分类： society

On a gritty back alley in Columbus, Ohio’s Linden neighborhood, 48-year-old Army veteran Mike crouches low, silver foil holding a few grains of fentanyl balanced between his hands. A straw rests at his lips, and a cigarette lighter flickers below, heating the potent synthetic opioid that has controlled his life for two decades. For just three or four dollars, this hit delivers a rush that no naturally derived opiate can match — but it comes with a deadly warning.

“This drug will damn near make you do anything, unfortunately,” Mike says, as he lights the grains. “You can snort too much and you can’t take it back. Kind of like a gunshot. Can’t call the bullet back.”

As the drug takes hold, Mike’s grip tightens on the chain-link fence behind him. He sways, a low guttural moan rumbling from his chest, his milky blue pupils shrinking to tiny pinpricks far smaller than standard opioids cause. Over the course of several days, Mike has served as a guide to this neighborhood’s hidden drug economy, a man well-known and liked by locals, who earns just enough working odd jobs at a nearby pawn shop and gas station to feed his addiction. What neither he nor the reporting team knew at first was that his fentanyl was not just fentanyl.

Over the past 15 years, the United States’ opioid crisis has undergone a dramatic, deadly transformation. Natural opiates like heroin, cultivated from poppy crops and trafficked across borders, have been largely replaced by fully synthetic alternatives led by fentanyl — a drug 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin that can be mixed in homemade batches in basements and bathtubs across the country. Today, even fentanyl is rarely sold on its own: dealers increasingly cut it with unregulated synthetic tranquilizers, turning every single dose into a lethal gamble.

Mike suspected his supply was laced with xylazine and medetomidine, two large-animal sedatives commonly called “tranq” that prolong the fentanyl high but slow breathing to deadly levels. Most alarmingly, the life-saving opioid reversal drug naloxone — carried by the reporting team to guard against accidental overdose — has no effect against these tranquilizers. Xylazine also causes severe, necrotic skin ulcers that eat deep to the bone, leaving users with permanent disfigurement or requiring amputation. A later drug test arranged by local recovery workers confirmed Mike’s suspicion: his sample tested positive for medetomidine.

Across Columbus, the Hope Dealer Community recovery group gathers weekly at Glenwood Church to share stories of survival amid this shifting crisis. Run by 65-year-old Scott Sanders, a former addict who has been sober for nearly 10 years, the organization supports people navigating the increasingly dangerous drug supply. When Sanders asks the room how many have survived an overdose, nearly every attendee raises their hand.

One man recounts his 2022 overdose, where paramedics administered three full doses of naloxone with no effect — the tranq in his system kept suppressing his breathing, and one medic was ready to call time of death before a last-ditch attempt successfully revived him. Another member, Tonya, tearfully shares how her nephew died of an overdose while she herself was overdosing on fentanyl-laced crack cocaine, a common deadly combination on streets today. “It’s not luck. I’m supposed to be here,” she tells the cheering, supportive crowd.

Sanders explains that the crisis has fundamentally shifted in recent years. Unwitting users are the biggest victims: people buying crack cocaine or meth, who have never used opioids, are receiving doses laced with fentanyl without their knowledge. In Franklin County, which covers Columbus, 78% of 2023’s fatal overdoses involved stimulants cut with synthetic opioids. Black men in Ohio are seeing rising overdose death rates, even as overall numbers tick down slightly from the 2022 peak of 110,000 annual overdose deaths nationwide — a peak that dropped to around 70,000 in 2024, driven in large part by widespread naloxone access. Still, Sanders emphasizes, the crisis is far from over.

His organization partners with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a groundbreaking drug sampling program: users bring swabs from their pipes or needles to test for adulterants, with samples sent to a CDC lab in North Carolina for analysis. That work has confirmed what street users like Mike have long known: the modern drug supply is a chaotic mix of unregulated synthetics, made in secret home labs with no quality control.

