Authorities in Greece have intensified investigations into how an explosive-packed drone ended up in waters off the west of the country.

An inquiry, involving specialised military teams, broadened at the weekend after bomb disposal experts detonated the unmanned device at sea.

The Greek defence minister, Nikos Dendias, said the drone, suspected to be of Ukrainian origin, almost certainly came from “a foreign state” although he stopped short of identifying the country.

Rolando Zumba, a gentle fifty-nine-year-old, wept through an Associated Press interview as he described the displacement of his people and their traditional lands to make way for a giant carbon offset project. His own ability to hunt disappeared when rangers in Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park—a spectacular 13,500-kilometre sweep of Amazon rainforest, mountains, and waterfalls—confiscated his hunting rifles. The act ended self-sufficiency for his Kichwa tribe on its ancestral land, ensuring poverty and hunger for his people.

In a December 2022 exposé, the news agency reported that this project was flawed from the beginning. The carbon credit program was set up in 2008 to “offset” the carbon footprint of Shell and TotalEnergies, which purchased blocks of the park, allowing them to claim more than 28 million “credits,” meaning they were theoretically offsetting that much CO2. The project brought in so much money, it covered around 90 percent of the operating expenses of the park and was supposed to be used for forest protection and reforestation. But the AP exposé found that not only did the companies exaggerate the credits earned, tree cover loss in the park also dramatically increased due to increased deforestation.

The market approach to nature is now deeply entrenched in many governments and international institutions, and trading in nature’s “assets” is a huge business. Most people around the world know little or nothing about this fast-moving development. But its reach is astounding.

Millennium Challenge was the name of a $250 million (US) war game, perhaps the most expensive in history, organized in 2002 by United States Joint Forces Command. It was designed to evaluate the new generation of American military technology—weapons, sensors, battlefield systems—in which the United States fought against a Middle Eastern adversary, either Iran or Iraq.

Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper of the Marine Corps was given command of the enemy force. Riper, who, in later interviews, expressed his doubts about the over-reliance on technology, devised an unconventional strategy. This included using low-tech communication methods—like motorcycle couriers and lanterns for signalling—to evade electronic detection. Riper also used waves of cruise missiles to overwhelm the attacking force’s defences. The results were stunning. Riper’s unsophisticated tactics sank sixteen American warships, wiping out the invading fleet, and ending the war game nearly as soon as it started.

But perhaps most surprising was what happened next: Joint Forces Command ordered the game restarted, “refloated” the sunk warships, and placed considerable constraints on Riper’s enemy force. Riper stopped playing the game: he had already won, and the new constraints were, in his eyes, scripted to deliver an American victory.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. As Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran grinds into its third month, it’s become obvious few in the Trump administration have heard of Millennium Challenge. Perhaps defence secretary Pete Hegseth shouldn’t have fired all those generals.

That said, the deficiencies of the conflict aren’t limited to the lack of planning, strategy, or clearly articulated goals. Much like the Millennium Challenge demonstrated, advanced military technology doesn’t guarantee an easy victory. Bombastic rhetoric notwithstanding, Iran has proven to be a resilient and innovative adversary. Not only have they managed to close the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping, causing a global economic crisis, they’ve further managed to rain down drones, rockets, and missiles across the Middle East.

A few years ago, Tim Beasley opened his front door to discover that a small package had been left on the step.

"I was like 'what the heck is this?'. I opened the box, and went 'oh!', and I immediately threw it away."

Inside the box was a threatening note, alluding to physical violence if he didn't back off.

Beasley works for a US security firm called Semperis, and at the time he was involved in ransom negotiations on behalf of a US government organisation that had been hit by a cyber-attack.

The package delivered to his home in the US was a warning from the ransomware group he had been having to talk to.

A new research tool that tracks cell phone activity has found a 42% drop in visitors from Canada to big metropolitan areas in the US that is much higher than official border-crossing data, suggesting Canadians during the second Trump administration are avoiding US cities in particular.

Researchers from the University of Toronto said the tool showed a “year-over-year median decline of approximately 42% in Canadian visits to US metropolitan areas – significantly higher than official border-crossing data, which showed a roughly 25% decline”.

According to flight data, WestJet replaced the aircraft scheduled for Vanderwilk's route with a different plane — one that had already been grounded for two days.

