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Cartel corruption claims push US-Mexico relations to breaking point

Relations between Mexico and the United States are being pushed to breaking point amid accusations by Washington that Mexican officials have been “in bed for years” with drug traffickers, and reports of CIA agents freely operating south of the border. “There are many who are betting on the defeat and failure of the Mexican government,” said Claudia Sheinbaum tersely on Wednesday, when asked about the allegations at a news conference. ”We want a good relationship with the United States government. What are our limits? The defence of sovereignty and respect for the Mexican people and their dignity.” Sheinbaum’s comments follow inflammatory testimony from Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) director Terry Cole before the US Senate on Tuesday. “There’s no doubt that the narco traffickers and high-ranking government officials in Mexico have been in bed for years,” Cole said. “They are just as much responsible for the death and destruction of record amounts of Americans by cooperating, by conspiring, by helping, producing this poison to come across the border.” Mexico has been under intense pressure from Washington for months to tackle drug trafficking groups, with President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening to send troops south of the border. But in recent weeks, that pressure has intensified, pushing Sheinbaum into a delicate balancing act between trying to appease her party and mollify an increasingly hawkish White House. “It’s the most tense, the most difficult situation since at least the 1980s,” said former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda. “We’re in a moment the likes of which we have never seen, at least not in my memory.” Despite Trump’s constant threats, Sheinbaum had kept a calm demeanor for months – denying that there would be any kind of US presence in Mexico even as she repeatedly bowed to Washington’s wishes. In the last year, the Mexican government has transferred nearly 100 cartel members to face justice in the US. When Mexico, with the support of US intelligence, killed the leader of the country’s most powerful cartel in February, American officials celebrated, with deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau calling it a “great development”. But relations began to fray last month when reports emerged that several CIA agents had been involved in a raid on a drug lab in northern Mexico, apparently without approval or prior knowledge from the federal government, potentially violating the country’s constitution. Then, the US justice department charged the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and nine other current and former Mexican officials for alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel, accusing them of aiding in the massive importation of illicit drugs into the United States. The indictment of a high-ranking member of Sheinbaum’s Morena party with almost no prior warning came as a slap in the face to the Mexican leader. Rather than handing him over, however, Sheinbaum closed ranks, arguing that Washington had failed to produce meaningful evidence. “We will not allow any foreign government to come and decide the future of the Mexican people,” she said. But last week, US acting attorney general Todd Blanche said there would be more charges against Mexican officials for links to cartels. The threat was made even more explicit on Tuesday when DEA director Cole said that Rocha’s indictment was “just the start about [sic] what’s to come in Mexico”. Amid the flurry of collusion allegations, Sheinbaum is being increasingly backed into a corner, analysts say. “Mexico has to be constantly on the defensive,” said Jesús Pérez Caballero, an expert on US-Mexico relations at the College of the Northern Border. “It’s very difficult for it to establish a counter-narrative that aligns with Mexico’s interests if it constantly has to respond to these accusations.” Also on Tuesday, CNN published an explosive report alleging that the CIA had intensified covert operations in Mexico through the agency’s Ground Branch unit. According to CNN, the CIA “facilitated” the March assassination of a mid-level cartel member who was killed when a bomb exploded in his car, during the day, on one of the country’s busiest highways. CNN also said that the CIA had been involved in multiple “deadly attacks” on cartel members since last year. The report followed comments from Trump last week that a “land force” was already operating in Mexico. “You’ll hear some complaints from … representatives from Mexico and other places,” Trump said. “But if they’re not going to do the job, then we’re going to do the job.” Sheinbaum, however, was emphatic in her rejection of CNN’s reporting on Wednesday. “It’s false that CIA agents operate in our territory,” she said during a news conference. “It’s a fiction about the size of the universe.” Still, for all her bravura, it is likely that Sheinbaum will have to cave into America’s demands eventually: Mexico’s intimate relationship with the US, particularly on the economic front, leaves the Mexican leader with little wriggle room. “She has a problem with the United States that is unsolvable,” said Castañeda. “She has to hand over Rocha, and the others they ask for. Period. There is no alternative. There is no possibility that she won’t do so without an enormous cost.”

