A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed on the outskirts of São Paulo on Friday, according to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with dramatic footage from the scene showing the plane’s destroyed fuselage in flames on the ground.

Interrupting a speech at a naval event, Lula said it “appears” that everyone on board the flight may have died. It is not clear what caused the twin-engine turboprop plane to crash.

“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in São Paulo, with 58 passengers and 4 crew members and it appears they all died,” he said, in a video of his statement shared on X.

Flight 2283 left Cascavel, in the Brazilian state of Parana, and was en route to São Paulo when it lost signal shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET), according to data on Flightradar24.

Social media videos of the crash showed the plane spiraling out of the sky before hitting the ground as people in the neighborhood shouted in fear. Another video showed the wreckage of the plane in flames on the ground.

“There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred or the current situation of the people on board,” according to a statement by airline Voepass.

She ducked down in terror and started praying, she said, calling it a “moment of panic” for the whole city. The private roads leading toward the crash site are now closed off, and first responders are in the area, she said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Police in the Nigerian capital Abuja are investigating the killing of a trans TikToker known as Abuja Area Mama after her body was found beside a highway.

On TikTok, where she identified as female and openly described herself as a sex worker, Abuja Area Mama styled herself as a “cross-dresser and queen of the street.”

A police spokesperson in the city, Josephine Adeh, said in a statement that “an unidentified lady was seen lying motionless along Katampe – Mabushi expressway” on Thursday and “preliminary investigations revealed that the individual was a man fully dressed in female clothing with no means of identification on him.”

Same-sex relations are banned in Nigeria and gay and trans people often face harrasment.

Abuja Area Mama had previously faced attacks and harassment. In a recent video on social media, she described being stabbed by an unidentified man.

A day before her body was found, she made a post on Instagram saying she was “getting ready to go and see my boyfriend.”

Abuja Area Mama was candid about the risks of being a sex worker.

“You could leave home at night to hustle and not return the next morning,” she said while featuring as a guest on a YouTube podcast four months ago.

On Tuesday morning, as Abdallah stood on a dusty street in northern Gaza amid the debris of bombed buildings, he received a call he had waited nine months for.

After nine months kept apart by war, his children were on their way to him.

“During those nine months, each day lasted nine years,” said Abdallah, whose last name was withheld by UNICEF to protect his identity and those of his family members.

Ten days after the war started, Abdallah’s pregnant wife and three children fled to the south of the Gaza Strip seeking safety. But two months ago, his wife, mother-in-law and one of his sons were killed.

“I have been eagerly awaiting them. Every day I yearned to hug them, see their mother and their brother. But that was God’s will. Their mother was martyred and so was their brother. I pray God will reunite me with the rest of my children safely,” he said.

When Abdallah finally held his youngest son in his arms Tuesday, it was the first time he had ever met him.

Abdallah’s children were returned to his care as a part of a reunification program run by UNICEF in Gaza, which helped seven children from four different families find their parents again on Tuesday alone.

The program has been running since March, and its mission is to track down relatives of unaccompanied children who have been orphaned or become lost or separated from their family in the strip, where the burden of Israel’s war against Hamas is weighing particularly heavily on Gaza’s youngest.

Family members are stepping up to provide care where they can despite repeated displacements. One of the children involved in Tuesday’s UNICEF mission was reunited with his grandmother, who will now take care of him after his mother, father and siblings were killed.

Israel’s repeated evacuation orders and the resultant forced displacement of populations are also causing spikes in reports of child abuse, as families are torn apart and support networks break down, according to Liz Allcock, head of protection at Medical Aid for Palestinians, an aid organization based in the United Kingdom.

Site visits to displacement camps in Gaza, led by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in June, documented a “significant number” of unaccompanied and separated children. OCHA’s Inter-Cluster Coordination Group – which oversees groups within OCHA working on matters like food security, protection issues and health – coordinated the visits.

In one camp, community members raised concerns about an “alarming” increase in child exploitation and abuse, as well as gender-based violence, one assessment published online said. Other sites across the strip have also reported incidents of child labor and “rising concerns” about child exploitation.

It’s not known exactly how many children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated, according to UNICEF. But using analysis of other global conflicts, the organization estimates that this population stands at around 19,000 children.

That number doesn’t consider that Gaza has a high population of children, however. Nor does it consider the large proportion of extended family in Gaza that are stepping up and looking after many children whose parents are killed. UNICEF is unable to verify exact numbers due to a lack of access into Gaza.

‘It’s very common for families to get separated’

Abdallah’s experience of being reunited with his children is not the norm in war-torn Gaza.

Child protection agencies face an uphill struggle to reunite unaccompanied and separated children with their families, according to Jessica Dixon, who coordinates child protection efforts in Gaza and West Bank for UNICEF.

“It’s very common for families to get separated. Crossing the checkpoints – from north to south, across Wadi Gaza – lots of people are being taken into detention. That’s been another cause of family separation.” Wadi Gaza is a strip of wetlands bisecting the enclave.

Agencies like UNICEF are working hard to identify and support children at risk of exploitation, particularly unaccompanied and separated children, she said.

