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Canada could become first ‘associate member’ of the EU, von der Leyen suggests – Europe live

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has warned the EU is “the strongest” but “most precarious” (9:16) it has ever been as it faces “an openly hostile world” (9:18) as she delivered her annual State of the Union address in the European parliament in Strasbourg. Von der Leyen outlined proposals for reforming the EU’s single market (9:21) and improving competitiveness and innovation (9:30), as well as electrifying its energy market (9:24), and rebalancing its trade relationship with partners, particularly China (9:27). In one of the most eye-catching proposals, she suggested Canada could become an associate member of the European Union (9:54). Von der Leyen also warned about the growing threat from Russia as she called for a “European Security Council” to help countries coordinate on security issues (9:58), as she pledged further support to Ukraine (10:04). In her wide-ranging speech, she also discussed the issue of irregular migration (10:10) and criticised Israel for “unacceptable” plans for its illegal E1 settlement project (10:07). She also called for urgent action on climate preparedness as she warned Europe faced “the hottest summer months ever, but the coolest of years to come” (9:34, 9:39). Von der Leyen also confirmed plans to introduce tougher rules on social media to protect children online, including a ban for users under the age of 13, as she warned that highly addictive platforms are “depriving children of their childhood” (10:20). The commission president also advocated for “AI with human agency,” and for Europe to explore “hidden” value where it can capitalise on its “big advantages” (9:45, 9:48). In a pointed comment, she also criticised Serbia for last week’s funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, saying “glorifying war criminals simply has no place in the European Union” (10:24).

‘We are prey’: discovery of seven women’s bodies fuels anger over femicide in South Africa

The discovery of the bodies of seven women around Johannesburg’s international airport, including five in the past week, has prompted an outpouring of fear, grief and anger over a lack of progress in tackling femicide. When Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo did not return after going for a run on 9 September, her eight-year-old daughter alerted relatives, who contacted police. The 38-year-old’s body was found on Saturday and identified by relatives on Monday. The news of her disappearance had gone viral. Police said in a statement on Saturday that four women’s bodies had been found since 15 July in Kempton Park, across the highway from OR Tambo international airport. All were half-naked and with visible bruising. On Monday and Tuesday, two more bodies were found in Olifantsfontein, about 15 miles north of Kempton Park. On Tuesday, police said another woman’s body had been found 25 miles to the south-east, naked and decomposed. “In this country we are prey,” Sakane Mokoena posted on Instagram after confirmation of the death of her friend and fellow runner Moselakgomo. South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world. In the year to 31 March 2024, more than 27,600 people were murdered, 5,578 of them women, according to the latest police data. For years, women have called on the South African government to take gender-based violence seriously. After hundreds of women protested on the eve of the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared it a national crisis. However, the lack of a concrete plan or action has frustrated campaigners – and women keep being killed. The latest deaths are being investigated by specialist officers, who said on Saturday: “Women in and around Kempton Park are urged not to walk or run alone, particularly in isolated areas. They should avoid secluded spaces, remain vigilant and, where possible, travel or exercise in groups.” South African women responded with anger at the idea that they had to be responsible for their own safety, with many runners noting they already took precautions, such as sharing routes. “We are tired of being told to be vigilant when women are already doing everything possible to stay alive,” said the advocacy group Women For Change. “It should not take a missing woman, a desperate family, runners and communities searching, and a case going viral, before an area is searched with this intensity,” the group said. Detectives said on Saturday that they were examining a serial killer angle. However, on Monday, a police spokesperson, Athlenda Mathe, told reporters: “For now, nothing tells us that we’ve got a serial killer.” Mathe added that a suspect in the killing in July of the first woman, her boyfriend, was in custody. Ramaphosa said on Tuesday that he had directed police authorities to prioritise the ongoing murder investigations. Although the gender of the suspect or suspects in the other killings has not been confirmed, campaigners called on men to take responsibility for violence against women and children. “When some of these things happen in our presence, most of us men tend to look the other way,” said Bafana Khumalo, a co-executive director of Sonke Gender Justice. “You have excuses like ‘No, it’s not my business’. We feel strongly that violence against women is our business. We need, as men, to begin to face each other squarely and hold each other accountable.” The identification of Moselakgomo’s body has triggered an outpouring of grief. Mokoena met her about two years ago, when Moselakgomo joined a running club so she did not have to train alone on Saturdays. “She’s an amazing woman,” said Mokoena. “She always spoke about her daughter. Tsontso always said ‘Bye guys, I have to go, I have to go to my child’. “That’s just an example of how close she was with her baby girl. And she was a really light-spirited, funny and joyful woman, who was kind – very, very kind.” Running clubs around South Africa organised events to remember Moselakgomo and Mokoena said she hoped this would help push the government and police to do more to protect women. She added: “I’m just happy that the world, or at least our country, was standing still for a moment to acknowledge what is happening. Let’s get this out there and figure out exactly what is happening to women.”

