The last captive orca in all of Latin America cuts a lonely figure.

“Kshamenk” has lived in the Mundo Marino oceanarium in the Argentine city of San Clemente del Tuyú since 1992 – the majority of that time, following the death of his female companion in 2000, as the lone representative of his species.

But in recent weeks, Kshamenk has amassed something of a following. One far beyond what might usually be expected at his oceanarium some 320 kilometers (200 miles) from Buenos Aires.

A campaign by the Canadian activist group UrgentSeas – which has been working to secure Kshamenk’s release – is building steam thanks to a series of clips on social media that allegedly show the orca in his tank, barely moving.

One of the group’s latest posts shows a timelapse video of what it says is a bird’s eye view of Mundo Marino in August and has the hashtag “FreeKshamenk.” It has already amassed more than 184,000 responses on TikTok.

Mundo Marino claims the images posted by UrgentSeas “have been maliciously manipulated as part of a disinformation campaign to suggest that Kshamenk is inactive and to make a negative diagnosis about his health, without any objective veterinary indicators.”

UrgentSeas insists its “videos are not edited or deceptive. They’re a real time look at Kshamenk’s cruel captivity without the music and spectacle of the show.”

Activists say the videos simply draw attention to the negative side of keeping these apex predators in captivity – a practice that not only in Latin America, but across the world has gone out of fashion in recent decades as the public’s awareness of animal rights issues has grown.

Globally, according to the International Marine Mammal Project, as of January 2024 there were just 54 orcas remaining in captivity out of the 166 that have been taken from the wild since 1961.

In Kshamenk’s case, controversy over his captivity has been brewing ever since he arrived at the oceanarium more than three decades ago.

According to Mundo Marino, “Kshamenk was rescued in November 1992 after stranding with a group of orcas.”

But animal rights activists have long questioned that account, alleging that he was deliberately captured to be used in its orca show and have launched legal action against Mundo Marino.

“They went out to look for a male orca for Belén, who was the female they had. What they wanted was reproduction to have more orcas and to have an orca show. That is the plain truth,” said María Rosa Golía, from the NGO Marine Animal Rights.

Last October several activist groups, including Marine Animal Rights, filed an injunction in court aimed at stopping the orca shows and forcing Mundo Marino to return Kshamenk to the wild.

Mundo Marino insists it is acting in Kshamenk’s best interests and that Kshamenk’s remaining years are best spent in captivity. It says that after the orca’s rehabilitation it received expert advice that reintroducing him to the wild would put his life at risk.

But some activists are skeptical about that claim and argue that, whatever the truth about his capture, three decades is too long for an animal of Kshamenk’s size – according to Mundo Marino, he is 19 foot long and weighs 4 tons – to be kept in captivity.

“Kshamenk has been locked up in that oceanarium, entertaining people (ever since his capture),” said animal rights lawyer Mauricio Trigo. “And since the year 2000, he has not seen another orca,” added activist Dalila Lewis.

Other activists point out that, while Kshamenk has spent most of his 35 years of life so far in captivity, he has the potential to live many more if given the right environment. Orcas can live up to 90 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

An Israeli official has floated the possibility of offering Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza, once all remaining hostages held in the Palestinian territory are released.

Hirsch said those conditions, along with Gaza being “demilitarized and deradicalized,” could help recover Gaza and end the war.

On Tuesday, Hirsch elaborated on the idea in an interview with Bloomberg, saying Israel has already proposed safe passage to Sinwar.

“I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, whoever wants to join him,” he told Bloomberg. “We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.”

He told Bloomberg that the offer of safe passage was put on the table a day and a half ago, but did not say what the response was. Israel would be open to releasing prisoners it holds as part of any deal, he told Bloomberg.

Sinwar, one of Hamas’ most powerful figures, is accused by Israel of being the key architect of the October 7 massacre in Israel, when militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 people hostages. He is also among the Hamas leaders charged by US prosecutors over the deadly attack.

