Category World News

Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.

Gehry passed away on Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, the chief of staff at his firm Gehry Partners LLP.

Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.

He also designed an expansion of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honour, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.

Other honours include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award and his native country’s highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

Even some of his early work has gained public appreciation.

In 2006, years after Gehry had stopped designing ordinary-looking buildings, word surfaced that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project he designed early in his career might be headed for the wrecking ball. The project had reportedly led to his career epiphany.

Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused.

“They’re going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had,” he said with a laugh.

Eventually, the mall was remodelled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, it’s no Gehry masterpiece.

Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world.

The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-storey New York By Gehry building, once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.

That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.

Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.

Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive”, arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.

Still other critics included Dwight D Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Gehry’s bold proposal for a memorial to honour the nation’s 34th president.

Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.

If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.

In that episode, he came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson’s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, “Frank Gehry, you’re a genius!”

“Some people think I actually do that,” he would later tell The Associated Press news agency.

Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on February 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a US citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him anti-Semitism might be holding back his career.

Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasn’t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognised his talent.

“It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said.

He went on to earn a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954. After serving in the army, he studied urban planning at Harvard University.

His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.

Egypt found itself back on the international front pages in the second half of this year. The country played host to the Sharm el-Sheikh conference in October when US President Donald Trump rallied global and regional powers alike behind his ceasefire plan for the Gaza Strip. Shortly after, in November, Cairo invited world leaders to attend the spectacular opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum next to the pyramids.

Amid these eye-catching events, other domestic developments have received less attention. Most notable were Egypt’s parliamentary elections, with the first round held in November, and runoffs planned for early December.

The elections have been dominated by a coalition of pro-government parties running unopposed for the party list seats, which are half of the parliamentary seats being voted for. Individual candidates can run for the other half of the seats in contention, but those seats are difficult to win for candidates without the necessary financial resources and connections.

Critics, therefore, believe that the race is essentially only between loyalists to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, with a group of Egyptian human rights groups saying that the elections had occurred “under chronic and severe restrictions on meaningful political participation”.

With that context in mind, the elections have not attracted a groundswell of attention from Egyptians, continuing a pattern since el-Sisi took power in the country more than a decade ago, after a coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.

“They are even less important than under [former President Hosni] Mubarak, it is not the talk of the day,” said a businessman in the textile industry, who did not wish to give their full name for fear of reprisals. “There are fewer banners and posters than during previous elections.”

Capital injections

In the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, it is often forgotten that less than two years ago, Egypt experienced the worst economic crisis seen under el-Sisi. Billions of dollars worth of capital injections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the European  Union, and massive investment pledges from the UAE in early 2024 prevented an economic crisis in Egypt.

Leading to the question, how is Egypt’s economy faring now? On paper, the picture looks promising. Recently, Egypt’s credit rating was upgraded, GDP growth is increasing, skyrocketing inflation rates that battered the population for years have cooled down, and investment from the Gulf continues. For example, Qatar is planning to develop a prime coastal strip near el-Alamein on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, not far from a similar UAE-funded project now under construction.

Earlier this year, the IMF completed its fourth review of Egypt’s economic reforms as part of conditions attached to its loan, and distributed a further $1.2bn – part of a loan worth $8bn in total, of which Egypt has now withdrawn $3.2bn.

The IMF continues to voice concern about state and military control in the economy – issues that have been on the table continuously under el-Sisi’s rule – but the overall message has been that Egypt is performing as desired. Between the lines, one can read that el-Sisi’s Egypt, especially as the precious peace agreement between Egypt and Israel has held steady amid Israel’s war in Gaza, is simply too big to fail.

Dollars available

The capital injections have had their impact on the ground. There are dollars in the banks and after a major devaluation in 2024, the Egyptian pound is relatively stable. It serves the business community well.

“Our exports rise every quarter,” said a textile company owner. “There are many Turkish textile companies opening in Egypt, drawn by our cheap labour costs.”

That is the intended effect of the devaluation: translated into foreign currency, labour costs decrease, making Egypt an attractive destination to move production that depends on low-skilled labour.