Al-Qaida and IS-linked violence in Africa’s Sahel belt set to hit record levels this year

Islamist extremist violence in Africa’s Sahel region is set to reach historic highs after a series of sweeping offensives by groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State, according to new figures compiled by the conflict monitor Acled. As the US marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks launched by al-Qaida against targets in Washington and New York, the statistics underline the continued expansion of the veteran organisation in parts of Africa – in stark contrast with its relative weakness elsewhere. Compiled by Acled, which stands for Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, the statistics focus on the centre of Islamic militancy in three countries – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – which together comprise a huge and hotly contested zone at the heart of the strategic Sahel region. According to the respected non-profit organisation, incidents of violence with jihadist groups present in the three countries have soared from 63 in 2016 to 2,845 in 2025. So far this year, 2,145 events have already been logged. If current trends continue in coming months, an annual total of well over 3,000 events appears likely. Though total deaths from terrorism globally have fallen to their lowest level since 2008, those in the Sahel have risen sharply. “Terrorism has become more geographically concentrated: the Sahel continued to record some of the world’s highest terrorism death tolls, with the UN recording more than 9,000 deaths from security incidents across Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2025,” the 2026 report of the Global Peace Index noted earlier this year. In April, a joint offensive in Mali launched by the al-Qaida-linked group Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Tuareg-dominated rebel group Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) targeted strategic towns, government forces and their Russian auxiliaries with ambushes, car bombs, drones and raids, inflicting significant casualties. Mali’s defence minister died in a suicide attack on his residence in the garrison town of Kati, 9 miles north-west of the capital, Bamako, and the head of military intelligence was killed. Other attacks hit Mali’s international airport, while rebels seized control of the strategic city of Kidal, a former stronghold of the FLA, after soldiers fled and a force of Russian mercenaries surrendered. The defeat reversed a key symbolic victory won by the junta in Mali three years ago. Since then, JNIM has continued to expand areas under its control in Mali, killing more soldiers and Russian mercenaries in recent weeks, and broadening its operations in some neighbouring countries. Much of the violence involves fighting with rival groups. The conflict has also included multiple killings by government armed forces and Russian mercenaries. In Burkina Faso, JNIM has claimed more than 130 attacks in 2026, striking closer to Ouagadougou, the capital. In Niger, the group claimed at least 17 attacks but remained significantly less active than its rival Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, according to a recent United Nations report based on intelligence supplied by member states. Experts said JNIM had distanced itself from al-Qaida’s historic objectives of striking the US and its allies. “In the Sahel, Islamic State and al-Qaida now command big areas but these are very localised groups. Not a single attack in Europe or the US has been planned in the Sahel,” said Ulf Laessing, a senior analyst at the Konrad Adenauer foundation in Berlin. The other main group in sub-Saharan Africa with links to al-Qaida is al-Shabaab, which has dominated much of Somalia’s rural areas for many years. “In east Africa, al-Shabaab remains one of the continent’s deadliest groups, with Acled recording more than 10,000 reported deaths in al-Shabaab-related violence over the past 18 months,” said Peter Bofin, Acled’s senior analyst for south-east Africa. “Despite some degradation of its extortion in Mogadishu, its revenue streams stretch across the country, and the region.” Militant groups linked loosely to IS are active in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Chad and Nigeria, where they were targeted by US airstrikes last year. The continuing expansion in sub-Saharan Africa has been welcomed in al-Qaida’s propaganda, but experts point out the continent barely featured in the group’s strategic planning until recent years. “Twenty-five years ago it was all about Afghanistan and then Iraq … Africa wasn’t really of interest then. Now its the main area of operations,” said Laessing. Though sectarian and ethnic conflict, bitter competition over resources, poor governance, endemic instability and other factors make Africa a fertile ground for Islamic militant recruiters, territory in places like Mali and Somalia has major limitations as a base for campaigns elsewhere in the world or for long-range terrorist attacks. At its peak in the years after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaida affiliates posed a significant threat to authorities across much of the Middle East, with thousands convinced by the group’s call for a global uprising against the US, Israel and local regimes. Al-Qaida was also able to inspire and direct a series of lethal attacks in Europe that killed hundreds. However, the recent UN report described al-Qaida senior leadership as “marginalised” and noted that the group’s capability and intent to conduct external operations remained “unclear”. Analysts point out there has been no formal declaration of a successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the veteran Egyptian militant killed in Kabul by the US in 2022. Instead, the de facto leader is believed to be 66-year-old Saif al-Adel, who is thought to have been in Iran since 2002 and has yet to make any public statement. Other leaders are likely to be based in Afghanistan, where the group has been able to rebuild a limited infrastructure, western intelligence services believe. The most potent al-Qaida affiliate outside Africa is the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which the UN report described as “the vanguard of the global al-Qaida movement” and one of the few affiliates committed to continuing al-Qaida’s decades-old campaign against the US. In May, AQAP’s media channels released a new video calling on Muslims in Europe and the US to carry out local attacks and to fight on “behalf of the [Islamic community] in any way possible”. But though AQAP continues to maintain an estimated 2,000 fighters, largely entrenched in the mountains between Abyan and Shabwa, the group’s activity fell by approximately 70%, from 63 events in the first seven months of 2025 to 19 during the same period in 2026, according to Acled. Some analysts have contrasted the high numbers of militants currently mobilised by groups such as JNIM and al-Shabaab, which number in the tens of thousands, with the much more limited manpower available to al-Qaida before the 9/11 attacks. Others stress the very different intentions and capabilities of the group now and 25 years ago.

