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  • ‘Onion cartel’ in Philippines fined $28m for price shock

    ‘Onion cartel’ in Philippines fined $28m for price shock

    More than a year after a severe onion price crisis roiled household budgets across the Philippines and tested the new national administration, regulators have handed down the largest antitrust penalty in the country’s modern history to six companies linked to a collusive onion cartel. The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) announced Wednesday that the combined fine against the group of onion importers, cold storage operators, and shipping distributors totals 1.76 billion Philippine pesos, equal to roughly $27.9 million or £21 million – the biggest penalty issued by the agency since it was founded in 2016.

    The crisis unfolded between late 2022 and early 2023, when the price of onions – an irreplaceable staple in nearly every Filipino household and cuisine – surged to an unprecedented 800 pesos per kilogram. At that peak, the cost of a single kilogram of onions outstripped the country’s daily minimum wage and even surpassed the retail price of most cuts of beef and pork, a shocking shift that made headlines around the world.

    The sudden price hike triggered widespread disruptions across the food sector: many local restaurants removed onion-dependent dishes from their menus to avoid passing on exorbitant costs to customers, the vegetable became a prime target for cross-border smuggling rings, and it even gained unexpected status as a luxury item – with one viral case seeing onions used in place of flowers for a wedding bouquet. For then newly-inaugurated President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who had campaigned on a promise to rein in skyrocketing food costs for working-class families, the crisis created immediate political pressure to act. Marcos responded by approving emergency imports of onions, and publicly vowed to hold accountable those responsible for the artificial shortage, stating at the time that vulnerable Filipinos were facing hunger and deepened poverty because of the cartel’s actions.

    After a months-long investigation, PCC officials confirmed that the six accused companies controlled nearly half of all approved onion import clearances across the Philippines in 2020 and 2021. The commission found the group engaged in an illegal coordinated scheme to manipulate the market, controlling supply through aligned practices across importation, cold storage, and wholesale distribution to create an artificial shortage and drive up prices. A separate parliamentary investigation launched after the crisis also reached the same conclusion, confirming a cartel was behind the artificial price surge.

    The crisis ultimately abated in late 2023, when large local onion harvests entered the market, boosted supply, and pushed prices back down to stable, affordable levels. Today’s penalty, regulators emphasized, sends a clear message that anti-competitive behavior will not be tolerated in any sector of the Philippine economy, including the critical food space. The PCC added that beyond the civil fine, the firms and their executives could still face criminal prosecution through the Philippine Department of Justice, underscoring the gravity of the offense.

  • Gulf states have downplayed damage caused by Iranian strikes: Report

    Gulf states have downplayed damage caused by Iranian strikes: Report

    In a bombshell report published this week, news agency Reuters has uncovered widespread claims that Arab monarchies across the Arabian Gulf have deliberately hidden the true scale of infrastructure damage inflicted by a series of coordinated attacks attributed to Iran and its regional allied militias. The disclosure has thrown into sharp question the accuracy of official statements from Gulf governments about the security of their energy and strategic assets in the escalating regional conflict that followed a February 28 cross-border strike targeting Iran by the United States and Israel.

    After that US-Israeli strike, Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone operations against multiple Gulf states including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, while Yemen’s Houthi movement — an Iran-aligned group — has stepped up attacks on the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, in recent months. What makes the revelation more alarming is that the strikes deliberately targeted civilian and critical infrastructure, including energy processing facilities, oil and gas pipelines, and even a United Arab Emirates nuclear energy site, putting energy supplies and civilian lives at severe risk.

    Reuters’ assessment highlights a consistent gap between official narratives and on-the-ground reality across all affected Gulf states. The most high-profile discrepancy involves Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in the eastern city of Dhahran. After a Houthi drone strike, Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry downplayed the incident, claiming only a “limited fire” had broken out at the site. But anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the damage told Reuters that the facility suffered “extensive damage”: the top three floors of the building, including the executive office of Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, sustained severe structural harm, with partial ceiling collapse and all windows and doors blown outward by the blast force.

    The pattern of underreporting repeats across the region’s most strategic assets. At the UAE’s Barakah nuclear energy plant, a strike hit the roof of a critical electrical substation, forcing one of the plant’s four operational reactors to switch to backup emergency diesel generators to maintain safe operation. Two Gulf officials and one Iranian official confirmed to Reuters that Iranian operatives had detailed advance intelligence of the plant’s layout and the exact location of the substation, confirming the strike was a deliberate, precision targeting rather than an errant attack.