But there are many operational constraints restricting their efforts and more information is needed about unaccompanied and separated children living in displacement camps, she added.

“There is a huge lack of access. There is a lack of security, a lack of communications,” she said. “Phone networks are so difficult, to get hold of different people and for service providers to make contact with different families.”

For now, aid organizations are doing what they can to try to reunite children with their families.

On UNICEF’s recent reunification trip, the organization created identification bracelets to give to children in case they become separated from their parents – hoping to make Abdallah’s experience one shared by many others in the strip.

Three of the four siblings in Lea Kilenga’s family were born with sickle cell, including Lea. Her eldest sister passed away from the disease when she was just 4 years old. Kilenga herself was told that she would not live beyond her 8th birthday.

Sickle cell is an inherited and debilitating blood disorder that causes normal round red blood cells – which carry oxygen through the body – to become crescent-shaped and rigid. These misshapen cells can block blood flow to vital organs and lead to serious complications, including stroke, blood clots, anemia, and bouts of extreme pain.

“You’re frequently in pain. And they say by the time you’re 40 you have at least one organ that is extensively damaged,” said Kilenga, who grew up in Taveta, Kenya. “(The disease) is something that I would not wish for anyone.”

Of the 120 million people worldwide living with sickle cell, more than 66% are in Africa. Despite the prevalence, treatment to relieve pain and prevent complications is difficult to secure, and stigma against the disease is widespread, even associated with witchcraft in rural areas.

“Sickle cell affects more lower resource communities where there’s a large financial burden to access medicine and health care,” Kilenga said.

Kilenga has fought her whole life to overcome the challenges of living with the disease, and she is on a mission to help thousands of other sickle cell patients get the medical care they need to lead fulfilling lives. Through her nonprofit, Africa Sickle Cell Organization, she is breaking down stigmas and bringing treatment that was once only available in wealthy Western countries to sub-Saharan Africa.

Growing up with sickle cell

As a child, Kilenga was ostracized for having sickle cell. She first encountered the stigma around the disease in grade school when other children treated her differently, not wanting to sit next to her or touch her because they thought she was contagious.

“My parents protected us from stressors, educated themselves, and allowed us to grow and to thrive,” Kilenga said. “The challenges we faced in a home of people living with sickle cell was the merry-go-round of pain and hospitals and medicine. It was how we grew up.”

After graduating from university, Kilenga decided to travel the country taking photographs of people with sickle cell and interviewing them and their families about their struggles with it. Initially, she planned to photograph and interview 10,000 people. But after the horrors she encountered on the project, she stopped at 400.

She found sick children locked in rooms, crying incessantly for help yet ignored by family members who had no idea what to do. Kilenga said so many families had no understanding of how to care for their sick children and thought it would be better to let them die. The people she met throughout Kenya didn’t have access to any medical care or pain management. There were 4-year-old children who looked 1 year old because of poor growth development from a lack of treatment.

“When I went on the ground, the reality was worse than I could have imagined,” Kilenga said. “I could no longer do it because it was just so sad. I decided I had to share this pain with someone who could do something about it.”

Creating a new normal

Kilenga contacted the Director of Noncommunicable Diseases at Kenya’s Ministry of Health.

“I met with him. He was a lovely gentleman. He told me he was inspired by the photographs and the stories and we should plan a time where we can speak more about it,” Kilenga said.

She waited one month, two months, three months, and never heard back. She tried calling his office, emailing, and got no response. So, she began to email him a daily portrait and story of someone living with sickle cell from her project.

That got his attention. Finally, he responded, and together they worked to raise $20,000 to form a set of national guidelines in Kenya for the management and control of sickle cell disease.

Yet with health care in Kenya decentralized and delegated to the county governments, to really affect change for people with sickle cell, she was advised by the Ministry to start in one part of the country that had a budget to implement sickle cell care.

In 2017, Kilenga moved from Nairobi to a small village in the southern part of Taita-Taveta County. The area is plagued by a lack of access to clean water, food, health care, and education. There is also an alarmingly high prevalence of sickle cell in the region.

That year, Kilenga started Africa Sickle Cell Organization and has since helped 500,000 people. She provides access to treatment by offering health insurance, establishing specialized clinics, and educating medical professionals and communities about the disease.

Connecting patients with clinics

The organization onboards patients for health insurance based on need and their resources. Then they place them in care and link them with the closest sickle cell facility.

She and her group work in tandem with the government, outside organizations, and funders to sustain and create clinics that specialize in sickle cell maintenance and treatment. They identify providers who can plug in the gaps in care and financing to expand access for patients.

“We’re talking about inpatient and outpatient care, meaning when they are hospitalized everything is covered,” Kilenga said. “Clinics, labs, medicines, and anything else healthcare providers are giving are covered by the package.”

The organization currently supports four clinics in Kenya that serve 2,000 patients, Kilenga said. Patients usually come once a week or twice a month to see clinicians, get diagnostics, and monitor blood levels.

After six months in treatment, patients are enrolled in the organization’s program to support their livelihood, such as raising goats and chickens.

