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Trial of 12mph bike lane speed limit grinds gears of Dutch cyclists

As road deaths increase and cycle lanes overflow with e-bikes, the Netherlands is considering a cycling speed limit of 12mph (20km/h). The government has started a two-week trial in Houten, near Utrecht, to gauge whether freedom-loving Dutch cyclists are willing to slow down – and whether they have any idea how fast they are going in the first place. Last year, an estimated 80,900 cyclists ended up in A&E departments after accidents, and cyclist deaths rose 14% to 281. “Traffic safety is ever more important because more and more different types of road users are on the bike paths,” said Houten’s transport chief, Wouter van den Berg. “Speed pedelecs, fat bikes, racers, golf carts with children in them – you name it. So when the government suggested this pilot, Houten stuck up its hand.” Cameras were installed last week to measure the normal situation on Fossa Iberica, a 130-metre road that includes a low-visibility crossroads where 3,000 people a day travel in one direction and 1,000 travel in the other. Speed limit signs were installed on Monday and next week a research team will measure the results. The Netherlands may have excellent cycling infrastructure, with bikes used for 27% of all journeys, but Van den Berg said it was difficult to retrofit the urban environment. “It all starts with how you organise public space, the roads and the streets – especially in new developments – so that the slowest traffic gets priority,” he added. “But here, you can’t widen the cycle lane, otherwise you’d be in people’s living rooms.” JanPeter Westein, 80, of the cycling association Fietsersbond Houten, said the group was glad the council was taking its concerns seriously. “I avoid the busy times because I’m an older chap. But pretty much all of the primary schools in Houten are on the bike paths … and you don’t want parents to say they will take their children by car because it’s not safe.” Some cyclists were unenthusiastic, even before anyone proposed handing out fines. One man told the current affairs programme EenVandaag that he probably cycled at about 14mph. “But how am I supposed to know?” he said. “I just have a normal bike.” A woman told the programme: “This is all about cyclists on motorised bicycles, so I should think you would do something about motorised cyclists. Make a rule for them and not for all cyclists.” The speed limit trial is just one of a number of measures to address increasing road accidents. Amsterdam and Enschede are banning wide-tyre fat bikes from some central locations or parks and – to the anger of many cycling advocates – the government plans to introduce helmets for under-18s on electric vehicles. Marcel Aries, of the Doctors for Safe Cycling group, said behaviour and the environment needed to change. “Safer cycling requires a package of measures, including a minimum age of 16 for e-bike riders, e-bike registration and licensing, better infrastructure and greater use of cycle helmets,” he said. But, added Anke Huss, an associate professor at Utrecht University, any cycling was better than none – even accounting for air pollution and accident risk. “The public health case should focus on that: keep people cycling, and keep cycling safe for everyone.”

Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy not on Trump’s G7 bilateral meeting list, official says

Donald Trump will take part in a G7 working session with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in France on Tuesday, but the US president won’t hold a bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, a senior administration official said. The G7 summit will take place in Evian in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region on 15-17 June, and Trump is scheduled to hold bilateral meetings on its sidelines with French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and India, the official said. One of the senior US officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity about Trump’s trip, said Russian gains have “more or less stopped” They added: “We want the war to end as quickly as possible.” A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured three in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, local officials said Saturday, as part of Kyiv’s campaign of strikes on Russian military and energy targets. The governor of Krasnodar, Veniamin Kondratyev, said drone debris sparked a fire at a sea terminal. Ukraine’s general staff did not comment on the Krasnodar strike Saturday, but said that its forces had hit an oil preparation and pumping station overnight in Russia’s Volgograd region, as well as Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The attacks come after Zelenskyy said his Ukrainian forces had struck several infrastructure sites deep inside Russia, including a military factory that he said supplied components for Russian drones and missiles. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been reconnected to the grid after repairs carried out under an IAEA-brokered localised ceasefire, the agency said. The outage marked the 19th time the plant has lost off-site power since the start of the war, after an attack on an electrical substation across the Dnipro River disconnected the Ferosplavna back-up power line late on Wednesday. Lasting almost three days, it was one of the site’s longest power loss events, forcing the facility to rely on emergency diesel generators for the electricity it needs to cool its six shutdown reactors.