    In Qatar, a strike on the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility — one of the largest LNG production hubs on the globe that supplies a huge share of global energy demand — also showed sophisticated Iranian targeting. The strike hit specialized “cold boxes” that house the cryogenic cooling equipment required to convert natural gas into its liquid export form. Industry experts note that this custom equipment can take multiple months to manufacture and replace, making any damage to the facility a long-term disruption risk for global gas markets.

    No site demonstrates the gap between official claims and actual damage more clearly than the UAE’s Fujairah Port, a vital chokepoint for global oil exports that handles millions of barrels of crude and refined products daily. According to Reuters’ investigation, based on satellite imagery and on-the-ground sources, Iran struck the port multiple times, even launching follow-up attacks after the UAE completed repairs to damaged infrastructure.

    The first strike on Fujairah on March 3 left two large oil storage tanks burning for multiple consecutive days. A second strike targeted the port’s matrix manifold, a critical transfer system that connects 62 pipelines moving crude oil and refined petroleum products from onshore storage terminals to waiting shipping tankers. Emirati officials attempted to dismiss the damage from both strikes as nothing more than harm caused by falling debris from intercepted missiles or drones — but Reuters found this explanation directly contradicted independent damage assessments.

    Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston, described the damage to the manifold system as a critical blow to the port’s core function. “This is a wound to the brain and heart of the facility,” he told Reuters, noting that the official explanation of incidental debris damage was not credible given the nature and location of the strike.

    Follow-up strikes in March damaged the port’s second intact matrix manifold, forcing the UAE to launch an urgent round of emergency repairs to restore full export capacity. While UAE officials announced the port was fully operational by the end of March, Iran launched another drone strike on the site in May, targeting the same pipeline network that had been damaged in the initial March attack. According to export data cited in the report, shipments of refined petroleum products from Fujairah did not return to pre-attack levels until September, more than six months after the first strike.

    The report’s findings are expected to deepen concerns about regional security and the vulnerability of critical global energy infrastructure amid escalating tensions between Iran and Western-aligned regional states, while also raising new questions about transparency around security incidents that can have global economic impacts.

  • Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s cell phone confiscated, family members subpoenaed

    Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s cell phone confiscated, family members subpoenaed

    A deepening federal investigation into Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has sent shockwaves through U.S. political circles, with new details emerging about subpoenas, evidence gathering, and the Trump administration’s aggressive broader agenda targeting immigration and naturalization. The Minnesota Star Tribune first reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), now led by Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, has issued subpoenas to several of Omar’s immediate relatives — excluding her husband and daughter — as part of an ongoing inquiry into alleged immigration fraud.

    The development comes just days after federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations carried out a pre-dawn raid at Omar’s Washington D.C. residence this Monday, a search that has now been confirmed resulted in the seizure of her cell phone, personal laptop and all other electronic devices held at the home.

    Omar, a Somali-born refugee who arrived in the United States as a child in 1995 and made history as the first hijab-wearing Muslim member of Congress, has been one of Donald Trump’s most persistent political targets since her election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. With just weeks remaining until her November 3 re-election bid, the investigation has raised urgent questions about political interference in law enforcement.

    The core of the DOJ’s current inquiry centers on the circumstances of Omar’s naturalization: she obtained U.S. citizenship at age 17 through her late father, who had already completed his own naturalization process. Investigators are now probing whether Omar was actually 18 at the time of her naturalization, a distinction that would have required her to submit a separate citizenship application independent of her father’s. For years, Trump has repeatedly called for investigations into Omar’s citizenship status, even going so far as to baselessly claim she married her own brother to fraudulently secure immigration status. Omar has repeatedly and forcefully denied all such allegations. Despite this, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have spent the past year publicly demanding the inquiry move forward, with Trump infamously leading crowds at his political rallies in chants of “send her back” targeting the congresswoman.

    On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous senior U.S. officials, that the current administration is actively building a legal case to revoke Omar’s U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. The reported plan is part of a much broader push by the Trump administration to strip citizenship from more people than any modern U.S. administration. Just last week, the DOJ announced an unprecedented move to initiate citizenship revocation proceedings for 40 people. Historically, such actions have been extremely rare, with most presidential administrations targeting fewer than five individuals per term. This crackdown aligns with Trump’s long-stated goal to deport as many as one million people annually from the U.S., regardless of whether their immigration status was obtained through legal or irregular pathways.

