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Search for single-tusked elephant after 22 killed in India rampage

Forest officials in India are on the hunt for an elephant that has killed more 20 people in a days-long rampage through the eastern state of Jharkand. Since the beginning of January, 22 people have been killed by a single-tusked elephant that has been tearing through forests and villages in West Singhbhum district of Jharkand. The attacks have mainly taken place at night as the elephant has entered small villages. The first victim was a 35-year-old man in Bandijhari village on 1 January. Since then, those trampled to death or suffering fatal injuries have included a couple and their two young children and a forest department official. The region has been put on high alert and residents living in the Chaibasa district, where the elephant was last spotted, have been warned to stay away from the forest areas and not go out at night. Aditya Narayan, divisional forest officer of Chaibasa district, said they believed a young male elephant had been separated from his herd and become “extremely violent”. Narayan said three attempts had been made to tranquillise the elephant but all had failed so far. “Our team is on high alert, and efforts to tranquillise it will be resumed. Villagers have been strictly advised not to go into the forests and to remain vigilant,” he told local media. The elephant has been covering almost 30km a day and more than 100 forest department personnel have been assigned to the search operation to track him down but without success. Wildlife specialists from three other states have also been drafted in to try to locate the elephant, but officials said the animal’s volatility and erratic trajectory through the forests made it hard to monitor his movements. The rampage comes as deadly human-elephant conflict is on the rise in India, attributed to rising deforestation, food and water scarcity and increased residential encroachment in areas that were once elephant corridors. Roughly 10% of the areas that used to be elephant corridors – safe routes for their migration – no longer exist. Elephants are also dying in high numbers from incidents such as electrocution, train hits and retaliatory poisonings. Over the past five years, more than 2,800 people in India have died from deadly encounters with elephants. In states such as Andhra Pradesh, AI early warning systems have been introduced in some villages to detect elephant intrusions and protect villagers.

Tuesday briefing: What has sparked Iran’s latest wave of protests – and what might happen next

Good morning. At least 648 people have been killed by Iran’s security services during nationwide demonstrations, with more than 10,600 arrested. The unrest is widely seen as the most serious challenge to Iran’s Islamic Republic in recent years. People took to the streets for reasons ranging from rising economic hardship to long-simmering anger over political repression and civil rights. Together, they represent a hardening of public opinion against the state. After a brutal government crackdown, Donald Trump has threatened US military intervention, and warned that any country that does business with Iran will face a tariff rate of 25% on trade with the US. But what sparked this latest wave of protests, and what might happen next? To discuss that and more, I spoke to Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a researcher of the international politics of the Middle East at St Andrews University. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories Iran | Donald Trump is “unafraid to use military force on Iran”, the White House said on Monday as the regime faced continued unrest across the country. The Iranian foreign minister claimed protests were “under total control”. Neurodiversity | The NHS is overspending by £164m a year on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) services, with an increasing amount going to unregulated private assessments that can be unreliable, a Guardian investigation has found. Elon Musk | The UK media watchdog has opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the use of the Grok AI tool to manipulate images of women and children by removing their clothes. UK politics | Nadhim Zahawi was rejected for a peerage by the Conservatives just weeks before he defected to Reform UK, Tory sources have told the Guardian. Zahawi was announced on Monday as Reform’s newest recruit despite having claimed Nigel Farage made “offensive and racist” comments about him. Sovereignty | Chinese officials have been pushing “legal advice” on European countries, saying their own border laws require them to ban entry to Taiwanese politicians, according to more than half a dozen diplomats and officials familiar with the matter. In depth: ‘There is a deep well of discontent’ The initial protests broke out on 28 December. Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi tells me they were started by electronics vendors in the Tehran’s bazaars, before quickly spreading across the country. The government initially struck a conciliatory note, acknowledging people’s grievances and right to protest, but that quickly evaporated. Videos of security forces storming hospitals to beat doctors and patients spread rapidly, shocking and enraging the country. And on Thursday, Iran went dark. Authorities shut down the internet and blocked international calls, cutting the country off from the outside world. The government has since threatened death sentences for protesters, whom they accuse of acting on behalf of Israel and the US. “There is a deep well of discontent,” Sadeghi-Boroujerdi says. “Iran’s got a water crisis, which has been completely mismanaged. It’s got horrendous levels of air pollution, to the point that elderly relatives of mine can’t even go outside in Tehran. And there are electricity shortages and cuts because the infrastructure hasn’t been adequately maintained.” These things are compounded by significant economic deterioration, he adds. Inflation is over 40%, with food inflation surpassing 70%. The cost of essential goods is also dramatically rising; for example, bread has seen an inflation rate of 110%, which disproportionately affects the poorest segments of the population, who rely on it as a dietary staple. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi says, however, it would be wrong to suggest that these protests are down solely to economic reasons. “There is an economic dimension to this, but it is also a profoundly political one.” *** A long history of protest There has been a long history of social movements and protests in Iran, particularly during the Islamic Republic, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi explains. The most famous before this was the women’s rights protests, which bloomed in 2022 after the killing of the Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini; and the Green movement of 2009, which called for democratic reform following a disputed presidential election. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi described the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement as not only centring the experience of women and the Kurdish community in Iran, but also offering a “more positive vision for a democratic, more egalitarian, less patriarchal society, addressing questions of ethnic oppression, which are longstanding in Iran as well”. The movement’s demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the Islamic Republic. The UN estimated that 551 protesters were killed, and thousands were arrested. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi tells me of the particularly disturbing use of metal pellets that were shot into the crowds, and blinded young women. But the violent suppression didn’t completely extinguish the movement, and the government was forced to concede significant ground on the question of mandatory veiling. “There are now remarkable scenes of women walking around cities without wearing their hijab,” Sadeghi-Boroujerdi says. “Mandatory hijab is not completely off the agenda, but the movement made significant gains here and the government was forced to backtrack in a way which we’d never seen previously.” *** A crumbling regime Sadeghi-Boroujerdi argues the Islamic Republic is weaker now than at any point in its history, after a decade of compounding pressure. He traces the decline back to the time of “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s oil exports, financial assets and more, that were partially lifted during Barack Obama’s presidency after the signing of a nuclear deal, but returned in 2018 when the Trump administration pulled out of the deal. Last September, the UK, France, and Germany (the “E3”) followed suit, triggering widespread UN sanctions against Iran for the first time in a decade. Over time, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi explains, sanctions have not just weakened the state, but “hollowed out Iranian society”. That process has driven what he describes as a cycle of austerity, shrinking state provision and “a form of authoritarian neoliberalism”, while also entrenching a “corrupt, unaccountable oligarchy” that thrives under sanctions. “The results have been mass impoverishment, but not just of the rural poor. The middle class has also been hollowed out in Iran in very significant ways,” he says. “Close family members who were middle class and had a relatively decent life have been pushed into poverty.” Iran’s regional strategy has also unravelled, says Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, pointing in particular to Tehran’s intervention in Syria’s civil war, to shore up the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad. This ultimately backfired. “The fall of the Assad regime marked a watershed moment,” he says. “It defeated the regional policy that Iran had been pursuing since the mid-2000s to work with various allies in the region, including non-state actors such as Hezbollah, in order to have a degree of deterrence, but also advance its own goals in the region.” That collapse has left Iran dangerously exposed. “Iran was really just trying to do everything to avoid a regionalisation of the conflict after 7 October, simply because they knew that they can’t actually confront Israel and the US in a conventional war.” But Assad’s fall, the weakening of Hezbollah and the aftermath of the Gaza war emboldened the US and Israel, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi suggests, which culminated in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last June, in which the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Iran was seen as uniquely vulnerable,” he says. “Internally, the society is brittle, and regionally, it’s severely weakened. It hasn’t been so isolated since the revolution itself.” He continues: “I would say it’s now in an even worse state. In the context of the revolution, it could rely on mass mobilisation and esprit de corps from the people. But today, there is mass discontent and hatred of the regime.” *** A crisis of governance Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is not surprised that protests have once again broken out in Iran. “I thought it was inevitable,” he says. “They are experiencing a crisis of governance.” Trump claimed on Sunday that Iran’s leader had reached out to him and proposed negotiations. The US president has openly said he is considering “very strong” military action against Iran’s ruling regime. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi says it is unclear what will come from any such discussions with Trump. He points to the limited power of the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been cast as a reformist and has struck a different rhetorical tone, but is “extremely weak” in practice and “not able to govern the country effectively”. Ultimate authority still rests with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, particularly on foreign policy and the nuclear programme, where support for Hezbollah has long been a red line. While Sadeghi-Boroujerdi isn’t sure anything as brazen as the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela is possible in Iran he says “they could potentially assassinate leading regime figures like they did in the 12-day war in June”. “Venezuela is also instructive because it shows that even the Trump administration wasn’t interested in massively destabilising the country and trying to impose opposition leader Maria Machado as the head of the new government.” There has been speculation in Persian-language political circles about a possible deal from within the system, with insiders willing to give Trump what he wants and sideline hardliners. That scenario is difficult, yet possible, he thinks, though there is little evidence it is happening. What strikes him instead is the silence of Iran’s political establishment. Former presidents, including Hassan Rouhani, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the reformist Mohammad Khatami, have stayed quiet, and none have backed the state’s claim that the unrest is simply a foreign plot. “A lot of the political elite are pretty unhappy with the situation,” he says. Some protesters, in Iran and across the diaspora, have called for the return of the Shah. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the authoritarian monarch deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution, died in 1980. He was first removed in the early 1950s, before returning after a US- and UK-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected Mohammad Mosadegh and reversed the nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry, only to ultimately be deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution. But the former ruler’s son, Reza Pahlavi, has increasingly appeared on international media, presenting himself as a potential alternative to the current regime. Sadeghi-Boroujerdi argues that support for exiled figures such as Pahlavi is driven less by belief than by exhaustion. “There’s sort of abject desperation in people,” he says. He also points to years of foreign-funded Persian-language media promoting “a revisionist history of the Pahlavi era”, recast as a lost golden age and embraced by younger generations who never experienced it. “There’s by no means any consensus on this,” he says, noting that some protesters left demonstrations after hearing pro-Shah slogans. Iran, he adds, remains “a very politically diverse society”, with long traditions of socialism, liberalism, nationalism and communism that persist, even if they are suppressed. “These people don’t just disappear,” he says. “They exist. Their children come of age. They have their own politics.” What else we’ve been reading Journalist Paulo Antonio Paranaguá uses images from the turbulent continent of Latin America (such as Mujeres por la vida protesters in Chile, above) to weave a history of the region, covering colonisation, slavery and dictatorship. Andrei Netto speaks to him about his latest work. Martin Belam, newsletters team Mindy Meng Wang describes her father’s three-day funeral in China – filled with paper effigies and ritualised crying – as “completely shocking and disorienting”. A decade later, she processes that intense experience on stage in a widely acclaimed opera. Aamna Author James Nestor has called breathing the missing pillar of health, pointing out how many people suffer from asthma, snoring, sleep apnoea and so on. Emine Saner interviews him. Martin After the Texas bathroom ban took effect in December, a transgender music teacher faced a terrifying choice: quit or continue using the men’s bathroom and see his school hit with a six-figure fine. He speaks movingly about why he was forced to quit. Aamna Keza MacDonald describes playing through the pain of brachial neuritis and tussling for 40 hours with 2025’s most difficult video game – Hollow Knight: Silksong. Martin Sport Football | Liverpool beat a gutsy Barnsley side 4-1 in the FA Cup with Dominik Szoboszlai opening the scoring but letting the visitors back into the game with an error. Macclesfield’s reward for the greatest FA Cup upset is a home draw with another Premier League side, Brentford, in the fourth round. Winter Olympics | The USA’s five-time Winter Olympian in skeleton, Katie Uhlaender (pictured above), has accused Canada’s team of depriving her of a place at next month’s Milan-Cortina Games by manipulating a qualifying event. Football | Midfielder Lucas Paquetá was asked not to play for West Ham in the FA Cup at the weekend, and wants a move away from the relegation-threatened club to join Flamengo. The front pages “ADHD care costs soar as NHS turns to private sector” is an exclusive in the Guardian. The Times has “UK’s troops set to swoop on Kremlin’s shadow fleet”. “China embassy’s secret threat to City” – the Telegraph got hold of unredacted plans and found a “hidden chamber” near buried fibre-optic cables bearing London’s financial secrets. The Financial Times splashes on “Former Fed chiefs attack ‘emerging market-style’ investigation of Powell”. The i paper goes with “UK under-16s could be banned from social media within months”. The Mail ropes the attorney general into its top story: “Fury over Labour payout to Hermer’s Guantánamo client”. The Express demands “Tell truth on ‘fantasy’ cost of net zero push”. “Crash! Gangs walloped” is the Metro’s way of greeting London’s reduced homicide rate. Today in Focus Is this the end of the Iranian regime? Protests have rocked Iran, a brutal crackdown is under way and Trump has threatened to intervene. Ellie Geranmayeh on a dangerous moment for the country’s leaders Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Studying horticulture has given Ellen Smith a place to put her mind completely away from the daily grind. “Having something that’s just fun has been huge,” she says. After years of dabbling in gardening in veggie patches and share houses, Smith enrolled in a free course in horticulture. One night a week and Saturdays are now spent learning plant ID and permaculture. “It’s a different way of seeing the world,” she says. “You get these lightbulb moments – and suddenly everything’s growing.” Smith has started helping friends and family with their gardens, and trying new things in hers. “I have high hopes for this year’s veggie harvest.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Ukraine war briefing: Oreshnik missile sparks anger at UN security council

The US and Britain have condemned Russia for dropping a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine. At an emergency meeting of the UN security council, Tammy Bruce, US deputy ambassador, called the Lviv strike a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation”. Britain’s acting UN ambassador, James Kariuki, called the attack “reckless”, adding that “it threatens regional and international security and carries significant risk of escalation and miscalculation”. Russia claimed the Oreshnik targeted an aviation repair factory. Ukraine has not confirmed what was hit but said the missile struck during a wider attack using drones and other rockets. The rarely used, multiple warhead Oreshnik missile is thought to be in limited supply – Ukraine’s military and special forces claim to have destroyed at least one of them on the ground in Russia. Observers have rated the two Oreshnik strikes so far on Ukraine as largely political and symbolic, with dummy warheads probably used, and any damage caused by their sonic boom and physical impact rather than live explosives. Analysts have questioned whether the Oreshnik is accurate enough to deliver non-nuclear bombs, which have to be more closely targeted than nuclear warheads to be effective. Russian forces launched attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv early on Tuesday, killing at least four people in Kharkiv, according to its mayor, Igor Terekhov, and injuring another six. In the southern city of Odesa, residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, said Sergiy Lysak, the regional governor. Kyiv on Monday buried medic Sergiy Smolyak, 56, who was killed in a drone attack as he rushed to rescue residents from a housing block that Russia struck minutes earlier in a massive attack on the Ukrainian capital on Friday. “He was very kind, always calm and even-tempered. He saved so many people,” said Ryta Dorosh, a nurse who worked with Smolyak before the war. Russia has bombed two more civilian ships transporting food products in the Black Sea, according to Ukraine. “An enemy drone struck a Panamanian-flagged tanker that was waiting to enter port to load vegetable oil. Unfortunately, one crew member was wounded,” said Ukrainian regional development minister Oleksiy Kuleba. “There was also an attack on a ship flying the flag of San Marino, which was leaving the port with a cargo of corn ... This is further proof that Russia is deliberately attacking civilian ships, international trade and maritime safety,” he added. Odesa regional governor Oleg Kiper said the attacks happened around the Chornomorsk port on the southern Ukrainian coast. Last year was the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has announced. Conflict-related violence in Ukraine killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in 2025, a 31% rise in the number of victims from 2024. A US-linked investor group has won the rights to mine Ukraine’s Dobra lithium deposit, Kyiv has announced. The consortium, Dobra Lithium, is owned by TechMet and Rock Holdings. The New York Times has reported that Ronald S Lauder, a billionaire friend of Donald Trump, is among the investors. TechMet is backed by the US government, according to the US International Development Finance Corporation.

