Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, condemned on Sunday the “horrific terrorist attack” on Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia. “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrific terrorist attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh,” Netanyahu wrote in a social media post, adding that he extended Israel’s “deepest condolences” to the families of the victims.
A projectile hit a passenger terminal at the airport in Riyadh on Sunday, the day after a deadly missile attack on the facility carried out by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel group killed 12 people. An unidentified projectile hit terminal 4 at King Khalid international airport, causing a fire, according to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. Air defences also intercepted a cruise missile in the vicinity of the airport. It was the third attack on the airport in the past week. The escalating attacks threatened to draw more countries into the Yemen conflict and further widen the regional fallout of the US-Iran war, which has already spread to Lebanon and Iraq. After Saturday’s strike on Riyadh airport, the US president, Donald Trump, said he was weighing whether to join the Saudi military campaign in Yemen, telling reporters: “We’re going to look into it.” Saudi Arabia blamed the Iran-allied Houthis for the attack on Saturday, which killed 12 people and injured more than 300 – the deadliest attack on a Gulf country since the war with Iran started in March and an apparent escalation in the Houthis’ war with Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government that Riyadh sponsors. In response to the attack, Saudi authorities extended the closure of the airport and said schools would be moved online until Thursday. The Houthis claimed that Saudi Arabia struck the airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, Sana’a, on Sunday, without providing more information on damage or casualties. Videos circulated on social media showing travellers walking through debris-strewn ground in the Riyadh airport as sirens blared. Four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a US citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese were killed in the missile strike. On Saturday night, the spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki, said the coalition would “respond firmly” to the attack, offering few other details. The Houthis said a Saudi airstrike on Sana’a on Sunday hit a home and killed a child, as well as injuring six others. The Houthis doubled down on their threats on Sunday, warning airlines, passengers and staff to stay away from Saudi airports. The group said “the worst is yet to come” if Saudi military action in Yemen continued. “We renew our warning to all airlines, experts, employees, workers and travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our forces,” the Houthis said in a statement on X. Trump said he would speak to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on Saturday night, after the previous attack on the airport. The US has already been assisting with intelligence cooperation and targeting, with about 200 US military advisers stationed in Saudi Arabia to help with the campaign. Until now, the US has not directly taken part in fighting against the Houthis. Direct US involvement could lead the group to resume its targeting of ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait, through which about 10% of global maritime goods transit. It would also further entangle the US in Middle East wars as the American public grows increasingly frustrated with the continuing Iran conflict. Trump faces the prospect of midterm elections in November with an unpopular war and soaring prices at home, threatening his party’s performance at the polls. Saudi Arabia is already carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthi government’s health ministry said coalition airstrikes over the last six weeks had killed 91 Yemenis and wounded 168, 60% of whom it said were women and children. Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen launched a campaign to push the Houthis back from the areas the group conquered over the last month. Despite claiming initial successes, the government forces have not been able to loosen the Houthis’ grip over areas closest to the Bab al-Mandab strait such as Perim Island. The Egyptian woman killed in the attack on the airport was a flight attendant identified as Azza Ramzy, 28, who worked for the Saudi airline Flynas, according to Egyptian state-run TV. The Syrian woman was a widowed mother of four who had been living in Saudi Arabia for five years, a relative told the Associated Press. The Syrian embassy in Riyadh identified her as Buthaina Ahmad Oweida. Her niece, Nisreen Oweida, said her aunt was 56, from Syria’s northern Idlib province, and had left during the country’s civil war. She was living in Mecca and had been returning from a visit to her sister in Riyadh when she was killed, the niece said. The airport attack was met with a wave of international condemnation, including from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “Attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence,” von der Leyen wrote on X. “They are destabilising crucial global transport and energy nodes.” The increasing intensity of Houthi attacks against Riyadh and its energy infrastructure has brought more foreign involvement in the Yemen war. Governments are facing pressure over oil prices, already high from the US-Iran war since March. On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey issued a joint statement saying they would move quickly to implement their mutual defence pact, including by speeding up the deployment of military forces in the kingdom. The UK said it would assist with defensive military support of Riyadh, providing refuelling for aircraft working to intercept Houthi missiles into Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has asked for further assistance from France, Egypt, the UK and Pakistan as its stock of interceptor missiles are running low. The Houthis launched a military campaign to take Yemen’s Red Sea coast in early September after months of escalating tensions with the Yemeni government and its Saudi patron. The campaign interrupted years of relative calm in the country after a 2022 UN-brokered ceasefire froze frontlines between the Houthis and the government. Despite the Saudi-supported counteroffensive, the group seems to have held on to its recent gains. It is unclear what further Saudi military action would look like against the Houthis, who resisted years of strikes by an international coalition, as well as by the US. Saudi Arabia led an international coalition that intervened against the Houthis in Yemen in 2015 after the group took over Sana’a and toppled the Yemeni government. Recent Houthi attacks against Saudi energy infrastructure, as well as Houthi military advances, have pulled Saudi Arabia back into the Yemen war.