    While Omar has been one of the most vocal critics of Trump’s policy agenda, she is far from the highest-profile opponent of the administration within Congress. Even many Republican lawmakers have pushed back on the investigation, arguing it is a deliberate distraction from pressing domestic issues that matter most to American voters. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a former Republican House member who has become a prominent critic of Trump, posted publicly on social media platform X Wednesday saying she shares the view held by many of Omar’s supporters that the probe is a political distraction.

    “Me and Ilhan Omar are far apart policy wise. I’m pro life, she’s pro abortion. I’m pro 2A, she’s pro gun control. And on and on,” Greene wrote. “But can someone tell me how pretending to get ready to deport Ilhan Omar is going to bring gas down under $2, make health insurance freaking affordable, make a family’s weekly grocery bill make sense, and stop sending our beloved military off to fight for another fucking foreign war??? People are so sick and tired of the bullshit.”

    This is not the first time Omar has faced federal scrutiny: The New York Times has confirmed that during Democratic President Joe Biden’s prior administration, federal officials launched an investigation into Omar’s personal financial dealings back in 2022. That inquiry ultimately stalled and was closed after investigators failed to turn up sufficient evidence to support any charges.

  • Canada PM warns ‘stakes are high’ as Alberta separation vote nears

    Canada PM warns ‘stakes are high’ as Alberta separation vote nears

    As Canada stands on the brink of a historic electoral test of national unity, Prime Minister Mark Carney has launched a two-day campaign blitz across Alberta, urging residents to reject regional separation and cement the province’s place within Canadian Confederation in Monday’s upcoming independence referendum. With polls showing a narrow majority leaning toward remaining in Canada, Carney warned Thursday that the stakes of the vote could not be higher, stressing that complacency among pro-unity voters could upend the expected outcome.

    Speaking to a energized crowd of more than 7,000 supporters at a pro-unity rally in Calgary, Carney characterized the referendum as mis-timed at a moment of global economic volatility. He called on Albertans to deliver a clear, decisive rejection of separation, rejecting arguments that polling alone guarantees a pro-union outcome. “Turnout will determine the outcome,” Carney told the gathered crowd, echoing warnings from pro-union organizers who fear low voter enthusiasm could hand separation advocates an upset victory.

    The referendum, scheduled for October 19, was called earlier this year by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith after a grassroots separatist movement collected nearly 300,000 signatures on a petition demanding a binding vote on provincial independence. Smith, a Conservative whose core political base includes a vocal bloc of separatist supporters, has publicly backed retaining Alberta’s place in Canada but framed the vote as a necessary step to amplify Albertans’ voices on long-simmering grievances against the federal government.

    Separation advocates center their campaign on the argument that Alberta, a landlocked province rich with oil and gas reserves, has been systematically sidelined by federal policymakers in Ottawa despite the massive economic contribution its energy sector makes to national revenue. Over the past decade of successive Liberal federal governments, separatists claim, national climate and environmental policies have been prioritized over the growth of Alberta’s key fossil fuel industry, and an independent Alberta would be able to retain far more of its resource wealth for provincial investment and public services.

    Pro-unity campaigners, by contrast, argue that separation would carry catastrophic near- and long-term economic consequences for the province. An independent Alberta, they warn, would immediately inherit billions in new sovereign debt, and widespread economic uncertainty would drive away major business investment and push thousands of skilled jobs across the newly created border into remaining Canadian territory. Carney and other pro-unity leaders have drawn explicit parallels between the Alberta referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote, cautioning that a vote to leave carries a host of unforeseen economic risks that will take generations to reverse.

    In a nod to the legitimacy of long-held frustrations among many Albertans, Carney acknowledged in his Thursday speech that “the frustrations that many Albertans have felt are real.” To address those grievances, the prime minister has already moved in the lead-up to the vote to demonstrate federal support for Alberta’s energy sector, announcing plans to fast-track regulatory approval for a major new oil pipeline connecting Alberta’s oil fields to Canada’s Pacific coast. Carney has framed the pipeline project as a demonstration of national solidarity, noting it will help Canada diversify its export markets at a time of ongoing trade tensions with the United States driven by tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

    Before wrapping up his two-day trip, Carney is scheduled to hold a second pro-unity rally on Friday in Edmonton, his hometown, after spending Thursday morning meeting with local business owners and pro-unity volunteers working to boost voter turnout. On the same day, Premier Smith will join Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre – another prominent backer of retaining Alberta’s place in Canada – at a separate pro-unity event in Calgary. Separation advocates, for their part, are planning a final get-out-the-vote rally in Edmonton on Saturday to shore up support in their strongest regional strongholds.