While Turkish companies are a new competitor to his business, the company owner sees the benefit for Egyptian workers. “I had to raise salaries to keep up with what Turkish companies offer, I can see that has a positive effect on people,” he said.

That said, when measured in foreign currency, salaries are still lower than before the 2024 devaluation.

“For the past year or two, exports were ridiculously cheap [due to low labour costs]. We see that advantage slowly fading now. Salaries will get better every year.”

Mohamed Usama, an engineer in a facility manufacturing steel products, has also seen conditions improve. His employer relies on the import of raw materials and export of higher-value products.

“The stable exchange rate made a huge difference,” Usama said. “It made imports and exports reliable. There are no more problems with wiring money; it is predictable when shipments come in. There are dollars available.”

“The waiting time for the arrival of an order of raw materials is now one month instead of three to six,” he added.

That predictability has allowed factories to hire again, according to Usama, even if he pointed out that many contracts were still temporary, leaving workers cautious.

Osama Diab, a Egyptian political economist at the Belgium university KU Leuven, is sceptical that the loans and investment deals have fixed Egypt’s economy.  “These mainly treat the symptoms,” he wrote in an email. “I don’t believe that any of the structural issues are resolved. The economy is still dependent on offering high interest rates to generate hard currency, and there are still massive current account imbalances.”

And while business sentiment is generally positive, hardship for many Egyptians appears far from over.

One economic parameter, non-oil private sector activity, has remained in contraction for most of the past five years. One culprit is low domestic consumer demand. That is also something the textile company owner has noticed.

“Purchasing power is not strong; it has not improved yet,” the textile company owner said. “Customers complain about not having money. Not only in textile, but in many sectors.”

More improvements needed

Diab explained that money from international institutions and investments is primarily being used to repay debts, and not on income or job-generating activities. “That means the vast majority of citizens will not feel any improvement,” he said.

“The government’s ability to honour its increasing debt obligation runs in contradiction with its ability to fulfil its social obligations,” according to Diab.

While the opening of the Grand Museum was surrounded by promises of increased tourism revenues coming in, people were hit with another fuel price increase in November. The price of electricity and cooking gas are set to rise, as well, early next year.

That means that even with the improved wages on offer in some sectors, the general sentiment is that they still need to rise further.

In fact, last year Egypt introduced a new labour law that decreased the mandatory annual raise for workers, and excluded a portion of the workforce from guaranteed annual raises all together. The law also allowed employers to use temporary contracts at will.

The government presented the law as a positive step for Egypt – for instance, it increases paid maternity leave, modernising relations between employer and employee. “The new law is simple, clear, and easy to apply. It provides contractual flexibility,” said Minister of Labour Mohamed Gobran after the law came into effect in September. “The new law is highly advantageous for employers. It simplifies many aspects of workforce management.”

Mahmoud, a farmer in his 40s from a village in Egypt’s Nile Delta, north of Cairo, is typical of those who are still struggling despite the economic shots. He owns a small plot of land that provides most of the income for his family of six, and takes up household service jobs in addition.

Rural areas in the Nile Delta, and especially Upper Egypt, have been hit hardest with high poverty rates in the past years, driving people to move away for work.

“The museum is good for Egypt, but mainly for tourism, for hotels, not for all Egyptians,” he said. ‘The farmers and others in the countryside are just trying to get by with the expensive prices. They wouldn’t abandon their whole lives and go work in hotels in Cairo. What would a farmer go to do in tourism anyway?’

Mahmoud complained that subsidies – for instance, those on fuel and food – have been removed as part of the IMF-induced reforms, making life more expensive.

That leads to often heard criticism of IMF conditions, including that, in the pursuit of free market economics, it is the poor that suffer, even if the general business climate improves.

Since early September, the United States has carried out at least 22 declared military strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking vessels off the coast of Latin America.

Legal experts and international officials say that the attacks, which have killed at least 86 people, are a violation of the law and represent acts of extrajudicial killing.

But despite what scholars describe as clear-cut illegality, Trump’s lethal campaign has shown few signs of slowing down, and critics see an alarming shift towards the use of military force against criminal activities.

“I was utterly shocked that the United States would do this,” Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview.

