunition to both warring parties, noting that outside support prolongs the conflict and undermines international mediation efforts. It specifically calls out the operation of drone and unmanned aerial system programs launched from third-party countries to support the Sudanese war effort, and demands that all nations immediately end any direct or indirect support – whether logistical, financial, or military – that allows the conflict to continue.

  • Anthony Joshua’s driver attempted overtake before fatal crash, trial hears

    Anthony Joshua’s driver attempted overtake before fatal crash, trial hears

    A high-profile court case in Nigeria has unfolded to unpack the circumstances of a devastating December car crash that claimed the lives of two long-time members of British heavyweight boxing star Anthony Joshua’s entourage, as new procedural and testimonial details emerge during ongoing proceedings.

    At the center of the case is 46-year-old Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, the driver of the Lexus SUV that was carrying Joshua, his personal trainer Latif Ayodele, and strength coach Sina Ghami when the crash occurred. Kayode faces a series of serious charges, including two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and operating a motor vehicle without a valid national driver’s license, all of which he has formally denied in court. A second defendant, 35-year-old Abubakar Adamu, who was the owner and driver of the parked lorry that Kayode’s vehicle collided with, also denies a single charge of obstructing public road traffic flow.

    Witness testimony from Inspector Christopher Ajayi Taiwo, a senior officer with the Ogun State Motor Traffic Division, laid out a timeline of the incident and the immediate aftermath. The court heard that the entire group was traveling from Lagos to Ogun State, a southwestern Nigerian region where Joshua has deep family roots, to visit the boxing champion’s father. All passengers, including Joshua, were asleep at the time of the collision, when Kayode attempted to overtake a moving heavy goods truck on the public highway, lost control of his SUV, and crashed headlong into an unoccupied parked lorry registered to Adamu. Both Ayodele and Ghami died at the scene of the crash.

    When first responders arrived at the crash site, Taiwo told the court, both the damaged Lexus SUV and the stationary lorry had already been removed from the highway. Investigators were only able to recover physical evidence consisting of scattered crash debris, spilled soya beans that made up the parked lorry’s cargo spread across the road surface, and three small items recovered near the driver’s side of where the Lexus had come to rest: the vehicle’s logbook, a bottle of painkillers, and an energy drink.

    One key procedural development that has been questioned by the defense is the fact that investigating officers have not yet taken a formal witness statement from Joshua, who was a passenger in the vehicle and survived the crash unharmed. During cross-examination of Taiwo, Kayode’s defense counsel pressed the inspector on why no statement had been obtained from the high-profile witness. Taiwo responded that efforts to secure a statement were still ongoing, and that he had not reached out to Joshua directly because he did not have the boxer’s contact information.

    Joshua, who was born in Watford, UK, to a Nigerian father, has maintained close family and cultural ties to the Ogun State town of Sagamu, located close to the crash site. Shortly after the crash, he shared a heartfelt public tribute to his late team members on his social media channels, opening up about his personal grief. “I didn’t even realise how special they are,” Joshua wrote. “I’ll just be walking with them and cracking jokes with them, not even knowing God kept me in the presence of great men. 100% it’s tough for me, but I know it’s even tougher for their parents.”

    Following the most recent court session, the judge adjourned the trial until September 10, when proceedings will resume with further testimony and procedural steps.

  • Body of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic to be flown to Serbia, president says

    Body of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic to be flown to Serbia, president says

    BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed Wednesday that the remains of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for war crimes and genocide at a U.N. detention facility in the Netherlands, will be transported to Serbia for burial this Thursday. The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, based in The Hague, has not yet issued an official statement on the release of Mladic’s body following his death in a Dutch hospital.

    Vucic told reporters that Mladic’s family will release detailed funeral arrangements in the coming days, but warned local security officials are bracing for an unprecedented turnout of the convicted war criminal’s supporters. Even after his 2017 conviction for some of the worst atrocities committed on European soil since World War II, Mladic retains widespread heroic status among large segments of the Serbian public. Vucic noted that Serbian police and state intelligence agencies currently project that tens of thousands of admirers could gather for the funeral, creating significant security challenges for authorities.

    “It will be hard to secure and guarantee security to everybody,” Vucic said. “It will be a demanding job for our security services and we will use everything at our disposal to provide security.”