    As of this week, early voting data points to extraordinarily high voter engagement: more than 450,000 Albertans have already cast ballots either through early in-person voting or mail-in ballots, a total that already exceeds the number of ballots cast in Alberta’s most recent provincial general election. While most public opinion surveys continue to show a majority of respondents favor remaining in Canada, both campaigns have spent the final stretch of the race working feverishly to turn out their base, knowing that even a small shift in turnout could reshape the future of Canada.

  • US police identify remains of man found in barrel in shrinking reservoir

    US police identify remains of man found in barrel in shrinking reservoir

    Receding water levels driven by climate change-fueled drought have unearthed a decades-old mystery at Lake Mead, the United States’ largest man-made reservoir, and investigators have finally identified the human remains found in a corroded barrel near the shores of the lake more than a year ago.

    After years of exhaustive investigation, law enforcement officials in Nevada have confirmed the identity of the victim found stuffed inside the rusted barrel as Edward “Buddy” Lelburian Jackson. The remains were first discovered in May 2022, when falling water levels triggered by a record-breaking severe drought exposed the barrel that had laid hidden for decades. When authorities recovered the barrel, they found Jackson’s body with a single gunshot wound to the head, indicating he was the victim of a homicide.

    For more than a year, the victim remained a John Doe, until investigators recently used DNA testing to trace Jackson’s identity and connect with his surviving family members, according to a statement from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Homicide detective Robert Price addressed widespread public speculation that the killing had ties to organized criminal activity in the Las Vegas area, noting that at this stage of the investigation, no evidence has emerged to link Jackson’s death to any known criminal groups or the mob.

    “At this point in our investigation, we don’t have information to support those theories,” Price said during a press briefing Thursday.

    Investigators believe Jackson was shot and killed sometime in the 1980s, when he was between 55 and 59 years old. A native of Arkansas, Jackson was known for his frequent cross-country travels, particularly across the Western United States, and had previously lived in both California and Utah. He had a prior arrest record in Salt Lake City, Utah, but Price confirmed that Jackson had no known connections to Las Vegas and was never filed as a missing person. His extended family in Arkansas told authorities that Jackson was a habitual traveler who would disappear for long stretches and reappear without warning.

    “He would travel the country. He would show up when he showed up,” Price explained.

    Beyond the victim’s clothing, no other evidence — including the fatal bullet — was recovered from the barrel, complicating the ongoing investigation into Jackson’s killer. Authorities are still working to trace potential associates of Jackson and determine a clear motive for the shooting. Price noted that Jackson was not known to be a gambler, which makes tracking down people who may have known him decades after his death a particularly challenging task.

    Jackson’s identification marks the fourth set of human remains recovered from the receding waters of Lake Mead since drought conditions began worsening. Two of the previous sets of remains were determined to be victims of drowning, while the third remains unidentified and the cause of death remains unexplained. Law enforcement has warned for months that as drought continues to push water levels lower, more human remains are likely to be discovered as areas previously submerged for decades are exposed.

    Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water to more than 20 million people across the Southwest from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, has seen steady water level decline since 2000. Climate scientists confirm that human-caused climate change has accelerated the rate of drying in the region, worsening multi-decade megadrought conditions across the American West.

    This phenomenon of long-dormant discoveries emerging from receding waters is not unique to the American Southwest. This year alone, drought conditions across Europe have exposed long-submerged remnants of past conflicts. In Budapest, Hungary, the receding waters of the Danube River revealed the remains of two German World War II soldiers alongside a mostly intact Wehrmacht motorcycle, while other WWII wreckage, including a broken ship hull, has been found near Prahovo, Serbia in recent months.

  • Three children and a teacher killed by 16-year-old at Oregon primary school

    Three children and a teacher killed by 16-year-old at Oregon primary school

    A horrific act of gun violence has left four people dead at an Oregon elementary school, in a tragedy that has shaken the small community of Bend. On Thursday afternoon, a local 16-year-old male suspect launched a deadly attack at Silver Rail Elementary School, leaving three children and one educator dead, and two more people fighting for their lives in hospital.

