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With spring initiative, European loan, score is Advantage Ukraine

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With spring initiative, European loan, score is Advantage Ukraine

In Ukraine, spring brings hope for new crops after the long cold winter and every year since the Russian invasion in 2022 it has brought new questions about which side might seize the initiative as confrontation on the battlefield is renewed. This year, unlike in 2024 or 2025, the springtime initiative is firmly in Ukraine’s hands.

Technological innovation, domestic Ukrainian weapons production and Russian weaknesses are all playing a part. But the starring role is being played by the landslide electoral defeat on April 12th of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, for that has cleared the way for vital European Union funding for Ukraine’s war effort.

The special €90 billion loan that EU leaders approved in December for Ukraine was smaller than Ukraine wanted and needed, but nonetheless essential if it was to keep its war production going. Orbán initially voted in favor of the loan, despite his long-running support for Russia, but then intervened (along with Slovakia’s Robert Fico) to block it at the last minute before the loan was due to be provided, conveniently just ahead of the Hungarian election.

Orbán’s pretext was Ukraine’s supposed failure to repair a pipeline transporting Russian oil to Hungary that had been damaged by a Russian attack. But his attempt to demonize Ukraine as a military and economic threat to Hungary failed spectacularly in the election.

Now his successor-elect, Peter Magyar, who will take office in early May, has already allowed the loan to go through, a decision formalized at the European Council meeting that opened in Cyprus on April 23rd. Oil has also resumed its flow down the damaged pipeline.

The defeat of Orbán and the unblocking of the loan are both setbacks for Vladimir Putin. The key economic point about the production of weapons and other material for war is that this represents pure consumption that will not lead to new wealth or productive activity: drones, missiles and other war material are made to be destroyed, preferably while destroying the enemy. So vast amounts of finance are needed to fuel this unproductive war machine. That is what the EU loan will chiefly do.

Without the loan, Ukraine would have struggled to maintain its now-phenomenal output of drones, robotic vehicles and missiles, just as Russia would have struggled to maintain its own output of war materials without the big rise in oil prices that has resulted from Donald Trump’s war on Iran. Each side is, naturally, doing what it can to attack the other side’s weapons factories while Ukraine is also attacking Russia’s oil refineries and export facilities.

Reuters has reported that attacks by Ukraine’s drones succeeded in temporarily reducing Russia’s oil-export capacity by 40% during March. What has changed is not the fact of these attacks but rather that Ukraine can now make them in repeated waves, hitting the same port, pipeline or refinery in new attacks over several days, worsening the damage and slowing the repair process.

Last week a drone attack on an oil refinery at Tuapse on Russia’s Black Sea coast produced especially dramatic consequences, as smoke and other pollution covered the whole city for several days.

This sustained air campaign is now possible thanks to the expansion of drone production inside Ukraine and in partner factories in countries such as Denmark, but also Ukraine’s impressive pace of technological innovation. This is enabling its drones to hit targets farther away and to have a higher chance of evading Russian defenses.

At the same time, Ukraine is using more armed robotic vehicles on the battlefield to prevent Russian advances and even to regain some territory, reducing Ukraine’s own casualty rate while aiming at keeping Russia’s casualty rate higher than the rate at which it can recruit new soldiers. For all that production and innovation, funding is required.

Although the European Council did not devote much time to the question of funding Ukraine at this week’s meeting, it will need to start thinking about it again soon as the €90 billion loan covers just two years.

As the EU found last year, there are formidable legal and political obstacles to using the most obvious source of funds, the roughly €300 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets that are currently held mainly in Belgium. That is why in December the European Council resorted instead to borrowing €90 billion itself and lending the money on to Ukraine.

The defeat of Orbán in this month’s Hungarian election removes one of the political obstacles to future funding, but not all. Slovakia and the newly elected governments of Slovenia and Bulgaria are also quite pro-Putin, albeit not as aggressively obstructive as Orbán was. But the big question concerns what will happen in the French elections in April next year.

Orbán’s fall did not represent a public rejection of populism nor of right-wing policies on immigration nor even of hostility to Ukraine. The man who beat Orbán is also right-wing and has expressed skepticism about support for Ukraine even though he is not an active supporter of Putin. Magyar’s landslide reflected discontent at the failure of the incumbent, Orbán, to raise living standards after 16 years in power, at his authoritarian style and at the spread of corruption.

When Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale tries next year to turn its current opinion poll lead into victory in France’s presidential election, it will be campaigning against an existing political system which it can describe as having failed to raise French living standards.