Marine Le Pen’s appeal against embezzlement conviction to begin

The French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen will face a fresh trial on appeal on Tuesday over the embezzlement of European parliament funds in a case that will determine whether or not she can run in the 2027 presidential election. Le Pen, 57, who leads the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN), was considered to be a contender for next year’s election until she was barred from running for public office last March after being found guilty of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam. Le Pen appealed, alongside 10 of the 24 party members who were convicted last year, and now faces a new trial which will run until 12 February. The verdict and sentence, expected before the summer, will determine Le Pen’s political future and whether she can make a fourth presidential attempt next year. If not, she would be replaced by her young protege and party president, Jordan Bardella, 30. Bardella appears to have benefited from Le Pen’s legal drama. Polling by Verian for Le Monde and L’Hémicycle published over the weekend found that 49% of French people thought Bardella had the greatest chance of winning the election, compared with 18% for Marine Le Pen. An Odoxa poll last autumn found that Bardella would win the presidency no matter who his opponent in the second round was. Analysts have cautioned that, with candidates from across the political spectrum yet to be decided, it is too early for a clear picture of how the 2027 election race may shape up. Le Pen has said she is innocent and still wants to lead France. She has attacked what she called a “tyranny of judges” who wanted to stop her running in a presidential race she said she could otherwise win. She told La Tribune Dimanche last month: “There was a time when you could take a bullet. Now you can take a judicial bullet. In reality, that means your death.” But she has also recently begun speaking of Bardella as a clear alternative if she can no longer run for president, telling the newspaper: “Jordan Bardella can win in my place.” She said whatever the outcome, her party would dominate and its “ideas will survive”. Judges last year ruled that Le Pen was “at the heart” of a carefully organised system of embezzlement from 2004 to 2016. Taxpayer money allocated to members of the European parliament to pay their assistants based in Strasbourg or Brussels was instead siphoned off by the party, which was then called Front National, in order to pay its own party workers in France. The staff in France had no connection to work undertaken at the European parliament. The loss to European funds was estimated at €4.8m (£4.2m). Le Pen was found guilty last March and given a five-year ban from running for office, effective immediately. She received a four-year prison sentence, with two of those years suspended and two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was also ordered to pay a €100,000 fine. There has been speculation about what length of sentence Le Pen may receive if she is found guilty on appeal, and whether she could still run for president. The five-year ban on running for office that is in place now began on 31 March 2025. If an appeal court sentenced her to a one or two-year ban on running for office, this will have ended by March 2027, allowing her in theory to run for president in April 2027, the expected date for an election. The RN’s choice of presidential candidate will depend on the verdict of the appeal, so will not be announced until this summer at the earliest. Le Pen’s sentence prompted anger among political figures on the international populist right. Donald Trump called it a “witch-hunt” by “European leftists”. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Trump officials had held internal discussions about sanctioning French prosecutors and judges who had been involved in last year’s trial and sentencing of Le Pen. The US state department denied this, calling it a “fake story”. Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, the president of the Paris judicial court, said last week that any move against a French judge would “constitute an unacceptable and intolerable interference in the internal affairs of our country”. Maud Bregeon, the French government spokesperson, aid last week that there was no proof of any international interference but that the government would remain vigilant.

An ecosystem of smuggled tech holds Iran’s last link to the outside world

For most of Iran, the internet was shut off on Thursday afternoon – the most severe blackout the country has seen in years of internet shutdowns, coming after days of escalating anti-government protests. For a very small sliver of the country, it is still possible to get photos and videos to the outside world, and even to make calls. The Telegram channel Vahid Online on Monday posted photos of dead bodies lying next to a street in Kahrizak, on the southern outskirts of Tehran; on Sunday, it shared a video of Iranians chanting “death to Khamenei” at a funeral. Some of these videos and messages are transmitted through an ecosystem of online tools designed to bypass censorship – among them Telegram proxies, a decentralised messaging service called Delta Chat, and a browser called Ceno, said Amir Rashidi, an Iranian digital rights expert. By far the most significant part of this system are Starlink terminals, which connect to the internet via thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and have been smuggled into Iran en masse over the past two years. Those who are using them risk their lives. There are about 50,000 Starlink terminals now in Iran, said Rashidi; other reports put this number at up to 100,000. The users of the service – which is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX – are a tiny fraction of Iran’s overall population of more than 90 million people. While multiple people – even a whole apartment block – might be able to connect to the internet via a