“What I’ve realized is you can give people medicines and access to care, and you can educate them all that you want,” Kilenga said. “But if they don’t have the basics like food, clean water, shelter, then you will not realize the outcomes that you want for them.”

Opening hearts and minds

Kilenga is also focused on creating community awareness to help end the stigma of sickle cell.

“In most communities, when your children have sickle cell, most blame the woman … and the woman is abandoned and left to (take) care of the children. And the community stigmatizes them to a point that they are so poor and destitute that they cannot ask for a job, or ask for help, because they have been shunned by their families,” Kilenga said.

Kilenga travels to villages and speaks with village elders, chiefs, parents, and community members to educate them about sickle cell.

“It’s an interactive session. I think this is one of the biggest tools that we use for elimination of stigma and education around sickle cell in communities,” Kilenga said.

“Those with sickle cell have been neglected, and I think this neglect has made them think that they don’t deserve good things. I need them to know that sickle cell is not just what they are. It’s a fraction of a fraction of their life, and they have so much more to do.”

Want to get involved? Check out the Africa Sickle Cell Organization website and see how to help.

To donate to Africa Sickle Cell Organization via GoFundMe, click here

Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont was on his way back to Belgium on Friday, having appeared at a rally in central Barcelona despite an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Spain, his party’s general secretary said on Friday.

Jordi Turull told RAC1 radio that he did not know whether Puigdemont had already reached his home in Waterloo, where he has lived for seven years in self-imposed exile since leading a failed bid for Catalonia’s secession in 2017.

Puigdemont’s brief appearance on Spanish soil and an escape worthy of a crime caper film angered conservative opponents already upset about Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s amnesty for separatists in exchange for support for his minority government.

To make matters worse for Sanchez, Turull said Junts was reconsidering its support because the Supreme Court had found the amnesty law did not apply to Puigdemont and two others, all charged with embezzlement.

He said Junts’ backing would have “a very narrow path forward or no path at all” unless Madrid strongly pressed for application of the amnesty law to all.

“The situation has changed a lot because of the context and the parameters that made our deal possible, and we have to see whether it makes sense,” Turull said.

The charge against Puigdemont is related to a 2017 independence referendum that was ruled illegal by the Spanish courts. Puigdemont says the vote was legitimate, and therefore related charges have no basis.

Sanchez and his government have remained notably silent, and declined a request to respond to the Junts threat and the opposition criticism.

Presidency Minister Felix Bolanos told reporters in Paris that the operation had been in the hands of the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra.

“They are the police force responsible for carrying out the orders of the Supreme Court,” he said.

Puigdemont ‘planned to go to parliament’

Turull, who was pardoned in 2021 after serving three years in prison for rebellion, sedition and embezzlement over the secession bid, said Puigdemont had planned to attend a vote in Catalonia’s parliament to confirm the Socialist Salvador Illa as new leader of the regional government.

“He did not come to be arrested in Spain but to exercise his political rights.”

But instead of walking from the rally to parliament, Puigdemont got into a car because of security concerns, and then decided at short notice to leave because he believed he would not be allowed in, Turull said.

He added that Puigdemont had not wanted to provide an opportunity for photographs of him being arrested.

Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, confirmed in a RAC1 radio interview that Puigdemont had left Spain and said he would make a public statement “in the coming days”.

In the meantime, the Mossos d’Esquadra and Sanchez’s administration face questions about their failure to arrest Spain’s most recognisable fugitive when he was in plain sight.

On Friday, the Supreme Court judge leading the investigation against Puigdemont for his role in the 2017 secession bid called on the Mossos to explain the spectacular failure.

Judge Pablo Llarena also requested explanations from the national Interior Ministry, including any orders to monitor the borders.

“Call to Earth Day – Connected Generations” celebrates the links between people and cultures and how these can help to play a vital role in preserving our planet.

Naimina Enkiyio, or the “Forest of the Lost Child,” stretches along the top of an escarpment on the western wall of the Rift Valley, Kenya. Legend has it that the forest is haunted by the spirit of a young girl lost while herding her family livestock. This place is sacred to the indigenous Maasai people, of whom around 25,000 live in and around it. Despite being just 70 or so miles southwest of the capital Nairobi, a lack of roads means these are some of the most remote Maasai clans in the whole of Kenya.

Not used to human presence, the forest’s animals are shy and know how to avoid our noisy footsteps. It’s hard to make out any creature, but there are signs of them everywhere. Piles of fresh elephant and buffalo dung obstruct the path. Chirps echo from the canopies, indistinguishable grunts and rustles come from within the overgrowth, and a gentle revving sound can be heard as colobus monkeys swing between branches overhead. High up in the Loita hills, this is the closest you’ll come to hearing a motorbike.

Parmuat Ntirua Koikai, a Maasai elder, leads the way. The 58-year-old’s earlobes are weighed down by bright beads and his back is draped in a red-checked shuka (a traditional cloth robe). He can’t speak English, but he uses simple motions to communicate the knowledge inherited from his forefathers. He picks a leaf from a shrub, mimes eating it and rubs his tummy: Obibi naibor, used to treat diarrhea. He points at the roots of a tree, then to his back with an expression of pain: Olmorogi, for soothing aches.

