分类： world

A high-profile British content creator and rapper has walked away cleared of the majority of serious sexual assault charges against him following a criminal trial in Western Australia, after a jury delivered its mixed verdict this week. Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, 30, who performs and creates content publicly under the stage name Yung Filly, faced six counts of sexual penetration without consent, one count of assault causing bodily harm, one count of strangulation, and two additional assault charges connected to an alleged incident in August 2024. The allegations stem from an encounter between Barrientos and a then-20-year-old fan, which occurred in the creator’s hotel room after he performed a live set at a nightclub in Hillarys, a coastal suburb located just north of Perth.

After deliberating on the case, the 12-person jury delivered a verdict of not guilty on three of the six non-consensual sexual penetration charges, as well as full acquittal on the strangulation charge and the single count of assault occasioning bodily harm. However, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision on the remaining three sexual penetration charges, resulting in a hung jury for those counts. Barrientos was also found guilty on the two lesser assault charges brought by prosecutors.

The UK-based creator, who rose to widespread fame as a core member of the popular YouTube collective Beta Squad, has expanded his career to mainstream British television: he has appeared on Channel 4’s celebrity edition of *The Great British Bake Off* and fronted original programming for BBC Three. Following the verdict, Barrientos has been granted continued bail ahead of his next court appearance, scheduled for 21 August. That hearing will set a formal date for sentencing on the two assault convictions. Prosecutors are also expected to announce their next steps regarding the hung jury charges in the coming weeks, deciding whether to proceed with a retrial or drop the remaining counts entirely.

Four days after a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Japan’s southwestern main island of Kyushu, local authorities confirmed Friday that the disaster’s death toll has climbed to 34, with an additional fatality still under investigation to confirm its link to the quake.

The temblor, which hit Tuesday, triggered widespread destruction across the Kumamoto region: it caused a secondary explosion at a busy regional shopping mall, collapsed a massive industrial chimney at a paper factory, and leveled hundreds of residential homes. As of Thursday’s official update, more than 80 people have been injured, five of whom are in critical condition.

In the aftermath of the disaster, thousands of local residents remain displaced. Official data shows more than 3,500 households are still without electricity, and over 9,000 people are currently taking refuge in emergency evacuation shelters. With high summer temperatures creating sweltering conditions inside temporary accommodations, disaster response teams have been rushing to install additional power capacity to run air conditioning, and public health officials have raised growing concerns about the spread of heat-related illnesses and other communicable diseases among displaced populations.

On Friday, search and rescue teams continued combing through wreckage across Kumamoto prefecture, with the highest priority placed on the site of the collapsed Aeon Mall in the town of Kashima — one of the hardest-hit locations. When the earthquake struck, the popular shopping complex was packed with an estimated 3,000 shoppers. Mall management quickly evacuated most visitors to an open-air parking lot before an explosion hit a separate section of the building, where a small number of staff had remained to secure operations. The mall’s second floor collapsed during the quake, leaving multiple people trapped.

During a press briefing in Tokyo Friday, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara confirmed that seven people have been confirmed dead at the mall site, while 11 trapped people have been rescued successfully. Authorities have not yet released information on how many people may still remain unaccounted for at the location.

Kihara also added that search operations have wrapped at another major disaster site: the Nippon Paper Industries factory in Yatsushiro, where a 100-meter factory chimney toppled during the quake. At that location, 11 workers were pulled out alive, but nine were confirmed dead in the collapse.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A catastrophic avalanche has swept across Broad Peak, the world’s 12th-tallest mountain in Pakistan’s northern Karakoram range, leaving a 10-member international climbing expedition led by famous Nepal-born mountaineer Nirmal Purja unaccounted for and cut off from all communication. Karrar Haidri, vice president of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, confirmed the development in an official statement released late Thursday, noting that the organization received initial alerts of the avalanche but has not been able to reestablish contact with the team since the incident.

The expedition brings together climbers from six different nations: five Nepalese mountaineers, Pakistani climber Sohail Sakhi from the Hunza region, Omani climber Nathira, American climber Mallory Geis, a Chinese climber identified only by the surname Wang, and one additional foreign team member. Purja, also known by his nickname Nims Dai, is a Nepal-born British mountaineer who earned global acclaim for his 2019 feat of scaling all 14 of the planet’s peaks higher than 8,000 meters in just 189 days. That achievement set a world speed record that stood until 2023, when a Norwegian climber and her Nepali Sherpa guide broke the mark. Purja’s historic climbing journey was later featured in the hit Netflix documentary *14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible*, introducing high-altitude mountaineering to a mass global audience.