Wednesday briefing: Why tech companies might be only too happy for us to believe AI will ‘kill us all’

Good morning. As a general rule, it pays to be suspicious of any gigantic company that claims it’s developing a tool capable of destroying humanity. But in recent days, a number of warnings from the AI industry have suggested that even tech insiders are starting to worry about what they have unleashed. In a lofty essay published on Saturday, Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic (the company behind Claude), argued that tech companies need to “slow” the pace at which they’re developing the newest and most sophisticated AI models. Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, voiced support for Amodei’s arguments, while Donald Trump, who has staked America’s economy on AI, described the worries as a “HOAX”, and insisted the only control on AI the world needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”. Yesterday, the UK government took out a more cautious position, when Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, said the UK must “heed the warnings” of AI experts. It’s hard to know what to make of this. Tech companies often tell fanciful stories about the fearsome potential of their products to convince the public (and the stock market) of those capabilities. So what’s really going on? For this morning’s newsletter I spoke to Aisha Down, the Guardian’s global technology reporter, to try to parse the reality of AI from the unreality of the AI discourse, and to figure out what the government should do about it. No tall order, then. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories Lucy Letby | Three babies might have survived if hospital had acted upon concerns over Lucy Letby, an inquiry has found. Lady Justice Thirlwall condemned the ‘complete failure’ to protect babies on neonatal unit at Countess of Chester hospital. UK politics | The leader of Reform UK in Wales stood down after arrest on suspicion of assault. Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor, was elected to Senedd as leader of the opposition in May. AI | The progressive senator Bernie Sanders and rightwing strategist Steve Bannon have called for restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) but offered competing visions for what they termed a “cold war” with China. UK news | Young people in Rotherham face a local jobs market with the fewest suitable opportunities in Britain, according to a report that warns stark regional divisions are fuelling a crisis in youth work. Defence | John Healey is in talks with the Canadian government about joining a new global defence bank intended to help allies rearm to counter mounting security threats, just weeks after Rachel Reeves rejected the move. In depth: ‘If a nuclear company had a radioactive spill, you wouldn’t be letting it regulate itself’ The most significant detail in Amodei’s essay, We Must Pace The Frontier, was a reference to the Hugging Face incident, which occurred in July, when the rival tech company OpenAI revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology hacked a prominent database of AI models, Hugging Face. Coverage of the hack made it sound as though OpenAI’s model had gone “rogue”. But tech researchers have since said that OpenAI turned off the model’s safety mechanisms, gave it impossible tasks to complete and ran it 1,200 times. “That’s human decision-making,” the tech research Eryk Salvaggio wrote in an essay on Substack. OpenAI then invited researchers from the non-profit institute METR to produce a report about the incident. As two legal experts observed in an interesting opinion piece for the Guardian, METR’s findings were constrained by its agreement with OpenAI, which prohibited investigators from accessing the underlying model that created the “rogue” agents. “Imagine a burglar who is hallucinating and breaks into the Louvre,” says Aisha. “Then imagine you shared a tape with the police that played back what the hallucinating burglar was saying to himself while he broke into the Louvre, but the report didn’t actually include any information about what the burglar did. That’s basically what OpenAI did.” In his essay, Amodei pointed to the Hugging Face incident as an example of the “catastrophic damage” that AI could cause in future. But industry critics are sceptical about what this incident can tell us, particularly since the only people who have examined it did so at OpenAI’s discretion. This reflects a broader problem where companies that claim to be developing products capable of catastrophic damage get to mark their own homework. “No other industry gets treated that way,” Aisha says. “If a nuclear company had a radioactive spill, you wouldn’t be letting it regulate itself.” *** Is it all just hype? Amodei’s essay has been treated as a doomsday warning. It was published just two days after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher at Anthropic, quit his job and posted an alarming thread on X warning that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of this decade”. Coxon is the latest in a long list of AI researchers who have been loudly quitting on X or making similar predictions. These self-styled whistleblowers don’t tend to leak documents that reveal useful information about the inner workings of AI companies, so their warnings of imminent apocalypse instead fuel speculation about the perils (and power) of AI. This plays into tech companies’ hands. The AI narrative is dominated by what the tech scholar Lee Vinsel calls “criti-hype” – criticism that feeds, and is fed by, hype. The language used to describe AI can be deeply unhelpful. While China tends to compare AI to “electricity,” western AI companies compare it to the atom bomb, which makes Anthropic and its rivals seem less like companies making everyday decisions about how they choose to build particular tools, and more like Promethean stewards of a fourth Industrial Revolution. “The framing is, ‘we’re inventing fire’,” Aisha says. “And that means governments have to treat them like magical gods and let them set the rules on their mysterious creation.” *** So why are AI firms calling for a slowdown? Apparently, AI firms now believe the risks posed by their technologies are too great for business to continue as usual. But there are a number of ways that Anthropic (and its competitors) might gain from a slowdown. Anthropic is launching its initial public offering later this year, so it has an interest in presenting its products in as epochal and deadly a fashion as possible. The backlash against AI is growing, and the firm has cast itself as a more responsible AI creator, most