Hamas announced Sinwar as the head of its political bureau last month, days after former political bureau head and top negotiator Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.

He is believed to remain at large in the vast warren of tunnels trenched beneath Gaza, moving frequently and possibly surrounded by hostages as human shields, US officials believe. He has not been seen in public since October 7.

A senior Hezbollah commander has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

Mohammed Qassem Al-Shaer, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was killed in a strike on the village of Qaraoun in the western Beqaa Valley on Tuesday, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The IDF said Al-Shaer had “advanced numerous terrorist activities against the state of Israel” and his “elimination” would impair the Iran-backed militant group’s ability to launch attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah confirmed Al-Shaer had been killed and said it responded to his killing by launching “dozens” of Katyusha rockets and several drones toward two locations in northern Israel.

The IDF said those attacks caused no casualties, with some of the “projectiles” being intercepted and others falling in an open area.

The Israeli military added that it had responded by striking Hezbollah launchers “in the areas of Mansouri and At Tiri,” which had been used in the attacks.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force said it had struck a Hezbollah military structure in the village of Rachaf in the Nabatieh governorate of southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center said the strike on Rachaf wounded 12 people.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on October 7.

The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who is accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.

Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the Sept. 1 attack and died four days later.

Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50 p.m. (12.50 p.m. ET) on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died.

“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters. Local media reported that he had suffered 30% burns when he assaulted Cheptegei as she was returning home from church with her children.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya, where many international runners train in the high-altitude highlands, are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done. This is not positive news whatsoever,” said Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for survivors of domestic violence in Kenya’s athletic community.

“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.

Cheptoo co-founded Tirop’s Angels in memory of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, who was found dead in her home in the town of Iten in October 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

Ibrahim Rotich, Tirop’s husband, was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.

Ukraine struck the Moscow region on Tuesday in its biggest drone attack so far on the Russian capital, killing at least one woman, wrecking dozens of homes and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.

Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power, said it destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the Moscow region, which has a population of more than 21 million, and 124 more over eight other regions.

At least one person was killed near Moscow, Russian authorities said. Three of Moscow’s four airports were closed for more than six hours and almost 50 flights were diverted.

Kyiv said Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, had attacked it overnight with 46 drones, of which 38 were destroyed.

The drone attacks on Russia damaged at high-rise apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, setting flats on fire, residents told Reuters.

A 46-year-old woman was killed and three people were wounded in Ramenskoye, Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Residents said they awoke to blasts and fire.

“I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shockwave.”

Georgy, a resident who declined to give his surname, said he heard a drone buzzing outside his building in the early hours.

“I drew back the curtain and it hit the building right before my eyes, I saw it all,” he said. “I took my family and we ran outside.”

The Ramenskoye district, some 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, has a population of around quarter a million of people, according to official data.

More than 70 drones were also downed over Russia’s Bryansk region and tens more over other regions, Russia’s defense ministry said. There was no damage or casualties reported there.

Drone war

As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has taken the war to Russia with a cross-border attack in Russia’s western Kursk region that began on Aug. 6 and by carrying out increasingly large drone attacks deep into Russian territory.

The war has largely been a grinding artillery and drone war along the 1,000 km (620 mile) heavily fortified front line in southern and eastern Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Moscow and Kyiv have both sought to buy and develop new drones, deploy them in innovative ways, and seek new ways to destroy them – from shotguns to advanced electronic jamming systems.

Both sides have turned cheap commercial drones into deadly weapons while ramping up their own production and assembly to attack targets including tanks, energy infrastructure such as refineries and airfields.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to insulate Moscow from the grinding rigors of the war, says the Ukrainian drone attacks are “terrorism” as they target civilian infrastructure – and has vowed a response.

Moscow and other big Russian cities have largely been insulated from the war.

Russia has hit Ukraine with thousands of missiles and drones in the last two-and-a-half years, killing thousands of civilians, wrecking much of the country’s energy system and damaging commercial and residential properties across the country.