Orbán’s defeat may well show that obtaining support from Trump is a disadvantage and that opposing the EU is not popular, but on present evidence it does not prove that the European mood is swinging against nationalist, anti-immigrant, right-wing parties such as Rassemblement Nationale.

This makes it even more urgent to resolve any pending EU issues that might risk being blocked by a President Le Pen (if the French courts allow her to run; if not, her candidate will be her young protégé Jordan Bardella).

This includes measures to improve the single market and EU economic vitality recommended by Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta in their much-admired 2024 reports. But above all it includes the provision of adequate support to Ukraine, so that it can retain the initiative in its war with Russia and so that it will stand a good chance of joining the EU once the war is over.

It is not surprising that, once the €90 billion loan had been unblocked, President Volodymyr Zelensky decided to attend the European Council himself. His message was that Ukraine is grateful for the loan and is making progress in fighting back against Russia, but this loan must just be the beginning of an even closer relationship with the European Union, not the end.

The EU is vital for Ukraine’s survival, but it is also clear that Ukraine, with its now formidable defense industry, is equally vital for the EU’s own security.

First published in Italilan translation by La Stampa, this article also appears on Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished with permission.

Open source package with 1 million monthly downloads stole user credentials

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Open source package with 1 million monthly downloads stole user credentials

Open source software with more than 1 million monthly downloads was compromised after a threat actor exploited a vulnerability in the developers’ account workflow that gave access to its signing keys and other sensitive information.

On Friday, unknown attackers exploited the vulnerability to push a new version of element-data, a command-line interface that helps users monitor performance and anomalies in machine-learning systems. When run, the malicious package scoured systems for sensitive data, including user profiles, warehouse credentials, cloud provider keys, API tokens, and SSH keys, developers said. The malicious version was tagged as 0.23.3 and was published to the developers’ Python Package Index and Docker image accounts. It was removed about 12 hours later, on Saturday. Elementary Cloud, the Elementary dbt package, and all other CLI versions weren’t affected.

Assume compromise

“Users who installed 0.23.3, or who pulled and ran the affected Docker image, should assume that any credentials accessible to the environment where it ran may have been exposed,” the developers wrote.

The threat actor gained access to the developers’ account by exploiting a vulnerability in a GitHub action they created. By posting malicious code to a pull request, the attackers were able to run a bash script that ran inside the developer’s account. The bash script retrieved the sensitive data. With the account tokens and signing keys, the attacker went on to publish a malicious element-data package that was nearly indistinguishable from a legitimate one.

The developers learned of the compromise from a third-party issue report. Within three hours, the package was removed. Element developers said they also rotated all credentials that the malicious code had access to. They have further fixed the vulnerability and audited all their other GitHub actions to ensure none contain the same flaw.

The developers are urging all developers who installed version 0.23.3 to take the following steps immediately:

1. Check your installed version:

pip show elementary-data | grep Version

2. If the version is 0.23.3, uninstall it and replace it with the safe version:

pip uninstall elementary-data

pip install elementary-data==0.23.4

In your requirements and lockfiles, pin explicitly to elementary-data==0.23.4.

3. Delete your cache files to avoid any artifacts.

4. Check for the malware’s marker file on any machine where the CLI may have run: If this file is present, the payload executed on that machine.

macOS / Linux: /tmp/.trinny-security-update

Windows: %TEMP%\.trinny-security-update

5. Rotate any credentials that were accessible from the environment where 0.23.3 ran – dbt profiles, warehouse credentials, cloud provider keys, API tokens, SSH keys, and the contents of any .env files. CI/CD runners are especially exposed because they typically have broad sets of secrets mounted at runtime.

6. Contact your security team to hunt for unauthorized usage of exposed credentials. The relevant IOCs are at the bottom of this post.

Over the past decade, supply-chain attacks on open source repositories have become increasingly common. In some cases, they have achieved a chain of compromises as the malicious package leads to breaches of users and, from there, breaches resulting from the compromise of the users’ environments.

HD Moore, a hacker with more than four decades of experience and the founder and CEO of runZero, said that user-developed repository workflows, such as GitHub actions, are notorious for hosting vulnerabilities.

It’s a “a major problem for open source projects with open repos,” he said. “It’s really hard to not accidentally create dangerous workflows that can be exploited by an attacker’s pull request.”

He said this package can be used to check for such vulnerabilities.