Benjamin Netanyahu says he made secret trip to UAE at height of Iran war

Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed he made a secret trip to the United Arab Emirates at the height of the Iran war to meet the president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “This visit has led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said on Wednesday night. The two leaders met for several hours in Al Ain, an oasis city by the Oman border, on 26 March, Reuters reported. A source told the news agency that the Mossad director, David Barnea, made at least two visits to the UAE during the war with Iran to coordinate military actions. The intelligence chief’s visit was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The supposed visit would be the latest milestone in a rapidly developing Middle East alliance. On Tuesday, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, disclosed that Israel had shared its air defence system with the UAE, sending Iron Dome batteries and military specialists to operate them over the course of the war. “There’s an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel,” Huckabee said. But the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry denied the reports of Netanyahu’s visit to the country, saying such claims were “baseless”. It was also reported that the UAE had secretly carried out its own strikes on Iran, including an attack on a refinery on Lavan island in early April, in retaliation for Iranian attacks on its oil facilities, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2020, the UAE was the first Islamic country to sign an agreement normalising relations with Israel, and was followed by three other Islamic countries: Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, in what were described as the “Abraham accords”. The UAE has gone much further than the other members in tightening the relationship into a de facto alliance. The Emirati rulers have increasingly sought to chart an independent foreign policy course from their larger neighbour, Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of the month, the UAE left the Saudi-led oil cartel, Opec, severely weakening the organisation’s clout in global markets. Israel and the UAE have close relationships with the Trump administration, which have been deepened by their involvement in the Iran war. But they are vulnerable to a change of administration and policy direction in Washington. Both are under intense scrutiny for their alleged involvement in war crimes. Israel has been accused of genocide in Gaza, and arrest warrants have been issued by the international criminal court for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The UAE is widely believed to be arming and funding the Rapid Support Forces, which have been accused of mass atrocities in Sudan. Its government has denied the allegations, despite considerable evidence underpinning them.

Ghayasuddin Siddiqui obituary

When Malcolm X arrived at Sheffield University in December 1964, it was a young Pakistani student activist, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, who had arranged his passage. That detail tells you much about my father, who has died aged 86. Ghayasuddin went on to co-found the Muslim Institute, one of Britain’s earliest Muslim organisations, and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, of which he became leader in 1996. Upon taking this role he threatened a campaign of civil disobedience unless the government passed legislation protecting British Muslims. The new Labour government of 1997 took on and implemented many of his demands – funding Muslim state schools and passing equalities legislation. What distinguished Ghayasuddin from many contemporaries was the willingness to turn that same critical gaze inward. The Muslim Institute led campaigns against forced marriages, child abuse and religious extremism, producing reports such as the child protection in faith-based environments report (2006) and the “model Muslim marriage contract” (2009), granting equal rights to both partners. Born near the city of Meerut, just east of Delhi, in pre-partition India, Ghayasuddin was the son of Muhammed Saeeduddin, a civil servant, and Batool Fatima. Partition in 1947 was a traumatic experience for the family, who resettled in Sukkur, now in the newly created Pakistan. He and his brother decided to take the surname Siddiqui. After attending a local school, Ghayasuddin gained a degree and master’s in chemistry from Sindh University in Jamshoro in 1962. He taught chemistry in Karachi before securing a place at Sheffield University in the UK to do a PhD. Arriving in 1964, he soon became assistant secretary of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, and as such organised the visit of Malcolm X to Sheffield. Ghayasuddin would recall praying together at the student union before Malcolm’s lecture that evening. He finished his PhD in 1970, the same year that he married Talat Anis, also a teacher, and the pair moved to Corby, Northamptonshire, to teach at local schools. In 1973 he co-founded the Muslim Institute with Kalim Siddiqui (no relation), and in 1978 the family moved to Chesham, Buckinghamshire, for my father to join the institute, based in London, as a full-time staff member. In 1992 he and Kalim also co-founded the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain. Following the death of Kalim in 1996, Ghayasuddin became director of the institute and leader of the Muslim parliament. He helped to establish the Halal Food Authority in 1994, and British Muslims for a Secular Democracy in 2006. Ghayasuddin was also vocal on the world stage. In 1999 he publicly supported British Muslims detained on terrorist charges in Yemen, arguing against a presumption of their guilt. He campaigned against the genocide in Bosnia, the war in Chechnya, and, as a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition in 2001, spoke out against Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. He believed, then as always, that Muslim and non-Muslim voices were stronger together. In 2009, he relaunched the Muslim Institute as a fellowship society promoting thought, debate and community empowerment. My father never fully retired, but passed the baton of leadership on in 2010. He is survived by Talat, their children, Faiza, Uzma, Salman and me, and 11 grandchildren.