Ntirua Koikai sees himself as a custodian of the forest. He and most of the community believe it is their duty to protect it – and in turn, they believe the forest will protect them.

“Without the forest there would be no people,” he says in the Maa language, through a translator. “We use it as a clinic, a hospital, so we must handle it with a lot of care.”

This deep-seated respect for the forest has earned it protection. Unlike many other forests in Kenya that have been logged or developed, Naimina Enkiyio remains largely intact. According to analysis of Hansen Global Forest Change data by the Mara Elephant Project, it has only lost 2% of forest cover since 2000, while some others in Kenya have lost 20 to 60% in the same timeframe.

But there is a growing fear among the community and conservationists that this could soon change, due to threats from land privatization, cultural shifts and the climate crisis.

That could have huge effects on the wider ecosystem. Located between the wilderness of the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara, the forest is a critical watershed, feeding the parched plains below where livestock graze and vast herds of wild animals migrate.

“It is a crucial drought reserve for elephants and a lot of the wildlife that comes up from the Mara Serengeti ecosystem,” explains Rob O’Meara, a conservationist who, together with his wife Sarah, both Kenyans, lives at the center of the forest with permission from the Maasai. He describes how, as climate change causes longer and harsher periods of drought, the forest could provide a lifeline to both humans and animals.

Shared land

In a shady clearing, a group of Maasai elders sit in a circle on the grass. Their rungus, short wooden clubs used for hunting, lie by their sides. Speaking in turn, respectfully, they all agree: the biggest threat to the forest is land adjudication, a Kenyan government policy whereby communal land is subdivided into individual plots.

The practice began during the British colonial period and was designed to convert land into a valuable asset that could stimulate rural development and prevent boundary conflicts. But critics warn of its ecological consequences, leading not only to an increase in fenced enclosures that prevent wildlife movement, but also roads, crop farming and timber trade. In 2020, the Loita area in southwest Kenya was marked out for adjudication by the government, and the process of apportioning land has since begun. The local Narok County Government did not respond to requests for comment.

The elders say this policy goes against the Maasai tradition of communal ownership, representing a disregard for their culture. Eighty-five-year-old Oltukai Ole Koikai, the eldest of the group, speaks first: “If you own the land, you can do whatever you want to do: you can sell it, you can give it to a different person outside the community … They don’t know our culture, they don’t know the forest, all they know is maize and beans.”

Already, agriculture has started to take over the society’s pastoral practices. Traditionally, the Maasai were nomadic cattle herders, who trailed through Kenya’s savannas seeking fresh pasture and making temporary manyattas (small mud houses) wherever they went. Today, due to development and prolonged periods of drought that have diminished the grasslands that feed the cattle, their lifestyle has become more sedentary, and they are looking for ways to diversify their income, including growing crops.

With a shift away from grazing, the elders fear that the value of the forest will be forgotten. They recall the times when they would go into the hills as boys to graze their cattle. It was there that in dry periods they could always find lush pastures.

But today, with fewer cattle, the younger generations of Maasai are coming into the forest less. The elders lament that while the forest hasn’t changed – they say all the plants that were there when they were children are still there today – people have.

Digital age

Ole Koikai blames the “digital” generation who he says now consult their phones rather than their elders. He worries that they will not learn the ways of the forest and how to live alongside it.

This knowledge, from understanding plants to how to interact with the forest’s many wild animals, has been passed down orally through the generations. While the community’s cultural ceremonies continue to take place in the forest, such as rituals after children are circumcised and the worship of sacred trees during times of drought, the overall time spent in the forest is rapidly decreasing.

The laibon, the Maasai’s spiritual leaders and healers, source medicinal herbs, trees and plants from the forest to treat diseases and ailments. They say it is the peace of the “lost child” (the forest’s namesake) that brings power to these remedies. But fewer people are becoming laibons, as they opt for a different lifestyle.

“The current generation just go to the city,” says Ntirua Koikai. “They don’t come here to learn the culture, learn species in the forest … They’re not interested at all.”

He hopes there may be some way to record the information in a document so that future generations can understand, as “knowledge without writing may disappear.”

There have been some efforts to do this. In 2019, the Kenya Forestry Research Institute published the first comprehensive checklist of plant species in Naimina Enkiyio, compiled through a survey from 2012 to 2015. It identified a total of 277 plant species, with both their botanical names and local Maasai names.

The report’s author, Mbuvi Musingo, hopes this will go some way to preserving the indigenous knowledge and provide a reference point for species in the future. “Naimina Enkiyo is a very important site not just in Kenya, but globally,” he says, explaining that the survey found that some plant species, which are endangered across the rest of the country, grow in abundance there.

New values

Living and working closely with the community in the forest, conservationist O’Meara has observed the Maasai’s customs for a decade, and yet it is still hard for him to explain exactly what they do to protect it. “The laibons play a very large role, with their spells and their medicines, but there is also just a respect for the forest – it’s almost hereditary.