Netanyahu Cancels Mount Meron Lag b’Omer Mass Event Amid Hezbollah Fire

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Netanyahu Cancels Mount Meron Lag b’Omer Mass Event Amid Hezbollah Fire


Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled the 2026 Lag b’Omer mass celebration at Mount Meron due to severe security threats and ongoing Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon, limiting the event to a symbolic ceremony with highly restricted attendance.

The decision was made following a security Cabinet discussion Sunday night. Netanyahu determined that the annual celebration, scheduled for May 5, would not proceed in its usual format, which typically draws large crowds. Police will restrict access to the site and actively block public entry, prioritizing safety concerns.

Authorities cited multiple risks, including continued rocket fire, the site’s proximity to the Lebanon border, and concerns over the ability to evacuate large numbers of people in the event of an attack. Despite a declared ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah drones continue to target northern Israel, while the military is carrying out strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon.

Lag b’Omer is a Jewish holiday marking the 33rd day of the Omer, commemorating Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai—a second-century sage, disciple of Rabbi Akiva, and central figure in Jewish mysticism—whose death is traditionally honored with bonfires, celebrations, and pilgrimages to his tomb at Mount Meron.

Alternative events are being organized in other locations, including a major gathering at Ancient Shiloh.

Separately, the Home Front Command imposed restrictions on public gatherings, limiting attendance to 1,500 people in communities along the confrontation line, including Meron, Bar Yochai, Or HaGanuz, and Safsufa. The measures took effect Sunday at 10:30 p.m. and were set to remain in place until Monday at 8 p.m.

Leaders of communities along the confrontation line announced they would immediately halt schools and transportation services in areas under threat of fire, even though the Home Front Command had not ordered such steps, Ynet reported. They said they would independently adopt an “orange” defense policy beginning Tuesday.

Trump uses assassination try to justify expanding spying powers

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Trump uses assassination try to justify expanding spying powers

An exchange of gunfire between an armed suspect and law enforcement outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday came days ahead of a deadline for extending far-reaching government surveillance powers, and President Donald Trump wasted no time in claiming that the attempted attack on the event proved that the FBI must be permitted to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump repeated his previous remarks that he is “willing to give up [his] security” in favor of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Thursday—and suggested other Americans should do the same for “the safety of our nation.”

Section 702 allows US intelligence agencies to surveil the electronic communications of foreign nationals overseas without a warrant. Since some of the nearly 350,000 foreign nationals whose communications have been collected under the law are in touch with Americans, Section 702 allows for the collection of emails, text messages, and phone calls of US citizens.

Fox anchor Jacqui Heinrich emphasized that “we don’t know right now” whether the suspect in Saturday’s shooting, Cole Tomas Allen, “was radicalized” by a foreign individual or group, but asked whether the attack drove home “the importance of having these tools to protect our country from these kinds of threats.”

The president responded by complaining that former FBI Director James Comey used FISA to obtain warrants to surveil a former Trump aide as part of the agency’s investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign’s communications with Russia, before saying FISA has been used in the US-Israeli war on Iran and in the US military’s invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.

“It’s really needed for national security,” said Trump. “Iran is decimated, and we got a lot of information by using FISA… I’m willing to give up my security for the military because ultimately that’s to me the highest cause is, you know, the safety of our nation.”

Jordan Liz, an associate professor of philosophy at San José State University, wrote last week in a column at Common Dreams that while Trump, Republican lawmakers, and US intelligence agencies “make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that Section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this.”

“According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of Section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot,” wrote Liz, adding:

In that case, Section 702 was used by the [National Security Agency] to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place.

Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British intelligence partners.

At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of Section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security.

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting is believed to have acted alone, and no evidence has been released that he was in communication with any foreign entities. A document he wrote alluded to his Christian beliefs and to reports of the administration’s abuse of immigrants in detention centers, its boat-bombing operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the bombing of an elementary school in Iran.

The president has been pushing in recent weeks for an extension of Section 702. The program was last reauthorized in 2024, and earlier this month two efforts to extend the program – one for 18 months and the other for five years – failed, with opponents objecting to a lack of privacy reforms and to a loophole allowing data brokers to sell private information about Americans to government agencies that have not obtained judicial approval to seize the data.

After those proposals failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week unveiled a new bill to extend Section 702 for three years and require the FBI to submit monthly reports on its reviews of Americans’ private data to an oversight official, as well as imposing penalties for abuse—provisions that were dismissed by privacy advocates.

