Global Pulse

博客

  • Bavuma epic drags SA back into Test – have they time to beat Australia?

    Bavuma epic drags SA back into Test – have they time to beat Australia?

    On the third day of the second Test at Gqeberha, South African captain Temba Bavuma produced a career-defining innings that turned the tide of the match against Australia, handing the Proteas a historic advantage heading into the final two days of play.

    When South Africa slumped to a fragile 12-2 on day one, and later crashed to 110-6 early on day three, the match looked set to follow the pattern of the first Test, where Australia dominated the Proteas’ batting line-up to claim an opening win. But Bavuma defied the odds, spending a marathon 552 minutes at the crease across three days to score a personal best 179, beating his previous Test high of 172. The knock not only marked his fifth Test century, but also anchored two game-changing partnerships that dragged South Africa into a commanding position: a 132-run stand with Marco Jansen, and an 183-run eighth-wicket partnership with Simon Harmer – the highest of its kind in South African Test history.

    This landmark century comes 10 years after Bavuma made history as the first Black African to score a Test century for South Africa, and cements his status as one of the Proteas’ most impactful modern captains. Across his 14 Tests leading the national side, Bavuma has now notched four centuries, boasting a stunning batting average of 54.36 as skipper – a massive jump from his 34.53 average across 93 innings before taking the captaincy. Few international batters have recorded such a dramatic improvement after taking on leadership duties.

    After Bavuma was caught behind off Mitchell Starc, South Africa declared their first innings at 425-9 with 30 minutes of play remaining in day three. The Proteas immediately turned the screws: fast bowler Kagiso Rabada dismissed Australian opener Nic Maddinson with just his fourth delivery of Australia’s reply, leaving the tourists reeling at 3-1 at stumps, trailing by a massive 422 runs. Scott Boland was the pick of the Australian bowlers, finishing with five wickets for 81 runs, a fine performance that could not prevent South Africa’s massive first innings total.

    Umpires ultimately called off play early due to poor light, cutting short South Africa’s opportunity to bowl more overs in favourable seam-friendly conditions. Speaking after the day’s play, Bavuma acknowledged the hesitation to declare earlier due to uncertain weather, but stressed the team had achieved their key goal of claiming an early wicket. “If we [had declared] a bit early we would have got one or two more overs. Saying that we got the one we wanted,” he said.

    Heading into days four and five, South Africa now holds an unlikely outside shot at victory: if they can dismiss Australia cheaply, they can enforce the follow-on to press for a series-leveling win. Even if the result does not go their way, Bavuma noted the lengthy time his batters spent at the crease against Australia’s top-ranked attack will pay dividends ahead of the third Test in Cape Town and the upcoming Christmas tour by England.
    “We have given ourselves a chance,” Bavuma said. “There is the other side of the draw but going into Cape Town whatever the confidence we can get here, being able to put their bowlers on their feet for a considerable amount of time, hopefully that can pay off in the long run.”

    Many observers have already labelled Bavuma’s innings more impressive than Matthew Renshaw’s match-winning 190 in Australia’s first Test victory, given the Proteas’ early batting collapse and the world-class quality of Australia’s attack, which features three bowlers ranked in the global top 10 for Test bowling. “That bowling attack, at least three are in the top 10 of the bowling rankings,” Bavuma said. “There is a reason why.”

  • UK universities worked together to suppress pro-Palestine activism, report reveals

    UK universities worked together to suppress pro-Palestine activism, report reveals

    A bombshell new investigation from Amnesty International has pulled back the curtain on a widespread, coordinated campaign by British higher education institutions to stifle pro-Palestine student protests against university partnerships with Israel amid its ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

    Released this Tuesday, Amnesty’s *Silencing Dissent* report draws on thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to dismantle the narrative that universities have acted independently in their responses to Palestine solidarity demonstrations. The investigation confirms that institutions operated within an interconnected, institutionally supported network that actively pushed for harsh, repressive measures against student activists.

    Internal communications obtained through FOI requests reveal that university administrators across the country openly coordinated punitive actions against protesters, from seeking court-ordered injunctions to block demonstrations to referring participating students to the UK’s controversial Prevent counterterrorism program, a scheme designed to root out extremist radicalization that critics have long accused of targeting Muslim and anti-war communities.

    One revealing email exchange from the University of Northampton shows senior administrators directly collaborating to share crowd control tactics, with one senior staff member asking peers at other institutions whether they were “locking in” student protesters — a reference to confining demonstrations to specific, limited campus areas to minimize their public impact.