“The drug supply in 2024 is this: we think we are buying crack but we’re not, we’re buying a number of different things,” Sanders says. “Today it is mixed, not just cut, but mixed with other drugs such as fentanyl or meth, and then other adulterant chemicals that are made in basements.”

A hundred miles north in Chicago, Illinois, this shift toward homemade synthetics has created new challenges for law enforcement, even behind bars. At Cook County Jail, one of the largest correctional facilities in the United States, traditional body scanners designed to catch drugs smuggled in body cavities could not stop a 2023 wave of overdoses that killed eight inmates — eight times the facility’s usual annual average.

Sheriff Tom Dart, who has led the county’s law enforcement for 20 years, says the smuggling method was entirely new. Prisoners were receiving drugs mailed straight to the facility, soaked into the pages of books and letters. Guards found burn marks on cell vents, where inmates lit the soaked paper to inhale the fumes. The deadly drugs were synthetic cannabinoids known as K2, mixed with other potent synthetics, that bypassed all traditional security measures.

In August 2024, BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville joined two dozen corrections officers for an early morning raid on the jail’s high-security D Block. Officers gathered outside in hushed silence, before rushing the cell block. As they entered, the smell of burning paper hung in the air, and the sound of flushing toilets echoed as inmates disposed of contraband. Every scrap of paper — every letter, every book page — was searched for traces of drug soaking. Today, all incoming mail is scanned for moisture, and between 20 and 25% of all incoming items test positive and are rejected.

Outside the jail walls, the synthetic drug wave has reshaped street addiction across Chicago. Even in the upscale neighborhood of Oak Park, free naloxone dispensing machines sit in metro stations, and recovery workers regularly encounter users with tranq-related leg wounds so severe they require life-altering medical care.

Forty-year-old Karen Bell, a recovery worker with the group Liv4Lali who has been clean from heroin for 17 years, regularly tends to vulnerable users on city streets. When she used heroin nearly two decades ago, she says, users knew what they were buying. Today, every dose is a mystery.

“So many things are being mixed in right now. And it’s affecting our bodies, whether it’s the wounds, whether it’s the withdrawals — and sometimes wounds can extend to the point where it’s life changing,” she explains. “Before, back in my day, that was still heroin. When you bought that you knew it was heroin. But now, when you buy a bag, you don’t know really what it is.”

Her organization, like Hope Dealers, distributes free test strips to let users check their drugs for fentanyl, xylazine, medetomidine and other harmful adulterants — a harm reduction measure that has saved countless lives, even as it does not solve the root of the crisis.

Karen’s own path to recovery began in crisis. When she found out she was pregnant with her daughter Abby 17 years ago, she was living homeless in a tent in the woods, planning to die by suicide, broken by years of addiction and shame. After she was arrested for theft, her parents refused to pay bail, betting that time in Cook County Jail would let her get clean. It worked: Abby was born in jail, and Karen has not used hard drugs since.

Today, Abby, who plans to become a tattoo artist, says she has never been tempted to try drugs after seeing what they did to her family. She also points to a growing root of addiction in modern America: soaring inflation has left basic needs out of reach for many, and mental health care remains prohibitively expensive, pushing desperate people to turn to drugs to cope.

An anonymous Chicago dealer working for Mexican cartels told the BBC that despite decades of government crackdowns, from labeling cartels as terrorist organizations to interdicting trafficking boats at the border, his supply chain remains fully operational. “If it doesn’t go over the wall, it goes under the wall. If it doesn’t go through the border, it comes through the top border. This game is about adaptability,” he explained. When asked what has changed most about his trade, he pointed to the rise of synthetics: “Synthetics. We haven’t seen what synthetics can do yet. It’s not even the tip of the iceberg.”

Sheriff Dart agrees that the old “war on drugs” framework, focused almost entirely on cutting off supply at the border, no longer works for the age of synthetic drugs. Where potent drugs once had to be grown in foreign poppy fields and trafficked thousands of miles, today any amateur can cook up a batch in a home basement. Victory, he says, will only come from addressing demand.