“It shows that the Trump administration has no respect for international law or conventions around the use of force.”

The situation points to a trend of impunity for powerful countries. Though there may be a broad consensus that Trump is breaking international law, it is unclear what legal or political mechanisms could halt his bombing campaign.

“Certainly, trying to rein in a superpower like the United States is something very difficult,” Saul said. “This has to stop from within the US itself.”

‘Guardrails have been eroded’

Experts say that oversight could potentially come from a number of sources.

On the domestic front, the US Congress has the ability to pass legislation barring military strikes or cut off funds for the campaign.

Military members involved in the attacks could also refuse to carry out what they see as unlawful orders.

Foreign leaders could limit or pause intelligence cooperation with the US.

Thus far, however, few meaningful restraints have been placed on the Trump administration.

Twice, the US Senate has voted to defeat legislation that would have required the White House to obtain congressional support for its bombing campaign.

In October, the first bill failed by a vote of 51 to 48. In November, the second was voted down by a margin of 51 to 49.

On the international side, there have also been reports that the United Kingdom and Colombia considered whether to stop sharing intelligence from the Caribbean with the US.

But officials from both countries have downplayed those reports, with Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti calling the situation a “misunderstanding”.

Other mechanisms meant to assess the legality of the Trump administration’s military actions have faced political pressure.

News outlets such as CNN and NBC News reported that US military lawyers — known as judge advocates general or JAG officers — who questioned the legality of the bombing campaign were sidelined or fired.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has previously said that he does not want military lawyers acting as “roadblocks” to Trump’s policies.

“Military lawyers are only roadblocks if you want to break the law,” said Sarah Harrison, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Harrison previously served as an associate general counsel at the Department of Defense, where she advised the military on questions of international law. She said the Trump administration has deliberately weakened institutional norms and legal safeguards meant to prevent the abuse of military power.

“They have established a blueprint to direct the military to commit an unlawful order without resistance,” she said.

“The guardrails inside have been eroded.”

‘Unlimited authority’

Numerous laws, however, exist to prohibit extrajudicial killings like those Trump is currently carrying out in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.

Article Two of the UN Charter, for instance, largely prohibits countries from using force internationally, barring an act of self-defence.

The Geneva Conventions, a cornerstone of humanitarian law, also bar military violence against “persons taking no active part” in hostilities.

The Trump administration’s use of “double-tap” strikes — where a second attack is conducted to kill survivors from the first — has raised additional legal concerns.

The Hague Convention explicitly outlaws “no quarter given” policies, wherein soldiers are ordered to execute those who could otherwise be taken prisoner.

The Trump administration nevertheless denied that any of its strikes violate international or domestic law.

Instead, it argues that the vessels it bombed contained deadly narcotics, and that drug-traffickers are ‘unlawful combatants’ whose transportation of narcotics represents an attack on the US.

“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in complete compliance with the law of armed conflict,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said.

“Lawyers up and down the chain of command have been thoroughly involved in reviewing these operations prior to execution.”

But legal scholars say that the administration’s claims do not hold water.

Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who previously served as an adviser to the US Department of State, said that the Trump administration has tried to erase the distinction between criminal activity and an armed attack that would justify a military response.

She compared the administration’s reasoning to the kind of garbled legal analysis an AI assistant like Grok might produce.

“It feels to me that some political actors inside the executive branch have taken all of the statements and memos about the use of force over the last 25 years, jumbled up the words, thrown them into Grok, and asked it to come up with a legal argument,” said Ingber.

“They think they can throw around words like ‘armed conflict’ and ‘terrorist’, and that if they label someone as such, it can give them unlimited authority,” she added.

A pliant Congress

Trump is not the first president to spur concerns about his broad use of military force.

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, presidents including George W Bush and Barack Obama carried out military strikes in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, as part of a global “war on terror”.

Both men drew on congressional authorisations for military force (AUMFs) that had been narrowly drafted to respond to the September 11 attacks.

Those authorisations were applied over time to an expanding list of organisations and conflicts.

Critics, however, have argued that this growing use of military force extends presidential authority beyond its constitutional limits and has weakened oversight and transparency.