Slovakia closes border crossing with Ukraine amid warnings of further Russian strikes – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! At least six people were killed in an intense daytime Russian attack on Ukraine, with over 800 drones launched against targets in the country, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said (9:57, 11:47, 16:54). Neighbouring Slovakia has closed temporarily its border crossings with Ukraine in response to expected further attacks near the border (17:12). The attack comes as top regional leaders, joined by Zelenskyy, met in Bucharest to discuss the European security, reaffirming their support for Ukraine (16:35, 16:43). Earlier, French authorities have confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew members to a cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after a suspected norovirus outbreak, officials have said (13:03). The cruise ship’s operator confirmed that a number of guests are displaying symptoms, with further testing under way (13:47). A 92-year-old man died on the ship earlier this week, but the cause of his death is yet to be established (14:13). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway

A peripatetic walrus who became a local celebrity as he toured the north-east coast of Scotland has now been spotted in Norway, bringing to an end his Celtic sojourn. The young male was christened Magnus after he after first hauled his estimated 2.5-metre frame out of the sea on to Stronsay pier in Orkney on 16 April. Although walruses usually prefer to rest on sea ice, Magnus was been found snoozing on piers and pontoons along the Moray coast after swimming 200 miles south to the Scottish mainland. Police asked the public to report sightings of a wandering walrus, and his appearances drew hundreds of spectators as he swam from Lossiemouth to Macduff, Fraserburgh, Findochty and then Hopeman, entertaining crowds with his vigorous itching and – in a move surely conceived for Instagram – accidentally rolling off a harbour wall. Walruses are rare visitors to Scottish shores, although sightings have increased in recent years, prompting concerns that the effects of climate change on their Arctic ice habitat may be causing these southbound excursions. While walruses are known to be highly social animals, by 21 April police took the step of erecting a cordon at Lossiemouth marina to contain his admirers. Farther east along the coast in the fishing village of Findochty, Katie Wilson spotted Magnus on 27 April as she was dropping her three-year-old daughter at nursery near the harbour. “The kids could not believe it,” said Wilson at the time. “They were in shock. It’s not every day you see a walrus here.” Wilson said Magnus appeared to be sunbathing on a pontoon after swimming a lap around the harbour. “He seems quite happy. He is just chilling,” she told a local reporter. On 30 April, the tusked traveller was again spotted swimming alongside a group of pupils from Gordonstoun, King Charles’s alma mater, who were taking a sailing lesson in Hopeman harbour. Magnus was later seen sunbathing on a nearby rock and rolling off a pontoon while napping. A fortnight later, a local birdwatcher from an archipelago south of Stavanger, in Norway, has raised the alert that Magnus had crossed the North Sea. Åge Jakobsen told BBC Scotland: “We went out to Buerholmen at Hidra to look for and photograph the walrus Magnus who is staying there. It was a little different to take pictures of one of the birds I usually do – didn’t seem like it would fly away.” He said the walrus appeared “really tired” after the 400-mile journey across the North Sea but was having a “great time in the sun on the floating dock”. The team from British Divers Marine Life Rescue had been monitoring Magnus as he made his way around Scotland, noting that adolescent walruses do experience wanderlust. The Orkney Marine Mammal Research Initiative said this was “a genuinely rare event” and only the third time a walrus has been sighted in Orkney in the last decade. “Walruses are Arctic animals, native to the sea ice and subarctic waters of the northern hemisphere. The individuals that turn up on our shores are typically young roving animals – adolescents striking out beyond their usual range, possibly following food, possibly just exploring, likely due to climate change to some extent.”