    According to official statements from Bend Police, the teen attacker forced entry into the campus by firing multiple shots at the school’s locked entry doors. Police chief Mike Krantz confirmed that a civilian community member spotted the suspect entering the school building, followed him inside and confronted the gunman, fatally shooting him before law enforcement could fully secure the scene. Additional law enforcement details clarify that the first 911 call came in at 12:59 local time, initially reporting an unknown shooter opening fire on a vehicle outside the school. Crime scene photos released by authorities show a red truck marked with multiple bullet holes. Within just three minutes of the first report, at approximately 1:02 pm, the gunman was confirmed dead.

    The victims of the attack include three children aged 5, 8, and 11, and one teacher who was killed during the rampage. A 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were rushed to a local hospital and remain in critical condition, as of the latest official update. Investigators have not yet confirmed whether the 16-year-old suspect had any prior connection to the school, and authorities have withheld the suspect’s name pending the completion of the ongoing investigation.

    Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Steven Cook released an official statement expressing the community’s overwhelming grief following the shooting. “We are stunned and heartbroken by this senseless tragedy,” Cook said. “No words can adequately express the grief our community is experiencing.” This latest incident adds to the long-running national debate over gun control and school safety in the United States, where mass shootings at primary and secondary education campuses have become an increasingly frequent public safety crisis.

  • NYC comptroller backtracks on buying Israeli bonds by saying they aren’t a good investment

    NYC comptroller backtracks on buying Israeli bonds by saying they aren’t a good investment

    New York City’s top financial official has backed away from a high-profile campaign pledge to purchase Israeli government bonds, reversing course over mounting concerns about economic instability and credit risk in the region.

    Mark Levine, a Democratic incumbent who made the purchase of Israeli bonds a central plank of his successful 2025 election campaign, confirmed his decision to The New York Times in recent comments, emphasizing that his choice is rooted purely in fiscal prudence rather than political opposition to Israeli policy.

    “I always said this would be based on financial considerations only, not politics — that’s still my position,” Levine stated. “But as of now, we feel that because of some technical challenges, and because of financial considerations, this is not an investment that we can make right now.”

    The debate over whether New York City should invest pension fund assets in Israeli bonds first erupted into public view in 2023, when then-Comptroller Brad Lander chose not to reinvest in new Israeli bonds after the city’s existing holdings matured. At that time, the city’s pension fund held roughly $39 million in Israeli bonds, which delivered consistent annual returns of approximately five percent. Lander’s decision stopped short of full divestment, however, as the city did not liquidate its existing positions.

    When Levine launched his campaign for comptroller last year, he positioned himself as an avowed supporter of Israel and made the purchase of new Israeli bonds a key campaign promise, setting up an immediate ideological and policy clash with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has publicly called for full divestment from Israel over its military conduct in the Gaza Strip. Notably, the mayor lacks the legal authority to override the comptroller’s independent decisions on pension fund bond purchases, meaning Levine’s final call stands regardless of city hall’s position.

    Levine, who speaks Hebrew and has longstanding personal ties to Israel, has not shied away from commenting on Israeli domestic politics. In his recent comments, he shared that he feels a deep personal connection to the country but also expressed heartbreak over its current political climate, echoing widespread international criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government.

    Levine’s decision comes against a backdrop of shifting credit ratings for Israeli sovereign debt. In 2024, credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Israeli bonds, labeling the asset an “increasingly risky investment.” While Moody’s has since revised its overall outlook for Israel upward, the technical credit rating of Israeli bonds still remains below the level it held before the October 7, 2023 attacks.

  • Israeli spyware targeted ‘hundreds of millions’ through zero-click ads, researchers find

    Israeli spyware targeted ‘hundreds of millions’ through zero-click ads, researchers find

    A groundbreaking investigation from Canada’s independent digital watchdog The Citizen Lab has exposed a sweeping global cyber surveillance campaign that leverages mainstream digital advertising infrastructure to deliver the notorious Israeli mercenary spyware Candiru to millions of devices, entirely without any action from the target. This marks the first publicly confirmed instance of zero-click mercenary spyware being distributed via targeted online advertisements, according to the organization’s official report published Thursday.