Donald Trump has announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, apparently without consulting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said the deal to stop long-range attacks was “news to me”. In a social media post, the US president claimed the two sides had reached an agreement. “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” he wrote on Truth Social. He offered no further details. Zelenskyy said he was surprised by the announcement but would agree to it if Vladimir Putin did the same. “If President Trump negotiated it with Putin – please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready and we will accept it,” the Ukrainian president told the Axios website. Earlier, Zelenskyy rebuffed Trump’s demand made on Saturday that Kyiv stop bombing Russian oil refineries. Zelenskyy said Moscow had to first halt its own “brutal” attacks on his country’s energy infrastructure. Any deal to end long-range drone strikes by Ukraine on targets inside Russia would have to be “reciprocal”, he said. It should be backed by “real guarantees” – meaning punitive measures against Moscow from Ukraine’s allies, including the US. This is not the first time Trump has announced an energy ceasefire deal. He made the same claim in September, which turned out to be untrue. Ukrainian officials said Russia was still bombing Ukraine on Sunday, with several energy sites damaged. The fast-moving row between Washington and Kyiv began on Friday when Trump announced he was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports. He said the move would reduce global and domestic fuel prices before next month’s US midterm elections. A furious Zelenskyy called the decision “weak” and said it would generate “billions” in extra revenue for Putin, enabling him to wage war “even more intensely”. An equally irate Trump said Zelenskyy should “damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries. Ukraine needed a “new leader”, he said on Saturday. Responding to Trump, Zelenskyy said it was up to Ukrainians to choose “one or another leader”. He told ABC News he was willing to accept Trump’s demands and to organise elections, but only if Putin agreed to a “total” 60-day ceasefire. The bitter public feud is the most serious between the US and Ukraine since last year, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. The New York Times has reported that US officials have offered the Kremlin lucrative economic incentives in exchange for a ceasefire. They reportedly include releasing billions in Russian sovereign assets that are frozen. The Trump administration also revisited a plan to sell parts of Russia’s energy company, Lukoil. The multibillion deal would benefit Middle Eastern investors, the paper reported, some with “business ties” to US negotiators. On Saturday, Trump berated Zelenskyy and said he had refused to make a deal to end the fighting. In response, Ukraine’s president laid the blame for Europe’s biggest war since 1945 on “Russia and Russia alone”. “It is possible to stop strikes on energy infrastructure as early as today, but Putin does not want to do so,” he said. Ukrainian officials point out that the White House is demanding Kyiv give up its most effective weapon, without demanding any corresponding concessions from Russia. In recent weeks, Kyiv has dealt a major blow to Russia’s economy, striking oil complexes, warehouses and datacentres. Russia’s own bombing campaign has been relentless. On Saturday it killed 23 people in the city of Zaporizhzhia, including four children, and hit a five-storey apartment block in the frontline town of Sloviansk. Zelenskyy said Moscow’s aerial campaign involved thousands of aerial bombs and jet-powered drones. It continued “unabated”, he said. The head of Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, said Trump’s “bullying” demand for Zelenskyy to quit had strengthened him at home “paradoxically”, after recent damaging corruption scandals. “Putin’s plan is to decapitate Zelenskyy and remove him as a wartime leader. Trump is siding with Putin,” Merezhko said. He added: “I’m afraid that behind this situation is Trump’s worldview. He wants to do business with Putin. For him, Ukraine seems like an obstacle to be removed. Both Trump and Putin wish to pressure us into capitulation.” Referring to the notorious 1939 agreement between Nazi Germany and the USSR, Merezhko said: “We are moving to a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and to a world of strongmen and spheres of influence.” Merezhko said Ukraine would continue to destroy enemy oil refineries, against