Then, in the same minute, the flight was cancelled.

After a previous Go Public report into similar complaints, dozens of passengers came forward with nearly identical stories. Go Public analyzed flight data tied to those complaints and identified 34 cases where passengers were denied compensation after their aircraft were swapped — in some instances, within minutes of cancellation.

In each case, WestJet cited safety-related maintenance.

Coal mining has always been a hazardous occupation. But today’s miners face a new danger because they’re inhaling something worse than the coal dust that settles in lungs, triggering immune cells to form nodules, masses, and scarified black tissue. Most of the large coal seams in the mountains of Appalachia are gone now. To reach smaller seams, miners must cut through much more rock with high levels of quartz, which gets pulverized into crystalline silica.

When tiny particles of silica are inhaled, they act like minute shards of glass, leading to severe tissue scarring and inflammation and eventually to progressive massive fibrosis. Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimate the disease now afflicts one in 10 working miners who have worked in mines for at least 25 years. Rising rates of the disease have led to stark increases in lung transplants and mortality. Between 2013 and 2017, hundreds of cases of progressive massive fibrosis were identified at three Virginia clinics alone, leading NIOSH to declare a renewed black lung epidemic. Black-lung-associated deaths, which declined between 1999 and 2018, rose between 2020 and 2023.

Armed federal agents recently arrested Dr. David Morens, a 78-year-old retired government scientist, strip-searched him, and charged him with crimes that could carry decades in prison — all for allegedly using his personal email to try and evade Freedom of Information Act requests.

According to prosecutors, Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used personal email accounts to dodge FOIA, deleted records, and sought to circumvent federal records requirements. In one message about communications about Covid research, he allegedly wrote: “I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I’m FOIA’d but before the search starts. … Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to my Gmail.”

But the Justice Department has, for decades, largely taken a hands-off approach to enforcing FOIA. When it has enforced the law, it’s usually landed in civil rather than criminal court. The DOJ has almost never treated FOIA evasion behavior as a crime — at least until now.

Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.

The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.

In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget, understating the significance of their emissions by a factor of five, according to experts at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove.

The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez answered a question about potentially running for higher office in 2028 by declaring: “My ambition is to change the country.”

The Democrat delivered that remark at a political forum in Chicago on Friday amid widespread belief that she is positioning herself to run for the White House in 2028 or challenge her party’s leader in the US Senate, fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer.

“What’s funny is they assume my ambition is a title or a seat,” the Bronx US House representative replied. “My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go.

“But single-payer healthcare is forever,” she added, in reference to the kind of national healthcare platform she has long supported over the private system entrenched in the US.

If all goes to plan over the next few days – and that is a big if – Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

The last visit was also made by Trump, during his first term, in 2017.

Back then, Beijing pulled out all the stops. On the three-day trip Trump and his wife, Melania, were treated to a private tour of the Forbidden City, the sprawling palace that housed Chinese emperors for centuries, and sat for a traditional Peking opera performance. The Chinese described it as a “state visit-plus”.

Now, as the president of the world’s biggest superpower prepares to visit his country’s biggest competitor on the global stage, the mood has shifted. Trump’s trip has been delayed by his attack on Iran, a stunning demonstration of the limits of US power, and cut to just two days.

Christine Tootoo had to spend weeks in a hotel, far from home, while she awaited the arrival of her second baby. Tootoo lives in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, and since there isn't a birthing centre close by, she had to fly to Winnipeg ahead of her due date earlier this year (a distance of approximately 1480 kms).

One early morning in her hotel room, her contractions came fast and irregular. By the time her partner, Rico Manitok, went to warm up the car, everything changed.

Manitok called 911 at 4:12 a.m. Two minutes later, their daughter was born on the floor of a Winnipeg hotel room.

Across many northern and remote Indigenous communities, families must leave weeks before giving birth to get the medical care they need. Some travel alone, others bring a support person, while children and extended family stay behind.

A dispute about a ship full of stolen grain has lifted the veil on a geopolitical reality that has persisted for years but is rarely mentioned in western capitals or noticed by western media: the curiously friendly relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to X to complain that a Panama-flagged ship was preparing to unload 25,000 tonnes of wheat and barley stolen from his country in Haifa, Israel. An investigation by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz suggests the Panormitis was at least the fifth ship so far this year to carry grain taken from occupied Ukraine to Israel.