Trump has continued the trend of presidents deploying the military without Congress’s approval first.

Normally, the power to declare war and authorise military action falls to Congress, not the president, and Congress retains the authority to rein in presidential military deployments.

Many conservative lawmakers, however, have been hesitant to challenge Trump, who maintains a firm hold over the Republican Party. Others accept the administration’s depiction of the air strikes as an anti-narcotics campaign.

Only two Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted with Democrats in their recent attempts to stop the boat bombings.

“From the bombing of Iran to possible attacks on Venezuela, there are some entrepreneurial figures on the right willing to criticise the administration when it carries out interventionist policies,” said Curt Mills, the director of the American Conservative magazine, which advocates for a more restrained foreign policy.

“But Congress is weak. Its influence over foreign policy is at a historical nadir.”

‘There is no limiting principle’

Given the reluctance of most Republican lawmakers to assert congressional authority, some experts expressed hope that voters will send lawmakers to Congress who will exert greater control over military attacks abroad.

But thus far, at least, a majority of voters do not appear to view the current strikes with particular alarm.

In a CBS News poll last month, about 53 percent of respondents expressed approval for the strikes against the alleged drug boats, while 47 percent expressed disapproval.

Ingber, the Yale Law professor, speculated that decades of military action overseas during the war on terror may have primed the public to see the current strikes as normal.

“It’s possible that this is a frog that has already been boiled, and the public has grown to accept the idea of the president using force on his say-so,” said Ingber. “Even, in this case, against suspected criminals for suspected crimes that we don’t even have the death penalty for in this country.”

But if the “war on terror” has helped desensitise the public to the use of military power overseas, legal experts say the current strikes represent a radical new development: the application of wartime powers to criminal activities.

“The president is claiming the power to kill anyone he accuses of a crime, no questions asked,” said Annie Shiel, the US director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), an advocacy group.

New York City, United States – A passionate crowd of a few hundred people lined the heavily trafficked Fifth Avenue in New York City, cascading with picket signs calling on coffee giant Starbucks to negotiate a contract with its union.

Picketers held signs saying “No Contract, No Coffee” and “Baristas on Strike” as they lined the sidewalk, blocking the front doors of the Empire State Building, the single most iconic landmark in the United States and which houses an office for the company alongside one of its more high-end signature stores called Starbucks Reserve.

Several demonstrators were arrested. Two of the men who identified themselves as “T-bone” and “Elon” spoke to Al Jazeera about why they’re picketing.

“Stop stalling contracts, negotiate with the workers and sign a contract for fair wages,” Elon, one of the detained baristas, told Al Jazeera as he was loaded into an NYPD bus.

Starbucks Workers United told Al Jazeera that a total of 12 people were arrested, but the NYPD did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request to confirm the figures.

Representatives for Starbucks said as per their “rough estimate”, only 25 people in the crowd were actually team members.

Representatives for Starbucks Workers United disputed that and told Al Jazeera that more than 100 baristas were in attendance.

This is the third straight week of open-ended strikes, which began on November 13 as the union calls for Starbucks to offer them a contract.

War of words

These tensions are not new for the company, which operates 18,300 stores in the US and Canada. They come amid a longstanding history of the coffeeshop chain being at odds with its workers. In December 2024, workers hit the picket line when negotiations for a contract that had started in April, stalled.

At the time, the union rejected a proposal that guaranteed raises of 2 percent, but did not include any improvements in healthcare packages, which workers said were inadequate. Starbucks has not budged.

“We’re focused on continuing to offer the best job in retail, including more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits for hourly partners. The facts speak for themselves: partner engagement is up, turnover is nearly half the industry average, and we get more than 1 million job applications a year,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson told Al Jazeera.

Starbucks Workers United points out that starting wages, which do not include tips, in 33 states are $15.25 per hour. That’s what Al Jazeera found on Starbucks’ jobs board: a barista position in Elko, Nevada starts at  $15.25, a supervisor role in Kansas starts at $19.37 per hour, a barista role in Brooklyn, New York, is open for a starting wage of $17.25 and a shift supervisor role that starts at $22.25 per hour.