Ukraine says it has a right to strike back deep into Russia, though Kyiv’s Western backers have said they do not want a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine about Tuesday’s attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians.

Tuesday’s attack follow drone attacks Ukraine launched in early September targeting chiefly Russia’s energy and power facilities.

Authorities of the Tula region, which neighbors the Moscow region to its north, said drone wreckage fell onto a fuel and energy facility but the “technological process” of the facility was not affected.

A Singaporean man has been ordered to repay more than 38 million Australian dollars ($25.7 million) after he lost big during a gambling spree at an Australian casino over the span of a few days.

Queensland’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that Yew Choy Wong owed that amount to the Star Gold Coast, as well as the casino’s legal fees and interest. He had racked up losses of 47.3 million Australian dollars ($31.5 million) there between July 26 and August 2, 2018.

Wong fled the country without settling his bill, according to court documents. The casino tried to recoup its losses using a blank check Wong had given its sister property, the Star Sydney, a year prior, but that check bounced after Wong told his bank not to pay out any checks from the Star, the ruling said.

The casino then tried to recover the debt in 2019 by suing Wong in Singapore, but that case was dismissed a year later because Singaporean law largely prohibits the recovery of gambling debts.

According to court documents from that case, Wong frequently played the card game baccarat at the Star’s casinos, during which he and his “entourage of some 28 people” were flown to Queensland by the casino and housed in its private salons.

In the more recent case, Wong argued he did not owe the Star any money because he had complained about the way the casino’s dealers had dealt cards to him, after which he stopped gambling.

Wong said he resumed gambling after the Star’s chief operating officer, Paul Arbuckle, verbally agreed that Wong would not have to pay for losses he had already incurred and that the casino would waive any further losses, if the dealers repeated their alleged mistakes.

Arbuckle denied making this agreement, according to the ruling.

Star Entertainment, which owns the Gold Coast casino, declined to comment on the case.

In a letter presented to the court, which was addressed to Wong and signed by Arbuckle, the COO apologized for “difficulties” Wong experienced during his visit, but noted the mistakes would have had no direct financial impact on Wong. The letter did not mention waiving Wong’s debt.

The casino also paid Wong hundreds of thousands of dollars in goodwill payments following his complaints, the ruling said.

Justice Melanie Hindman said: “The alleged agreement pleaded by Dr Wong is not evidenced by the letter of apology or otherwise supported by any other evidence adduced in the trial.”

American and Chinese military commanders spoke in a long-anticipated call Tuesday as the two powers seek to manage their intensifying rivalry in a contentious Asia-Pacific region – and repair lines of military communication severed more than two years ago.

US Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo and Gen. Wu Yanan, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Southern Theater Command spoke via video conference, according to statements from both sides.

The call marks a step forward in what has been a gradual restoration of high-level US-China military communications in recent months as the two sides navigate a host of regional tensions, including over Beijing’s aggressions in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan.

Beijing severed high-level military-to-military communication with the US in August 2022 following visit by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the self-ruling democratic island that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its own.

China and the US agreed to hold the commander-level call “in the near future” during a visit from White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Beijing late last month.

In Tuesday’s call, Paparo underscored that having sustained lines of communication between senior military leaders serves “to clarify intent and reduce the risk of misperception or miscalculation,” according to a White House readout.

He also cited “several recent PLA unsafe interactions with US allies,” and called on the PLA to “comply with international laws and norms to ensure operational safety.”

“Paparo also urged the PLA to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive, and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond,” said the readout, which characterized the talks as a “constructive and respectful exchange of views.”

A readout published by Chinese state media Tuesday morning confirmed the talks and simply said the “two sides exchanged in-depth views on issues of common concern.”

The resumption of the commander-level talks comes amid especially heightened tensions in the South China Sea, where Chinese and Philippine ships have been engaged in a series of increasingly violent, but so-far non-lethal confrontations in recent months.

Beijing claims the sea almost in its entirety despite a major international ruling to the contrary, and the US has in recent months reiterated Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to defend its treaty ally, the Philippines.