recently by refusing the Pentagon’s requests to use its Claude model to power autonomous lethal weapons. Meanwhile, American AI firms face increasing competition from Chinese AI firms, and are desperate to retain their share of the market. An industry-orchestrated slowdown could freeze the pace of AI development in China and might also help firms like Anthropic avoid the possibility of stringent government regulations by putting them on the front foot. One of the people who has called this out is David Sacks, co-chair of Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology, who said in response to Amodei’s essay: “demanding your preferred regulatory framework … will look like blackmail of the public and the political system”. *** What should the UK government do? To be clear, AI poses huge risks. Readers of First Edition will know that we’ve previously covered how the datacentres used to power AI demand huge volumes of water and energy. You can already use AI to generate sexualised “deepfakes” and child sexual abuse images, or make use of an open-source version of Palantir to monitor live camera feeds (meanwhile, Palantir has access to identifiable NHS England data). And experts have long been arguing that as AI becomes more advanced, it could pose existential risks. All of these things are terrifying. But much of the AI narrative focuses on extinction-like events, the Terminator hypothesis, rather than dangers that are playing out right now. And many of the organisations that are supposed to make AI safer are closely aligned with the tech industry, such as Britain’s AI Security Institute, which receives funding from the industry, and doesn’t have the legal power to regulate AI or to compel developers to hand over their models. One of the institute’s co-founders, Matt Clifford, who lobbied for the government to loosen copyright laws, was recently forced to stand down from his role as chair of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency after taking a job with Anthropic … nice work if you can get it. Recently, I’ve notice a creeping sense of fatalism in my conversations with friends about AI. Nobody (aside perhaps from government) consented to the volumes of energy, resource and information being fed into the giant AI machine. But as Aisha makes clear, the design of technology is a choice, not an inevitability, so there’s an argument for stubborn resistance to the idea there’s no alternative. “We should be treating AI like any other industry, and regulating it like any other industry,” Aisha says. “Policy based on fear and vibes is just never going to work.” What else we’ve been enjoying The narrative that white women recognised the suffering of enslaved people and fought for abolition is challenged in the last instalment of our Enslaving Nation series, identifying the women who invested in transatlantic trafficking in pursuit of economic independence. Libby For our rugby newsletter, The Breakdown, Sarah Rendell has a look at the growing calls for clubs to offer financial fertility support for their female players. “I think the more we can empower women, the better for the game as a whole,” England captain Meg Jones tells her. Charlie “Sometimes you have to scream ‘this is not acceptable’.” Sam Levin’s interview with Julia Curlee, a trans CIA analyst fired by Trump, exposes the chilling national security consequences of White House chaos. Libby This is a deeply fascinating piece from Alaina Demopoulos on the rise of AI-generated tributes to the dead, and why people generate versions of lost celebrities and loved ones to “talk” to. What does so-called “deathslop” say about the way we mourn now? Charlie This column by Carolin Würfel, who grew up in the east of Germany, unpicks some of the lazy assumptions about her home made since last week’s AdF triumph. Libby Sport Football | Liverpool won the Carabao Cup third-round tie 3-1 against Tottenham via impressive strikes from Alexis Mac Allister, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai. Football| Raheem Sterling has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide. The former England footballer also admitted to failing to provide a specimen as he appeared at Basingstoke magistrates court. Cricket | Harry Brook smashed 114 off 49 balls before England bowled out Sri Lanka to record an emphatic win by 119 runs in the first T20. The front pages “NHS faces big changes after ‘devastating’ Letby review”, is the Guardian’s front page today. The Times says “Failure to act allowed Letby to kill three babies”, the Mirror writes “They failed and babies died”, and the Express has “Cot cams after ‘complete failure to protect babies’”. The Telegraph says “Mayors to control water companies”, the i Paper leads on “Russian spies ‘recruiting UK teenagers’”, and the FT writes “Fresh test for Healey as state pension poised to cross income tax threshold”. The Sun has “Sterling mess”, the Mail says “Earl Spencer’s bombshell new book is stolen”, and lastly Metro’s splash is “Zap the boats storm”. The Latest Lucy Letby inquiry finds ‘some babies would have been saved’ if hospital acted sooner Three babies might have survived and others could have been protected if hospital staff had taken action over concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, an inquiry has found. Lady Justice Thirlwall, who led the inquiry, found there was a ‘complete failure to protect babies on the neonatal unit’ at the Countess of Chester hospital. Letby is serving 15 whole-life prison terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more. The former neonatal nurse says she is innocent and is fighting to overturn her convictions. Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian’s north of England editor, Josh Halliday. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad For years, Natalie Ambersley felt that her vitiligo controlled her life. She was three years old when she first developed vitiligo, and by the age of six, 70% of her skin was covered. As a teenager, she hid her skin condition with makeup, hoping people wouldn’t notice. But at a London comedy club last December, she decided to joke about her skin condition, dating experiences, and how children react to her unfiltered skin in her standup set. Initially a nerve-racking performance, it became a liberating experience, as she realised she could own her story – and feel proud of the skin she once wanted to hide. “The cheers felt like the biggest sign of approval; as if I was educating the audience and advocating for vitiligo while standing under a spotlight and owning it,” Ambersley writes. 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