“It is dying fast with the Western culture that is creeping in,” he cautions. “Part of protecting the forest is going to be how to maintain that culture of respect.”

For O’Meara this boils down to creating new values. “In the past, the cultural respect for the forest has been (as) a drought grazing area, a source for medicine … but that value is dying,” he says. “We’re going to have to maintain that value, but also give it a monetary value, which is where tourism, conservation, biodiversity credits, carbon trading (come in).”

The O’Mearas, alongside conservation organizations such as the Mara Elephant Project, have been working on creating alternatives that will incentivize the community not to clear the forest for timber or crops. That could include a sustainable wood fuel scheme, whereby the outer edges of the forest are coppiced and sold, or encouraging the community to keep beehives and sell honey, which could generate more income than maize.

They are exploring the possibility of setting up conservancies across the Loitas – a system that is used widely across Kenya, whereby a conservation group or tourism operator leases land from local communities and operates it as a wildlife reserve, while sharing any profits with the community; and a carbon credit project, that would bring a monetary value to keeping the trees standing, is also in the works.

But all of this, O’Meara stresses, is entirely dependent on community support: “The Maasai have a system where if they make a decision, they always look for 100% consent from within their communities.” For any of this to work, they will need to be involved each step of the way, he says.

Josephat Olokula, 25, is one of a handful of Maasai youths who is committed to maintaining the forest. He is a sparky young man dressed in Western clothes, with a smartphone poking out of his front pocket. Having done very well at a local school, he says he became the first person from his village to go to university. But while many of his peers decided to move to a city, he has come back to the community to learn from the elders and protect the forest. He now has a job working on the carbon trading scheme.

“If you’re not engaging with the elders here then it would be difficult to learn the culture and how to protect the forest,” he says in English, but he adds that while he is learning from them, they can also learn from him. “I’m engaged with the issue of climate change. The only area that will save us is the forest. I really need to tell people that the forest must be there for us to have our health.”

Blessing the forest

The generational divide is not going away anytime soon. Modernization is unavoidable – the younger men with phones are all eager to show off their Facebook profiles. But if there are attractive opportunities available to the younger generation within their communities, perhaps the cultural values and respect for the forest will live on.

Ntasikoi Oloimoeja, 30, is a laibon, one of the youngest of the community’s spiritual leaders. He has a strong, soulful gaze and white markings painted on his forehead and around his eyes. He sits with a large horn in his hands, full of all sorts of pebbles and charms. The laibon have a tradition of “stone throwing,” where they ask the stones a question, toss them onto a cloth and after a process of counting, interpret what the stones say.

“When we wake up, we ask our stones if there’s anyone with intention to come and grab the forest,” he says. “Then we ask the forest to keep giving us rain.”

Along with two of the elders, Oloimoeja stands up and starts to perform a blessing for the forest. He places a cowrie shell full of white powder upon the ground and they start pacing around a tree, chanting, kneeling over the cowrie shell on each lap.

“We shall protect the forest so that we retain this fresh air for our communities and also everyone in the world,” he says. “This is our forefathers’ forest … we must support what they left for us.”

An 18-year-old Iraqi national was detained in Vienna in connection with investigations into an alleged plot to strike a Taylor Swift concert in the Austrian capital, the interior ministry said on Friday.

The Iraqi national is said to have come from the same circle as the main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots, according to the ministry.

The main suspect, who had vowed loyalty to Islamic State (IS), was planning a lethal assault among the estimated 20,000 “Swiftie” fans set to gather outside Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium.

The US popstar had planned concerts in Vienna on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. All three were canceled late Wednesday over security concerns.

Two other Austrian youths aged 17 and 15 were detained on Wednesday over the reported plot.

The 15-year-old has meanwhile been released and is being treated as a witness, the Kurier newspaper reported on Friday.

The Iraqi suspect is reported to have sworn allegiance to IS on Aug. 6, but it remains unclear whether he had anything to do with the planned attack, the newspaper reported.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

China has taken a major step forward in its bid to create a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink this week by launching the first of what it hopes will be a constellation of 14,000 satellites beaming broadband internet coverage from space.

Eighteen satellites were blasted into low Earth orbit (LEO) on Tuesday in the inaugural launch for the government-backed Qianfan, or Spacesail, constellation, state media reported.

The constellation – hailed in domestic media as China’s answer to US-based SpaceX’s Starlink – aims to join a handful of planned or operational large-scale space projects from providers in various countries offering broadband satellite internet services.

Leading that pack is Starlink, which has more than 6,000 satellites in orbit and ambitions to expand to as many as 42,000. It is widely expected to remain the dominant player in years to come, given its head start and advanced launch capabilities.

While most people accessing the internet do so through cables and other ground-based infrastructure, satellite internet connection has emerged as an important service for rural, under-resourced and disaster-hit areas. It’s also seen as key for expanding technologies like autonomous cars and other internet-enabled devices – industries that China wants to lead.

Qianfan, also known as G60 Starlink, is among three planned Chinese mega constellations that could see the country’s firms launching nearly 40,000 satellites into low Earth orbit (defined as no more than 1,200 miles above the planet) in the coming years. So-called mega constellations refer to networks of hundreds or thousands of orbiting satellites.