US wishes, because they funded Russia’s war machine and acknowledged that a cutoff of US intelligence sharing with Kyiv – threatened by the Trump administration – would “blind” Ukraine’s air defence systems. “This would be an act of complicity with Putin’s genocide. It would mean more dead civilians and dead children,” he said. Ukrainian negotiators had been meeting in Florida with their American counterparts, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, when Trump announced the US was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel. Blindsided, the Ukrainians went home early. “It felt like a trap,” one stunned Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. On Saturday, Zelenskyy shored up support in a series of conversations with key European allies including the UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb. Downing Street said Burnham recognised the last 24 hours had been “difficult” for Ukraine and “reiterated his complete solidarity”. Downing Street said the two leaders agreed “to maintain pressure on Russia” and to strengthen the sanctions regime, despite Trump’s efforts to the contrary. “Russia should agree to an immediate energy ceasefire, ending its brutal strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and its attacks on shipping in the Black Sea,” a statement added. Speaking over the weekend, Zelenskyy said Trump’s decision empowered Putin and gave him “extra money for the war”, running into millions and “perhaps billions”. “It is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should act. And, in my view, it is a weak decision,” he said. Luke Harding’s Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest is published by Guardian Faber
At least 139 people, including 15 children, have died after a boat carrying 305 migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Another 84 people are still missing after the incident, which, according to survivors, happened near Guhere, north of the fishing town of Obock, during the night of 8-9 October when the boat was travelling from Djibouti to Yemen. Eighty-two people, all Ethiopian nationals, survived the capsizing, the UN agency said. It described the incident as one of the deadliest boat disasters recorded on a migration corridor between the Horn of Africa and the Arab peninsula known as the eastern route. “This is a devastating loss of life. Our thoughts are with the survivors and the families who have lost loved ones or remain without news of their relatives,” said Alexandre Coissac, the IOM’s chief of mission in Djibouti. The organisation is providing healthcare, psychosocial, food and other assistance to 64 survivors at its Obock migrant response centre. The IOM is working with local authorities to provide emergency assistance. Djiboutian authorities are continuing search and rescue operations, and local authorities are providing medical care to survivors and arranging burials for those who died. The eastern route is one of the busiest migration paths in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people a year, mostly Ethiopians and Somalis, use it to reach Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia. Some have been forced out of their communities by conflict and natural disasters, and others move to seek work and other economic opportunities. The route accounts for most of the migratory movement from the Horn of Africa. The other main ones are the northern route to north Africa and Europe, and the southern route to southern Africa. The eastern route is also one of the most dangerous globally, with some people dying from walking long distances in searing heat and others from the capsizing of boats that smugglers have crammed them on to in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Coissac said: “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the dangers faced by migrants along this migration corridor as they seek economic opportunities.” In 2025, more than 900 people died or went missing along the route, according to the IOM’s missing migrants project, while the number undertaking the journey increased by 18%. In March, nine people died and 45 went missing after a migrant boat capsized. This week’s tragedy shows the movement is happening despite fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group and Saudi-backed government forces for control of strategic heights on the Red Sea coast. The violence has forced more than 3,800 people to cross to Djibouti to seek protection, according to the country’s office for assistance to refugees and disaster victims (Onars).