People protecting nature and land set up self-defence units amid threat of murder

Nature and land defenders were murdered at the rate of one every three days last year, prompting many communities to set up self-defence units, according to the latest annual death toll by the independent watchdog Global Witness. Organised crime groups or professional killers were implicated in more than a third of the 124 killings of defenders in 2025 as narco-trafficking activities overlapped with intrusions into indigenous territories and environmental crime, such as illegal logging and wildcat gold mining. This was particularly true in Latin America, which accounted for 85% of last year’s deaths of people trying to protect forests, rivers and other ecosystems. Colombia had the highest toll with 39 killings, followed by Brazil with 26 and Honduras with 12. In Asia, the most dangerous country for defenders was the Philippines, with 12 killings – many during crackdowns by state security forces. Since Global Witness began compiling statistics in 2012, the overall global tally is now 2,375 deaths and disappearances – on a par with a small-scale war. On a more positive note, the headline figure has declined over the last two years, from 196 in 2023 and 142 in 2024, though the report authors say this is likely to be an underestimate because data collection is difficult in war zones and authoritarian regimes. Many countries and companies are also carrying out nonlethal attacks on defenders, including criminalisation and online smear campaigns. Many defenders are now exposed to more organised crime with less assistance from the international community, partly as a result of cuts by the Trump administration. “The dismantling of USAID, which previously supported initiatives for Indigenous peoples to steward their own land, has had particularly serious implications for defenders,” the report says. Almost three-quarters of the killings documented in 2025 were of Indigenous people and small-scale farmers targeted for defending their land. With less outside help, an increasing number of these communities are establishing their own territorial defence mechanisms. The report highlights the example of the Kakataibo Indigenous Guard in the Peruvian Amazon. Six of the community’s leaders have been killed since 2020 amid growing incursions into the forest by criminal groups. Starting in 2022 with a few dozen recruits, the guard now has more than 150 volunteers in its 10 bases. Segundo Ispón, the commander of the organisation, said the self-defence groups provided a global benefit: “Defending our territory is important to us as a community and as a people, and we’re proud to support the climate that we all depend on. In our culture, the work of defending our resources and territory is taught from an early age. But for this next generation coming up, the work is more dangerous than ever.” At least a dozen other communities in Peru have organised self-defence units. Similar bodies have existed for some years in Colombia and Brazil. But it is risky. Last year, seven Indigenous guards were murdered. In at least five of these cases, the killings were linked to organised crime. Many forest communities report the narco-threat is growing closer. In July, Asháninka leaders on the Brazilian border with Peru petitioned the government for help after armed and masked men entered their homes, apparently in search of assassination targets. In the Ucayali basin on the other side of the border, Global Witness said there was a 600% increase in coca production between 2019 and 2023. This is pushing gangs to expand smuggling networks, including through the opening of illegal roads and trails through the forest. Corruption further adds to the risks facing forest protectors who stand in their way because many local politicians and police are in the pay of the traffickers. Forest communities want help from governments to ease these pressures but there are concerns the opposite may be happening. Under US leadership, many rightwing governments are pursuing military crackdowns on coca growers and drug traffickers, which is pushing narco-gangs further into remote regions and indigenous territories. Ricardo Soberón, a former head of Peru’s anti-narcotics office, said many communities were also affected on the border of Peru and Colombia. “We are in a situation where transnational criminal groups have appropriated the daily life of the Huitoto, Quichua, Bora, Secoya Indigenous people, who live along the Putumayo basin,” he said. Of particular concern, he added, were the threats against local leaders, environmental defenders and human rights activists who call for a more effective state presence. He fears the newly elected rightwing governments in affected countries will make matters worse by militarising the conflict in line with the “America shield” priorities of the Trump administration. Global Witness has urged the authorities to respect and work with nature and land defenders rather than making their role more difficult. Toby Hill, the lead author of the report, said: “Defenders are the world’s eyes and ears on the ground. It’s thanks to them that we know when ecosystems are being destroyed, where forests are being cleared or rivers polluted. We can’t forget the thousands of defenders around the world who are working every day to protect their territories and cultures under increasing pressure.”