Standing at 8,047 meters (26,401 feet) above sea level, Broad Peak is part of the Karakoram mountain range that straddles the Pakistan-China border. Pakistan attracts thousands of elite mountaineers from across the globe each year, as it hosts five of the world’s 14 8,000-meter peaks, making it a premier destination for ambitious summit attempts.

Immediately following news of the avalanche, Alpine Club of Pakistan president Major General Irfan Arshad and the organization’s senior leadership launched coordination efforts with Pakistani federal and regional government officials to speed up the launch of search-and-rescue operations. The organization confirmed that teams are working to rapidly mobilize rescue helicopters and other specialized emergency resources, though deployment will depend on current high-altitude weather conditions and operational safety constraints.

“The Alpine Club of Pakistan is closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with all concerned stakeholders,” the organization’s statement added. “The club stands in solidarity with the climbers’ families and the international mountaineering community as rescue efforts get underway.”

As geopolitical fault lines across the Middle East deepen, Yemen’s Houthi movement is developing a plan to levy new fees on commercial maritime traffic transiting the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, multiple regional sources have confirmed to Reuters. This emerging policy shift comes against a backdrop of already heightened tensions across the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, reshaping global energy transit routes and challenging Western military presence in the region.

Five years after Myanmar’s 2021 military coup plunged the country into brutal civil war, the Thai border town of Mae Sot has emerged as a fragile, overcrowded sanctuary for tens of thousands of people who fled their homeland to oppose junta rule. For many of these exiles, what was once hope of a swift democratic revolution has curdled into exhaustion, disillusionment, and a future shrouded in uncertainty.

One 22-year-old former urban guerrilla, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his family still living under junta surveillance in Yangon, embodies this shifting tide of sentiment. At 17, he joined nationwide mass protests against the coup that ousted democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. When security forces crushed the nonviolent demonstrations, he fled to ethnic insurgent-controlled territory for military training, before returning to Yangon to carry out bombings as part of an underground resistance cell. “I thought then that non-violent protests were not the right way to get back our freedom,” he recalled.

His armed resistance ended abruptly when he was captured and sentenced to seven years in Insein Prison, a facility infamously known for routine abuse and torture of political inmates. Released last year, he fled across the Moei River – the narrow waterway that marks the Myanmar-Thailand border – to Mae Sot, where he now lives in one of dozens of hidden safe houses run by local charities. It was during his imprisonment that his views on the struggle changed forever. He witnessed deep infighting among insurgent groups, saw countless unnecessary civilian and combatant casualties, and as the eldest child in his family, felt a growing obligation to prioritize his family’s safety over armed struggle. Today, he has rejected violence entirely. “I want to help our people as much as I can. But I choose another way. A non-violent way,” he said. Now, he spends his days teaching children in the safe house and supporting friends who remain imprisoned in Myanmar, clinging to a faint hope that freedom will eventually come.

The 22-year-old is far from alone. Since the 2021 coup, Mae Sot – a major trade gateway between Myanmar and Thailand that has long hosted a shifting Burmese population – has seen its community of exiled Myanmar residents swell exponentially. Nearly all cross the border unofficially, leaving them undocumented and without legal status in Thailand. They live in constant fear of arrest by Thai police and deportation back to Myanmar, where reprisals from the junta await them and their families. Many dare not leave their cramped safe house rooms for weeks at a time; one defected former army officer told the BBC she only ventures outside twice a month.

These safe houses, tucked down quiet back streets and offering only six months of maximum stay per resident, are warrens of tiny, basic rooms with shared communal facilities. Behind every door lies a harrowing story of survival. Among them is Yin Yin Aung, a 20-year-old mother who traveled 1,000 miles from her resistance-stronghold village in Sagaing Region to reach Mae Sot with her husband and toddler son. Two years ago, junta troops occupied her village, Htomar, after sweeping through the region to crush dissent. The family fled into the surrounding forest, where they survived for six months on river water and scarce rations, falling ill and seeing several members of their group die before they could begin their journey to the border. When troops finally withdrew, they left the village looted and laced with landmines, making return impossible.

