As Iran and the United States maintain rival blockades on the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, we look at the more than 20,000 seafarers stranded on commercial ships since the outbreak of the war and unable to move out of the region. These maritime workers are often working-class men from developing countries across the Global South who form the crews on about 1,500 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels currently stuck on the water. Unpaid for several weeks, they lack the visas to disembark in any of the Gulf countries near the ships.
“There is lack of food, there is lack of provisions, there is lack of water,” says Mohamed Arrachedi of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, joining us from Bilbao, Spain. “The seafarers are just exposed and absolutely vulnerable.”
We also speak with Manoj Yadav, general secretary of Forward Seamen’s Union of India, who says the mental health of the workers is rapidly deteriorating as many have also lost connection to their families.
“They are trained for serving on board merchant vessels. They are not trained for the war,” Yadav says.
People have created their own online platforms to probe the millions of Epstein file documents, fostering new conspiracies that link to older ones like QAnon.
A large review of existing literature shines a light on the little-known condition and points to the need for a better understanding of who is at risk and how to prevent and treat it.
Construction crews in Arizona who are building President Trump’s expanded border wall have razed a portion of a Native American archeological site in the Sonoran Desert estimated to be at least 1,000 years old. Aerial photos reveal that bulldozers caused extensive damage to a 280-by-50-foot etching in the desert sand known as an intaglio, which holds special significance for the Hia-Ced O’odham people.
Lorraine Marquez Eiler, co-founder of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance and an elder of the Hia-Ced O’odham, says locals informed both the work crews and Border Patrol officials about the significance of the intaglio.
“On Thursday, late afternoon, they were still talking about how to protect the area and went home feeling that they were still working together. On Friday, for whatever reason, the contractors bulldozed the area,” says Marquez Eiler.
“This wall cuts through sovereign ancestral lands that existed long before the U.S.-Mexico border,” adds Congressmember Adelita Grijalva, whose district includes the area. “The federal government is prioritizing this rapid construction of an unnecessary wall without any meaningful tribal consultation.”
As the Trump administration continues to expand the ICE detention system, concerns are growing over abuses inside immigration jails, including use of physical violence, pepper spray and electric shocks against detainees. Earlier this year, more than 70,000 people were being detained by ICE in jails across the country.
Congressmember Adelita Grijalva from Arizona, who visited two ICE jails recently, says detainees who spoke to her described dire conditions, medical neglect and more. “People are losing weight. Water is undrinkable,” she says. “There are a lot of really significant abuses happening. There’s no rhyme or reason as to what’s going on.”
A new investigation by Reuters details how the Trump administration is seeking to gain federal control over elections in at least eight states, employing investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID records for the campaign.
“What we’re seeing is the Trump administration, in some ways, is seeking to relitigate the 2020 election, and they’re also seeking to impose federal authority over the administration of elections,” says investigative journalist Ned Parker.
Parker also discusses the Trump administration’s campaign of retribution against the president’s perceived enemies, for which he and his colleagues at Reuters just won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. “What we found in our count of 470 targets was that it really cut across all aspects of American society,” he says.