Students in Gaza ‘devastated’ after plan for them to study in Belgium fails

Students who are unable to leave Gaza and take up scholarships at Belgian universities have said they are devastated after Belgium’s government hit deadlock on a plan enabling them to leave the war-torn territory. Ahmed Abujami, a 28-year-old doctor in Gaza, said he was “deeply disappointed” after Belgium’s five-party coalition government last Friday failed to agree on an evacuation plan for 13 students and researchers in the territory. Abujami has a scholarship to do a one-year master’s degree in public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. He hopes to gain skills and experience to rebuild Gaza’s shattered health system. “I was devastated by the failure to reach an agreement on Friday,” he told the Guardian via a messaging app. “We have already lost so much because of the war and now we are facing the possibility of losing another academic year.” Like many of the 12 other students, he is unable to apply for a visa to Belgium, which can only be done in person in Jerusalem or Cairo, but is blocked from leaving the Gaza Strip. He said: “We are 13 students who followed every rule, went through a strict academic selection process and earned scholarships to study in Belgium. We have nothing to do with the political disagreements surrounding our case.” Salwa Abu Elhaj, a 23-year-old graduate, still hopes to take up her place to study communications sciences at KU Leuven, but said “with every passing day, that hope becomes more difficult. I have worked very hard for this opportunity and it is heartbreaking to see it becoming uncertain because of circumstances that are completely outside my control.” She lives in central Gaza in a tent with her family, after their home was destroyed and she was forced to move several times. “There is constant uncertainty about safety, food, water, electricity, communication and even what will happen the next day.” Ahmed Alsalibi, a 39-year-old computer science professor, said the failure of Belgium’s government to reach an agreement had been “painful” for the group. In May 2024, he was awarded a fellowship at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). He hopes to develop artificial intelligence-aided systems that can be used one day in Gaza to help with the efficient dispatch of ambulances and emergency vehicles. He said his visa has been approved, but he must collect it in person in Cairo, Jordan or Jerusalem. “We hope that the [Belgian] government in the end will decide to help us.” The support the students are seeking is not unprecedented. Italy and the UK are among European countries that have negotiated with Israel and neighbouring countries to enable the evacuation of researchers and students in the last year. The Guardian has seen official letters confirming the scholarships and, in Abujami’s case, emails denying requests for remote application for a visa. Rectors from seven of the academic institutions involved published a joint article on Monday saying they were outraged by the outcome. “The moral compass of some government partners is missing,” the group wrote in De Standaard. “These students are not illegal migrants. They were selected for a competitive scholarship by independent selection committees,” they said. Belgium’s government, an eclectic five-party coalition led by the Flemish nationalist prime minister, Bart De Wever, failed to reach an agreement on a plan to evacuate the 13 students last Friday. Maxime Prévot, one of Belgium’s deputy leaders and foreign minister, announced he was withdrawing a proposal to evacuate the students. He said it had been “completely rejected” by one coalition partner – understood to be the New Flemish Alliance party – “unless we were prepared to make