    At the center of this cross-institutional coordination is Universities UK (UUK), the national representative body that counts 142 British universities among its member institutions. The report documents that UUK played a foundational role in standardizing the crackdown, hosting weekly strategy calls for vice-chancellors whose campuses hosted pro-Palestine encampments to share tactics and align their responses to demonstrations.

    This collaborative effort did not stop at the university sector gate: the coordination extended directly into the UK government. FOI documents from the University of Kent confirm that UUK maintained close, ongoing ties with Whitehall departments and senior government ministers. The organization arranged direct meetings between university leaders and Downing Street officials, while simultaneously communicating official government expectations for protest management to its member institutions.

    As protests grew in size and intensity through 2024 and 2025, UUK deepened its partnership with the Department for Education and the Office for Students (OfS), the national regulator for higher education. The group provided targeted guidance to universities on mitigating reputational damage, managing protest actions, and pursuing legal avenues including civil injunctions to shut down demonstrations. As of publication, UUK has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the report’s findings.

    Beyond senior administrative coordination, the report also documents that campus security leadership organized its own unified response through the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso), the trade body representing security leaders across UK higher education.

    Ahead of planned national student mobilizations, the chair of Aucso’s South West regional division circulated formal strategic briefings to prepare institutions for increased protest activity. In those documents, Aucso advised universities to consult data protection teams and apply FOI exemptions to keep internal security communications about protests hidden from public disclosure. The organization also provided pre-written press release templates that institutions could adapt locally to shape public narratives and deflect scrutiny of their crackdowns.

    The investigation further reveals that at least nine UK universities received private threat assessments from commercial intelligence firms, including Horus Security Consultancy Ltd, Mitie Intelligence Hub, and risk specialist Global Situational Awareness (GSA). These private intelligence updates routinely categorized entirely non-violent student protest actions as high-level security threats.

    In one notable example, student-led national weeks of action planned for May 2025 were labeled a “high threat” and classified as a coordinated security risk by the Global Security Operations Centre (GSOC), a private firm that markets itself as a 24/7 centralized command hub for monitoring domestic security threats. The firm’s briefings even labeled common peaceful protest slogans, including the widely used “From the river to the sea,” as “escalatory rhetoric,” and advised authorities to monitor the social media accounts of at least 15 university-based Palestine solidarity societies, including prominent groups at SOAS University of London, the University of Leeds, Imperial College London, and the University of Glasgow.

  • Swimmer, 65, killed in shark attack off South Africa’s east coast

    Swimmer, 65, killed in shark attack off South Africa’s east coast

    A tragic shark attack has claimed the life of an experienced open water swimmer on South Africa’s eastern coast, marking the country’s first recorded fatal shark encounter of the year. The victim, 65-year-old Janine Lochrenberg, was attacked on Tuesday morning while swimming with her local open water club at Orient Beach in KuGompo City, previously known as East London, according to local authorities and witness accounts.

    The incident unfolded around 8 a.m. local time, when Lochrenberg was on her regular daily morning swim. Fellow club members immediately rushed to her aid after the shark struck, pulling her toward the shore. But witnesses confirmed she suffered two severe bite wounds to her upper arm and thigh, and succumbed to her injuries before the group could get her out of the water. Notably, Lochrenberg had been wearing a magnetic shark repellent ankle band at the time of the attack, one of her fellow swimmers shared with the BBC.

    Lochrenberg’s sister, Margot Lochrenberg, told the BBC she was able to hold her sister’s head as the group brought her body to shore. She confirmed that Janine was well aware of the increased shark activity documented in the East London area in recent months, but had long embraced the risk out of her profound connection to the ocean. “She’d made peace with that. She had a deep affinity with the water and was a remarkable person,” Margot said.

    Barbara Briceland, Lochrenberg’s life partner, remembered the retired medical physicist as an accomplished, adventurous swimmer who often ventured far out into the breaking waves. “She was highly intelligent, lots of fun, kind, in a quietish way, thoughtful, well-loved with a love of life,” Briceland told reporters. She added that the couple had been excitedly preparing for a three-week cross-country road trip, a long-planned retirement adventure that was set to begin just days after the attack.

    Data from the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File underscores how rare fatal shark encounters are in South African waters; fewer than 10 deadly attacks have been recorded across the country since 2012. In response to the incident, local authorities have temporarily closed Orient Beach and a second adjacent beach to all recreational activity as a precautionary measure, while investigations into the encounter continue.