The launch comes as China ramps up its commercial space sector as part of Beijing’s broader bid to cement its place as a dominant power in outer space. The country has already made tremendous strides in its ambitious national space program, which aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, while also launching military-linked satellites for navigation, communication and surveillance.

Controlling LEO broadband satellite constellations could be a boon for China, experts say, enabling its firms to offer services domestically and around the world – while bolstering Beijing’s diplomatic sway, control over data flow and national security.

The rollout of Qianfan, which is run by Shanghai government-backed Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), will also be a test of China’s ability to produce and launch satellites at scale and on a tight timeline.

The constellation is slated to grow to more than 600 satellites by the end of 2025 with plans to reach more than 14,000 satellites providing broadband internet globally by 2030, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

That number would be “sufficient to provide coverage for most human population centers,” Zhu Xiaochen, deputy director of the project, told CCTV.

‘Informational superiority’

China’s foray into broadband mega-constellations comes as governments and companies across the world are increasingly eyeing satellites for everything from communications to military operations.

The war in Ukraine, where access to Starlink has been a key asset for the Ukrainian military, has also moved LEO broadband satellites into the spotlight for its security implications.

Chinese researchers have on several occasions raised national security concerns about the SpaceX-run constellation – including one military scholar who said in January that it had the potential to support US “ground forces” and strike capability in “regional conflicts.”

While the launch of Qianfan is part of Beijing’s broader push to boost space capabilities and commercial applications, its launch also shows China is “recognizing the dual use … potential of these capabilities from the standpoint of informational superiority or data flow control,” said Tomas Hrozensky, a senior researcher at the nonprofit think tank European Space Policy Institute in Vienna.

Constellations like Qianfan, once operational, could also yield diplomatic benefits for Beijing, experts say. For example, China could offer access to its internet and communications services as part of deals with governments within its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure scheme widely seen as a vehicle for China to build its overseas influence.

Chinese companies’ role in global telecommunications has been a fractious subject in recent years, with the US government raising alarms about alleged security risks for countries using ground-based Chinese infrastructure and equipment.

Some experts warn of related concerns if countries start getting online via Chinese satellites.

“As China begins deploying G60 and other planned LEO broadband constellations, we’ll see them extend their telecommunications model to space – a model based on surveilling and censoring the flow of information,” said Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

‘A national priority’

The Qianfan constellation’s launch comes as China’s top leaders have signaled that developing the commercial space sector – including satellites, launch capabilities and tech production – is an economic priority.

The 18 satellites sent into orbit this week appears to put Qianfan ahead of two other planned Chinese communications constellations in LEO. State-owned China Satellite Network Group’s Guowang constellation project aims for nearly 13,000 satellites, and leading private space firm Landspace’s Honghu-3 has plans for 10,000, according to information released in state-linked media.

Plans for the Qianfan project were announced in 2021 as part of a state-backed technology innovation scheme across China’s prosperous Yangtze River delta. Its operating company, the Shanghai-government backed SSST, raised $933 million earlier this year, Reuters reported in February, citing an investor.

Preparing for the launch has included efforts to streamline satellite production, using what Qianfan’s chief designer Cao Caixia recently described to state broadcaster CCTV as “an intelligent satellite manufacturing platform” to speed up production times.

There are likely to be hurdles as SSST and other Chinese firms seek to rapidly scale-up their constellations. China is opening its first commercial launch pad this year, even as state media says roughly half of the satellites launched last year were commercial ones.

A number of Chinese companies are working to enhance launch capabilities, but those are still significantly behind the kind of technology powering SpaceX’s Starlink, which is expected to further expand its launch capacity once its Starship vehicle comes online.

“Like any spacefaring nation, China will undoubtedly encounter technical and operational challenges,” said CSIS’s Bingen, pointing to the need to establish and scale satellite production lines and launch rockets at a frequent cadence.

“But space is a national priority for Beijing, with these commercial entities receiving top-down support from the (Chinese Communist Party), large tracts of funding, municipal government support, and regulatory leeway, so I would expect China to continue its rapid progress in space.”

For over a week, Venezuela has been in suspense after a hotly contested presidential election left both the opposition and incumbent President Nicolas Maduro claiming victory.

How verifiable is the data presented by each of the parties? Although Venezuela’s electoral and judicial authorities announced the victory of Nicolás Maduro, they have not shown detailed results and electoral records to support it.

In contrast, the opposition published on a website the count of 83.50% of the voting records, a result that has also been verified by civil organizations and independent media outlets.

Here is the breakdown:

What the CNE says

Early in the morning of Monday, July 29, the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, proclaimed Nicolás Maduro the winner of the race. According to the data of that organization, with 80% of the records counted, the president had obtained 51.20%, that is, exactly 5,150,092 votes. In that same first bulletin, the CNE gave second place to Edmundo González with 44.2%, exactly 4,445,978 votes.

According to CNE, the sum of the votes of all the other presidential candidates represented “462,704 of the votes, equivalent to 4.06%.”