Analysts have long warned that a miscalculation in the South China Sea could quickly spiral into a damaging regional conflict between the world’s two largest economies and that a lack of communication could compound those risks.

The talks also play out amid a range of frictions between Washington and Beijing, including over China’s close ties to Russia and what the US says is its support for Moscow’s defense industrial base, as well as Beijing’s concerns that the US is tightening ties with its regional allies to contain China.

Tuesday’s call marks a rare point of contact between top military officials leading American troops in the Indo-Pacific and Chinese strategy in the Southern and Eastern theater respectively.

It comes within a broader, gradual resumption of high-level military communication following a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November.

Top US and Chinese generals spoke in December after more than a year of silence, and US and Chinese defense chiefs held rare talks on the sidelines of a defense gathering in Singapore in May.

But the Biden administration had for months pushed to move direct discussions between the two global powers beyond the government brass to uniformed officers making decisions in the region.

Many are feared killed and wounded after Israeli forces struck a humanitarian zone created to shelter displaced people in southern Gaza, in what Israel said was an attack on Hamas terrorists in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday evening that it “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area” in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The strike was carried out with the direction of the Israel Security Agency and the Israeli Air Force, and steps were taken to mitigate civilian harm, it also said in a statement.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional means,” it also said.

According to Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, civil defense and medical teams are working “to control the situation” following the strike.

The IDF has accused Hamas and other militant groups in the Gaza Strip of continuing to “systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to carry out terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ahead of a key US presidential debate this week, families of several American hostages held in Gaza are calling on US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to offer new ideas for securing the immediate release of their loved ones.

“Enough is enough,” said Adi Alexander, whose 20-year-old son Edan was serving in the Israeli military when he was abducted by Hamas on October 7.

“Perhaps the deal proposed by President (Joe) Biden back in December was good then, but maybe we need something different now,” he added.

“I would challenge the candidates and ask them, you know, how to get our kids back,” said Ruby Chen, another US-Israeli citizen whose 19-year-old son, Itay, was killed during the attacks last year. His body is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

“Our children may be not as famous as a basketball player, but you know, from our perspective, the creativity they have shown has to come back again here in our case, and to do everything possible, everything within their means – whether it’s putting more pressure, whether it’s finding creative ways to bring our kids back home.”

There is even support among the relatives of the US hostages for Washington to apply greater pressure on Israel, whose veteran prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is accused by critics of thwarting US-led hostage negotiations to appease hardliners in his fragile coalition.

The relatives said they would now support moves to curb US diplomatic, financial and military aid to Israel as a way of pushing Netanyahu toward a deal.

“But we are urging our leaders to take brave action and to put politics aside. We are not playing here. This is a real life-and-death situation,” he added.

Over 100 hostages remain in Gaza today, as living conditions in the Palestinian enclave crumble under Israeli forces’ months-long siege. Freed hostages have described suffering from frequent shortages of food and water in Gaza, and some have also reported physical and mental abuse by their captors.

The recovery earlier this month of six murdered hostages’ bodies prompted mass protests in Israel, with demonstrators demanding Netanyahu’s government strike a deal to free those who remained in captivity. Many wondered if the nationwide outrage might be enough to force his hand.

Instead, a defiant Netanyahu has doubled down on his strategy in the strip, stressing his commitment to fighting until Hamas is defeated and repeating his refusal to withdraw soldiers from the border between Gaza and Egypt – a significant new sticking point in talks to reach a deal.

The Israeli military has detained a convoy of United Nations vehicles in northern Gaza, according to a statement.

The Israel Defense Forces were acting “following intelligence that a number of Palestinian suspects were present in the convoy” and delayed the convoy in order to question them, it said.

The IDF said that the convoy was not involved in the transport of polio vaccines but used instead to exchange UN personnel, and that the incident is “ongoing.”

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the organization is aware “of an ongoing incident involving UN personnel and vehicles” and is working to establish the facts, Reuters reported.