The reckless missile attack on King Khalid international airport in Riyadh on Saturday did not just export the death and misery inside Yemen to Saudi Arabia, it also left Donald Trump forced to reconsider his diplomatic and political strategy designed to take him into the midterm elections next month. The US president’s plan had only been unveiled on Friday. He said it was the result of “a world problem” – spiralling diesel prices – which he blamed on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s attacks on Russian oil refineries. He was going to keep the political temperature down on his war of choice in Iran and its spillover in Yemen until after the midterms. In pursuit of this strategy, he claimed the Iranian blockade in the strait of Hormuz was in effect broken, producing figures on daily oil barrel exports to assuage the markets. As a further insurance he also claimed it was impossible to negotiate with the Iranians since there was no single leadership in Tehran. Saudi Arabia, in conjunction with Turkey, and Pakistan, were largely to be left to sort out the Houthis along the Red Sea. The fate of Yemen, the poorest country in the world according to the International Monetary Fund, was not going to shift votes in Kansas or Alaska. Now, after the Riyadh airport attack, it is doubtful, for a basket of reasons, that this anyway threadbare strategy, largely born of desperation, can hold. For all the talk of the Gulf becoming responsible for its own security, it is doubtful that Saudi Arabia can be left to fend for itself after the carnage in Riyadh. One of the the 12 dead is an American and there may be more among the severely injured. Something is clearly wrong with Saudi defences since the Houthis are firing rockets from 500 miles away, and they are reaching their target too often. The US has had a unilateral ceasefire with the Houthis since 2025, and once the hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis recommenced in the summer, the pact was quietly renewed. Trump has twice rejected Saudi appeals for help. Can he spurn them three times? The pressure to act as allies are expected to may prove overwhelming. But “the blame Zelenskyy, trade with Russia” strategy is anyway unlikely to work. The amount of additional diesel Vladimir Putin will put on the market is not enough to bring down prices at the pump. Russia accounted for about 12% of global diesel shipped by sea. Exports have fallen by about a third, according to calculations by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The deal has also reawakened Europe’s worst fears about Trump’s relationship with Russia only weeks after Congress had passed a sanctions package against Moscow authorising Trump to penalise buyers of Russian energy. Europeans know full well that the inflation problem helping to drive populism is caused by the Iran war and not by Zelenskyy’s tactics. The only question is who will say so. The former UK Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson did not hold back, writing: “It is sickening that the USA is now lifting sanctions on Russian fuel, and transparently ridiculous to blame Ukraine for the spike in prices that obviously began with the closure of the strait of Hormuz. Putin is murdering innocent Ukrainian civilians every day. The Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. And yet the White House is apparently determined to force American drivers to bankroll Putin’s slaughter.” The German education minister and a member of the CDU, Karin Prien, said: “For a few litres of diesel. What moral bankruptcy.” Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general and Trump ally, will this week travel to Estonia, one of the countries most supportive of Ukraine. He will have some explaining to do. Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, vowed that EU foreign ministers on Monday will impose the biggest package of sanctions in its history, and he, along with Sweden, now wants to revisit using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. What is worse, it looks as if the political damage to the Republicans caused by the Iran war is irrecoverable. Polls show the ship has sailed. The war has already been weaponised as a pocketbook issue by every Democratic candidate in every TV debate. Republican candidates, challenged to disown the war, are scrambling for the relative safety of identity politics. The Iranians are also trying to maximise the damage they cause in the strait of Hormuz, countering the Trump narrative that the blockade has been broken. Scenes of tankers on fire are proliferating. So Trump post-Riyadh needs to rethink. He can rejoin the war against the Houthis, ending the unilateral US ceasefire, but, if so, he knows from experience this will be costly. The first three weeks of the war against Iran cost $1n a day. Many of the US president’s advisers say he may as well also attack Iran, the Houthis’ backers, as Tehran expects him to do. The Iranian military nevertheless still believes it has escalation dominance, and what happened in Riyadh can be repeated across the Gulf. The alternative is that his team can negotiate discreetly and indirectly with Tehran as is occurring in Doha. Some Iranians are urging their leadership to seize the chance, arguing Trump is uniquely vulnerable in the run-up to the midterms. A deal could be done, including on uranium enrichment, but it would not be palatable for the US – or for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election chances. China and Russia are trying to sort out the Houthis diplomatically, but the Houthi objectives are broadening, while the south of Yemen is split about its future inside the country, a division that harms the country’s ability to be the ground component that Saudi Arabia needs to supplement its air-power dominance. Taiz, the third city of Yemen, is struggling to overcome a Houthi siege. The Saudis can deliver retribution, but retribution is not a solution to a decade-long civil war. So for the moment the twin Trump strategy – to park the Iran and Yemen conflicts while blaming Zelenskyy – is now so transparent, so morally craven, and in its own terms so ineffective, that it looks unsustainable. The only question is whether the strategy will be jettisoned by the president or instead just rejected by the American people at the ballot box.