    The investigation details that Discover-Tech, an Israeli firm that operates under the facade of a legitimate digital advertising company, actually acts as a front for major mercenary spyware operators, including Candiru, which recently rebranded to Integrity Labs following a 2025 acquisition by unsanctioned U.S. private equity firm Integrity Partners. Through its advertising operations, Discover-Tech placed targeted ads that forced millions of devices across dozens of countries to connect directly to Candiru-controlled servers, enabling covert tracking and deep digital reconnaissance of affected users.

    Notably, the report confirms that between 2024 and 2025, at least 45 devices connected to Al Jazeera Media Network were specifically targeted in a string of these zero-click ad attacks commissioned by Discover-Tech. The company controls a proprietary platform called Controlium that enables its mercenary spyware partners to de-anonymize users, collect unique device fingerprints, and automatically deploy malware infections the moment an ad loads on a user’s device. No click, no interaction, and no action from the target is required for the infection to succeed, making these attacks nearly invisible to the average user.

    Over a four-month monitoring period, Citizen Lab researchers recorded Discover-Tech’s ads running across nearly 200,000 distinct websites and mobile applications for both Android and iOS operating systems, spread across dozens of nations. Beyond its partnership with Candiru, the investigation also links Discover-Tech to two other known mercenary spyware actors: Intelos and Bindecy.

    Candiru first drew international regulatory attention in 2021, when the U.S. government added the firm to its trade blacklist over findings that it engaged in activities that threatened U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. Candiru is not the first Israeli spyware firm to face such sanctions: it was added to the blacklist alongside the infamous NSO Group, another major mercenary spyware provider that has been linked to global surveillance of journalists, activists, and government officials.

    This is not Candiru’s first documented targeting of independent Middle Eastern media outlets either. In 2021, it was revealed that the firm’s spyware had been used to target the independent news outlet Middle East Eye (MEE) and dozens of other regional websites. A 2020 investigation by cybersecurity firm ESET uncovered a multi-wave Candiru surveillance campaign running between April 2020 and August 2021 that focused heavily on targets with connections to the Middle East, particularly organizations and individuals focused on the conflict in Yemen.

    A particularly troubling revelation from the new investigation is that Discover-Tech was listed as a certified, approved vendor by both Google and IAB Europe, the leading trade association for the European digital advertising industry. The company was able to place its malicious ads across major global ad networks including Google, Russian search giant Yandex, and ad platform Beeswax.

    Wolfie Cristl, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, emphasized the systemic risk this campaign exposes to the global digital ecosystem. “The way online advertising works today is a systemic security threat,” Cristl told Reuters, noting that the risk extends equally to governments, private sector entities, civil society groups, and ordinary individual internet users.

    Confiant, a New York-based advertising security firm, released a parallel independent report on the campaign the same day as The Citizen Lab. Jerome Dangu, Confiant’s co-founder, told reporters that Discover-Tech was deploying as many as 10 million malicious advertisements every day across the globe. Dangu explained that standard industry data-sharing practices, known as cookie matching, allowed the firm to track users even after they left websites or apps that ran its ads. “Very likely hundreds of millions of people would have been touched by Discover-Tech,” Dangu said.

    Following the publication of the two research reports, major digital ad platforms including Google, IAB Europe, and Beeswax have already moved to cut off Discover-Tech’s access to the global digital advertising market, halting its ability to run new malicious ads for the time being.

  • Are student protests being manipulated ahead of France’s presidential election?

    Are student protests being manipulated ahead of France’s presidential election?

    France’s long, storied tradition of mass public protest is once again taking center stage across the country, as three straight weeks of high school blockades and street demonstrations have widened to include union workers and veteran activists from the decade-old yellow vest movement – opening deep rifts over systemic inequality, fiscal policy and political gridlock just six months before the nation’s next presidential election.

    For years, displays of public discontent have shaped French political life: angry farmers have lobbed manure at municipal buildings to push back against costly regulatory burdens, while frustrated youth in marginalized suburban neighborhoods have clashed repeatedly with riot police. Today, that legacy of protest has been reignited by thousands of secondary school students, who have blocked campus entrances and marched on city streets to voice anger at crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, understaffed schools and stark educational inequity that disproportionately harms low-income communities in disadvantaged suburbs. This Saturday, a new wave of hundreds of demonstrations is scheduled across the nation, with planned participation from labor unions and prominent figures from the 2018 yellow vest movement, which staged a year of nationwide protests against soaring living costs.