concessions on returns to Afghanistan and return hubs”. “Faced with this attempt to hold one issue hostage to another at the expense of people already living in misery I chose to withdraw my proposal. Dignity is not for sale.” Belgium’s asylum and migration minister, Anneleen Van Bossuyt, opposes entry for the 13 students, without stronger action to ensure people without the right to stay in Belgium leave the country. She wants to see returns to Afghanistan of convicted criminals and other measures to strengthen deportations of irregular migrants. She has been vocal in her opposition to the students’ entry, arguing it would lead to “a domino effect” if they seek to bring family members or request asylum in Belgium. Van Bossuyt, a member of the New Flemish Alliance party says the evacuation would set a precedent for other countries. “Why wouldn’t that apply to people from Yemen or Sudan? Or why not Afghan girls who want to study here?,” she told the public broadcaster VRT earlier this month. Van Bossuyt is expected to make a statement on the issue in the Belgian parliament on Wednesday. Her spokesperson declined to comment ahead of this event. Writing in De Standaard, the seven rectors say they do not understand the minister’s reasoning, noting the students have scholarships to cover living expenses and are motivated to return home. “The courses they are coming to take align with what Gaza will need for reconstruction. After their studies, they want to return there for that purpose.” The academic leaders say they continue to press for a solution, adding: “The doors of our lecture halls remain open.” But with the academic year under way in some universities, the Gaza students are left watching time slip away. “Our universities are waiting for us, our academic year is already moving forward and every day we remain trapped in Gaza puts our futures at greater risk,” Abujami said.

Singapore pays people to pick up a book in battle against doomscrolling

Singapore is paying its citizens to pick up a book for at least 15 minutes a day in an effort to fight the rise of doomscrolling. The affluent city-state hopes its gamification strategy, which launched this month, will improve concentration, critical thinking and the imagination of Singaporeans. Under the scheme, readers accrue points that can be redeemed for a few cents. People will have to log 50 daily reading sessions on a government website to earn S$1 (80c). A session of 15 minutes or more is rewarded with 20 virtual coins, with 1,000 coins needed for a dollar payment. One reading session is allowed daily. The national library board’s chief, Melissa Tam, said sustainable reading habits were built through small and achievable steps. “We live in a world of extraordinary abundance, of content, information and stimulation,” she told the Straits Times. “At any moment, we can scroll through hundreds of headlines, watch a video or get a summary of almost anything. “We know that habits are built through small, consistent actions. So, we are starting with a simple goal: just read for 15 minutes a day. On the bus, before bed or over lunch.” The government is considering ways to make social media less harmful for young Singaporeans, including a daily time limit. Doomscrolling and addiction caused most harm to young people, a recent study found. It is not uncommon for the Singapore government to use financial incentives to try to influence the behaviour of its citizens. Previous health-focused initiatives have included supermarket vouchers for walking and prizes for hitting daily step targets. Despite government concerns about reading, Singapore’s 15-year-old students recently topped the world rankings for reading in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), beating China and Taiwan.

