In a video, thousands of people demonstrate outside Istanbul’s municipal building to mark the 100th day since the detention of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was suspended. After the Republican People’s Party (CHP)-led rally, riot police used pepper spray and detained protesters who refused to disperse.
One of the most vulnerable nations in the world is Suriname, the smallest nation in South America, due to rising sea levels.
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nearly seven out of ten people in the former Dutch colony’s 600, 000 inhabitants reside in coastal low-lying areas.
A 56-year-old farmer who has lost 95 percent of his smallholding to the sea, Gandat Sheinderpesad said, “Every day I see a piece of my land disappear.”
Local authorities have been attempting to stop the tide for years.
According to Riad Nurmohamed, Minister of Public Works, “Some areas are not problematic because we have five, ten, or twenty kilometers (three, six, or twelve miles) of mangroves acting as a buffer between the waves and the shore.”
However, he continued, “there is only one kilometer in this area, which is very vulnerable,” close to Paramaribo, Suriname’s capital city.
A program to restore the capital’s mangroves was launched in 2020.
In 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dipped into the mud to personally plant seedlings in order to increase VIP power.
The project’s lead environmentalist, Sienwnath Naqal, surveys a desolation-stricken area five years later.
The wooden stakes to which he had attached hundreds of saplings are now mostly bare, and the sea is now sputtering at the edge of a road.
The roots were exposed because the sediment from the high seas was carried away.
According to Nurmohamed, “the water forcefully penetrated the mangroves, which were destroyed over the past two to three years.”
Naqal claimed that the erosion was also caused by the sand being dug at the entrance to the Paramaribo estuary to facilitate the passage of boats upriver to the port.
However, the destruction was deliberate in some places, with farmers removing mangroves to make way for crops, just like the Amazon rainforest in the nearby Brazil.
Suriname has taken a different approach and began building a dyke as the water is sputtering at the feet of Paramaribo’s 240, 000 residents.
Sheinderpesad has one last chance to survive on his land thanks to the levee.
I need nowhere to go, I tell myself. I’m not sure how long until the dyke is operational, but he said he will be safer.
The government has promised to pay $11 million from state funds for the 4.5 km-long barrier.
“It takes years before you can begin building if you go see donors.” We will be flooded because there is no time left,” Nurmohamed said.
However, stifling the nation’s maritime defenses will not be enough to stop the mighty Atlantic.
The entire network of dykes that line the nation’s 380 km of coastline is being planned by the government.
Simply put, it’s not sure where to find the money.
Nurmohamed remarked, “It’s a colossal investment.”
The solution might be found in the newly discovered offshore oil deposits of the nation.
At least three people were killed when an African Union peacekeeping mission’ helicopter crashed at the international airport in Mogadishu, according to authorities.
According to Artan Mohamed, the head of the airport’s immigration office, the incident took place on Wednesday at Aden Adde airport as the helicopter attempted to land.
Eight people were on board the helicopter, which belonged to the Ugandan Air Force but was being operated by the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), he claimed. It took off from Baledogle Airfield in the Lower Shabelle region.
A Ugandan military spokesman claims that three of the passengers on board managed to survive the incident.
At least three people were also found to have survived the collision, which allegedly occurred at around 7.30 am (04:30GMT) local time.
Without providing further information about their health, the survivors were transported to the AUSSOM hospital, it continued.
Witnesses described the helicopter exploding, igniting a fire, and plummeting to the ground.
Omar Farah, an aviation officer, told The Associated Press that he “saw the helicopter spinning and then it fell very quickly, while Abdirahim Ali, a resident, claimed he witnessed “a huge explosion and smoke everywhere.”
Flights resumed, according to the director-general of the nation’s civil aviation authority, despite the airport’s reported minor delays.
“The situation has been managed,” he declared. According to Ahmed Macalin Hassan, the runway is level and fully operational, and flights can take off and land as usual.
More than 11, 000 Somalia residents, including those from Kenya and Uganda, make up the AUSSOM mission.
They are aiding the Somali military in battling al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate that wants to overthrow the nation’s ruling class and establish its own rule.
According to state media reports, the Somali army killed a well-known member of the organization this week in the Middle Shabelle.
After ordering the United States military to bomb Iran last month, US President Donald Trump made a brief address at the White House to laud the “massive precision strike” that had allegedly put a “stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
The speech, which lasted less than four minutes, ended with the invocation of God’s name no fewer than five times in a span of seven seconds: “And I wanna just thank everybody and in particular, God. I wanna just say, ‘We love you God, and we love our great military – protect them.’ God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America.”
Of course, the terminology deployed in the speech was problematic before we even got to the rapid-fire mention of the Almighty by a man who has never been particularly religious. For one thing, Iran simply lacks the credentials to qualify as the world’s “number one state sponsor of terror”; that position is already occupied by the US itself, which, unlike Iran, has spent the entirety of its contemporary history bombing and otherwise antagonising folks in every last corner of the Earth.
The US has also continued to serve as the number one state sponsor of Israel, whose longstanding policy of terrorising Palestinians and other Arabs has now culminated in an all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, as Israel seeks to annihilate the territory and its inhabitants along with it.
But anyway, “God bless Israel.”