    France’s Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has sparked controversy this week by alleging that the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), led by presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is deliberately manipulating student anger to gain electoral traction ahead of 2027’s presidential vote. “Members of LFI are instrumentalising the high school movement for their electoral advantage,” Lecornu stated this Wednesday, accusing the party of encouraging unrest while performing perfunctory condemnations of violence that erupt during protests. “This hypocrisy damages France.”

    For many protesting students, however, Mélenchon’s platform – which includes a new wealth tax, lowering the voting age to 16, and direct engagement with underfunded schools that most national candidates ignore – has made him a popular figure, with chants of “Mélenchon for President!” common at marches. Prominent yellow vest activist Jérôme Rodrigues, who helped lead the 2018 movement, has publicly urged supporters to join Saturday’s protests, framing the unrest as a fight for basic economic dignity. “Anger has no political party. An empty fridge has no political party,” Rodrigues said in an Instagram video, adding that protesters demand the ability to “live decently, no longer have to count every cent, and no longer have to choose between eating and driving.”

    On the ground in Paris, student protesters say their grievances stretch far beyond electoral politics. Three 17-year-old students blocking their high school entrance in Paris’ 3rd district told reporters that while their campus already suffers from crumbling walls, overcrowded classes and a shortage of teachers, conditions are far worse for peers in poor suburban districts. “France likes to speak of égalité,” they said, “but the reality is the poor here are prejudiced against, while the rich benefit.” Though none will be old enough to vote in next spring’s election, the teens expressed widespread distrust of the political establishment, saying large-scale protest is the only tool left to force authorities to listen to young people. Intergenerational support for the movement is widespread: many mothers have joined marches in solidarity, taking turns to coordinate between student protesters and police after earlier demonstrations saw hundreds injured, including a 15-year-old boy in Lens who lost a hand when police used stun grenades. The French interior ministry has denied accusations of police brutality and has since suspended stun grenade use at high school protests. One participating mother, 37-year-old Gwen, said she does not mind her son missing weeks of classes, noting “It’s a far better education for him to wake up to his civic duty and to fight for what is just in society.” Another 17-year-old protester, Lola, whose mother participated in the historic 1968 May student protests, carried a joint placard with her mother reading “revolution is the most beautiful expression of humanity.” “Now it’s my turn. No point in waiting for the presidential election in France. We want change now,” Lola said.

    Beyond the immediate standoff over student grievances, the unrest lays bare deeper structural crises facing France, the European Union’s second-largest economy: spiraling public debt, a deeply fragmented parliament, a revolving door of prime ministers (six in the last five years alone) and widespread public disillusionment with the status quo. Leading economists have pushed back against widespread speculation that France is approaching a Greek-style 2012 debt crisis, noting that the nation retains the fiscal capacity to address budget shortfalls. “The markets recognised already in 2024 that we would have a budgetary problem after snap elections left parliament deeply divided between three opposing political blocs but they also realise France is a big country with the ability to raise taxes if necessary,” explained Anne-Laure Delatte, a tenured CNRS researcher at Paris Dauphine University and a leading commentator on French public finance. Delatte compared France’s current fiscal strain to the 2023 UK crisis under then-Prime Minister Liz Truss, noting that the crisis was short-lived because markets recognized the UK had the tools to correct course. For France, she said, “it would be painful, but a 4% increase in VAT would raise the 120bn euros needed to plug government debt. Investors know that.” She added that the European Central Bank would likely intervene if France’s fiscal troubles threatened to spill over into other EU economies. Even so, policy moves like tax hikes or cuts to welfare and education spending would likely trigger even deeper public anger, given the widespread discontent already visible on French streets.

    Delatte argued that no new president, regardless of political affiliation, will be able to resolve France’s underlying challenges without systemic constitutional change. The Fifth Republic’s system concentrates power in the presidency, leaving parliament to block initiatives rather than build cross-bloc consensus, she explained. “We need a system where MPs have more power and should learn consensus and coalition-building from our European neighbours,” Delatte said, adding that underfunded, unequal education systems drag on long-term economic growth by stifling innovation and productivity. “Our current system of inequality in schooling and low wages for teachers means we lose out from benefiting from the best and brightest across French society. That is not only unfair on individuals but our economy ultimately loses out on innovation and productivity.”