The union said that many baristas get less than 20 hours per week, which is below the cut-off for benefits; Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify those claims.

Starbucks said that the union is demanding a 65 percent pay increase in the immediate future and 77 percent over the next three years, and higher pay for other elements of their jobs, including weekend hours, early or late hours, sorting inventory, and working on days of promotions, like the store’s Red Cup Day, which typically brings in heavier traffic.

Starbucks Workers United has pushed back and has said that it is a misrepresentation of their requests and combines several proposals into one.

“That allegation is not true. We presented a set of economic proposals as options to negotiate over and ultimately get to more pay and benefits. Starbucks simply said ‘no’ to all of them, and then disingenuously added up all the options as if they were one cohesive demand,”  Michelle Eisen, Starbucks Workers United spokesperson, told Al Jazeera.

“That would be like walking into Starbucks, adding up the entire menu, and saying it costs $1,000 to order a drink at Starbucks.”

Political pressure

Starbucks is also facing increased pressure in New York City, where the chain has 300 stores. Both the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, and the incoming one, Zohran Mamdani, are putting pressure on the company to meet union demands.

This week, the current Adams administration solidified a $38.9m settlement with the coffeeshop chain for violations of the city’s Fair Workweek law, which requires employers to provide predictable schedules, advance notice, and to give existing workers the opportunity for more hours before hiring new employees. The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) said the company committed more than half a million violations of the law since 2021.

The settlement covers those who worked at one of the 300 locations across New York City between July 4, 2021, and July 7, 2024.

Also this week, Mamdani and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined striking workers outside a Starbucks location in Brooklyn, New York.

While Mamdani answered Al Jazeera’s questions on Tuesday in a news conference, his press team did not respond to requests for comment following the arrests of members of the union he marched with only two days before.

Sanders — who in March 2023 grilled then-CEO Howard Schultz on union-busting allegations — told Al Jazeera that momentum is now on the side of workers.

“I’ll tell you what is also different is that for years, four years have come and gone, and hundreds of shops have voted to join unions, 12,000 workers have voted to join unions. And yet Starbucks has refused to sit down and negotiate a fair contract,” Sanders told Al Jazeera.

It’s not clear what the next steps are. On the federal level, under the administration of US President Donald Trump, the National Labor Relations Board — the federal agency where workers bring labour rights complaints to— has been scaled back.

Since Trump took office, the agency has lacked quorum, meaning there are not enough members to make key decisions related to allegations of unfair labour practices. Earlier this year, the Trump administration fired board member Gwynne Wilcox, and fired the general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, two Biden-era appointees who took pro-labour stances.

Long-term tensions

The nationwide movement — a wave of unionisation that has called for better pay has been years in the making, beginning after a store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionise in 2021.

Among allegations of union-busting practices under then CEO Schultz, is surveillance amongst workers and what are called “captive audience” meetings in which workers had to listen to anti-union messaging from the company.

In 2024, the NLRB ruled that Schultz made a threat to employees in a 2022 town hall in which he said, “If you’re not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.”

“There is an exhaustion amongst New Yorkers at the sheer contrast between these workers, who cannot afford to live in this city, and CEOs who are making $96m a year on the backs of those same workers’ labour,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani was referring to Brian Niccol, who took over as CEO from Schultz in September 2024, with a compensation package  of nearly $96m — or 6,666 times the median employee salary. That represents the largest CEO-to-worker pay gap among the S&P 500, according to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch tracker.

With sales slumping, Niccol was brought in with the hopes that he would turn the company around after a short stint by Laxman Narasimhan, who was ousted by the board amid looming pressure from activist investors and slowing sales.

Starbucks Workers United said that the former CEO was at the negotiating table.

“Bargaining commenced in a real way under his [Narasimhan] leadership,” Eisen added.

A new CEO

Niccol’s appointment was a step back, according to Eisen.

“We had a solid 9 months of really good bargaining in 2024, which came to a screeching halt when this current CEO stepped into that role,” said Eisen, whose Buffalo location became the first store to vote to unionise.