Yin Yin Aung gave birth to her son in the forest, but he was born with an abdominal hernia that requires urgent surgery. In Mae Sot, the couple has no legal status, so they cannot access Thailand’s public healthcare system. A private hospital has demanded a 38,000 baht ($1,140) deposit for the procedure – a sum nearly out of reach for the destitute family. Like many others, they have already hit their six-month limit at one safe house and are now staying in a second, with another move looming when their time runs out. “So long as Min Aung Hlaing is in charge, I cannot go back home,” Yin Yin Aung said. “He is the one who caused all of this.”

The growing despair among Mae Sot’s exiles comes as Myanmar’s junta leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, has consolidated his grip on power over the past 12 months, backed by significant diplomatic and military support from China and Russia. Last month, Min Aung Hlaing received a formal red-carpet welcome from Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking a key milestone in his effort to rebrand himself from a coup-leading pariah to a legitimate head of state accepted by neighboring countries. Earlier this year, the junta held a tightly controlled, opposition-boycotted election that allowed Min Aung Hlaing to formally take the office of civilian president, while over the past year junta forces have recaptured large swathes of territory that resistance groups seized in the early years of the war.

Chinese pressure has also cut off critical weapons and technology supplies to many resistance groups, leaving them fragmented, outgunned, and on the defensive. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently reported that at least 702 civilians – most of them women and children – were killed by junta air strikes between the announcement of the election last August and its conclusion in January, with violence against civilians continuing unabated even as Min Aung Hlaing solidifies his international standing.

Not all exiles in Mae Sot have abandoned hope of a revolutionary victory. In another safe house, a former Yangon bartender who serves with the Cobra Column – one of the opposition’s most effective fighting units, affiliated with the long-running Karen National Union insurgency – traveled to Mae Sot only to welcome his newborn child, and says he is eager to return to the front lines. “The military is fighting a war against the entire country, against the very citizens they are supposed to protect,” he said. “There is no way they can win.” Morale remains high among well-established ethnic armed groups like the Karen National Union, but newer people’s defense forces have struggled to maintain momentum amid supply shortages and junta advances.

For many older exiles like Louis, a 40-something Yangon entrepreneur who joined the Karen insurgency after the coup and was later imprisoned, the dragging war has forced a reevaluation of priorities. After his release, he chose to settle in Mae Sot to provide for his children, who need education and stability that a life on the run cannot offer. “For the first two or three years, we had high morale and were very motivated,” he said. “But since the war is dragging on for so long, a lot of people have other responsibilities that do not stop. We have changed under that pressure.”

One local Mae Sot activist, who runs a program to rescue child soldiers as young as 13 from insurgent groups and help them adjust to civilian life, says the war has torn apart communities that once lived in peace, with neighbors turning on each other for supporting opposing sides. She argues that the resistance must shift its strategy to meet the growing humanitarian crisis. “We have to prepare for a long fight for this revolution, not only with weapons, but also thinking about education and healthcare,” she said. “There are so many displaced people now. What are we going to do for them?”

Today, hundreds of thousands of Myanmar refugees across Thailand’s border regions remain trapped in devastating limbo. Diplomatic outreach from regional governments has failed to secure any meaningful concessions from the junta, while undocumented exiles like Yin Yin Aung face repeated moves, scarce support, and no clear path home – or to a better future elsewhere. In the cramped, dimly lit safe houses of Mae Sot, each resident carries the weight of trauma, and a future that grows more uncertain by the day.

Amid the ongoing military confrontation between the United States and Iran, the Islamic Republic has expanded its retaliatory operations across the Gulf region, targeting U.S. strategic assets while turning its attention to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq. The cross-border strikes have deepened regional instability and sparked new debate over the nature of the threat Tehran perceives from these exiled Kurdish factions.

Keywan Faramarzi, international relations representative for the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, confirmed to Middle East Eye that recent weeks of attacks on Komala bases and operational hubs in Iraqi Kurdistan have left 10 fighters dead. While no group has formally taken responsibility for the strikes, Faramarzi explicitly pinned the blame on the Iranian government, framing the violence as part of a long-standing state policy to eliminate Iranian Kurdish opposition organizations operating beyond Iran’s official borders.

Komala is not alone in facing this escalation. Multiple other Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have reported similar attacks both in northern Iraq and inside Kurdish-populated regions of Iran itself.