    Mladic was found guilty of overseeing three of the conflict’s most infamous atrocities: the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that killed more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys, the 44-month siege of Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo that killed more than 10,000 civilians, and the systematic establishment of concentration camps where thousands of non-Serb civilians and enemy combatants were abused and executed. The Srebrenica massacre remains the first legally recognized act of genocide on the European continent since 1945; the enclave was designated a U.N. safe haven for Muslim refugees before Mladic’s forces overran the area, executed the civilian population, and buried their remains in unmarked mass graves.

    The Bosnian War, which broke out in 1992 after Bosnian Serb militias backed by Belgrade seized control of large swathes of Bosnian territory to form a separate breakaway state, ended in 1995 with a U.S.-brokered peace deal. The 3-year conflict left more than 100,000 people dead and displaced more than 1 million from their homes, leaving the region deeply ethnically divided decades later. Within hours of Mladic’s death being announced last week, thousands of Serbs gathered for public vigils and marches to honor his memory, a demonstration that drew sharp condemnation across the Balkans from survivors and political leaders.

    For surviving family members of Mladic’s victims, the 2017 conviction represented a long-delayed measure of justice for their murdered loved ones. But attitudes in Serbia, which is currently pursuing European Union membership, remain deeply defiant over the country’s role in the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict. Last week, Vucic launched a sharp attack on the international tribunal, accusing the court and Western powers of systemic bias that only holds Serbs accountable for war crimes while ignoring atrocities against Serb civilians. He previously condemned the tribunal for what he called “uncivilized behavior” after it denied requests to release Mladic on compassionate grounds to allow him to die at home in Serbia.

  • Tebogo says late mother ‘always there’ ahead of emotional return to Budapest

    Tebogo says late mother ‘always there’ ahead of emotional return to Budapest

    For Olympic 200-meter champion Letsile Tebogo, next week’s trip to the Hungarian capital of Budapest for the first-ever Ultimate Athletics Championships is far more than just another stop on the global track and field circuit. It is a return to the city that launched his international career, and a bittersweet journey back to the place where his mother watched him make history for Botswana.

    Three years ago, 20-year-old Tebogo stepped onto the track at Budapest’s 2023 World Athletics Championships for his first senior global competition, when his mother Seratiwa surprised him by making the trip to watch him compete. That outing became a landmark moment for both Tebogo and his home nation: he claimed silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m, becoming the first male athlete from Botswana to win World Championship medals, and the first African man ever to reach the 100m podium at the event. Seratiwa, who shared an extraordinarily close bond with her son that she once described as more like a “brother and sister relationship,” told BBC Sport Africa at the time that she was overflowing with pride for his achievement.

    This time, however, Seratiwa will not be in the stands to cheer him on. She passed away in May 2024 after a sudden, short illness, and Tebogo has opened up about the difficulty of returning to the city that holds so many shared memories without her. “I haven’t really looked into the fact that I’m going now to Budapest without my mom,” he said. “It’s just been a bumpy ride having to think about it and having to continue with the grind.”

    Even amid the grief, Tebogo says the city remains a source of strength, a place where he can carry his mother’s memory forward as he competes. He believes her spirit stays with him, pushing him to give every race his all even on days when stepping away feels like an option. “She pushes me to give my absolute best and I believe the memories that we had in Budapest, they will still come again,” he said.

    In the years since that breakthrough 2023 World Championships, Tebogo has only scaled greater heights. In 2024, he made history once again as he won the 200m title at the Paris Olympic Games, becoming Botswana’s first ever Olympic gold medalist. He carried his mother’s legacy with him that day, marking her initials onto both his running shoes and his fingernails as a quiet tribute. Earlier this year in May, he also helped lead Botswana to 4x400m gold at the World Relays, hosted on his home soil in Gaborone, and has notched up 200m wins at top-tier Diamond League events in Oslo and Lausanne this season.

    The Ultimate Championships, the new biennial event hosted in Budapest from September 11 to 13, was created to cap off the track and field season by bringing together the very best performers from across the globe to determine the year’s undisputed best. The inaugural edition boasts a total $10 million prize pool, the largest single-event prize pot in track and field history according to organizers World Athletics, with individual gold medalists set to take home $150,000 each. Tebogo enters the competition as one of the sport’s biggest young stars and a clear favorite to contend in the men’s 200m.