  • Christina Applegate says she was wrongfully diagnosed with MS

    Christina Applegate says she was wrongfully diagnosed with MS

    Hollywood veteran Christina Applegate, famous for her roles in hit productions including *Anchorman* and *Married… with Children*, has opened up about a devastating medical mistake: she spent five years believing she lived with multiple sclerosis (MS), only to recently learn her initial diagnosis was incorrect. The star shared the shocking news in a new episode of her podcast *Messy*, released this Tuesday, marking the end of a brief hiatus she took to process the unexpected revelation.

    Applegate made clear that far from celebrating the correction, she was overwhelmed with frustration and tears when she received the news. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” she explained to listeners. “If anything, I’ve gotten worse.” After five years of adjusting to life with a presumed chronic autoimmune condition, she now finds herself back at the very start of her medical journey. “I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me,” she added. A full investigation to identify the root cause of her daily, debilitating symptoms is scheduled to launch next week.

    The chain of discoveries that led to the corrected diagnosis began a few years ago, when Applegate’s treating physician suggested pausing her regular MS infusion therapy to monitor her body’s response. During the treatment break, Applegate’s reaction did not align with what clinicians would expect for a confirmed MS patient. Prompted by this inconsistency, doctors conducted a deeper review of her case, ultimately concluding she had never had the autoimmune disease, which typically causes muscle stiffness and impaired mobility, speech, and coordination. Recalling the moment her doctor delivered the news, Applegate said: “She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.’ I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”

    Joined on the podcast episode by guest Dr. Marwa Kaisey and co-host Jamie Sigler, Applegate’s conversation also shed light on a broader systemic issue in MS care. Dr. Kaisey explained that MS misdiagnoses are far more common than many patients realize, rooted in the condition’s inconsistent presentation and the lack of a single, definitive diagnostic test. Roughly one in five people told they have MS actually receive an incorrect diagnosis, the doctor noted. “It’s not like we have something like a pregnancy test that says ‘yes, you have it. No, you don’t,’” Dr. Kaisey said. “It’s a list of criteria.”

    Applegate first announced her MS diagnosis publicly in August 2021, after months of experiencing unexplained symptoms. At the time, she framed her prognosis as a challenging but manageable new chapter, writing: “It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps on going.” In the years following her initial diagnosis, however, Applegate spoke openly about her declining health and deepening emotional distress. Earlier in 2024, she told listeners she was stuck in “real depression,” admitting: “I don’t enjoy living. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy things anymore.” In a prior interview with *The New York Times*, she shared that she could no longer walk without a cane, and relied on a wheelchair throughout production of her hit Netflix series *Dead to Me*.

  • Sudan army drones hit mourners and fuel market killing more than 200 people, sources say

    Sudan army drones hit mourners and fuel market killing more than 200 people, sources say

    A series of deadly drone strikes attributed to Sudan’s regular army have killed more than 200 civilians across multiple regions of the conflict-battered country, triggering a diplomatic backlash, fears of cross-border conflict spillover, and sharp criticism from United Nations humanitarian officials.

    The coordinated wave of attacks launched over Sunday and Monday this week marks one of the deadliest single episodes of civilian harm since the full-scale civil war erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023. According to the Sudan War Observatory, a conflict monitoring body, the death toll from two Sunday evening strikes in West Kordofan state alone stands at 150. The deadliest of these attacks targeted a convoy of roughly 200 mourners traveling to a funeral in the town of Al-Dabab, killing 145 people and wounding 150 more. A second strike on a nearby funeral tent killed an additional five people. A separate strike on a market in Al-Mujlad the same evening has left casualties uncounted as of press time, the monitoring group added.

    On Monday morning, a separate drone attack hit the Amiet Common Market, also called Al-Na’am Market, a busy commercial hub 10 kilometers from Abyei town in the contested border region of Abyei, killing 73 people, according to Yohana Akol Ngor, information minister for the Abyei region. A military source confirmed to the BBC that the SAF carried out the Abyei strike, justifying the attack by claiming the market served as an illicit fuel storage and distribution hub for RSF forces. BBC Verify’s independent analysis of satellite imagery and on-the-ground footage confirmed extensive destruction: large-scale fire damage to multiple buildings in the market’s northeast corner, thick smoke plumes, and at least one destroyed fuel tanker matching witnesses’ accounts that five missiles were fired during the assault.

    Ngor told Reuters that emergency response teams have faced major barriers recovering bodies from the strike, as ongoing blazes from ignited fuel stores have kept the area unsafe for access. Medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) confirmed it has admitted more than 20 wounded patients from the attack to Ameth Bek Hospital in Abyei town, including multiple critical care cases and patients with severe burns. “We are providing surgical services and wound dressing, along with other emergency care,” said Christian Lindauer, MSF’s hospital manager in Abyei, in a statement.