“I don’t think there’s anybody involved with it who would sit there and say it’s a raging success. It’s not,” Dart says. “Front and centre there’s got to be huge substance abuse treatment. You can reduce the market if you can address people’s issues with substance abuse. And I know many people who, after long struggles, have come out on the other side in a really good way.”

For America, the opioid crisis has never been a static problem. It has evolved from plant-based heroin to prescription opioids to fentanyl, and now to an unregulated mix of homemade synthetics that outpace law enforcement and treatment efforts with every passing year. Users, dealers and cartels adapt constantly, always staying one step ahead of policy and enforcement — leaving thousands of lives on the line every year, even as recovery workers and survivors fight to turn the tide.

A fatal alligator attack has claimed the life of a 71-year-old fisherman at a central Florida public park, prompting local law enforcement to renew urgent public safety advisories about coexisting with the state’s native apex predators. The incident unfolded shortly after 5 p.m. local time Friday at Dr Bradford Memorial Park, located just a few miles west of Orlando along the shoreline of Lake Apopka in Winter Garden. According to Winter Garden Police Captain Michael Mason, the 12-foot (3.7-meter) reptile approached the shore where the man was fishing and launched an unprovoked assault. Following the initial attack, the alligator dragged the victim into the lake, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officials confirmed via the BBC’s U.S. partner network CBS News.

In response to the attack, licensed wildlife trappers were called to the scene to capture and remove the alligator, which was subsequently dispatched as a public safety risk, Mason added. This tragedy marks the second fatal alligator attack in Florida in 2025. Earlier this year in June, a 31-year-old woman was killed by an alligator while swimming with companions in another area near Orlando.

Despite their ubiquitous presence across the state, with an estimated population of 1.3 million alligators maintained at a steady level for decades, fatal attacks remain extremely uncommon, FWC data shows. Between 1948 and 2025, the commission has recorded just 32 fatal alligator attacks across the state out of a total of 500 documented unprovoked incidents. Mason emphasized that alligator sightings are entirely routine in the Lake Apopka area, noting that the large waterbody is home to a substantial alligator population.

In the wake of the killing, authorities are urging residents and visitors to remain vigilant when recreating near Florida’s waterways. “Always be aware of your surroundings, always be safe. Local wildlife – respect it, keep your distance,” Mason said in a statement to reporters Friday night. “It looks like it’s docile, it looks like your Florida emblem, but it can be dangerous.” The BBC has confirmed it is reaching out to FWC officials to gather additional details about the attack for further reporting.

For more than six decades, Marineland, the Niagara Falls-based marine amusement park, stood as one of Canada’s most recognizable tourist landmarks, its catchy “Everyone loves Marineland” jingle ingrained in the memories of generations of visitors. By 2024, however, years of mounting animal welfare scandals, crippling financial instability, and the passing of its long-time owner forced the iconic park to close its gates permanently, bringing a close to a chapter of Canadian entertainment that had long fallen out of step with shifting public values.

Seven years before Marineland’s closure, Canada had already enacted landmark legislation banning the captivity and breeding of cetaceans — the group of marine mammals that includes belugas, dolphins, and porpoises — leaving the park with 30 belugas and four dolphins that needed new permanent homes. When the Canadian government rejected a proposed sale of the animals to facilities in China over widespread animal welfare concerns, park officials warned the entire group would need to be euthanized. The announcement sparked an unprecedented international rescue effort, coordinating aquariums and marine parks across North America and Europe to accept the animals, in what became the largest single transfer of captive whales in recorded history.

Photojournalist Carlos Osorio, who documented the months-long relocation process, captured the final departure of Tofino, the last remaining captive whale to leave Canadian soil, in a moment that carried historic weight. As Osorio recalled, the 1,500-kilogram beluga swam to each of his long-time handlers kneeling in shallow water, brushing against their hands in what looked like a quiet goodbye before a crane lifted the whale into a transport truck bound for SeaWorld San Antonio. “This is the last one to happen, and it’s never going to happen again,” Osorio said of the historic moment.