Ukraine war briefing: New anti-drone weapon scores hit amid race against Shahed jets

“Today, there is good news about interceptors against jet-powered Shaheds,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his Tuesday evening address as he spoke about efforts to counter newer, faster Russian suicide drones. A new interceptor managed to shoot one down, Zelenskyy said, without giving further details. “It’s a Ukrainian development and it scored a hit, ⁠the Shahed was destroyed.” He added: “Some technical things still need to ‌be refined.” Ukraine’s military said its forces downed 187 airborne targets overnight into Tuesday – Zelenskyy said “of course more is needed”. Ukraine has struggled to develop interceptors for the jet-engined Shahed drones that Russia has started using, which can go faster than 400km/h. Previously, Shaheds were all propeller-driven and half as fast. Reuters reports that tests of interceptors have been hampered by the high speeds involved. “With the jet drones, we completely screwed up the initiative again, that’s a fact … we don’t even know what to do about them,” Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of the 3rd Army Corps, posted on Friday. Zelenskyy has said more than 60 Ukrainian companies are working on interceptors for jet-powered drones but only a handful have demonstrated results. Yuriy Cherevashenko, a deputy commander of Ukraine’s air force, said one solution being tested was a new generation of cheap guided missiles – engineered to cost less than the drones they shoot down. “I’m confident that soon we could fully have a class of weapons that will be effective at countering jet-powered UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles],” Cherevashenko said. A Ukrainian army unit has launched a counteroffensive against Russian forces near Lyman in Ukraine’s east, the unit’s commander said on Tuesday. Ukrainian units have cleared Russian infiltrators from an area of “about 75 square kilometres”, said Andriy Biletsky. “The 3rd Army Corps has launched an offensive operation called Vivaldi in this sector,” Biletsky said. The battlefield mappers DeepState showed Ukrainian troops had made a small pocket of gains north of Lyman. The reported gains in the Donetsk region would add to Ukraine’s push earlier this year in the south-east, where Kyiv said it clawed back more than 700 sq km of territory during a months-long counterattack. A week ago, war analysts said the same corps had recaptured a “salient” – a protrusion of Russian-occupied land hemmed by Ukrainian-held territory – of more than 200 square kilometres near Lyman. Russia attacked port ⁠infrastructure in ⁠Ukraine’s southern Black ⁠Sea region ⁠of Odesa ‌overnight, ‌the regional governor ‌said on Tuesday. Residential buildings, ‌logistics facilities and transport infrastructure came ⁠under attack, said Oleh Kiper. A ⁠Russian drone attack ⁠killed ⁠one person and knocked out ⁠power in parts ⁠of the ‌city of Zaporizhzhia ‌in south-east ‌Ukraine, said the acting regional governor, Mykhailo Semikin, said. Russian strikes on Kyiv killed one person and wounded seven other people on Tuesday, with attacks carried out on the capital’s petrol stations, Ukraine’s state emergency service said. Two more people were killed in separate Russian strikes in the Ukrainian cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Ukraine struck ⁠an oil refinery ⁠in the ⁠Russian city of Syzran, ⁠Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday. He also reported a ‌strike ‌on a drone ‌production facility in the Russian city of Taganrog, and ‌on a drone preparation and launch site in the Oryol ⁠region. Unnamed targets were hit in the Black Sea, ‌he said. Zelenskyy said ⁠Russian drones attacked Moldovan airspace twice while he was in the country on board his aircraft at Chisinau airport headed to and from a trip abroad. “In Moldova, my presidential jet was there ⁠and that’s why they attacked Moldova, the airspace of Moldova. Maybe they didn’t want to attack ‌me personally,” Zelenskyy told CBS. “When ‌we came back home, again through Chisinau, again they did the ‌same.” Moldovan authorities said two drones entered ⁠the country’s airspace on Monday 14 September. One came down in a field and the other flew off into Romania. Initially reports that Zelenskyy’s plane was almost hit were later played down. Russia will not stop fighting ⁠in ⁠Ukraine while any potential ⁠talks take place, its foreign minister, ⁠Sergei Lavrov, said ‌on ‌Tuesday. Ukraine has repeatedly said that ⁠a ceasefire should be the starting point for the ‌talks. Ukrainian lawmakers approved ⁠Zelenskyy’s sacking of ⁠the prosecutor general, Ruslan ⁠Kravchenko, who resigned amid a corruption scandal in his agency but then appeared to attempt a challenge against anti-corruption agencies. The ‌vote was supported by 317 ⁠lawmakers, with 226 needed for a majority. None voted against.