Russia targets Ukraine with more than 800 drones in deadly daytime assault

Russia targeted Ukraine with more than 800 drones in a large-scale daytime assault that killed at least six people on Wednesday, hours after a previous deadly barrage. The strikes came as Kyiv and Moscow traded long-range attacks after a brief ceasefire, and despite the latest suggestion from Donald Trump that the war could soon come to an end. Ukrainian monitors detected at least eight salvoes of Russian drones, including some entering from Belarus, with the apparent target being Kyiv’s critical infrastructure. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Romania on Wednesday, wrote on X: “Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched, and the attack is ongoing, with additional drones entering our country’s airspace.” Moscow had targeted western regions closest to the borders with Nato countries, he added. Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán, condemned attacks on ethnic Hungarian regions in western Ukraine in a Facebook video. They would be on the agenda of prime minister Péter Magyar’s inaugural cabinet meeting later, she said. Slovakia announced it would be closing its border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons until further notice. Trump’s latest claims of progress in negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow were offered with scant detail and follow similar unfounded claims. “The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” the US president told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.” His comments follow remarks by Vladimir Putin in a speech last weekend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was possibly coming to an end. The latest strikes came a day after one of Zelenskyy’s top aides, Andriy Yermak, appeared in a Kyiv court after Ukraine’s two anti-corruption agencies named him as a suspect in a money-laundering scheme. He was a close friend of Zelenskyy’s for years, and led Ukraine’s talks with the US until an anti-corruption raid on his flat last November prompted his resignation. Yermak’s lawyer has described allegations that the former head of the presidential office had been caught up in a corruption scandal surrounding a $10.5m (£7.8m) luxury construction project as baseless. Yermak told reporters before the hearing: “I do not have any house, I only have one flat and one car,” adding later that he would comment afterwards. Russia’s earlier strikes had targeted Ukraine’s residential and railway infrastructure in the central Dnipro and north-eastern Kharkiv regions, port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region and energy facilities in the central Poltava region, according to Zelenskyy. Fourteen regions had come under attack on Tuesday, he said. The correlation of forces in the war has shifted in recent months. Ukraine has gone from pleading for international help with its defence to offering other countries expertise on how to counter attacks thanks to its domestically developed drone technology. Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile attacks have disrupted energy and manufacturing facilities deep inside Russia. Three regions reported strikes Wednesday. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russia, the illegally annexed Crimea peninsula, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. On the 780-mile (1,250km) frontline, the advance of Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing each month since last October, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Moscow’s spring offensive has floundered and its forces recorded a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based thinktank said. “Not only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,” it said on Tuesday.