How to reverse declining birth rates? The guy from Jim’s Mowing has a theory and it’s … unusual

Limiting sex could lead to more babies, the man behind Jim’s Mowing says. Sex, drugs, parties and social media have blunted humans’ dopamine responses, Jim Penman argues in a new book. That has led to less interest in faith, community, marriage and producing potentially “boring” children. “Scientific interventions may become necessary” to turn around the resulting fall in birthrates, he writes in The Birth-rate Crisis: the Hidden Catastrophe in the Global Decline. Penman is the chief executive of Jim’s Group, the largest franchise business in the southern hemisphere, with a billion-dollar annual turnover. He has poured millions into epigenetic research and says gene editing, drugs or pheromones could ultimately provide a solution by restoring the brain’s sensitivity to dopamine. Birthrates have declined around the world, and in most countries are now below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. Australia’s rate is 1.48. Government policies such as Australia’s baby bonus have failed to change that trajectory. “We’ve proposed a more controversial possibility: that the birthrate crisis may ultimately require a biological solution and not just a cultural one,” Penman writes. “My research team is actively investigating such treatments. Technological and medical advances may eventually make it possible to alter how the brain responds to reward and stimulation. “Immediate benefits could include improvements in addiction, anxiety, depression, motivation, and self-control. In the process, the birthrate crisis itself might largely disappear.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Penman has 10 children and “would dearly have liked more”. He is running for the Libertarian party in November’s Victorian election, but his politics do not slot neatly into the global “pro-natalist” push. It comes predominantly from the right in the US, linked to calls for a return to the traditional family and cuts in immigration levels. Elon Musk has called the collapsing birthrate the “biggest danger civilisation faces by far”. The SpaceX boss and father of 14 retweeted a post on X on 7 June about Australia’s fertility rate, with the comment: “They are disappearing.” The late Maga activist Charlie Kirk told people to “get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion”. The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy, says the US “fertility crisis [is] a threat not only to our economy [but] to our national security”. And Donald Trump has declared himself the “fertilisation president” as he tries to encourage a baby boom. Closer to home, the Nationals leader Matt Canavan has called for “more Australian babies”. Research suggests women’s liberation, education and access to contraception have contributed to the fall in birthrates. Women having babies later in life have fewer, and are more likely to have fertility struggles. Social and economic policies may also play a role. Polling done for the Nine Newspapers found the most common changes people nominated as likely to encourage people to have children or more children were: working from home policies; more parental leave; free or heavily subsidised childcare; and more affordable housing designed for families. ‘Discouragement of … masturbation’ But Penman argues financial reasons “don’t fully explain the scale and consistency of the decline”. He points to sex, sex addiction, porn, social media, gambling, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, calorie-dense food and caffeine as some of the culprits that have disrupted our brains. “Our brains have been so bombarded by surges prevalent in the modern world that we’ve become far less sensitive to dopamine,” he writes. On the other hand, he says, religious communities such as the Amish and the Mormons, where gambling and heavy drinking are discouraged, are more likely to have higher fertility rates. “Another shared factor is the strong discouragement of sexual activity outside marriage, including masturbation,” he writes. “Marriage also tends to