    The Abyei region holds a unique and fraught status: it is jointly administered by Sudan and South Sudan, but both nations claim full ownership of the oil-rich territory, a dispute that has remained unresolved since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011. In response to the strike, South Sudan has officially summoned Sudan’s ambassador to Juba to lodge a formal diplomatic protest, and analysts warn the attack could reignite long-simmering cross-border tensions and allow the Sudanese civil war to spill into South Sudan.

    In a separate incident on Monday, a drone strike near Khartoum International Airport killed four people, three of them children, the AFP news agency reported, citing an anonymous medical source. A Sudanese military spokesperson told AFP that air defense systems had shot down multiple other drones launched by the RSF targeting the airport.

    Fighting across the broader Kordofan region, an economically strategic area that holds large reserves of gold and oil, has intensified dramatically over the past 12 months after the SAF recaptured full control of the capital Khartoum from RSF forces. Greater Kordofan, which includes West Kordofan and the attack’s launch point of Kadugli in South Kordofan, serves as a critical supply and movement corridor connecting Darfur — which is largely controlled by the RSF — to Khartoum, which remains under SAF control.

    Armed drones have become the weapon of choice for both warring parties in the Sudanese conflict, even with a partial United Nations arms embargo in place across the country. Multiple international reports confirm foreign states continue to supply both the SAF and RSF with advanced drone technology.

    The United Nations has issued sharp condemnation of the latest wave of strikes, with spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric saying the organization is “alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting essential services.” Dujarric added that the growing use of lethal airstrikes comes as 20 million Sudanese people already face acute food insecurity, with famine looming across large parts of Darfur and Greater Kordofan. The two-year conflict has already created what the UN calls one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on the globe, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing more than 14 million Sudanese from their homes.

    The SAF has not yet issued an official response to specific allegations it carried out the West Kordofan and Abyei strikes, but has repeatedly stated it does not intentionally target civilian areas, even when operating in zones where RSF fighters are believed to be present.

  • Huge setback for Alberta’s separatist movement after decisive defeat

    Huge setback for Alberta’s separatist movement after decisive defeat

    A decades-long debate over Alberta’s place in Canadian confederation reached a pivotal turning point this week, as preliminary referendum results show more than two-thirds of the province’s voters rejected a call for a binding separation vote, delivering a decisive blow to the provincial separatist movement that could push the idea back to the political margins for years to come.

    The outcome, which was broadly in line with pre-vote polling, still marked a bitter disappointment for separatist leaders who spent more than a year organizing and campaigning to put the question to voters. When asked by the BBC for a one-sentence reaction to the results, separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre offered only a blunt, dejected response: “Not happy.”

    At a pro-separatist results watch party in Calgary, movement leaders refused to concede the fight was over, insisting the debate over Alberta’s relationship with the federal government will continue to shape provincial politics for the foreseeable future. “We plan to roll up our sleeves and work harder,” said Jeffrey Rath, a Calgary-based lawyer and leading separation advocate, who added that Premier Danielle Smith has now lost the confidence of the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) restive pro-separatist base. Fellow separatist Keith Wilson echoed that sentiment, telling supporters that while the vote had concluded, “the conversation about Alberta’s future in Canada and our place in Canada and our role in Canada will continue.”

    Supporters of Canadian unity celebrated the outcome almost immediately, with Prime Minister Mark Carney noting in an official statement that “Albertans made a clear choice” to remain part of the country. At a pro-unity gathering in Edmonton, prominent unity campaigner Thomas Lukaszuk called the early results a point of pride for the province, while acknowledging that many of the grievances raised by separation advocates are legitimate. “I don’t want to see us doing another referendum like this ever again,” Lukaszuk told the crowd, urging the province to prioritize healing deep divisions laid bare by the public debate.

    The referendum was the product of a high-stakes political gamble by Premier Smith, who openly campaigned for a pro-unity result but lowered the petition threshold to allow the citizen-led separation question to reach the ballot. To bypass a court ruling that blocked the original petition for failing to consult Indigenous First Nations communities whose lands would be affected by separation, Smith structured Monday’s vote as non-binding. The gamble, which aimed to appease her party’s pro-separatist base while all but guaranteeing a defeat for separation, is now expected to trigger renewed challenges to her leadership of the UCP, which she has led since 2022.