    Beyond his own race, Tebogo will take on another role at the event: he is serving as a team captain for the Kids’ Athletics Ultimate Challenge, an event that invites young athletes from across Budapest to take part in fun developmental activities at the Gyula Zsivotzky National Athletics Centre the day before the main competition kicks off. The role gives him a chance to pass on the core lessons he has learned throughout his rapid rise from young hopeful to global champion.

    For the next generation of athletes, Tebogo highlights two key values he hopes to instill: accountability and unwavering sportsmanship. “I believe firstly you should start with accountability,” he explained. “Think about your preparation, how you want your journey or your season to be, and then also think of unwavering sportsmanship. I would love them to have that unwavering sportsmanship, so that they can share lanes, they can cheer for one another.”

    For Tebogo, this trip to Budapest is about more than competing for another major title. It is about honoring the woman who supported him from his earliest days, celebrating the shared memories that made him the athlete he is today, and chasing new glory while carrying her spirit with him every step of the way.

  • Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s recent public reflections on Christian eschatological ideas, including the possibility that the Antichrist already lives among humanity and that the world may be entering its final days, have been framed as a widely held mainstream Christian belief by one of his close personal friends. The comments emerged during a recent interview on a Christian podcast hosted by American creator Bryce Crawford, where Vance opened up about his personal religious views as a convert to Catholicism.

    During the discussion, Vance struck a measured tone about his eschatological speculations, emphasizing that these thoughts do not dominate his daily work or personal life. “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance told the podcast. “And I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it, because there are, like, things you gotta do. I gotta be good to my wife. I gotta be good to my kids. I have to be as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America.”

    He went on to add, “I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.” Reiterating his commitment to his vice-presidential duties, Vance noted that his core priority is advancing what he sees as God’s work in his current role, rather than obsessing over apocalyptic timelines.

    In Christian theology, end times theology centers on prophecies about the final period of human history before the second coming of Jesus Christ, with most mainstream denominations holding that God has a preordained divine plan for the end of the world. The Antichrist, a core figure in these eschatological frameworks, is described as a deceptive evil figure opposed to God that will emerge to seize global power during the final phase of human civilization.

    Rod Dreher, a conservative writer and close friend of Vance who was present at Vance’s 2019 confirmation into the Catholic Church, pushed back against any claims that Vance’s comments would damage his political standing in an interview with BBC’s *Today* program. Dreher argued that apocalyptic beliefs like those Vance outlined are extremely common among Christian voters, particularly the Republican base that forms Vance’s core political support. “Most Americans who are inclined to vote Republican already believe this stuff,” Dreher stated. He added that while the comments may sound outlandish to people outside of Christian faith communities, they reflect a widely shared intuition among religious believers that the world is descending into chaos amid rapid technological change like artificial intelligence development and ongoing global armed conflicts.

    Dreher also drew a parallel to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who made similar apocalyptic comments during his time in office without facing significant political backlash from his base, framing the remarks as a perfectly normal expression of faith for conservative American politicians.

    Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 when he was in his mid-30s, and has previously spoken publicly about how Catholic social and family values align closely with his conservative political ideology. Since taking office as vice president, Vance has had public disagreements with both current Pope Leo and retired Pope Francis, most notably over the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy.

    Looking ahead, Vance is scheduled to lead the White House press briefing on Thursday afternoon, marking the first on-camera press briefing from the vice president following the departure of former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

  • Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    A devastating maritime disaster off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands has left at least five migrants dead and dozens more missing, with activists reporting an even higher death toll following the vessel’s catastrophic breakdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 44 people from the overcrowded boat were pulled to safety by Spanish rescue crews this week.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service confirmed Thursday that a surveillance plane first detected the unstable, drifting vessel around 120 kilometers south of Gran Canaria on Wednesday afternoon. Responding quickly to the distress call, rescue teams immediately airlifted three of the most severely injured survivors to a Gran Canaria hospital by helicopter, while the remaining 41 passengers were transported to shore by rescue vessel. The group disembarked early Thursday at Arguineguín port, where local Red Cross teams stood by to provide urgent medical care and support.

    José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, a Canary Islands-based Red Cross spokesperson, told reporters that all 44 survivors are men, including several underage passengers, who originated from Mali and Senegal. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rodríguez Verona explained that the survivors arrived in a fragile state: many were severely disoriented and dehydrated, with a large number collapsing or vomiting immediately after setting foot on land after weeks adrift at sea.