single Starlink terminal, the number of total users in the entire country is at most in the hundreds of thousands, said Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network observability and intelligence platform. They hold Iran’s last tenuous link to the outside world. Very little information, at least electronically, appears to be leaving the country, except for minimal traffic from businesses and individuals whitelisted by the regime. Across Iran, authorities are hunting for Starlink terminals – jamming whole neighbourhoods using tools developed for electronic warfare, and flying drones over rooftops to search for telltale satellite dishes, say sources. Under a law passed in 2025, possessing a Starlink terminal in Iran can be interpreted as espionage for Israel and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. “They have basically criminalised Starlink to the extent that they’re saying in the law [that] if you use Starlink it’s the equivalent of conducting espionage operations for Israel and the American CIA,” said Rashidi. It is unclear how many terminals are still operating, and how many have been confiscated, he added. The tools Iran appears to be using to jam the terminals are military-grade, similar to those used to jam drones on the frontlines of Ukraine, said Rashidi. They are expensive and energy-intensive, capable of knocking out a certain radio frequency within a given area, but can only be used locally and cannot blanket the country. “It’s not cheap. It’s something you’d find in a military arsenal, and there’s only a few types of suppliers,” said Madory. For now, the few who have smuggled Starlink terminals can connect online, although in neighbourhoods with heavy jamming it is nearly impossible to do more than send messages. The tech-savvy among them are using VPNs to disguise their presence; others are simply hauling their terminals from place to place to avoid detection. While Starlink users can communicate for now, Iran could choose – though it would be difficult – to track them down. “Depending on how much effort the Iranian government wanted to put into it, they could trace the signals that use the particular frequency those terminals have to use,” said Madory. “You’re kind of announcing yourself.” For those without a terminal, an announcement on a state-linked Telegram channel has given a preview to the potential future of the internet in Iran. The IRIB news agency yesterday published a list of all internet sites that would now be available in Iran. These included domestic search engines, domestic maps and navigation services, domestic messaging apps, and even a domestic streaming service – an Iranian version of Netflix, said Rashidi, with only government-approved videos. All of these sites are part of Iran’s effort to create a national internet, said Rashidi: a skeleton version of the web that is significantly more restricted than even China’s, managed by the government and virtually unconnected to the outside world. That effort has been under way since the Rouhani administration, and now appears to be working, he said. What this could mean, said Madory and Rashidi, is that Iran’s internet as it was may not come back. “There are rumours,” said Rashidi. “Some people are saying that if things go back normal, there won’t be the internet. There will be only the national internet.” “They’re gearing up for the long run, for this to be the way things are for an extended period of time,” said Madory.

Russia working to circumvent sanctions to ensure India oil imports continue

Russia is already working to circumvent the latest US sanctions to ensure India can continue to import high levels of cheap Russian crude oil, according to industry analysts. Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, India has become the world’s second largest purchaser of Russian crude oil, which has been heavily discounted due to the impact of western sanctions. US-India relations have plummeted in recent months as Donald Trump has attempted to coerce India into halting its reliance on cheap Russian oil, accusing it of bankrolling Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. In August, Trump hit India with an punitive 25% tariff on imports into the US over their purchase of Russian crude. However, India refused to back down, maintaining that its purchase of Russian oil was a sovereign issue and that India’s energy policies would not be dictated by third countries. Trade negotiations between the two countries have since failed to reach any agreements. Last week, the Trump administration once again upped the ante on India with threats to impose 500% tariffs and withdraw from several India-led global initiatives over ongoing Russian oil purchases. It came as questions have been raised over the effectiveness of the latest US sanctions intended to disrupt the flow of cheap Russian oil to India. From the end of November, US sanctions were brought in to target any companies or refineries that purchased oil from Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil exporters and the biggest sellers of oil to India. Figures showed it has had an initial impact, with India’s imports of Russian oil dropping from an average of 1.7m barrels of Russian oil a day, mostly bought from Rosneft and Lukoil, to roughly 1.2m barrels a day in December – a decrease of around a third. However, industry experts have cast doubts that these sanctions marked the end of India’s dependence on cheap Russian crude in the long term. Even after the sanctions, four out of India’s seven biggest oil refineries are still primarily running on Russian oil. There are already indicators that Russia has begun reorganising its supply chain to allow countries such as India to circumvent the US sanctions. In a notable loophole, as long as the crude oil is supplied by a company which is not Rosneft or Lukoil, then the refinery is not subject to US sanctions. Export data shows several new Russian oil exporters had emerged by December, likely intended to act