    Many pro-unity voters told the BBC their decision was driven by two core concerns: a desire to maintain Canadian national unity amid growing tariff threats from the United States, and fears that an independent Alberta would become vulnerable to external influence and even annexation. Pro-separation sentiment in the province has deep, longstanding roots in the concept of “western alienation,” a decades-old grievance held by some in western Canada that the federal government based in central Canada systematically ignores the region’s interests. In recent years, that resentment has intensified, with many Albertans across the political spectrum arguing that federal environmental policies have undermined the province’s critical oil and gas sector. Frustration over former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s COVID-19 pandemic response and vaccine mandates further deepened anger, with many viewing those measures as a clear example of overreach by Ottawa.

    Carney, who was raised in Alberta, has already moved to address some of the province’s concerns, signing an agreement with Smith to advance construction of a new pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast. In his statement on the referendum results, Carney reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to leveraging the province’s energy resources, saying his plan “unlocks Canada’s full potential as a global energy superpower with Alberta at its core.” Still, political analysts note future tensions between Carney and Smith, a veteran politician who has thus far survived Alberta’s notoriously fractious political landscape, are likely.

    Alongside the separation question, Smith put nine additional ballot measures before voters Monday, all designed to win greater autonomy for Alberta from the federal government on issues ranging from immigration to natural resource policy. Preliminary results suggest many of these measures are on track to pass, a development Smith says will give the province increased leverage in negotiations with Ottawa, even as separation is taken off the table. Many pro-referendum voters have said they did not necessarily support full independence, and only backed the question to gain more negotiating power with Ottawa.

    Separatist leaders point to Quebec’s decades-long sovereigntist movement as a blueprint for their future, noting that separation referendums in 1980 and 1995 were defeated by narrow margins, but the threat of separation allowed Quebec to win significant new autonomy over provincial affairs. Even with support for Quebec sovereignty at historic lows, the province’s newly elected pro-sovereigntist government has pledged to hold a third separation referendum by 2030. Rath argues that path is open for Alberta as well: “A predominantly rural Independence Party in Quebec has just formed the government of Quebec with 28% of the vote. It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” he added, that Alberta separatists could replicate that success in future elections.

  • Marseille braces for more unrest after protests give way to ‘apocalyptic’ disorder

    Marseille braces for more unrest after protests give way to ‘apocalyptic’ disorder

    When thunder and lightning cracked open the sky over Marseille in the days after France’s worst bout of modern civil unrest, the storm illuminated a scene of chaos: hundreds of storefronts stood with cracked glass panes and hastily boarded entryways, left scarred when peaceful student protests dissolved into widespread looting and violence Saturday.

    As France’s second-largest city bore the brunt of the national chaos, the scale of damage has shaken local leaders, law enforcement and residents alike. Local business associations confirm more than 500 commercial locations were damaged, the vast majority also targeted for looting across central neighborhoods and outlying shopping districts. For frontline police officers, the weekend was nothing short of catastrophic: 118 Marseille officers were hurt in the unrest, accounting for more than 10% of all injuries sustained by police nationwide during the riots. As of early this week, 101 people have been taken into custody in the port city, 25% of whom are minors.

    By Monday, a drastic emergency intervention had cleared protesters from Marseille’s streets: an 8-hour ban on all demonstrations and public gatherings was enacted to block a third straight day of disorder. The measure appeared to deliver temporary calm; the largest group to gather in the city center that day was a cluster of weather-worn tourists walking the waterfront quayside. In a further move to head off renewed unrest, local officials are set to implement an overnight curfew for minors in targeted parts of the city starting Tuesday.

    Marseille, long France’s most ethnically diverse urban hub, has been a landing point for generations of new arrivals to the country, and the unrest has split opinions across its diverse population even as it has left a shared trail of damage. For 18-year-old student Maryame, who moved to the southern city just a few weeks ago from a nearby rural area, Saturday’s violence was her first frightening experience of both big-city life and political protest.

    She joined the original student march, which first launched in September to demand improvements to dilapidated school infrastructure before expanding to address broader grievances including France’s ongoing cost of living crisis. The early solidarity of the march felt “beautiful,” she told reporters, but the situation shifted dramatically when looters broke away to attack nearby shops. Still, she remains conflicted about the unrest, echoing a thread of thought that runs through many French debates over civil protest.

    “It is a very complicated question if violence is legitimate,” Maryame said. “But the thing is, France, our history is really based on revolution, and sometimes we really have to make a really big impact. Sometimes it goes too far.”

    For rank-and-file police, the speed and severity of the collapse of order was unprecedented. “It was a war,” said Arnaud Blaise, a representative for the UN1TE police union. “An unheard-of level of violence. Unprecedented.”