The latest surge in Iranian strikes follows unconfirmed reports from Israeli media claiming Turkey pressured the U.S. to scrap a planned operation that would have deployed Iranian Kurdish fighters across the border to overthrow Tehran’s government. Since the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran launched in February, rumors of a Kurdish incursion into Iran have circulated repeatedly, but this most recent proposal was said to carry greater strategic ambitions – and the Iranian leadership has treated the threat with clear seriousness.

In a public statement released July 19, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. and Israel of plotting to fragment Iran using Kurdish opposition groups as proxies. “I made clear that if any threat emerges against us from Iraqi Kurdistan, we will respond without question,” he said.

Despite Tehran’s claims, all major Iraqi-based Iranian Kurdish parties have flatly denied any involvement in internal Iranian armed conflict, and reject assertions that former U.S. President Donald Trump ever proposed a cross-border ground operation to them. “We have no knowledge of any such plan, and no verifiable evidence exists to support these allegations,” Faramarzi said. “These reports read as nothing more than media speculation that does not align with on-the-ground realities.”

Hana Yazdanpanah, a representative for the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), echoed that denial. “We hold no such intention,” she told Middle East Eye. Yazdanpanah acknowledged that PAK supported and defended Kurdish communities in Iranian Kurdistan during the January anti-government protests, but dismissed all claims of involvement in a regime-change operation as baseless. “Neither the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, our party PAK, nor any other Iranian Kurdish party have taken part in any such operation, nor have we received any weapons or military supplies from foreign actors,” she added.

Even with these consistent denials, Iran’s unbroken campaign of strikes confirms that Tehran still views the exiled Kurdish factions as a meaningful threat. Middle East Eye reached out to the Iranian Foreign Ministry for additional comment, but received no response prior to publication.

As demographic data cited by Minority Rights Group International shows, Kurds make up roughly 10 percent of Iran’s total population, concentrated primarily in the country’s western provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Ilam. For decades, several Iranian Kurdish opposition movements – which Tehran designates as terrorist organizations – have maintained operational bases in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. These groups include Komala, PAK, the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PKDI), Khabat, and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the latter of which holds ties to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

While the groups hold a range of distinct ideological positions, most are united around two core goals: the self-defense of Kurdish communities inside Iran, and the eventual achievement of self-determination for Iranian Kurdistan. In late February of this year, the major factions announced a new formal coalition, with an explicit stated mission of coordinating efforts “to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In April, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed his administration had supplied large quantities of firearms to anti-government protesters in Iran, and that Kurdish groups had taken possession of the weapons – a claim the Kurdish parties have repeatedly denied.

“We have formed this alliance to strengthen and escalate our struggle in East Kurdistan [Iranian Kurdistan] and across Iran against the Islamic Republic,” Yazdanpanah said. “In this struggle, we utilize every available method of resistance.” Even so, she emphasized that the coalition has “openly maintained and declared its neutrality” in the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict.

Estimates of the coalition’s collective military strength put it far below the capacity of Iran’s state security forces. PAK reported roughly 1,000 members in 2019, while PDKI, Komala, and Khabat are believed to have similar troop counts. PJAK officials have claimed as many as 3,000 active fighters. Combined, the entire coalition’s fighting force pales in comparison to Iran’s hundreds of thousands of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel, plus an additional hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the Basij militia network.

This military imbalance has led most independent analysts to conclude the Kurdish coalition lacks the raw power to overthrow Iran’s government on its own. The repeated claims of foreign-backed regime change have also sparked growing frustration among the Kurdish parties themselves.

Winthrop Rodgers, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, noted that the Kurdish parties have approached the ongoing U.S.-Iran war with significant caution, a choice that reflects their own clear assessment of their limited capabilities and the current strategic context. “This caution likely disappointed the expectations of some reckless U.S. and Israeli planners, who failed to grasp the complex dynamics at play on the ground,” Rodgers explained.

Even so, Iran’s continued targeting of Kurdish positions in northern Iraq makes clear that the opposition groups remain a persistent concern for Tehran, even if they do not pose an immediate existential threat. Faramarzi argued that Komala’s core work focuses on building political power, not large-scale conventional military invasion. “Our main role is organizing, supporting, and strengthening civil society and protest movements across Iran – and that is what the government fears,” he said. “Through these attacks, the Islamic Republic is trying to erode our political and organizational capacity, while also sending a warning to all opposition forces across the country.”