While the rescue operation saved the majority of the animals from certain death, the effort has been overshadowed by tragedy: five belugas and one dolphin transferred from Marineland have died since the move this summer. Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, which accepted eight of the Marineland belugas, has recorded four deaths: 23-year-old Peekachu, 20-year-old Rain, 26-year-old Orisis, and 27-year-old Caspian. A long-time resident beluga at Shedd, 34-year-old Beethoven, also died shortly after the new animals arrived. Necropsies revealed that Peekachu and Rain suffered from chronic gastrointestinal inflammatory disease, and foreign objects including feathers, large rocks, and flecks of paint were found in their stomachs — a discovery Shedd attributes to poor conditions at Marineland before the transfer. Preliminary examinations found Orisis had long-standing chronic liver disease.

Tragedy also struck at Oceanogràfic València, Europe’s largest aquarium located in Spain, where one beluga named Jelly Bean and one dolphin named Echo died after transfer. Oceanogràfic officials reported Echo arrived with pre-existing severe vision problems and developed life-threatening swallowing and respiratory complications within hours of her arrival.

Many animal welfare experts have cautioned against drawing hasty conclusions about the transfer’s success, noting the animals were already facing euthanasia after decades of living in an aging, poorly maintained facility. Between 2019 and September 2025 alone, roughly 20 whales died at Marineland while the park waited for a resolution to its future, according to a tally by Canadian Press.

The closure of Marineland and the relocation of its animals have thrown a spotlight on a growing, unresolved global crisis for captive cetaceans: as more countries like Canada, France, and Mexico move to ban cetacean captivity, thousands of captive cetaceans raised in captivity cannot be released into the wild, and few safe, humane long-term alternatives exist. Worldwide, an estimated 3,600 cetaceans remain in captivity, according to World Animal Protection Canada.

Animal welfare advocates have raised critical questions about the transfer process, arguing that unhealthy animals that could not survive the stress of relocation should never have been moved. In a statement, Melissa Matlow, a spokeswoman for World Animal Protection Canada, noted the organization had proposed two alternative solutions for the Marineland animals: converting the shuttered park into a permanent hospice facility for ageing and unhealthy cetaceans, or accelerating construction of the proposed Whale Sanctuary Project, a seaside sanctuary off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and founder of the Whale Sanctuary Project, explained that for cetaceans that cannot be released into the open ocean, a seaside sanctuary offers the next best alternative, allowing animals to live in natural ocean waters while retaining their autonomy. “I look at it as an exit ramp,” Marino said of the project, which was first launched a decade ago and only broke ground two months ago. The project still needs an additional C$6m ($4.2m) to complete construction, and once finished, it plans to house between 12 and 15 retired captive cetaceans.

Offshore whale sanctuaries remain an unproven model for long-term care of captive whales, however. A similar beluga sanctuary project in Iceland was forced to delay the arrival of its first two whales until next summer to complete additional construction work. Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Whale Research in Washington state, noted that while seaside sanctuaries are still largely theoretical, they would still offer dramatic improvements to animal welfare compared to the small concrete tanks used in traditional marine parks. Net pens similar to those proposed for the projects have long been used to rehabilitate injured wild whales, Weiss added.

Critics of the transfer plan also point out a major gap in Canada’s ban on cetacean captivity: while Canada prohibits breeding, the aquariums that accepted the Marineland belugas are under no such restrictions, raising concerns that breeding will continue, perpetuating the cycle of cetacean captivity. Jason Jones, senior curator of animal well-being at Georgia Aquarium, which recently accepted two young male belugas from Marineland — 10-year-old Balor and 7-year-old Zephyr — defended the practice, arguing that breeding is a natural part of cetacean life and contributes to good welfare. Jones reported the two new arrivals have adapted well to their new home, arriving bright and alert, quickly integrating with the four female belugas already at the aquarium, and showing all the positive signs of healthy adjustment.