"In any normal country, purchasing stolen goods is an act that entails legal liability," Zelenskyy wrote. "This is not — and cannot be — legitimate business. The Israeli authorities cannot be unaware of which ships are arriving at the country’s ports and what cargo they are carrying.”

Five years after the federal government announced it would restrict vaping flavours nationwide, Canada's health minister won't say when or even if it will still happen — despite widespread expert advice that a ban could help curb the country's staggering youth vaping rate.

"I'm committed to keep Canadians informed on next steps," Health Minister Marjorie Michel said in an interview with CBC News. "It's very important to me to protect youth."

Public records show the nicotine and vaping industries have been regularly lobbying Health Canada, along with Liberal ministers and MPs.

Donald Trump has announced a three-day ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine from 9 to 11 May.

The US president said on social media the ceasefire would include a suspension of all “kinetic activity” and a swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country. It was confirmed by both sides.

Trump said in his post: “Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War,” adding that there was constant progress in talks to end the conflict.

Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted an uncharacteristically long silence over the Iran conflict this week with a video commentary insisting he had “full coordination” with Donald Trump, with whom he spoke “almost daily”.

The insistence that all was rosy in the US-Israeli relationship followed weeks of reports in the domestic press that Israel was no longer being consulted over the Iran conflict, and even less over Pakistani-brokered peace talks. Such is the scepticism over Netanyahu’s trustworthiness among the general public and independent press that the immediate reaction among observers to his video statement was speculation that the reality could be even worse than they had imagined.

“He is doing so much talking about how great the relationship is that it makes me rather concerned about how much tension there is,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and pollster. “I wouldn’t be surprised, as the war is clearly going very poorly from all perspectives related to the original goals.”

The Earth is getting hotter. Conflicts are raging, in the Middle East and Ukraine, each increasing the chance of nuclear war. AI is infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives, despite its unpredictability and tendency to hallucinate. Scientists, tinkering in labs, risk introducing new, deadly pathogens, more destructive than Covid. Our pandemic response preparedness has weakened. The Doomsday Clock – a large, quarter clock with no numbers, keeps ticking, counting down the seconds until the apocalypse. Tick. Tick. Tick. In January, we reached 85 seconds to midnight. Experts believe humanity has never stood so close to the brink.

“What we have seen is a slow almost sleepwalk into increasing dangers over the last decade. And we see these problems growing. We see science advancing at a rate that defies our ability to understand it, much less control it,” says Alexandra Bell, CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organisation that sets the Doomsday Clock. She speaks of the “complete failure in leadership” in the US and other countries, which are doing little to address global, catastrophic threats, even as they feed into one another. Climate change increases global conflict, for instance, and the incorporation of AI into nuclear decision-making is, frankly, terrifying.

Live Nation Entertainment says it knows many music and sports fans hate the company and blame it — and subsidiary Ticketmaster — for sky-high ticket prices.

But the executive vice-president of the world’s largest entertainment company insists the conglomerate is not a monopoly and should not be broken up.

But Wall defended his company and said he will fight moves to split up Ticketmaster and Live Nation after a recent landmark verdict by a U.S. federal jury.

A petition with more than 300,000 signatures — well over the required threshold — seeking such a referendum was submitted to Elections Alberta on May 4.

But that key step in the process comes amid an ongoing court case about treaty rights, which means things are stuck in limbo for the time being.

The group’s first petition was referred to court last July by chief electoral officer Gordon McClure, who was seeking a ruling on whether it violated the Constitution. In December, Court of King’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby ruled that separatism couldn’t be pursued under the provincial Citizen Initiative Act — partly because of Constitutional concerns and partly because it could violate First Nations' treaty rights.

That second petition was also taken to court, this time by First Nations who argued provincial separation would be unconstitutional on the grounds that it would violate treaties negotiated with the Crown.

The number of Canadians connected to a hantavirus outbreak that began on a polar expedition cruise has grown to 10 as federal officials report three more people — two from Alberta and one from Ontario — may have had contact on a flight with someone infected.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Joss Reimer provided the latest details at a Friday briefing about the MV Hondius cruise ship, which has been the focal point of international attention since an outbreak of the rodent-borne virus on the ship spread to eight people, killing three.