The leaders of India’s Cockroach movement accused the Narendra Modi government of declaring “war with its own citizens” and vowed to continue with their protest after being released from police detention, as anti-government unrest rocked Delhi for a second day. The three leaders of the youth-led Cockroach Janta party (CJP) were taken into custody on Saturday when thousands were detained by police as authorities went to extreme lengths to prevent young people taking to the streets to protest. By Sunday morning, a magistrate had ordered that the three CJP leaders, Abhijit Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, be released on the condition that they would not “breach peace” for a year. In a social media post soon after his release, Dipke, CJP’s founder, pointed his criticism directly at the prime minister. “Modi, as PM, is an embarrassment to India. Never has this country seen a bigger coward and bully,” he said. Saturday’s protest was called by the CJP alongside student groups and civil society leaders to demand the resignation of India’s election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, who is accused of an “assault on democracy” by overseeing an exercise that has deleted 130 million names from India’s electoral roll. Kumar is accused of implementing the voter roll revision to help Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) entrench its power and to disenfranchise minority groups such as Muslims who are not traditionally part of the BJP’s voter base. Those who attempted to take part in Saturday’s demonstration were ruthlessly obstructed by a security crackdown, in which more than 25,000 police barricaded roads and the internet and public transport were shut down. More than 7,000 people were taken into police custody, many before they had even reached the protest site in the centre of the capital. Despite the heavy-handed police response, it was still an unprecedented display of dissent against the powerful Modi government, which has been notoriously intolerant of any political opposition or criticism over its 12 years in power. Several senior opposition leaders were among those who tried to protest and were detained. By Sunday, the centre of Delhi still resembled a high-security fortress, with roads blocked by barricades and tens of thousands of police and paramilitary still deployed. Supreme court judges have ruled that the government must restore internet and reopen the capital’s metro stations. Small groups of students and Cockroach supporters, many freshly released from police detention, again attempted to demonstrate in Delhi and were detained. Among those taken into custody for a second time was the student leader Neha Bora, whose repeated defiance in the face of the police crackdown has made her a figurehead of the movement. In a video she posted on social media after she was picked up by Delhi police, Bora showed a detention bus with metal grilles over its windows and four small “jail-like” compartments secured with latches. She said six to eight protesters were crammed into each of the compartments, leaving little room to breathe, and that male protesters were subjected to verbal abuse and physical violence. “So many troops, so much police presence, so much violence, abuses targeting mothers and sisters, caste-based slurs – why?” Bora said in the video. “Simply because you want to protect a thief, Gyanesh Kumar.” Marching alongside Bora was Surbi Yadav, 20, an undergraduate student at Delhi University, who said police detained her on Saturday morning. She accused police personnel of dragging her, injuring her arm and leg. “They treated us like animals. They pushed us into a bus and took us to a sports facility that had been turned into a detention centre,” Yadav said, while showing scars on her arms. “The police kept misbehaving with us on the way and warned us against taking part in the protests.” Yadav was released on Saturday evening. By Sunday afternoon, she was back on the streets with other students, holding a placard She vowed to return the following day and keep protesting until their demands were met. “We are not afraid any more. The government and the police will have to understand that,” she said. “They can use as much force as they want to silence us, but it will be futile. In fact, it will only backfire. Every day, more people are turning against this government because of the way it is treating protesters.” At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, the CJP leaders Das and Ranka condemned the police and government for turning Delhi into a “war-like situation” and reiterated their message of defiance that “this fight is on”. They added that it was no longer just about Kumar but also targeted at Modi and his home minister, Amit Shah. “The state is at war with its own citizens,” Das said. “An atmosphere of fear has been created in country, it’s clearly being done to save one person. We want to ask Modi and Shah, why are you trying to save Gyanesh Kumar?” There was no response from Modi to the accusations by the protesters. However, the BJP’s spokesperson, Gaurav Bhatia, said earlier that the voter roll revision was a legitimate exercise to remove dead and illegal voters and refuted any political interference. “These are baseless allegations being levelled by an irresponsible opposition,” Bhatia said. “The claim that democracy is being destroyed and that the constitution is being undermined has no basis and not an iota of evidence.” The weekend’s protests had drawn support from the leader of India’s opposition alliance, Rahul Gandhi, who has accused the Modi government of “vote chauri” or vote cheating through the voter roll revision. Gandhi was detained twice last week as opposition parties attempted to hold a protest in central Delhi calling for Kumar to resign. “Mr Modi does not understand that the game is over,” Gandhi said on Saturday. “We will ensure that Modi pays for the crimes he has committed against the country.”