    Centrist French senator Anne-Catherine Loisier, a member of the Centrist Union in the upper parliament and vice president of the parliamentary group for sciences and technology, said immediate progress can be made by reallocating existing education funding and decentralizing power away from Paris. “Our budgets are limited, but you don’t necessarily need more money. You can make improvements by redistributing funding better. Education is a regional competence in France. Every region should take a look at local needs and address priorities accordingly. That action can be taken immediately,” Loisier said, echoing calls for greater regional power that mirror similar pushes in the UK. “France has traditionally been very Paris-centric but so much could be improved by decentralising the country. My France isn’t broken. We need to give power back to the people. Local governments can look people in the eye directly, so voters feel they have power over their own future, rather than politicians handing them their fate from up high. That way I hope we can restore voters’ – and students’ – faith in politics.”

    The promise of reform is a common refrain from all political factions ahead of next year’s election, but polling across France and much of Europe shows public trust in the political establishment continues to decline, leaving the outcome of the upcoming election – and the future of France’s growing protest movement – far from certain.

  • US judge bars Trump from punishing rights groups for liaising with ICC

    US judge bars Trump from punishing rights groups for liaising with ICC

    A U.S. federal judge has dealt a legal blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on groups cooperating with the International Criminal Court (ICC), issuing a preliminary injunction this week that shields two American human rights organizations from potential civil or criminal liability for their work supporting ICC investigations.

    Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York ruled that the two groups, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG), had demonstrated a strong likelihood of proving that the Trump administration’s executive order violated their First Amendment rights to free speech. In his ruling, Furman emphasized that any interruption to First Amendment freedoms, even for a short period, constitutes irreversible harm to constitutional protections. The judge’s order specifically blocks any punitive measures targeting the two groups that are rooted in their protected speech activities.

    The legal challenge was launched in July, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio published an op-ed declaring the administration’s intent to “dismantle the ICC brick by brick.” A separate, ongoing lawsuit was filed a month later by four additional U.S. human rights groups, which argue that Trump’s sanctions on the ICC are rooted in a manufactured national emergency with no factual basis.

    DAWN, which was founded by the late Jamal Khashoggi, a former Middle East Eye columnist murdered in 2018, confirmed this week that it will continue its work after the court’s ruling. The organization has submitted multiple filings to the ICC that document alleged atrocity crimes committed by Israeli officials in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as the complicity of U.S. officials in these alleged crimes. DAWN’s legal team explained that the group’s work is not limited to supporting ICC investigations, but also aims to build broad public pressure to hold state actors accountable to international law.

    The court ruling does not, however, reverse the Trump administration’s broader sanctions regime targeting the ICC itself. That regime was established 18 months into Trump’s presidency via Executive Order 14203, which authorized the imposition of sanctions on any foreign individual that supports ICC investigations into U.S. or Israeli nationals suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The order also criminalized providing or receiving any “service” connected to sanctioned individuals or entities connected to the ICC. The administration justified these measures by claiming the ICC’s investigations represent a national emergency, arguing the court has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. or Israeli citizens during armed conflict.

    The U.S. has a long history of ambivalence toward the ICC: while it participated in the court’s founding negotiations and signed the Rome Statute in 2000 under President Bill Clinton, it never sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, over longstanding fears that U.S. military personnel and officials could face prosecution for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump has been openly explicit that his administration’s actions are specifically intended to punish the ICC for its investigations targeting Israel. To date, the administration has used Executive Order 14203 to sanction ICC prosecutors and judges, three leading Palestinian human rights groups (al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights), and United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who investigates human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    When DAWN and TAAG first filed their lawsuit, their legal team argued that the executive order’s vague definition of “service” gave the government broad power to penalize almost any activity that benefits sanctioned parties. The groups warned they could face prosecution for routine activities such as filing legal briefs with the ICC, sharing evidence, or even collaborating with Palestinian human rights groups or Albanese. Prior to the court ruling, the threat of legal action had already forced many organizations to self-censor, halt work related to the ICC and cut professional ties with sanctioned individuals and groups. Joe Pace, the attorney representing DAWN and TAAG, described the Trump administration’s actions as a “textbook infringement on the First Amendment,” noting that the Constitution does not allow the government to dictate what topics American citizens can discuss with domestic or foreign parties.