    Looting stretched across the entire city: from La Canebière, Marseille’s bustling central boulevard equivalent to Paris’s Champs-Élysées, and Rue Paradis, to the popular Centre Bourse shopping mall, and out to the Grand Littoral and Le Merlan malls in the city’s northern districts. Blaise said officers eventually exhausted their non-lethal riot supplies, forcing tactical retreats as disorder spread.
    Blaise blamed the chaos on a combination of far-left Black Bloc agitators who he said provoked the unrest, and young people from deprived northern neighborhoods who seized the opportunity to loot. “The Black Blocs provoked, and the youngsters took advantage to start looting,” Blaise explained. “That created chaos, with police officers running right, running left, and in effect, we got overwhelmed.”

    When questioned about widespread accusations that police used heavy-handed tactics against peaceful student demonstrators while failing to intervene to stop looting, Blaise rejected the claim. He noted far more officers than protesters were injured in the clashes, adding: “Four thousand tear gas grenades were fired and then we ran out of ammunition. So at a certain point, you have no choice but to retreat.”

    On Monday evening, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez traveled to Marseille to meet with local leaders, after President Emmanuel Macron rejected calls for Nuñez’s resignation in the wake of the riots. During his visit, he stopped at Marseille City Hall, which was briefly occupied by protesters Saturday, for talks with Socialist Mayor Benoît Payan.

    Payan has openly demanded answers from the national government over how the chaos was allowed to unfold, calling the entire response to the unrest a “fiasco” from start to finish. He criticized understaffed, poorly deployed police forces and called for a complete overhaul of crowd control tactics. “If there isn’t a radical change of approach on this issue – if, by chance, the only target remains high school students – then we will see looting scenes again,” Payan warned. “I don’t know what’s left to loot in Marseille, but for the little that remains, it will be looted.”

    While emergency measures have brought a fragile, temporary calm to Marseille, more national demonstrations are already scheduled for the coming weekend. For long-time Marseille residents like 79-year-old grandmother Chantal Bellanger, the unrest reflects deep, unaddressed failures across French society that have left young people disillusioned.

    Standing near a shattered tram stop in a damaged neighborhood, Bellanger said she had been worried about growing unrest for a long time. “We can clearly see that France has lost its grip on many things,” she said. “Public services, hospitals, education is in a horrible state, the peripheral neighbourhoods are dilapidated, they are abandoned.”

    Bellanger, who once worked in the impoverished northern suburbs where much of the unrest originated, said she fears anger and despair are pushing an entire generation of young people into criminal activity that will exclude them from society for life. “It tugs at your heartstrings,” she said. “To see children whose actions are going to place them completely outside of society. It’s painful to watch.”

  • Kenya cult leader’s children still being starved weeks before trial, son says

    Kenya cult leader’s children still being starved weeks before trial, son says

    The chilling legacy of one of Kenya’s deadliest cults has been laid bare by the eldest son of its convicted leader, who has revealed that forced starvation indoctrination continued to target his own younger siblings more than two years after the cult’s brutal practices were first exposed.

    Twenty-seven-year-old Dan Mackenzie, son of doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie, came forward to Kenyan police with a disturbing tip-off just two weeks ago: his five young siblings were being held at their grandmother’s home and denied food as part of the cult’s deadly doctrine. Acting on his report, law enforcement officers raided the property, rescued eight children including the five siblings, and transferred them to a state-run protection center. “They were basically forcibly fasted because they were denying food to them for almost three days,” Dan told BBC’s Newsday in an exclusive interview.

    On Monday, a Kenyan court delivered a historic guilty verdict: Paul Mackenzie was convicted of the murder of 191 people — 190 children and one adult — who starved to death in the remote Shakahola Forest near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. The 53-year-old pastor ordered followers of his Good News International Church doomsday cult to starve themselves and their children to death to “meet Jesus” ahead of an apocalypse he preached was imminent. Twenty-eight other senior cult leaders were also found guilty of murder alongside Mackenzie.

    Dan, who once defended his father’s actions, told reporters he spent months grappling with the reality of the cult’s crimes as the court case unfolded, before his own childhood trauma led him to break with his family’s dangerous beliefs. “When I was 12, I was forced to fast for almost a week,” he recalled. He also detailed violent childhood abuse at the hands of church members, who beat him for hours to force him to attend cult services. Under the cult’s extreme ideology, formal education was banned entirely and modern medicine labeled “evil” — a rule that cost Dan his own schooling at just seven years old.

    Today, Dan lives in the coastal town of Malindi, where he works as a motorcycle taxi driver to support himself and the newly rescued siblings he helped save. While some local residents have shunned him over his father’s atrocities, he says most have accepted him after he publicly cut all ties with the cult and its dangerous teachings. “I hope the verdict would bring some comfort to those who had lost friends and relatives,” he said.