A high-altitude desert plateau traverses Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. I am on the Chilean side, sitting in a Jeep along with two other researchers. The afternoon air is thin and brisk but the sun is piercing – a combination I am familiar with from years of living and travelling in South America’s Andean range. The landscape is a study in contrasts and contours: broad basins suddenly cut off by sweeping curves; flat expanses sliced by near vertical ascents. The Licancabur volcano looms large above us. Vegetation and humidity levels change rapidly with the rising altitude, bringing cooler temperatures, wetter air and denser plant life. We are driving to the Salar de Atacama – the Atacama salt flats – the largest of several dozen salt flats in northern Chile, and the third largest in the world. The brilliant white flat lies in a high basin 7,500ft above sea level, enclosed by the even higher Andean mountains to the east and the Domeyko mountains to the west. This striking landscape – the salt flat, the flamingos, and the neighbouring Indigenous communities – is under threat from a counterintuitive source: our efforts to save the planet from catastrophic climate change. Just beneath my feet is nearly one-quarter of the world’s lithium reserves, suspended in water saltier than the ocean. Lithium is essential to addressing the climate crisis. It is a key ingredient in the rechargeable batteries that play a starring role in eliminating carbon emissions from transportation and energy – the two highest emitting sectors. But extracting this lithium will come at escalating social and environmental costs. It is this dilemma that has brought me to the salt flat. When it does rain in the Atacama, it’s hard to overstate the intensity of the floods. I once found myself caught in what is called invierno boliviano, or Bolivian winter, a paradoxical name for a weather phenomenon that occurs during the southern hemisphere’s summer months. These rainy fronts originate in the Amazon and travel up the steep slopes of the Andean mountains, where Bolivia’s high-altitude winds then drive them up and over the ridges, until their torrents drench the Chilean high plateau. The scientific term for closed basins like the Atacama is “endorheic” (etymologically, “inside” and “flow”), for water can flow down into the Atacama basin but it cannot leave – except by evaporation. And this is the key to Atacama’s extraordinary lithium brine. After deluges like the one I experienced, water pours down the surrounding mountains; during the long dry spells between storms, it trickles down ravines from the precious mountain springs. As it flows, the water leeches lithium from the volcanic rock, picks up wind-scoured lithium dust, and carries it down to the nucleus, or centre, of the salar. This pooled surface water can only escape through evaporation, and with every drop of water that evaporates, the concentration of lithium in the remaining brine increases. Without the parched and sun-blasted Atacama’s extraordinarily high evaporation rate, lithium concentrations would not reach the “economical” levels prized by mining companies. Yet further lithium enrichment takes place out of sight. Remaining water gradually seeps into the ground, creating underground wells of lithium-rich brine. These wells are linked to complex hydrothermal systems. Then the heat of magma, especially near the Andes’ active fault lines, drives circulations of subsurface brine through fissures and porous geological strata, dissolving even more lithium out of the subsurface rock. The resulting brine deposits anywhere from four to 200 feet below the Atacama’s salty crust represent a potential bonanza to corporations. The Atacama’s singular coincidence of climactic, geological, geothermal and hydrological conditions makes it one of the least expensive places on Earth to mine lithium. And at each step, the process of “mining water” is intimately related to the very environmental conditions that formed the valuable deposits in the first place: miners pump the underground brine to vast evaporation ponds on the surface, where natural evaporation concentrates the brine yet again, increasing its lithium levels 40-fold, from approximately 0.15% to a whopping 6%. One cycle of the process can take 10 to 24 months, depending on brine quality and weather conditions. But this relatively low-cost, low-tech and supposedly low-impact extractive process nonetheless imperils the species and communities that call the Atacama desert home. And it is a microcosm of a planetary phenomenon: the expanding extractive frontiers of green capitalism. Everywhere that mines are dug up to provide raw materials for the energy transition, global climate action comes into conflict with local environmental protection. Mining always transforms, in many ways irrevocably, the landscapes