be both early and near-universal, at least compared to wider society.” He writes that it is difficult for young men with normal sex drives to completely avoid “any form of sexual outlet”, but that any reduction could help. He says his own experience may have had a “profound effect” on his character. “For five years after reaching puberty, my sole sexual outlet was nocturnal emissions, more commonly called wet dreams,” he writes. “Lack of sexual outlet meant that I had fewer of the surges that desensitise brains to dopamine, so my brain could have become unusually sensitive to its effects. And because it happened at a young age when my brain was plastic, this effect would be enduring.” He writes that limiting sexual activity is an effective way to increase dopamine sensitivity, and that “even within marriage, frequent sexual activity may have negative effects”, but that these are balanced by positive effects, such as strengthening the marriage itself. As more women pursued education and careers, often delaying marriage, there were also “more premarital relationships, wider use of birth control, and more open discussion of sexuality”, Penman writes. He points to the 1920s as a key turning point. “Cultural trends such as the emerging image of the ‘modern woman’, jazz, film, and consumer goods reflected these changes,” he writes. “Lively parties, especially combined with alcohol and drugs, are also attractive.” Penman argues limiting or forbidding these activities will make the brain more sensitive to dopamine. As a result, everyday activities will become more pleasurable and “we feel less need to chase dangerous surge activities such as alcohol, drugs, gambling, porn, and promiscuous sex”. The evidence on dopamine There is plenty of evidence linking such activities to dopamine highs and lows. Dr Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, has warned that smartphones are turning us into dopamine junkies and that it’s making us depressed. Our brain compensates for the instant gratification from pleasurable things by “bringing us lower and lower and lower”. She advises stepping away from the phone, and doing “things that are hard”, when the pleasure comes later. There is plenty of advice online and on social media about the supposed benefits of “digital detoxing” to reset the brain for a healthier dopamine balance, although the science around it is nuanced and mixed. Penman has gone beyond that to argue that medical treatments, rather than digital detoxing, could be the answer. A team of scientists at his research company, Epigenes Australia, is looking at how different ways to mimic the effect of calorie restriction could reset the brain. He says female rats whose food is restricted in studies are more attentive towards their young. Scarcity, he writes, could “reduce overstimulation and restore sensitivity to everyday rewards”. Rats exposed to “the soiled bedding of calorie-restricted rats” also became more “exploratory”, he writes. He says his team plans to do similar experiments with humans, using sweat rather than urine, but that regulations make it prohibitively expensive in Australia. “It’s one reason we’re moving much of the research to China,” he says. Penman is also keen to explore something like a GLP-1 (Ozempic or semaglutide), which has been shown to reduce interest in alcohol, smoking and gambling as well as food. Scientists are still trying to understand how GLP-1 drugs affect people, including whether it can cause “emotional flatness”. Neuroscientist Paul Kenny, from the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, recently said it was possible that they could affect emotions and social interactions. A third avenue of exploration is gene editing. Penman points to CRISPR technology, saying epigenetics could induce the same effect as calorie restriction, and make marriage and children more appealing. “Over time, the birthrate crisis could begin to reverse naturally,” he writes. • The Birth-rate Crisis: the Hidden Catastrophe in the Global Decline is due to be self-published in October, with the proceeds going towards further research.