    Due to the survivors’ poor physical and mental condition, it took responders time to piece together the details of the fatal voyage. Survivors told aid workers they departed from Gambia nearly a month earlier, and had been stranded adrift for far longer than anyone anticipated. When their food and fresh water supplies ran out, desperate passengers were forced to drink seawater to survive, a choice that left many gravely ill.

    The survivors also shared chilling accounts of the scale of the disaster: they told the Red Cross that more than 100 people, including multiple women and one infant, were originally on board the small vessel. As passengers died of dehydration and illness over the course of the journey, surviving passengers threw the bodies overboard, until they eventually became too weak to continue the practice.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service stated in an official emailed statement that rough sea conditions, including 2.5-meter-high waves and strong gusting winds, prevented crews from recovering the remains of five deceased passengers found still on the boat when rescuers arrived.

    In a separate update, Helena Maleno, founder of migrant rights organization Walking Borders — a group that tracks fatalities and missing persons along migration routes leading to Spain — has put the total death toll from this voyage at 83, including three women and the infant. Maleno confirmed via a post on the social platform X that the boat departed Gambia 27 days before the rescue. Maleno’s organization regularly receives distress messages from relatives of missing migrants and coordinates rescue requests with Spanish authorities. The Associated Press has reached out to Maleno and Walking Borders for additional context, but has not yet received a response.

    This disaster highlights the ongoing deadly risk of the West African Atlantic migration route to the Canary Islands, which remains one of the most dangerous migration crossings into Europe. While the number of migrant arrivals to the Spanish archipelago has dropped sharply over the past year, tens of thousands of migrants have died or gone missing on the route in recent years. In multiple extreme cases, overcrowded migrant boats have become lost and drifted all the way across the Atlantic Ocean as far as the Americas before being found.

  • Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Fresh armed conflict broke out before dawn on Thursday between Somalia’s federal government troops and aligned militias in the peripheral areas of Baidoa, the key southwestern city at the center of a growing national political power struggle. Witnesses and local officials reported sustained heavy gunfire across the front lines, forcing hundreds of civilian residents to abandon their homes in search of safer shelter as the violence intensified.

    According to statements from Somalia’s Defense Ministry, the outbreak of hostilities followed an offensive launched by fighters loyal to Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, the former president of Somalia’s South West state, alongside militants linked to al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group that has waged an insurgency in Somalia for decades. Wednesday’s clashes mark the most recent escalation of a bitter political and security dispute between Somalia’s central federal government and Laftagareen over administrative control of the strategic South West region.

    The current crisis traces back to late March, when federal security forces seized full control of Baidoa on March 30. Shortly after the government takeover, Laftagareen stepped down from his position as regional leader, a post he had held since 2018. After several hours of intense exchanges of fire, armed clashes tapered off by early Thursday afternoon. As of the latest updates, no official government statement has been released confirming total casualty numbers or the full scope of destruction caused by the fighting. In the aftermath of the violence, government military units deployed to conduct patrols across Baidoa’s urban streets, while emergency ambulances scrambled to reach injured people trapped near conflict zones. Local residents slowly began to reemerge from hiding to assess damage to their properties and clean debris from public walkways.

    Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, who leads the emergency department at Baidoa’s Bay Regional Hospital, confirmed to the Associated Press that medical teams at his facility had treated 24 wounded civilians and received the body of one civilian killed in the clashes. Abdullahi Haji, a long-term Baidoa resident, described the chaos of the outbreak in a phone interview with AP, saying he fled his residence immediately after hearing heavy gunfire erupt, noting that stray bullets began hitting residential neighborhoods within minutes of the first shots.

    Located roughly 245 kilometers, or 150 miles, northwest of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Baidoa holds outsized strategic and humanitarian importance for the entire country. The city serves as a major coordination hub for international aid organizations working across southern Somalia, and it currently hosts more than 500,000 people who have already been displaced by previous rounds of conflict and the severe ongoing drought devastating much of the Horn of Africa. This latest violence comes just weeks after earlier clashes in and around Baidoa killed at least four civilians and left another 98 people wounded, adding to a growing toll of civilian harm in the already unstable region.

    This report was compiled with on-the-ground contributions from Associated Press correspondent Bishar Mayow Mukhtar in Baidoa, Somalia.