    In her eight-hour ruling delivered in the coastal port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache outlined the full scale of the cult’s manipulation and violence. She told the court that Mackenzie had convinced his followers he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece,” and that any member who resisted the order to fast would be beaten into compliance to “send them to heaven through kicks and blows.” Bodies of victims buried in shallow graves across Shakahola Forest were referred to by cult members as “weddings,” the judge added, with deaths celebrated as followers “wedding with Jesus.”

    The murder conviction marks the first major ruling on the most severe charges against Mackenzie, who was first arrested in 2023 after investigators discovered more than 400 bodies in shallow graves across the forest. The cult leader and his co-convicted still face a string of additional pending charges, including terrorism, radicalization, and the unlawful denial of education to hundreds of children. Mackenzie’s sentencing is scheduled for 6 November, where he could face the death penalty for his crimes.

  • A Chinese dissident falsely claims Kim Jong Un is dead – why is this rumour back?

    A Chinese dissident falsely claims Kim Jong Un is dead – why is this rumour back?

    Unsubstantiated online speculation claiming North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had died following a reported brain hemorrhage was swiftly disproven this week, after North Korean state media released clear photographs showing the 42-year-old leader in good health touring a domestic exhibition.

    The images, published by state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun, captured Kim inspecting a clothing and footwear exhibition alongside his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, and his regular retinue of senior officials. The photos emerged just hours after a China-based dissident living in the U.S. named Wanjun Xie — who self-identifies as chairman of the banned Chinese Democratic Party — spread an unevidenced claim that Kim had been transferred comatose to a Beijing hospital and ultimately succumbed to his condition.

    For analysts who closely track North Korean affairs, this wave of rumor is far from an unusual event. As one of the most closed and secretive nations on the globe, verifiable information about the inner workings of the Pyongyang regime and its leadership is notoriously scarce, creating ideal conditions for unproven speculation to spread rapidly.

    Beyond the photographic evidence contradicting Xie’s claim, multiple independent indicators cast major doubt on the rumor. Regional and international intelligence agencies have not recorded any of the preparatory actions that would logically precede a sudden leadership change: China has not increased security along its shared border with North Korea to prepare for potential instability or refugee flows, there has been no unusual uptick in activity at North Korean diplomatic outposts, and informal cross-border information networks used by North Korean defectors in South Korea have not picked up any chatter consistent with Kim’s death. South Korean intelligence officials also confirmed to Yonhap News Agency that they have found no evidence to back up the unsubstantiated death claims.

    This incident mirrors a pattern of false alarms around Kim’s health stretching back years. In 2020, a prominent North Korean defector claimed he was 99% certain Kim had died after cardiovascular surgery, a claim that quickly collapsed when Kim made a public appearance shortly afterward.

    Experts point to two core reasons why rumors about Kim’s health and status keep resurfacing repeatedly. The first is widespread uncertainty over the North Korean succession process. Unlike the carefully planned, decades-long transitions that brought Kim Jong Il to power after the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, Kim Jong Un’s rise to the top was rapid and untested, following his father’s sudden stroke in 2008 and death in 2011. Though Kim has spent years consolidating power by purging rivals, the question of who will succeed him remains open. South Korean intelligence currently assesses that Kim may be grooming his daughter for the role, as she has appeared increasingly often at high-profile state and military events, but she is estimated to be only around 13 years old, has never been formally named as heir, and would be the first woman to lead North Korea — all factors that add layers of uncertainty to the succession question.

    The second reason these rumors gain traction is that they are not entirely without plausible basis. Multiple assessments from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service have noted that Kim is overweight and a heavy smoker, lifestyle factors that increase his risk of cardiovascular disease, and heart and circulatory issues are a documented family health trend. A sudden leadership transition in North Korea would carry massive stakes for the entire international community: any sudden political crisis would raise urgent questions about control of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, the risk of regional instability, and potential humanitarian crises along the Chinese border. With roughly 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, any unrest directly impacts core U.S. security interests, making even unproven rumors newsworthy.

    North Korea’s status as an information black hole also makes it far easier for false reports to spread. Only a tiny inner circle of officials has regular access to Kim, and even the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies struggle to confirm information about the leader’s health or internal regime affairs. Many updates from open sources are framed as unconfirmed or probable rather than definitive fact, and the Pyongyang regime itself is widely suspected of deliberately allowing ambiguity to leak in order to obscure internal developments.