Trump says Iran peace deal could be signed by Sunday, with strait of Hormuz to open shortly after

Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US is set to sign a new agreement with Iran the following day, claiming that the deal would prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, as well as reopen the strait of Hormuz to international shipping. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Iran “no longer want a Nuclear Weapon, nor will they have one, either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement”. The statement added: “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL. Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had … Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly. If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!” Iran, the US and mediators had suggested earlier on Saturday that a preliminary peace deal could be signed within days to end the three-month war in the Middle East, though they gave differing timelines and versions of its text. Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, said on Saturday that Islamabad was preparing for an electronic signing within 24 hours to be followed by technical-level talks next week. “We are closer to a peace deal than ever before … We are confident that this historic peace deal will form a strong foundation for lasting peace,” Sharif wrote on social media. However, Esmaeil Baghaei, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, counselled caution. “We will have to wait and see about the exact date of the signing of the memorandum of understanding, although it will not be tomorrow,” Baghaei was quoted as saying. “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.” Recent days have seen the most intense clashes between Iran and Israel and the US since a ceasefire came into effect in April. Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to seize Iran’s oil export terminal of Kharg Island and launch a new wave of attacks, then suddenly claimed a diplomatic breakthrough, saying a draft deal had been “approved” by “the highest level of Iranian leadership”. During the conflict, the US president has claimed about 40 times that a deal was on the point of completion, only to then revert to threatening Iran with new attacks. Officials from both the US and Iran are trying to frame the possible deal as a victory, claiming it includes a series of major concessions by their enemies. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said on state television on Friday that the draft agreement showed his country had emerged stronger from the conflict. “Iran is the winner of the war with the US,” he told viewers. Hours after those remarks, US forces shot down several Iranian one-way attack drones heading toward the strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that carried about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies before the conflict but was closed to most shipping by Iran within days of the outbreak of hostilities. The proposed deal calls for reopening the strait and lifting the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, sources on either side of the talks said. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program would take place afterwards. On Friday, Trump said a report of the text of the draft deal published by Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency, which quoted a source close to Iran’s negotiating team, bore “no relation to the truth”. According to Mehr and Iranian officials, the agreement would end conflict on all fronts, including Lebanon, where Israel has launched an offensive against Hezbollah, and ensure the release of $24bn (£18bn) of Iran’s frozen assets. It would also set a 60-day period for negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear programme, offer the suspension of sanctions on the sale of Iran’s oil and petrochemical products, allow Iran to levy service charges on passage through the strait of Hormuz and lift the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, which has been in place since 13 April. The claims contrasted dramatically with statements from Washington, where officials said the agreement stipulated that Iran’s nuclear material would be destroyed, and its nuclear programme dismantled, none of its frozen money would be released until it met certain demands, and Iran would stop supporting allied militant movements around the Middle East. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on Friday that the deal met Trump’s core objectives and put negotiations “in a very, very good place”. The apparent deal has prompted consternation in Israel, where the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has clashed with Trump over US demands that Israel curb military action in Lebanon to allow Washington to reach a deal with Tehran. Israeli forces carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday and issued evacuation warnings for the city of Nabatieh and more than 20 other locations ahead of raids.

Mourners line Bangkok streets to pay respects to Thailand’s Princess Bha

As the sun began to set on the golden spires and gilded finials of Bangkok’s Grand Palace, the gates were open, waiting for the return of a princess. Since December 2022, Princess Bajrakitiyabha had been in hospital, having collapsed while out training her dogs. After nearly four years in a coma, the princess died earlier this week. On Saturday afternoon, her body finally left the hospital in a royal funeral procession of flashing motorcycles and cars travelling through the city centre’s empty streets, which were closed to traffic but lined for kilometres with nurses from the hospital bowing prostrate, thousands of Thai citizens dressed in black, and ending with officials in white suits with black armbands. They had been waiting for hours for the princess’s arrival in a silver van, with her father, the king, in a cream-coloured car behind her. The officials present saluted, while the crowd – remaining seated on the sidewalk – silently bowed their heads towards their hands. Many were in tears. From morning, mourners had gathered on the edges of the streets with umbrellas and fans to cope with the hot and humid conditions in the heart of the city. Wanida Lainun, wearing a brooch with the princess’s image, told the Guardian her aunt had benefited from Princess Bajrakitiyabha’s project to help underprivileged people in Chiang Mai in the country’s north. The princess, known affectionately in Thailand as Princess Bha, trained as a lawyer, and served the country in several official roles including as an ambassador to Austria and in the royal security command. But it was the care she took for the ordinary citizens of Thailand, including campaigning for the rights of female prisoners, that those gathered on Saturday remembered. “The work she’s done in Thailand has touched my heart,” said Anchalee, who asked that her last name not be used, and cited her project to help people during natural disasters. “Herself and her team go there right away to help them.” After devastating floods hit Bangkok in 1995, Bajrakitiyabha and her mother personally cooked meals, packed medicine and waded into cut-off areas to deliver aid directly to the stranded, according to local media. In October that year she founded the Friends in Need (of ‘Pa’) project, under the Thai Red Cross Society, that provided people with tools to evacuate before disaster struck, as well as frontline services, and helped people affected by the floods out of poverty. She was 47 years old when she died on Thursday evening. Anchalee, being the same age, said she had always felt close to the princess, whom she met as a college student. “She wouldn’t remember me, but I will always remember her,” she said. Anchalee, who had been waiting on the streets for the procession since 10am, said she was shocked when the princess first fell ill. “We all hoped she could get better from the coma. We waited for years and we all prayed for her to get better.” She had already waited in line earlier in the morning to participate in the funeral bathing ceremony at the Grand Palace that the king had invited the country to attend – a Buddhist ritual of pouring holy water into a ceremonial bowl placed before a portrait of the princess. “We pray for the princess to go to a beautiful place in heaven,” Anchalee said. The prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, led members of the Thai cabinet in performing the bathing rite. From 27 June, after the 15 days of the royal merit-making ceremony, involving Buddhist monastic chanting, the public will also be allowed to pay their respects to the royal remains at the Grand Palace’s throne hall. When King Bhumibol Adulyadej died in October 2016, his body lay in state for more than a year before an elaborate royal cremation ceremony. A date has yet to be announced for the princess’s cremation ceremony.