But that is a highly unlikely breakdown, experts say. “There is about a 1 in 100 million chance that this particular pattern will occur by chance,” said Andrew Gelman, a professor of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University, in a post analyzing the numbers collected from the CNE’s first report.

Gelman ran a mathematical simulation with a probability model and concluded: “A million simulations and not once does this rounding work.”

For John Magdaleno, political scientist and director of the public affairs consultancy Polity, the inconsistencies appear in what the CNE has presented — it has not yet published the electoral results of every polling station, as mandated by Venezuelan law — as well as in the figures.

Magdaleno highlighted four technical issues in the first CNE bulletin: First, the absolute and relative number of null votes was not announced; second, the votes of all presidential candidates other than González Urrutia and Maduro were totaled “instead of presenting them separately, as is usual”; and third, the frequencies were presented with a single decimal, “which is not common.” Fourth, with 80% of the votes counted, the agency declared an irreversible trend favor of Maduro, although the reported difference was just over 704,000 votes and at least 2,300,000 votes remained to be counted.

On Friday, August 2, the CNE published a second bulletin that stated that, after processing 96.87% of the votes, Maduro had obtained 51.95% of the votes while González Urrutia reached 43.18%. They also did not make public the data that supports this bulletin.

John Magdaleno pointed out that since the second bulletin announced a total of 12,335,884 valid votes, “it follows that in the first bulletin there were more than 2,300,000 votes left to be counted.” This, according to Magdaleno, confirms “the central inconsistency of the first bulletin”: there was not an irreversible trend.

The opposition numbers

On Friday, August 2, the opposition released a database that it has been updating.

As of Wednesday, August 7, when this article was written, the database contained 83.50% of the tally sheets (25,073) from a total of 30,026 polling stations. According to this data, Edmundo González would have won the election with 7,303,480 votes (67%), while Maduro would have come in second with 3,316,142 votes (30%) and the other candidates only obtained 267,640 votes (2%).

“If the database is downloaded, an analysis can be made of how they arrive at the global voting announcement that they make and that is why the opposition’s data is verifiable and that of the CNE is not,” said Martínez.

In effect, the data from the opposition website can be downloaded, and it contains the disaggregated voting data with links that direct to images of the scanned minutes.

To verify that an electoral record is valid, it must have a QR code, the votes broken down by candidate and the signatures of the representatives of the parties, a representative of the electoral body and another of the electoral witnesses who participated by lottery.

Professor David Arroyo Fernández, from the College of Economists of Madrid, made a statistical study of the data published by the opposition and concludes that “it is very unlikely” that they would have had enough time “to have created a distribution of votes with these characteristics in just a few days” if they were not the real data, so “mathematically and statistically the data [of the opposition] fit in terms of numbers and the accuracy shown.”

Analyst John Madgaleno points out that “the opposition has presented more detailed and verifiable information on the result of the presidential election than the body in charge of the administration of the electoral event.”

On Monday, August 5, the Public Ministry of Venezuela opened a criminal investigation against the candidate González Urrutia and opposition leader María Corina Machado for “the alleged commission of the crimes of usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information to cause anxiety, instigation to disobedience of the laws, instigation to insurrection, criminal association and conspiracy.”

The agency claimed that the accusation is linked to the call that opposition leaders made in a statement to the military and police to stand “on the side of the people.” But it also accuses them of “falsely announcing a winner of the presidential elections other than the one proclaimed by the National Electoral Council.”

Several media and international organizations analyzed the database offered by the Venezuelan opposition. One of them was the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission (MOE).

According to this organization, “the calculation of the electoral participation that is in the database is consistent with the data presented by the Venezuelan CNE.” After analyzing the information contained in the database, the MOE validates the results that give González Urrutia as the winner.

The Associated Press (AP) processed nearly 24,000 images of ballot papers released by the opposition, representing the results from 79% of the voting machines. Each coded sheet of votes counts in QR codes, which AP decoded and analyzed programmatically, resulting in tabulations of 10.26 million votes.

According to those calculations, opposition candidate Edmundo González received 6.89 million votes and Maduro obtained 3.13 million.

The same conclusion was reached by media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and El País, which made their own analyses of the data released by Venezuela’s majority opposition and concluded that the information supports González Urrutia’s victory over Maduro.

How did the opposition obtain these records?

Thousands of volunteers participated in the electoral process on July 28. The instruction, which Maria Corina Machado herself reiterated that Sunday after the polls closed, was to stay at the voting centers until they obtained a copy of the printed records. These were then transferred to a safe place, accompanied by members of the opposition party who sought to guarantee the safety of the witnesses.

What about the percentage of the records that the opposition could not access? Could they change the result? Even if 100% of the votes contained in the missing records were favorable to Maduro, the count, according to the data published by the opposition, would likely still give González Urrutia the victory.

“On the other hand, it would be necessary to see from which geographic areas (and with what sociodemographic characteristics) the missing votes are visible and counted. As can be seen from the data provided by the published votes, Maduro would have obtained more votes in those sectors that are more vulnerable in socioeconomic terms, as has been the case in past elections,” added Lacalle.