For Phil Demers, a former Marineland animal trainer who has become a prominent animal welfare advocate, the closure of the park is an inherently bittersweet moment. He is grateful to see the controversial facility shut down, and hopes Canada’s ban on cetacean captivity will inspire similar policy changes across the globe. Still, he acknowledges that the end of Marineland does not mean the end of captivity for its former animals, only a change of address. For people interested in experiencing whales, Demers says the best option is to observe them in their natural habitat: “I’d rather see a whale fart in the wild than do a triple backflip in a tank.”

As public attitudes toward animal captivity continue to shift, the fate of the Marineland belugas underscores the hard work and difficult trade-offs that come with phasing out a practice that was once mainstream, leaving policymakers, advocates, and conservationists searching for lasting solutions that prioritize the welfare of the thousands of cetaceans still living in captivity around the world.

In a significant legal development out of the U.S. state of New Mexico, a state judge has tossed out all criminal charges against veteran Emmy Award-winning actor Timothy Busfield, known for iconic roles in *The West Wing* and *Field of Dreams*, over fundamental flaws in how prosecutors built and presented their case. The ruling on Friday brings a major turn in a high-profile case that first made headlines earlier this year when Busfield was indicted on four counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor.

The accusations against Busfield, who also has credits as a producer and director on the Fox drama series *The Cleaning Lady*, originated from claims made by two child actors who worked on the show under his supervision. Prosecutors initially alleged that between October 2019 and September 2023, Busfield inappropriately touched the intimate parts of one boy who was under the age of 13 at the time of the alleged offenses. The arrest affidavit further claimed that Busfield, who the children reportedly called “Uncle Tim”, groomed the young actors, engaging in inappropriate tickling of their stomachs and legs that escalated to ongoing sexual abuse spanning years.

The legal process first moved against Busfield in January of this year, when an arrest warrant was issued and he voluntarily surrendered to Albuquerque law enforcement. He was briefly taken into custody on initial charges that included two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and one count of child abuse, before a judge granted his release pending trial, which he maintained through the entire proceedings. A grand jury later returned a four-count indictment against him in February.

Busfield has staunchly denied every allegation brought against him from the start. His defense team mounted a robust push to dismiss the indictment, submitting more than 70 character reference letters from people who have worked with and known the actor over decades, and confirming that Busfield completed and passed a polygraph examination directly addressing the abuse claims. Defense attorneys also argued that the entire case was rooted in retaliation: the children were removed from the cast of *The Cleaning Lady*, a decision that enraged their mother, prompting her to manufacture the false accusations.

On Friday, State District Judge Joseph Montano sided with the defense, granting their motion to dismiss the entire indictment. The judge’s ruling centered on critical errors made by prosecutors that irreparably damaged the integrity of the grand jury process, adding that the prosecuting team “failed to act in a fair and impartial manner” throughout the proceedings.

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for the Office of the Second Judicial District Attorney in Bernalillo County confirmed to the BBC that the office has received the judge’s dismissal order and is currently reviewing all available options to determine next steps in the case. The BBC has reached out to Busfield’s legal representation for additional comment on the ruling, and no further statement has been released from the actor’s team as of Friday evening.

A quiet Thursday at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, erupted into horror when a 16-year-old former student opened fire inside a special education needs classroom, leaving four people dead and two others injured. In the chaotic moments that followed, quick thinking and extraordinary bravery from a classroom teacher and a passing father prevented the attack from becoming an even deadlier mass casualty event, law enforcement officials confirmed at a Friday press briefing.

The unidentified teacher, who was in the targeted classroom when the shooting began, made the split-second decision to confront the gunman. Before launching herself at him, she threw her mobile phone to alert others to the danger, then grappled with the teen to wrest control of his shotgun away as the pair tumbled to the classroom floor. During their struggle, an off-site bystander, 36-year-old local carpenter Kaylub Giamanco, drove past the school and witnessed the suspect opening fire in the parking lot before shooting through a window to gain entry to the building.