in which it occurs. In remaking the earth in the image of extractive capital, physically and chemically separating what is deemed valuable from often toxic waste, mining evokes the image of terraforming so central to science fiction. But if terraforming is supposed to make a lifeless planet as verdant as Earth, mining, to the contrary, often leaves parts of Earth itself uninhabitable. While the environmental impacts of mining brine are less obvious to the naked eye than, say, mountaintop removal, extracting the lithium-rich liquid does in fact threaten a fragile, desert water system, along with the ecosystems and people that depend on it. The world’s oldest, driest desert may appear bereft of life. Ecologists call it a “polyextreme” environment, given its altitude and high direct solar radiation, its intense aridity, its huge diurnal temperature swings and its densely saline lakes. Those who study such polyextreme environments alternately describe them as low-diversity, with relatively simple webs of life, or astonishing in their biodiversity. It all depends on perspective. Plants and animals have evolved to make do with less and saltier water and, above all, the abundant energy of relentless sun. Extremity stimulates nature’s creativity. Artemia, or brine shrimp, thrive in hypersaline lakes that would be intolerable to most species. These tiny creatures are a key node in the plateau’s food chain. The brine shrimp eat bacteria and phytoplankton (microscopic plants) and are, in turn, food for Chilean flamingos. The flamingos, too, have adapted to the saline lagoons, evolving a filter in their bills akin to the lamellar membranes of oysters or whales to strain the microscopic plants and animals from the brine. The flamingos are a barometer of wetland health. As the birds travel the salt flats in search of food and mates (attracted through a courtship ritual of synchronised dancing), they link together the saline lakes into a web of habitats. And as these habitats suffer, so do flamingo populations: all three of the Atacama salt flats’ endemic flamingo species are in decline. The distinct drivers of this population loss reveal the compounding harms afflicting this fragile environment. Warmer average temperatures due to climate change evaporate surface water faster, reducing the blue-green algae essential to flamingo and Artemia diets. And the noise and traffic associated with mining operations appear to directly disrupt the flamingos’ breeding. Researchers are struggling to predict the overall direction of the multiple processes changing the Atacama. Science can only play catchup, documenting the impacts long after the harm has occurred. Lithium extraction’s threat to the liquid supporting its ecosystem is a slow-motion disaster, with planetary causes and consequences. This fact raises existential questions for the planet’s zero-carbon future. In the Atacama, global supply chains intersect with local food chains, webs of economic production undermine webs of life, and colonisation and postcolonial state-building erase ancient histories of continuous Indigenous settlement. And these unexpected entanglements are just the beginning of the story. In more ways than I could have imagined when I first stepped foot on the Atacama salt flat on that blustery day, this extractive frontier is a portal into our planetary future. The task of achieving a globally just energy transition is daunting. But it is possible. Achieving it requires understanding supply chains in reverse, starting from what we produce and consume and working backwards to their material inputs and, further still, to the relentless scramble for new extractive frontiers. Policies that promote alternatives to car use, reduce sprawl, encourage more compact batteries and require recycling would all reduce the scale of mining needed for carbon-free transportation. We can start by demanding supply chains organised around justice for everyone they touch, rather than profits for just a few. Just as any workplace is simultaneously a site of exploitation and locus of worker power, and any mine is at once a setting for extraction and a potential scene of community resistance, the supply chains of green technologies are both a means of domination – of people and of nature – and fertile ground for making the world anew. This is an edited extract from Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism by Thea Riofrancos, published by Icon Books at £20 in the UK. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