    Given this context, analysts note it is extremely unlikely that Xie — an individual with no established access to classified intelligence on North Korea — would have obtained accurate information about Kim’s death that professional intelligence agencies missed. Observers suggest Xie likely spread the claim to seek public attention or to embarrass China over its long-standing diplomatic ties to North Korea, a relationship that is already a matter of public record. Regardless of his motive, Xie is just the latest actor to exploit the persistent uncertainty surrounding North Korean leadership for their own ends.

  • Zelensky prepares for Oslo talks with US envoys as Rubio denies withholding intelligence

    Zelensky prepares for Oslo talks with US envoys as Rubio denies withholding intelligence

    In a high-stakes gathering aimed at resetting strained relations between Kyiv and Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have convened in Oslo, Norway, for critical talks centered on the future of Western support for Ukraine and diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion. Both leaders arrived in the Norwegian capital on Tuesday, with the meeting arranged at Zelensky’s explicit request through Norwegian and Finnish authorities, at what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre called “a critical time for Ukraine.”

    The talks come amid a sharp downward spiral in ties between Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump, whose public comments in recent weeks have openly questioned Zelensky’s leadership. Trump has gone so far as to state that Ukraine needs a new president and suggested that a third party should take over Ukraine’s negotiation mandate for any peace deal. The rift has deepened over mounting accusations from Ukrainian officials that Washington is withholding critical intelligence that would warn Kyiv of incoming Russian missile and drone attacks.

    Serhii Beskrestnov, Zelensky’s top military technical adviser, recently told the BBC that inconsistent access to U.S. early warning intelligence is directly costing Ukrainian lives. “Sometimes we receive this information before the attack, another time we do not,” Beskrestnov said, describing the pattern of inconsistent alerts as deeply concerning. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, currently on an official visit to India, has pushed back fiercely against these claims, dismissing the accusations as “scandalous” and “outstandingly outrageous.” While Rubio acknowledged that additional Patriot air defense interceptors requested by Ukraine have not yet arrived in the country, he denied Washington has intentionally withheld any critical military support from Kyiv. Unconfirmed reports emerging on Tuesday have added to tensions, indicating that formal approval for the transfer of more Patriot interceptors is still pending in Washington.

    Another major point of friction revolves around SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network, a critical infrastructure for Ukraine’s military and civilian communications on the front lines. Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators called for an urgent investigation into repeated service disruptions of Starlink across Ukrainian territory. Zelensky noted ahead of the Oslo talks that he had already held a “constructive discussion” with Rubio about the pressing need for consistent U.S. intelligence support, additional missile interceptors, and uninterrupted Starlink connectivity.

    The Oslo meeting is not a bilateral dialogue between the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations. Witkoff was joined remotely by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, while in-person and virtual attendees include Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and senior officials from the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Germany, the European Union, and NATO. Støre emphasized that the core goal of the facilitated talks is to steer the fractured U.S.-Ukraine relationship back onto “a more constructive path,” with the ultimate aim of reaching a “lasting and just peace” through diplomatic negotiations.

    Speculation is growing that Witkoff may travel to Moscow for talks with Russian officials after wrapping up his engagements in Oslo, though no official itinerary has been confirmed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian officials hope to arrange a meeting with Witkoff in the near future, adding that Moscow “greatly appreciates the mediation efforts of the American negotiators.” The contact comes just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with Trump to discuss the war, a conversation that was followed by Trump’s announcement that Russia would lift its ban on diesel exports to the U.S. and other global markets, ending U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel shipments.

    European leaders have openly voiced growing concern over inconsistent signals from the Trump administration on the Ukraine war. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Bloomberg TV on Monday that Washington has sent “mixed pictures and messages” on the conflict, noting that the U.S. has halted all funding for Ukraine’s defense since the start of 2025. “Europe and other countries are shouldering the burden now,” Merz said. “It’s really a big effort for our budgets, it’s really a big thing for the European Union, but we are doing that and we are trying to keep on doing that until this terrible war ends.”

    U.S. Vice President JD Vance further clarified the Trump administration’s stance in a recent television interview, saying that while Ukraine is a “partner in some ways” to the U.S., the two countries hold “divergent interests from time to time” — specifically calling on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. Vance added that the U.S. does not have a formal alliance with Ukraine, and he does not support Ukraine joining NATO, saying “we’re gonna work together on some things, but also we’re gonna be opposite on some things too.”

    As the talks get underway in Oslo, the outcome of the negotiations is expected to shape the future of Western support for Ukraine, the trajectory of diplomatic efforts to end the war, and the stability of the transatlantic alliance amid shifting U.S. foreign policy priorities.