Giamanco, a father of two daughters who attend Silver Rail Elementary, kept a legally concealed .40-caliber pistol in his vehicle. The carpenter, who had just finished lunch and was heading home when he encountered the unfolding violence, grabbed his weapon and rushed inside to intervene. He opened fire on the suspect, striking him multiple times and killing the teen before he could continue his attack. When police searched the suspect after he was stopped, they recovered an additional 44 rounds of shotgun ammunition, confirming he had fired roughly 15 shots inside the classroom already.

Four people lost their lives in the attack before the suspect was neutralized: three children and one teacher. Police have publicly named two of the victims: 5-year-old student Rhoam Summer and 25-year-old teacher Meghan Lambert. The families of the two other deceased children, aged 8 and 11, have requested that their identities remain private at this time. Two additional people were wounded: a 54-year-old teacher remained hospitalized for treatment as of Friday, while a 7-year-old student was listed in serious but stable condition.

Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz commended the two heroes who stepped in to stop the attack during Friday’s press briefing. “To the people who showed courage in the face of such violence, and intervened to prevent this tragedy from being any worse, we owe you a debt of gratitude,” Krantz said. He confirmed that the teacher who confronted the gunman walked away from the encounter unharmed, and that her quick action “almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.”

Police identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, a former Silver Rail Elementary student who himself received special education services at the school during his time enrolled. Law enforcement has already executed a search warrant at the suspect’s residence, and investigations are ongoing to map out the 16-year-old’s movements before the attack, determine how he obtained the shotgun and ammunition, and uncover a potential motive for the violence. Authorities have confirmed the suspect traveled to the school on foot, but no other details about his planning have been released to the public.

Though law enforcement has not publicly named Giamanco out of respect for his privacy, his family confirmed his identity to U.S. media outlets. In a statement released through CBS News, the family said Giamanco is a lifelong resident of Bend who does not seek public recognition for his actions. “He wants to express his gratitude to the first responders, school personnel, and community for the outpouring of love and support,” the statement read, adding that Giamanco and his family “respectfully ask for privacy” to process what happened.

Political leaders have weighed in on the attack, with both state and federal officials praising the intervention that stopped further bloodshed. Speaking to reporters at the White House before departing for Georgia on Friday, former U.S. President Donald Trump called Giamanco a “great hero,” noting that the attack would have had a far higher death toll without his intervention. “It’s a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it,” Trump said. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek also acknowledged the bystander’s heroic actions, while noting that stopping the attack will “carry a heavy emotional burden.” “I just want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well,” she said.

In the wake of the tragedy, local community members have organized a candlelit vigil to honor the victims and support their families, as Bend comes to terms with one of the deadliest school shootings in recent Oregon history.

In the wake of an unspecified tragedy that took place near Silver Rail Elementary, local residents have come together to mourn their lost loved ones through quiet, heartfelt acts of commemoration. Multiple photographs captured by Reuters document the outpouring of collective grief as community members leave tokens of remembrance at a growing makeshift memorial established close to the school campus.

One image shows a small group of residents carrying armfuls of fresh flowers to lay at the memorial site, their quiet gestures speaking to the shared pain that has enveloped the neighborhood following the tragedy. Another photograph captures a woman adding a personal memento — a bracelet — to a memorial display at the cordoned-off perimeter near the school, turning the restricted area into a space for collective mourning. A third image documents a mother and her young child stopping to leave their own floral tribute at the outdoor makeshift memorial, a small act that underscores how the tragedy has touched people of all generations across the community.

The handcrafted memorial has become a central gathering place for locals to process their loss, share condolences, and stand together in solidarity after a devastating event that has shaken the Silver Rail Elementary neighborhood. The images, captured shortly after the event on October 16, 2026, reflect the raw, compassionate response of a community united in grief.