“Project Freedom” was only in force for a day.

Indigenous people are gathering to honor loved ones who have gone missing or been killed. They're also calling for reforms to make their communities safer.

India News: NEW DELHI: West Bengal has turned saffron. Mamata Banerjee's 15-year rule has ended and BJP is all set to form its first government in the state. So, .

The twin island nation Antigua and Barbuda swore in a new Cabinet on Tuesday, days after incumbent Prime Minister Gaston Browne led the Antigua and Barbuda Labor Party to an unprecedented fourth consecutive electoral victory. For the first time, elected officials swore an oath of allegiance to the country, setting aside a more than 40-year tradition of pledging loyalty to the British sovereign in the former colony. In December 2025, Parliament approved a constitutional amendment formally removing loyalty to the British monarch, King Charles III, his heirs and successors from the oath of allegiance. The oath now pledges allegiance to the state of Antigua and Barbuda, its constitution and its laws. “Whereas your success at the polls has earned you the confidence and trust of the people; that confidence and trust collectively, is not a gift to be enjoyed, or trust to be betrayed. It is a burden to be carried, a duty to be performed, a trust to be honored every single day,” Browne said to those gathered.

A teenager shot dead two staff members and injured two other people, including an 11-year-old girl, on Tuesday in the latest school shooting to rock Brazil. A 13-year-old boy was arrested over the attack at São José Institute, a junior high school in Rio Branco, capital of northwestern Acre state, the local government said. The injured girl was shot in the leg. The teenager, who is a student at the school, entered the building and fired several shots in a hallway leading to the principal’s office, Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Russo of the Acre military police department told reporters. He surrendered to police after the attack.

This article gives an idea how the votebank and the geopolitics works in the subcontinent.

Nine million voters have been dropped from rolls in West Bengal, raising concerns over exclusion and fairness.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo on Tuesday appointed a new attorney general and head of the prosecutor’s office, putting an end to a fierce, years-long struggle between the anti-corruption progressive and former top prosecutor Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by 40 countries for obstructing anti-corruption efforts. He appointed lawyer Gabriel Estuardo García Luna to the position, marking a win for the Guatemalan president who has often clashed with prosecutors he accuses of rotting Guatemala’s justice system and making politically motivated arrests. Porras’ prosecutor’s office repeatedly tried and failed to block Arévalo from entering office, sparking international rebuke and a fierce struggle with the president. In Guatemala, the attorney general holds an independent office that is not supposed to be allied to any given president, meaning that presidents can be effectively stuck with rivals as chief law enforcement officers. The office has been plagued by corruption allegations for years.

Syria announces clandestine cells dismantled for preparing assasination of top government officials

Explosives and weapons seized, 11 people detained

https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2026/05/05/syria-foils-hezbollah-assassination-plot-with-raids-across-country/

https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2642450/middle-east

The United Arab Emirates has come under attack from Iranian missiles and drones for the second day in a row, according to its Defence Ministry. Tuesday’s attack came a day after at least three people were injured in strikes the day before, and a drone sparked a fire at a key oil facility in the eastern emirate of Fujairah.

The results of the latest attack were not immediately clear. The escalation comes amid fears of a return to war between Iran and the US, after Washington launched a new initiative, dubbed “Project Freedom”, to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday. About a fifth of global energy exports pass through the narrow waterway. In retaliation for joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, Iranian forces have effectively taken control of the strait by attacking – or just threatening – vessels attempting to cross without Tehran’s permission. The move has triggered a global energy shock, pushing oil and gas prices to multi-year highs. In response, the US imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and shipping on April 13, limiting Tehran’s ability to export oil, import essential goods and maintain foreign-exchange inflows.

Prosecutors said that the six defendants were members of the banned group Palestine Action, which organised the assault on the Elbit Systems UK facility in Bristol, southwest England, in August 2024.

The raid, which prosecutors said caused about one million pounds ($1.36m) of damage, took place about 10 months into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza that began in October 2023.

Palestine Action was later proscribed under “terrorism” law, a decision which was ruled unlawful by London’s High Court, though the group remains banned pending the government’s appeal, which was heard last week.

Tuesday’s verdicts follow an earlier trial, after which all six defendants were acquitted of aggravated burglary, and the previous jury could not reach verdicts on the criminal damage charges.

Prosecutors later dropped charges of violent disorder against all six defendants.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51525347

Full Report(PDF).

Trump says US navy will ‘guide’ stranded ships out of waterway but report says warship was hit by Iran

The world’s shipping industry has questioned whether vessels will be able to travel safely to and from the Gulf after Donald Trump announced his latest plan to open the strait of Hormuz.

Trump wrote on Monday that the US navy would “guide” stranded ships out of the waterway, writing on his social media site Truth Social that the operation, “Project Freedom”, would be a humanitarian gesture “on behalf of the United States, Middle Eastern Countries but, in particular, the Country of Iran”.

But within hours Iran’s Fars news agency reported a US warship intending to pass through the strait had been hit by two missiles and turned back after ignoring an Iranian warning. The US denied its ship had been hit. Brent crude rose more than 5% a barrel to $114.45 amid reports that the United Arab Emirates was responding to a missile threat and a fire on a South Korean vessel in the Gulf.

The surge in gold prices in recent years has fueled a renewed mining rush in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, accelerating deforestation in protected areas and driving mercury contamination to hazardous levels, officials and experts say. A study released Tuesday by the nongovernmental organization Amazon Conservation, in partnership with Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Socioambiental, found illegal mining sites drove clear-cutting inside three conservation areas in the Xingu region, one of the world’s largest expanses of protected forest, spanning the states of Para and Mato Grosso. The analysis combined satellite imagery with ground research. The Terra do Meio Ecological Station recorded its first cases of illegal mining in September 2024. By the end of 2025, mining-related deforestation there had spread to 30 hectares (74 acres). At the Altamira National Forest, illegal mining accumulated 832 hectares (2,056 acres) of deforestation between 2016 and September 2025. A new mining front that opened in 2024 expanded to 36 hectares (89 acres) by October 2025, accounting for nearly half the mining-related deforestation recorded in the unit during that year.