US claims it is not responsible for strikes on Ecuadorian fishing boats – so who is?

Captain Hernán Flores was fishing with his crew about 170 miles off the coast of Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands on 17 March when an explosion cut through the air and an unmanned drone crashed into the cabin of his boat, exploding into flames. Flores’s nephew was hit. The attack split his face and cracked his foot, exposing the bone. “Some guys looked for an extinguisher, but the fire was already spreading,” Flores, who has commanded the Negra Francisca Duarte for about 20 years, said. “So some of our crew leapt into the water.” An expansive US military campaign that has so far killed nearly 200 people across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September 2025 appears to have reached the fishing fleets of Ecuador and left eight men missing and presumed dead. But the Trump administration insists it had no part in these particular operations, like the one that set Flores’s boat aflame. Flores recounted his story to members of the Human Rights Commission (CDH) while in his home town in San Mateo, Ecuador. When Flores’s ship was hit, the US Coast Guard cutter Bertholf was patrolling the eastern Pacific Ocean, a spokesperson said, when its crew reported hearing “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, vessel on fire” over the ship’s radio. A Coast Guard spokesperson said that it assumed responsibility for coordinating a “search and rescue” and dispatched the Bertholf to respond. Meanwhile, Flores and his crew continued to sail their damaged ship searching for help. As they manoeuvred east, Flores said that a small observation plane followed them. “We kept our eyes fixed on it for fear it would drop another bomb.” After 40 minutes, Flores said they reached another ship that “seemed to be changing course to sail away”. “As we approached with the wounded man, we saw several Americans pointing guns at us,” Flores said. “They were yelling ‘hands up’ in Spanish, using translators. I was the first to go up; they handcuffed me behind my back, put a hood over my head, and took me to the top of the boat. They sat us down one by one on the deck. “Around three in the afternoon, they gave us a bottle of water, and the boat set sail,” Flores recalled. The next morning, Flores said his crew were transferred on to a large Salvadorian coastguard vessel, where they were reported as a “shipwrecked crew”. He said they spent eight days sailing north to Puerto Unión, a coastal city in El Salvador, and were placed in temporary detention. The fishermen said they were never charged with any wrongdoing and were issued emergency travel permits to return to Ecuador by the end of the month. Conflicting accounts Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and CDH have been looking into the alleged interactions between US vessels and fishing boats in the eastern Pacific. So far, the Pentagon and the US Coast Guard have both publicly denied participating in operations involving Ecuadorian fishing vessels. “We have no knowledge of, nor were Department of War forces involved in, the incidents described in those reports,” a spokesperson for United States Southern Command (Southcom) said in a statement to the Guardian. “US forces conduct operations under established legal authorities and hold its forces to the highest standards of professionalism, safety, and compliance with US and international law.” The state department did not return a request for comment on whether it had any communication with Ecuador over these maritime incidents and whether it was aware crew members were being transferred to El Salvador. The Coast Guard also said that it had no knowledge of, nor were any Coast Guard forces involved in, the incident described in reports on attacks on Ecuadorian fishermen. A spokesperson added that the US Coast Guard does not operate armed drones. Latin American experts have said that something about the various reports does not add up. “There are strange aspects to the official ‘rescue’ story in the Negra Francisca’s case,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said, which was “disputed by the crew, who publicly claim they were captured and taken to El Salvador – that none of the three governments has clarified. “We do not have smoking gun evidence to say this was a US strike,” Will continued. “But who else might have taken these men – found so far from El Salvador – to that country?” Embassy representatives from Ecuador and El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A search for answers In a letter obtained by the Guardian, the Democratic representatives Joaquin Castro of Texas and Bill Keating of Massachusetts in the House foreign affairs committee confront senior administration officials with survivor testimony, UN intervention, and a direct challenge to