As raw milk becomes increasingly popular among Americans, there have been several recent disease outbreaks tied to the product, alarming public health officials. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban on sales of unpasteurized milk in the United States. More people have started drinking raw milk, doctors say, because of influencers who have touted its health benefits; Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, who until recently promoted it; and a lack of trust in government regulators. But there is no evidence for claims that it reduces lactose issues and can cure allergies and boost immunity, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and public health groups argue. And whereas raw milk producers say that pasteurization eliminates flavor and health benefits, public health officials say it keeps people safe. “I’m concerned about people consuming raw milk because while it isn’t a guarantee that you will get sick from it, there is a relatively high likelihood that you can get a pathogen, a bacteria that will make you sick,” said Petra Levin, a professor of biology at Washington University. US businesses started using pasteurization, a process in which milk is heated to destroy pathogens and bacteria, in the late 19th century. As more producers adopted the practice and regulators started requiring it, the country saw a dramatic decrease in the infant mortality rate. In 1987, the FDA banned the interstate sale and distribution of raw milk, but businesses were still allowed to sell it within their states, depending on their laws. During this century, more Americans started consuming raw milk and, over the last decade, many states have loosened their milk regulations. In 2024, raw milk sales increased by 17.6%, according to the market research firm Circana. Before becoming the health and human services secretary, Kennedy said on stage that he only drinks raw milk and vowed that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end”, including its “aggressive suppression” of raw milk. Once in office, he took a shot of raw milk with Dr Paul Saladino, a psychiatrist and author of The Carnivore Code – but to the dismay of some in the industry, Kennedy has now apparently stopped advocating for it. The Trump administration now instead promotes whole milk. Ben Beichler “fell in love” with milk cows while farming and, eventually, he and his wife started their own operation, Creambrook Farm, in Virginia. They now milk 150 cows and legally sell raw milk through a “herd share” loophole that allows consumers to buy a share of a cow. He describes the Covid-19 pandemic as a “massive gamechanger” for his business because people started thinking more about how they could protect themselves from getting sick. Plus, “for better or worse, I think there is a skepticism in society that didn’t exist pre-Covid, and people are willing to question things more than they used to. So that has made people question a lot of their dietary needs,” Beichler said. “I’m not necessarily saying that skepticism has been a good thing.” Since 2020, his sales have increased between 30% and 50% annually, he said. As evidence of raw milk’s benefits, Beichler and others point to studies such as a 2011 report in the Clinical & Experimental Allergy journal which stated that “consumption of farm milk may offer protection against asthma and allergy”. But the FDA states that advocates have misused the findings because about half of the farm milk in the study was boiled. Also, the authors stated that they could not evaluate the “effect of pasteurized vs raw milk consumption because no objective confirmation of the raw milk status of the farm milk samples was available”. “At this stage, consumption of raw farm milk cannot be recommended as a preventive measure,” the study authors stated. To ensure his milk is safe, Beichler said, his farm tests every batch at its laboratory and then sends samples to a third-party lab. He declined to provide its name but said he would provide it to customers who ask for it. His farm has only five-star reviews on Google. “An honest and wholesome family who can provide safe and nutrient dense milk to the many people who are drinking raw milk these days,” one review stated. Despite his belief in raw milk, Beichler said that “the consumer has to be judicious” about “where they are getting” it. This summer, more than 100 people became sick after consuming raw milk, and 11 were hospitalized, according to National Public Radio. An E coli outbreak this year in California, Florida and Texas was also linked to cheese from the country’s largest raw milk distributor, Raw Farm. Most of those who fell ill were children ages three and younger. Dr Brian Dawes, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University, said raw milk is especially dangerous for children because “they have weaker immune systems, less overall physiological reserves, so when they get these infections, they tend to get much sicker”. He supports a ban on raw milk. He said he also thinks public health leaders “have our work cut out for us to really regain public trust in the systems that have worked for milk for over 100 years, keeping people safe”.