This, to be sure, was not the first time that Trump relied on God to sign off on worldly events. Back in 2017, during the man’s first stint as president, the deity made various appearances in Trump’s official statement following a US military strike on Syria. God, it seems, just can’t get enough of war.
God made a prominent return in January 2025, taking centre stage in Trump’s inauguration speech – yet another reminder that the separation of church and state remains one of the more transparently disingenuous pillars of American “democracy.” In his address, the president revealed the true reason he had survived the widely publicised assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Part of making America great again was supposed to be focusing on ourselves instead of, you know, getting wrapped up in other people’s wars abroad. But the beauty of having God on your side means you really don’t have to explain too much in the end; after all, it’s all divine will.
Indeed, Trump’s increasing reliance on the Almighty can hardly be interpreted as a come-to-Jesus moment or a sudden embrace of the faith. Rather, God-talk comes in handy in the business of courting white evangelical Christians, many of whom already see Trump himself as a saviour in his own right based on his valiant worldwide war on abortion, among other campaigns to inflict earthly suffering on poor and vulnerable people.
The evangelical obsession with Israel means Trump has earned big saviour points in that realm, as well. In 2019, for example, the president took to Twitter to thank Wayne Allyn Root – an American Jewish-turned-evangelical conservative radio host and established conspiracy theorist – for his “very nice words,” including that Trump was the “best President for Israel in the history of the world” and that Israeli Jews “love him like he’s the King of Israel”.
And not only that: Israelis also “love him like he is the second coming of God”.
Obviously, anyone with an ego as big as Trump’s has no problem playing God – especially when he already believes that his every proclamation should spontaneously be made reality, biblical creation story-style.
Former Arkansas governor and zealous evangelical Mike Huckabee, who once declared that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian” and who is now serving as Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has done his own part to encourage the president’s messiah complex, writing in a text message to Trump that “I believe you hear from heaven … You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU!”
So it was only fitting that Trump should thank and profess love for God after bombing Iran in accordance with Israel’s wishes – not that US and Israeli interests don’t align when it comes to sowing regional havoc and ensuring the flow of capital into arms industry coffers.
And yet, Trump is not the only US head of state to have enjoyed wartime communications with God. Recall the time in 2003 that then-President and “war on terror” chief George W Bush informed Palestinian ministers of his “mission from God”.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath would go on to quote snippets from Bush’s side of the conversation: “God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.”
Now, Trump doesn’t like to take orders from anyone, even if they’re from on high. However, he’s made it clear that he’s not opposed to ingratiating himself with God in the interest of political expediency.
Some evangelical adherents see the current upheaval in the Middle East as potentially expediting the so-called “end times” and the second coming of Jesus – which means the more war, the better. And the more that God can be portrayed as an ally in US and Israeli-inflicted devastation, the better for Trump’s delusions of deification.
In response to Israeli and US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities last month, President Masoud Pezeshkian has signed a law severing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday that “Masoud Pezeshkian promulgated the law … interfering with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
The announcement comes a week after Iran’s parliament passed a law requiring the IAEA to stop cooperating with Israel, citing Israel’s surprise surprise attack on Iran on June 13 and US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
IAEA inspectors won’t be able to visit nuclear sites without Iran’s Supreme National Security Council’s approval, according to the parliament resolution.
“These reports are known to us. The IAEA is awaiting Iran’s next official information, the organization stated in a statement.
Iranian officials have harshly criticized IAEA chief Rafael Grossi for rejecting Israeli and US strikes during the conflict, according to Iran’s foreign minister earlier this week.
Grossi has also received criticism from officials for a board resolution the IAEA passed on June 12 that accused Tehran of breaking its nuclear obligations.
According to Iranian officials, the resolution was one of the “excuses” for the 12 day-long Israeli attacks that started on June 13.
Grossi, the head of the IAEA, requested a visit to nuclear facilities that were bombed during the war, but Iran has also refrained.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on X on Monday that Gorsi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards was meaningless and possibly even malign in intent. Iran “reserves the right to pursue any defenses of its interests, its people, and its sovereignty.”
Pezeshkian earlier this week decried Grossi’s “destructive” behavior, while France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all decried unspecified “threats” directed at the IAEA chief.
The ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper in Iran recently argued that Grossi should be executed based on documents that revealed the spy’s identity to be an Israeli spy.
Grossi or the agency’s inspectors have been kept safe, according to Iran.
Israel’s surprise attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and military installations assassinated several senior military figures and scientists, starting the 12-day conflict. Israel was hit by a number of missile- and drone-firing waves by Tehran.
On June 22, Israel’s ally, the US, launched unprecedented strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. On June 24, Iran and Israel reached a truce.
According to judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir, citing the most recent forensic evidence, at least 935 people have died as a result of Israeli attacks on Iran. 132 women and 38 children were among the deceased, Jahangir added.
According to Israeli authorities, 28 people were killed in retaliatory attacks by Iran.
Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated,” according to US President Donald Trump, despite the extent of the damage’s nature.
Araghchi acknowledged that nuclear sites have suffered “serious” harm.
However, he stated in an interview with the US media outlet CBS Evening News that “one cannot destroy the technology and science through bombings.”
A fireworks warehouse in Esparto, California, exploded and caught fire, sending debris and smoke into the air. Authorities established a 1,6-kilometer evacuation zone and advised people to stay away from the area as fireworks raged.