the Pentagon’s denials to demand whether the United States has been telling the truth. “These incidents have resulted in eight persons still missing or unaccounted for, credible survivor accounts of arbitrary or unlawful detention, abuse, and extrajudicial use of force by US personnel, and the formal intervention of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances,” the two lawmakers wrote to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, and coast guard commandant, Adm Kevin Lunday. Their letter was delivered on Thursday. The letter, which sets a response deadline of 10 July, focuses on three incidents in the eastern Pacific. The Fiorella, an Ecuadorian fishing vessel, disappeared on 20 January after its captain sent a final satellite message describing what [he] said was a US aircraft, a UAV, and a blue patrol ship that had been following the vessel for three days. Eight crew members have not been seen since. The Negra Francisca Duarte II, captained by Flores, reported being struck by a drone on 17 March near the Galápagos, and its crew reported being hooded, handcuffed and held on a blue patrol vessel bearing the word “Spear” on its hull before being transferred into Salvadorian custody. Trump’s counternarcotics program spanning the Americas is nicknamed Operation Southern Spear. Fishermen onboard a third Ecuadorian ship, the Don Maca, also described being stopped and arrested by an American patrol boat after catching swordfish, albacore and dogfish along one of their regular fishing routes. “As we boarded, they handcuffed and hooded us all,” crew member John Sebastián Palacios said in testimony to CDH. “After we were hooded, they fired two more shots at the boat. After half an hour, they sank it. We were so scared we didn’t even dare reach for our phones to record, thinking that if we made a wrong move they would shoot us again.” Palacios said that the first vessel transferred his crew to a Salvadorian patrol. The US has long denied involvement in the three incidents targeting the Ecuadorian boats. The House armed services committee chair, Mike Rogers, on 4 June, read a Pentagon statement into the record during an NDAA markup that said the US “did not board the Don Maca and conducted no kinetic strikes against it”, was “unaware of any strikes” against the Fiorella, and equally unaware of any strikes against the Negra Francisca Duarte II. Castro and Keating now ask whether that denial covers every entity that could have been involved: specifically the DEA, the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection and any intelligence agencies or contractors operating under US authority. A fraught moment The questions also land at a moment of rapidly deepening US military engagement with Ecuador. In November 2025, President Daniel Noboa hosted then-DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, at the Manta naval air station to discuss establishing a US military base. On 6 March, the US participated in strikes on an armed group inside Ecuador, which Hegseth celebrated on X, writing that the United States was now “bombing Narco Terrorists on land”. Ecuadorians rejected the expansion of US military bases into their country in a November vote, stalling plans to advance US “anti-narcoterrorism” operations there. The small coastal nation is located between Peru and Colombia – the world’s top cocaine producers – and the US Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency have long operated interagency patrols that monitor the eastern Pacific Ocean corridor for drugs that may be headed to the United States or Europe. Then, in April, Ecuadorian navy vessels trained alongside the Nimitz carrier strike group in the Pacific. At a Senate foreign relations committee hearing on 2 June, Senator Tim Kaine pressed Rubio on targeting criteria, revealing that striking a vessel does not require evidence of narcotics being onboard. Kaine had called that description “odd”, though Rubio defended the program, saying every strike involves a legal officer making a determination on legality. Among the handful of questions, Castro and Keating are asking whether detained crews were ever searched for contraband, whether they were given access to lawyers or consular officials, and whether survivors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. They also demand “all videos, photographs, and audio recordings taken by US personnel or US aircraft, UAVs, or other modes of surveillance” during those three incidents. The three vessels remain the clearest evidence yet that Washington’s supposed war on drugs in the eastern Pacific has quietly expanded into a shooting war against the fishermen. “[I]f it was drug traffickers, pirates, or the crews themselves who set fire to their vessels,” Freeman said, “why has the Ecuadorian government been so unwilling to launch a serious investigation?”