as shadow middlemen between the Russian oil giants and refineries in countries such as India. “It looks like the new players are emerging, which is a sign that Russia is already trying to reorganise the supply chain,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, the head crude oil analyst at Kpler. “Obviously the Russians are not going to sit and just watch the sanctions take effect, they will try to bypass them as much as they can.” Falakshahi said these new companies were already beginning to dominate exports and it was likely just a matter of “two or three months until the full supply chain gets reorganised and most of the barrels then get supplied by companies which are not Rosneft or Lukoil”. So far, the Indian government has issued no direct mandate to state or private refineries on Russian oil, only encouraging them to act in the best interests of their operations. During a visit to India in December, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, vowed shipments of Russian oil to India would remain “uninterrupted”, in defiance of the US. The low price of Russian oil is hard for countries such as India, which imports 90% of its oil, to turn away from. After the US sanctions, the discounts on Russian crude have dropped even further, making them $9 or $10 per barrel cheaper than oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq, presenting a significant bargain for India’s refineries. “For the companies that are still willing, buying Russian oil is a risk worth taking because it would represent savings of almost $4bn over a year,” said Falakshahi. “We expect that imports, at least by India’s public sector, will soon return to the levels seen previously.” He was echoed by June Goh, a senior oil market analyst for Sparta Commodities. “The discount is just too attractive for the Indian refiners not to buy the oil,” she said. Goh said this expectation had also been reflected in the response from the global oil market. “Initially, when things blew up, we saw oil prices rising quite significantly,” she said. “However, we have now seen prices falling off. The market just doesn’t believe that this sanctions enforcement will likely take place in a big way.” One exception has been Reliance, India’s biggest private oil company and previously the largest buyer of Russian oil. Since November, the conglomerate publicly declared it would no longer import Russian crude into its Jamnagar refinery and had an “impeccable record” of abiding by sanctions and January marked the first month of no Russian crude imports. It appears this is in response to the US sanctions but also EU sanctions preventing Russian-origin oil processed in a third country being allowed into the bloc. The EU is one of Reliance’s largest export markets for diesel and jet fuel and therefore violating the sanctions could present a heavy risk to their business. But as Reliance seeks an alternative to Russian crude, analysts said Trump’s recent actions in Venezuela and the US capture of Nicolás Maduro could present a well-timed opportunity for the conglomerate. According to reports, Reliance is among the companies in talks with the US for authorisation to resume purchases of Venezuelan oil, which India had previously exported before sanctions were brought in. In a statement, a Reliance spokesperson said they would “consider buying the oil in a compliant manner”.

‘The real ringleader’: the Venezuelan security chief with a $25m bounty on his head

His nickname is the Octopus, he hosts a TV show called Hitting it with a Sledgehammer and many Venezuelans consider him the real power in the land. Diosdado Cabello runs the regime’s security apparatus and is perhaps the most feared, reviled and, in some quarters, revered government figure, with influence to rival that of the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. As interior minister, Cabello controls the police and prisons and after three decades at the heart of Chavismo his influence – or tentacles – also stretch across the ruling socialist party and state enterprises. With Donald Trump demanding Venezuela’s obeisance, the Caracas regime’s fate depends in part on whether Cabello, 62, retains his authority – and whether he uses it to bow to Washington or attempt a fightback. Since the US raid in which Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted on 3 January, Cabello has patrolled Caracas with armed men and wielded a Fred Flintstone-style bludgeon on his TV show, known in Spanish as Con el Mazo Dando. The US has reportedly put Cabello on notice that he will be the next to fall unless he does its bidding. Andrés Izarra, a former government minister who now lives in exile, believes Maduro’s abduction has undermined Cabello and that he will bow to the US. “Diosdado is a walking zombie,” Izarra said. “He’s been left with his pants down.” The failure of Venezuela’s security apparatus to protect Maduro leaves Cabello little choice but to follow the lead of Rodríguez, and her brother, Jorge, the head of the national assembly, who have cooperated with the Trump administration, said Izarra. “He just was totally overrun. I mean, he is the security minister. And they took away the head of state under his nose. I mean, what the fuck? He has no agency. He has no power.” A US indictment and $25m (£19m) reward for information leading to Cabello’s arrest further restricts him, said Izarra, who has known him for many years. “He has a gun to his head. Either he does what the Rodríguezes do, or he’s going to be taken out. It’s very clear that the CIA is all over Venezuela right now [and] it won’t take much from them to take him out if needed.” For those who loathe the interior minister, that is a happy prospect. “We’ve always thought that Maduro was a mannequin incapable of taking decisions and that Diosdado was the one who actually made the decisions,” said a resident of 23 de Enero, a Caracas neighbourhood. “A lot of people around here are saying: ‘I hope they get this damn Diosdado – this guy’s the real