Niccol has struggled to address slumping sales. Global same-store sales rose by 1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the previous quarter, lifted by international markets. North America same-store sales remained flat.

In September, the Seattle-based coffee shop chain announced the closure of 1 percent of its US stores. While it does not impact store workers, 900 corporate employees lost their jobs as part of a $1bn restructuring plan.

Niccol came from Chipotle, which faced a slew of union-busting allegations and settlements under him during the more than six years he led the company. In 2023, the company closed its first unionised store in Augusta, Maine, and later agreed to pay employees of the store $240,000 as part of a settlement.

Chipotle also faced similar penalties from the City of New York, much like this week’s settlement with Starbucks. In 2022, the company agreed to pay $20m to settle allegations it violated city labour laws, including failing to provide predictable schedules and paid sick leave. That settlement covered 13,000 workers.

Under Niccol, the chain was also accused of violating child labour laws and paid out settlements across the country. In 2022, the company settled with the state of New Jersey for $7.75m after a state agency found more than 30,000 allegations of child labour violations. In Massachusetts, the company paid almost $2m to settle 13,000 allegations of child labour law violations.

Workers hope that amid the settlement this week, renewed pressure from lawmakers, and bigger turnout of picketers will be enough to move contract negotiations forward.

“I think this company recognises that there are some serious systemic issues within it. I think they do recognise that the people with the solutions are the ones in the cafes every single day and we are just waiting for them to pick that conversation up so we can finalise that contract,” Eisen said.

And the company spokesperson suggested it is as well amid a jab at strikers on the picket line.

“We’ve been very clear that we’re ready to talk when the union is ready to return to negotiations. Instead, they are focused on staging and promoting a protest in New York City, where they represent only 200 of the 4,500 partners in NYC,”  Anderson said.

ECOFEST 2025 is under way in Dakar, Senegal, with a focus on how culture fosters resilience amid political crises in West Africa. Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque spoke to attendees about what the celebrations mean to them.

They are not acceptable in our nation. I’ll be open and honest with you, okay. Someone will say, “Oh, that’s not politically correct.” I’m not interested. In our nation, I don’t want them. For a reason, their country is no good.

On the first day of an immigration crackdown targeting their community, President Donald Trump said this. He argued that Somali migrants have made Minnesota, a state where 2 percent of the population is of Somali descent, into a “hellhole” and should be “out of here.” Trump then vented his ire at Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative from Minnesota who was born in Somalia, who was also a vocal critic. Her close friends are garbage. These individuals do not perform work. These people don’t say, “Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great,” they just say.

None of this is, of course, novel or unexpected. Immigration and asylum seekers have always been the pillars of Trump’s MAGAverse. Who can forget that several MAGA Republicans seriously attempted to revoke Zohran Mamdani’s US citizenship before his cordial meeting with Trump at the White House? Since Trump’s ascent to power, hostility toward immigrants has become a guiding principle in American politics.

However, Trump’s increasingly isolated America and its validation and promotion by those in positions of power are not exclusive to this. Other countries are adopting similar rhetoric and strategies, which shows a global trend that extends far beyond the United States. One such example is Denmark.

Denmark has recently grown to be one of Europe’s most restrictive states on immigration and asylum, despite its long-held reputation as a progressive, compassionate, and orderly society built on universal healthcare, Lego, highly liveable cities, and minimalist designer aesthetics. Islamophobic rhetoric was prominent during the recently concluded local elections, and the ruling Social Democrats have put their campaign’s emphasis on addressing the alleged immigration issue.

The supposedly progressive Labour government in the United Kingdom appears eager to emulate the Danish example across the border. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to put an end to a quappy chapter of British immigration policy under the pressure of the far right and Reform UK’s enduring rise in the polls. He has promised that immigration will drop as a result of his government’s reforms, and that the UK could end up with a population of strangers if immigration is drastically reduced. That is a promise. Most strikingly, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently traveled to Denmark to look into its immigration and asylum laws, which highlights how severely Labour’s position has weakened.

Outside of the West, xenophobia is also becoming more prevalent. It serves as a constant source of policy and practice for countries as far as South Africa, a sign that anti-immigrant politics are now a global tool of government.