Swiss wait to hear result of ballot on capping population at 10 million

A national ballot on an unprecedented far-right proposal to limit Switzerland’s population to 10 million concludes this weekend, amid warnings of devastating consequences for the country’s economy if voters back the initiative. A “yes” vote would require the Swiss government to take steps to cap the population at 10 million by 2050, enacting tough restrictions on family reunification, residency permits and asylum if the number reaches 9.5 million before that date. If the 10m threshold is still exceeded before 2050, the proposal by the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP) would oblige the government to pull out of the country’s free movement agreement with the EU – ending its access to the bloc’s single market. Switzerland’s system of direct democracy allows for “popular initiatives” that are put to a referendum if they get 100,000 backers within 18 months. Typically held four times a year, plebiscites are a long-favoured tool of the anti-immigration SVP. Switzerland’s population has grown far faster than that of surrounding EU states, rising by 23% since the free movement agreement came into effect in 2002. Economic output has risen by about 24% over the same period, government figures show. About 27% of Swiss residents are not citizens. Supporters of the “No to a Switzerland with 10 million” initiative say the influx of mainly EU workers puts housing, schools, transport, welfare and the Swiss way of life itself under unbearable strain. “Uncontrolled immigration is causing Switzerland to grow far too quickly. The negative consequences are palpable in all areas of life,” the SVP, the largest party in Switzerland’s parliament since 1999, argued in its campaign. The seven-member government, made up of ministers from Switzerland’s four biggest parties, including the SVP, is collectively against the initiative, warning it would threaten national stability, harm the economy and hurt Swiss prosperity. Clear majorities in both houses of parliament have also recommended rejecting the proposal, as have the Swiss trade union federation, the Swiss Employers’ Association and Economiesuisse, the country’s main business umbrella organisation. Rudolf Minsch, Economiesuisse’s chief economist, said the proposal was a populist attempt to fix complex problems with a simplistic artificial cap. “It sells the illusion of a free lunch, and will not solve our housing or traffic problems,” he said. Thomas Matter, an SVP MP, dismissed the concerns as scaremongering. “We are not against immigration, but it has to be moderate and controlled,” he said. “Before, we had qualitative immigration; now we have quantitative immigration.” Populist rightwing parties in Europe have successfully exploited – and inflamed – concerns over immigration, reflected in Britain’s 2016 Brexit vote and in surging support for parties such as France’s National Rally and the AfD in Germany. However, while many nations limit immigration, no country has ever voted explicitly to cap its population, Philippe Wanner, an expert in demography at the University of Geneva, said – although countries such as China have legislated to reduce growth. Like many European countries, Switzerland needs immigration because birthrates are falling and it faces a steadily ageing population, with the proportion of people aged over 65 due to climb to more than 27% from 21% by 2055. Recent opinion polls suggest the campaign against the proposal has gained ground since the referendum was announced in February, but most surveys have pointed to a close race, with the “no” camp predicted to win with about 52% of the vote. Polling stations will open briefly on Sunday to allow in-person votes, but up to 90% of voters in Swiss referendums typically vote by post. To pass, the initiative must win both the popular vote and a majority of Switzerland’s 23 full and six half cantons. Results should be known by mid to late afternoon on Sunday.