Marine Le Pen’s party hits back at Kylian Mbappé comments

The French football captain, Kylian Mbappé, has angered Marine Le Pen’s far-right party after expressing concerns about it winning next year’s presidential election. Mbappé, 27, who grew up in Paris’s northern suburbs in a family with Algerian and Cameroonian heritage, told Vanity Fair this week: “I know what it means and what consequences it can have for my country when people like them come to power.” Jordan Bardella, 30, the president of Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN), which is polling high ahead of the spring presidential race, immediately shot back at the football star. He made a dig at Mbappé, who left the Paris Saint-Germain club in 2024 to play for Real Madrid, only for PSG to win the Champions League the following year. “I know what happens when Kylian Mbappé leaves PSG: the club wins the Champions League! (And maybe soon a second time),” Bardella wrote on social media. Le Pen told RTL radio on Wednesday she found it reassuring that Mbappé did not want her party to win, because his own strategy of leaving PSG in order to win at Real Madrid had not worked. “Frankly I think football fans are free enough to know who to vote for without being influenced by Mbappé,” she said. Julien Odoul, an RN MP and party spokesperson, said that, as the captain of the French team, Mbappé must represent all of France, including the millions of RN voters, and should not become a “political activist”. Bardella, who could become the party’s presidential candidate this summer if an appeals court upholds Le Pen’s ban on running, has a longstanding feud with Mbappé. At the time of France’s snap parliamentary election in 2024, Mbappé, who has worked to dismantle the stereotypes often applied to Paris’s diverse suburbs where he grew up, said electoral gains made by the RN were “catastrophic”. Bardella hit back, saying it was embarrassing to see deep-pocketed athletes “give lessons to people who can no longer make ends meet, who no longer feel safe”. Asked by Vanity Fair about the allegation that he was too rich to discuss French politics, Mbappé said: “Even as a footballer, you’re foremost a citizen. We’re not disconnected from the world … or from what’s happening in our country. People sometimes think that because we have money, because we’re famous, these kinds of problems don’t affect us.” But, he said, footballers “have our say, like everyone”. He said the RN’s gains in parliament in 2024 had shocked him and other footballers. “We’re citizens and we can’t just sit there saying all will be fine and go and play. We have to fight this idea that a footballer should just be content to play and keep quiet.” Mbappé is the face of a national team often celebrated as a symbol of diversity, and which many tip to win this summer’s World Cup. He was born in 1998, the year that France’s World Cup-winning team starring Zinedine Zidane was mythologised as “Black-Blanc-Beur” (Black-White-Arab) and presented by politicians as able to solve France’s deep-seated identity issues through their triumph. William Thay, from the thinktank Le Millénaire, told Reuters that Bardella’s response to Mbappé this week was politically shrewd because the player’s popularity in France had weakened since his PSG exit, with perceived arrogance and underwhelming results at Real Madrid. But Thay said the RN risked undermining its electoral strategy by attacking one of France’s biggest sporting stars while doing little to address moderates who fear the party seeks to deepen social divisions.

Chinese court awards compensation to sacked worker replaced by AI

A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation. The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products. The company, which has not been named publicly, later said AI could do his job and offered him a demotion and a 40% pay cut. When he refused, the company fired him. Zhou disputed his dismissal, and the Hangzhou intermediate people’s court ruled last month that the company had been wrong to fire him and ordered that he be paid 260,000 yuan in compensation. The case has attracted widespread attention as an example of how China can balance the country’s enthusiastic adoption of AI with job security, especially at a time of high youth unemployment. Chinese state media heralded the ruling as sending “a reassuring message to labour rights protection efforts in the age of automation”. People in China, encouraged by their government and by a generally optimistic attitude towards technology, tend to be more positive than their counterparts in the west about AI’s potential to improve their lives. A recent survey by the polling firm Ipsos found that more than 80% of people in China were excited about products that use AI, compared with fewer than 40% in the UK or the US. But the race across different sectors of the economy to integrate AI as fast as possible is starting to cause some concern about potential job losses. China is struggling with persistently high youth unemployment with 17% of people aged 16 to 24 unable to find work, according to the latest data. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies China’s technology and industrial policy, said there were signs of a shift in Beijing’s approach to job losses caused by AI. “Previously, Chinese policymakers seemed to downplay these risks. Official messaging on AI focused on the new jobs that AI was creating,” he said. “This process was compared to the restructuring of the labour market during the Industrial Revolution. The irony here is that there was sharp worker backlash to those changes. “Now we see more language from Beijing about addressing unemployment related to AI.” The Hangzhou case is not the first time authorities have ruled in favour of workers who have lost their jobs to AI. The Beijing local government published details last year of an arbitration case in which a company fired an woman who had worked as a manual data collector for 15 years. The company said an automated data collection tool could do her job. An arbitration committee ruled that the company was entitled to incorporate AI into its business model, but that this did not constitute a “significant change in objective circumstances” that could be the legal basis for terminating an employment contract. The committee said: “While enjoying the benefits of technology, employers should simultaneously assume corresponding social responsibilities.” Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow at Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Centre in Beijing, said the recent cases showed that “where the tech change is a foreseeable, controllable business upgrade … employers can’t simply pass the transition costs on to employees”.