ringleader.” It is a grim irony that after years of rivalry with Maduro for supremacy, the president’s downfall leaves Cabello weaker, not stronger. Venezuelans have long appreciated another, more trivial irony: Diosdado Cabello literally means god-given hair but the minister is largely bald and what hair is left is tightly cropped. Born into humble means in the eastern state of Monagas, Cabello joined the military when Venezuela was a democratic, relatively wealthy country with close ties to the US. However, inequality and an economic crisis paved the way in 1992 foran attempted coup by his army mentor and co-conspirator, Hugo Chávez. It flopped but Chávez then embraced electoral politics and swept to power in 1998, promising to redistribute wealth through a “Bolivarian revolution” that later endorsed socialism. Chávez appointed his comrade to a series of posts – party leader, state telecommunications regulator, infrastructure minister, chief of staff, vice-president, governor of Miranda state – through which Cabello built a patronage network and acquired the octopus nickname. Before his death in 2013 Chávez anointed Maduro as his heir. Cabello was denied the presidency but maintained his power base and profile. His TV show rallied party loyalists, assailed enemies – the then US senator now US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was called Narco Rubio – and featured performances from Cabello’s pop-singer daughter, Daniella. In 2024 Maduro, facing turmoil after hijacking an election, appointed Cabello as interior minister to quash dissent. The security chief vowed to catch and punish opponents. “They’re hiding like rats but we’re going to grab them,” he said. Canada, the EU and other governments joined the US in imposing sanctions against Cabello for alleged crimes including money laundering and human rights abuses. Washington claims he runs drugs through a military network labelled the Cartel of the Suns. Since Maduro’s ouster Cabello has urged defiance and posed with police who chanted “always loyal, never traitors”. However, he is considered a pragmatist and knows that his liberty hinges on the regime’s survival. “He’s a family man – he loves his family and his family loves him a lot as well,” said Izarra. “He’s also a savvy political operator.” Cabello’s task now is to project enough force to intimidate the regime’s opponents without triggering a fresh US strike that could put him in the crosshairs – a delicate balance. For many Venezuelans, little has changed. “The guy they took [Maduro] is a puppet,” said a 34-year-old Venezuelan supermarket employee from Anzoátegui state. “The real boss is still in power.”

Berry nice to meet you: bumper fruit crop could lead to huge mating season for NZ’s endangered kākāpō

It has been four long years, but the world’s heaviest parrots, the kākāpō, are finally about to get it on again. The mass fruiting of a native New Zealand tree has triggered breeding season – a rare event conservationists hope will lead to a record number of chicks for the critically endangered bird. Kākāpō, the world’s only nocturnal and flightless parrot, were once abundant across New Zealand. But their population plummeted after the introduction of predators such as cats and stoats, and by the 1900s they were nearly extinct. A recovery programme established in 1995 rebuilt the population from 51 to 236 birds, including 83 breeding-age females. Kākāpō breed only every two to four years when the native rimu trees “mast” and produce large numbers of berries, so repopulation is slow. This year a “mega-mast” is expected, resulting in a bountiful harvest of rimu berries, which could prompt the birds to produce more eggs. Deidre Vercoe, the Department of Conservation’s operations manager for kākāpō recovery, said it was an exciting moment for her team. “We’ve got a really big rimu crop developing on the trees and the birds haven’t bred for four years so we’re hoping that they will all get into the action this summer,” she said. Kākāpō are thought to live between 60-80 years, can weigh up to 4kgs and are famously entertaining. Their mating rituals are “crazy”, Vercoe said. Male birds gather in a “lek” to produce a distinctive booming sound, emitted from air sacs in their chests while sitting in a dug-out bowl in the ground. The deep boom, which can travel up to 5km, sounds similar to a softly plucked cello string. After choosing a partner and mating, females typically lay one to four eggs. The females become solely responsible for their eggs and hatched chicks for roughly six months. Vercoe said it was a mystery how kākāpō know when rimu are likely to mast, or why they rely on that particular tree. But the fruit is nutritious and, when plentiful, provides enough food for the birds to raise two to three chicks. Kākāpō are extremely good climbers and can easily scale the 20-30 metre high rimu to access berries, she said. “They are doing that over and over all night long for months – it’s really hard work, and quite amazing.” Previous breeding seasons have on average led to the production of one chick per breeding female, and each season brings new challenges. This year, a higher number of younger females are ready to breed but they may not be as successful as older birds. “I never like to count our chickens before they hatch, but we’re really hopeful that the majority of the females breed and we will get some good numbers of chicks through.” There are three kākāpō breeding populations, all based on predator-free islands near the bottom of the South Island – one near Rakiura / Stewart Island, and two near Fiordland national park. As the population steadily grows, so too does the issue of where to put the birds. “We are actually running out of space for kākāpō and predator-free, good-quality habitat,” Vercoe said. “It’s an exciting turning point for the programme – how do we keep growing the population, but how do we take steps back and where do we put them?” she said. “It’s a challenge for New Zealand to grapple with.”