What will happen now?

The Supreme Court of Justice, the body that answers the ruling party, had given the CNE three days to present the votes. The deadline was met on Monday and according to the judicial body, the CNE delivered what was requested and began an expert process that includes summons for the 10 presidential candidates, including Maduro and González Urrutia. On Wednesday, González Urrutia announced on his social networks that he would not attend because he would be “in a situation of absolute defenselessness.”

Read the original story in Spanish here.

The Middle East, and indeed much of the world, is bracing for Iran to carry out a revenge attack on Israel over the assassination of Hamas’ political leader. But could Tehran instead be prepared to pull back in exchange for progress on Gaza peace talks? That was the hope among regional leaders gathered at an emergency summit in Jeddah.

It was Wednesday and the world was on edge. Flights across Iran and its neighbors were cancelled amid fears that missiles could fly any moment, triggering a much-feared escalation of Israel’s war in Gaza.

With his country on the brink of triggering a regional war, Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri whispered to an aid bending close to catch his words.

Cameroon’s foreign minister sat to Bagheri’s right, Yemen’s to his left, along with a room full of other foreign ministers from Muslim-majority countries, all there to help prevent the situation from spiraling into a wider conflict.

Since Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran last week, the Islamic Republic’s leaders have vowed vengeance against Israel, whom they claim was responsible. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.

The unassuming venue for such a last-ditch effort to quell Iran’s seething rage was the headquarters of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC), modest by Saudi Arabia’s rapidly modernizing and glitzy standards. It sits in a dusty, nondescript corner of the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

The thrust, to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to soften his stance in ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, isn’t new. But the payoff this time may be much more attractive than previous attempts.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the US and its allies have communicated directly to both Israel and Iran that  “no one should escalate this conflict,” adding that ceasefire negotiations have entered “a final stage” and could be jeopardized by further escalation elsewhere in the region.

Safadi was in Tehran over the weekend and met both Bagheri and Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian, and appears to believe that Iran may be looking for an off ramp to escalation.

Iran needs diplomatic cover to back away from its hasty threats against Israel in the immediate aftermath of Haniyeh’s killing: a Gaza ceasefire that would allow Tehran to claim it cares more for the lives of Palestinians in the Palestinian enclave than it does for taking revenge would fit the bill. But the payoff needs to be big enough for Iran as its honor and deterrence are at stake.

France’s President Emanuel Macron is adding his diplomatic heft, declaring in a phone call with Pezeshkian Wednesday, retaliation against Israel “has to be abandoned”.

Pezeshkian’s response suggests he is listening. “If America and Western countries really want to prevent war and insecurity in the region, to prove this claim, they should immediately stop selling arms and supporting the Zionist regime and force this regime to stop the genocide and attacks on Gaza and accept a ceasefire,” he said.

Could Hezbollah act alone

Nearly ten months since Israel’s war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas brutal October 7 attack which saw around 1200 people in Israel killed and at least 250 others taken hostage, almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials – and there is still no end in sight to the conflict

The catch in the Gaza ceasefire escalation off-ramp play is that it is heavy on hope and short on substance.

For it to work, Netanyahu will have to buy in to it too.

Hamas just made this harder by replacing Haniyah with his tougher counterpart inside Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, an architect of the October 7 attacks, and anyway, right now they are in no mood for meaningful talks.

The change, if it’s going to come, according to the consensus at the OIC  has to be from the outside, from the only person who remotely has the clout to temper Netanyahu – US President Joe Biden.

But almost a year into the conflict, Biden refuses a showdown with Israel’s most hardline, right-wing government in its history, that also adding to the frustrations in Jeddah.

Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s Permanent Observer at the UN, was in the room with Bagheri and the others.

“The region does not need escalation,” he said  “What the region needs is a ceasefire. What the region needs to address legitimate rights. I have a feeling that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to drag President Biden into a war with Iran”

What Bagheri did get in Jeddah was the kind of diplomatic support intended help get them off the ledge, with Mansour saying “With regard to what Iran wanted about, you know, the respecting its territorial integrity and its sovereignty, there was, you know, a strong support to this sentiment.”

As the acting Iranian foreign minister left for Tehran following the four-hour emergency meeting, focus shifted slightly back to Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which is also intent on retaliation for the assassination of its top military commander Fu’ad Shukr in Beirut hours before Haniyeh’s killing.

For Netanyahu this may look like semantics intended to blunt Israel’s desire for an overwhelming response against either aggressor.

He views Iran and Hezbollah as different hands of the same theological head.

With the exception of direct IranianIsraeli exchange of fire in April, Hezbollah has always landed the punches on Israel Iran hesitates to take, and may this time throw a double blow, one for Shukr and one for Hamas’s Haniyeh.

Were that the case Israel’s retaliation against Hezbollah could just as quickly become the regional escalation dragging in Iran that everyone fears.

What is clear, the Jeddah meet and the back channel diplomacy buys diplomatic space and time to develop an off ramp that has a least a little traction for now.

Both Iran and the US, to a degree, are buying in to it.

Whether this fizzles out to another false horizon is with Bagheri and his president.