In Libya, migrants traveling through Europe are subject to horrific levels of abuse and violence. They are subject to prolonged arbitrary detention, forced disappearances, torture, rape, unlawful killings, extortion, and forced labor, according to Amnesty International. These abuses occur within a system that is effectively funded by European governments, which have given Libyan coastguard units tasked with intercepting migrants before they enter international waters funding, training, and equipment. Despite being aware of the consequences, European Union countries have outsourced border control to Libya in an effort to stop the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean, allowing the authorities to carry out measures that the UN says are likely to be crimes against humanity.

Further west, Black African migrants have experienced years of intermittent violence in Tunisia. Tunisia became a purely African nation without any affiliation to the Arab or Islamic countries in the early 2023s, according to President Kais Saied’s claim in the beginning of a criminal plan to change the country’s demographic makeup through irregular migration. His statements sparked a rise in violent attacks on Black people, including asylum seekers, students, and immigrants. Additionally, there were more arrests, and it appeared that police were pursuing Black African foreigners based on their appearance. Undocumented migrants, registered refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants with valid credentials were among those detained, a stark illustration of how state policies can change once xenophobia is legislated for political gain.

In post-apartheid South Africa, xenophobia has always been a constant feature of life and politics, just like it has been with immigrants from other African nations. There have been 1, 295 recorded incidents since 1994, including displacement, looting of migrant-owned businesses, and killings, according to Xenowatch, a project hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand that tracks xenophobic discrimination and violence. In 2008, there were 150 incidents and 72 fatalities. The overall number of xenophobic incidents again reached 2008 levels in 2025, underscoring the persistent nature of the crisis, which included 16 fatalities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government consistently cut off migrant communities, cutting many out of relief efforts, and placing South Africans’ protection at the top of the priority list. Despite having only 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the time compared to South Africa’s 1, 845, the state constructed a 40-kilometer fence along the border with Zimbabwe to stop infected or undocumented people. Current myths about foreign-owned businesses posing health risks were reinforced by politicians. Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, the then-Minister of Small Business Development, declared that only South African-owned, managed, and run shops would remain open when he announced that spaza shops could remain open.

Additionally, there is a rise in explicitly anti-immigrant mobilization in South Africa. On September 23, 2020, a coalition of civil society organizations called for the widespread deportation of African migrants and marched to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean embassies, claiming that foreigners contribute to South Africa’s social problems like drug use, human trafficking, and child abductions.

Following the former president’s imprisonment, in 2021, the vigilante organization Operation Dudula emerged as a result. Despite its claims to address crime and drug use in Gauteng communities, Dudula, which means “force out,” in isiZulu, accurately sums up its true focus. The organization is more well known for urging mass deportations, preventing immigrants from using hospitals and clinics, and launching foreign-owned businesses.

I could continue, of course, from increasing restrictions in nations like Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador that are intended to stop the flow of Venezuelan immigrants to Indian authorities forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh for lack of respect for their rights, including international human rights standards, claiming they are undocumented. Xenophobia is now ingrained into the political life of nations all over the world, not just in any ideology or region.

Why are we so eager to accept xenophobic ideologies and policies? partly because they are practical. They make it easier for governments and societies to externalize domestic failures, providing an easy explanation for issues that are much more complicated and frequently rooted in political and economic mismanagement at home, in austerity, worsening inequality, and precarious work than in stranger arrivals.

In this way, the migrant functions as a ready-made scapegoat, a person we project all of our beliefs as a threat to who we are or what we stand for. Then it becomes simple to make claims that immigrants are a part of some hideous plan to alter the country’s demographic or cultural fabric by adhering to dangerous ideologies, using strained national resources, carrying diseases, or using migrants as part of a dangerous ideology or strategy.

Reality is realized through perception. By blaming those who live outside our borders, we can see where the threat is hiding, giving us peace of mind that we are not the problem. The saddest part is that our own systems’ dysfunctions and corruptions remain unaffected. And scapegoating the ostensible outsider doesn’t help our societies become fairer, safer, or more compassionate; it just wastes time for those who are unwilling to face the crises they contributed to.