The House Rules Committee was set to convene on Monday, a step toward advancing the new bill toward a vote in the House, and according to NPR, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) circulated a memo late last week urging his colleagues to reject the Republicans’ latest proposal.

The bill, he wrote, “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data… FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge.”

Four Democrats in the House – Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NJ), Marie Gluesencamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Jared Golden (D-Maine) – broke with the party and joined the GOP earlier this month in supporting a procedural vote to advance the reauthorization of Section 702. Privacy advocates are ramping up pressure on them to oppose the latest proposal for an extension.

“It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told The Intercept Monday, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and [White House homeland security adviser] Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”

-Common Dreams

“Super ZSNES” is a stab at a modern SNES emulator from the original developers

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“Super ZSNES” is a stab at a modern SNES emulator from the original developers

Aficionados of game console emulator history will almost certainly be familiar with ZSNES, an MS-DOS-based (and, later, Windows-based) emulator for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that originally launched back in 1997. Originally written in x86 assembly code, it was known best for its performance on low-end PCs and was capable of running some games at full speed on chips as slow as a 233 MHz Pentium II, though it usually did so at the expense of emulation accuracy.

ZSNES developed rapidly (alongside the contemporary, competing Snes9x project) throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s. Updates slowed after the original creators left the project, and new releases ceased entirely around 2007.

But a successor to ZSNES has arrived. The project’s original creators (who go by the handles zsKnight and _Demo_) have returned 19 years later with a new follow-up project called “Super ZSNES,” an SNES emulator that emphasizes audio-visual upgrades to those aging ’90s-era Super Nintendo games. The only more surprising emulator news would be if NESticle somehow rose from the dead.

Aside from the name, the developers, and an updated version of the falling-snow menu screen, Super ZSNES has nothing to do with the original project. The new emulator has been “re-written completely from scratch” with “no vibe coding.” The emulator features “far more accurate CPU and Audio cores than the original ZSNES” and makes extensive use of GPU-based rendering instead of the mainly CPU-based emulation of the original and most other SNES emulators.

But the main selling point for Super ZSNES, and the reason for its existence alongside mature full-featured emulators like Snes9x and Higan/bsnes, is its new “super enhancement engine.” These enhancement features go beyond typical image upscaling and screen filters, adding features like widescreen support and texture mapping that can optionally give supported games “a higher resolution look.”

Super ZSNES can also replace the original audio samples with uncompressed versions (“restored” versions of SNES game soundtracks that claim to use uncompressed versions of the original audio samples are a whole thing), and can add actual 3D to games that use the Mode 7 effect rather than just upscaling it. These enhancements don’t directly modify the ROM files, nor do they include data from ROMs, insulating the project from legal action.

An overview video by Modern Vintage Gamer shows many of these new updates in action, and they can definitely give old SNES games a dramatically different look and sound. They likely won’t do much for the kinds of retro-game purists who spend their time looking for the perfect CRT filter, but they can give you something new to look at and listen to while you work on your 17th playthrough of Super Mario World.

These enhancements need to be created on a per-game basis, and the initial Super ZSNES release only includes enhancements for seven “popular games”: F-Zero, Gradius 3, the first Mega Man X, Super Castlevania 4, Super Ghouls & Ghosts, Super Mario World, and Super Metroid. The creators plan to add support for more games in the future, and players will also be able to create their own enhancements for individual games using tools built into the emulator.

The initial Super ZSNES release supports Windows, Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, Linux, and Android, with an iOS release “coming soon.” Future releases will include general bug fixes and performance optimizations, support for popular enhancement chips like the DSP-1 and SuperFX, “more types of enhancements,” online netplay, and more.

Nearly two decades after landmark Indigenous rights declaration, countries still aren’t complying

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This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

Nearly two decades after the United Nations adopted a landmark declaration on Indigenous rights, advocates say countries still aren’t living up to their promises to uphold and respect those rights.

Indigenous people are being killed for protecting their territories, criminalized for practicing their culture, and seeing their lands stripped of resources without consent. Last week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous peoples, leaders called for countries to fully implement the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, and other international human rights standards.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted UNDRIP, a sweeping resolution that established international standards for Indigenous land, language, health, and more. The United States and Canada were among a handful of countries that initially opposed the declaration and later adopted it. But in the years since, Indigenous people in those countries, and around the world, say nations are not living up to the framework.

At the U.N., Kenneth Deer, a member of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke, delivered a joint statement on behalf of the Canadian Coalition for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He called for states to establish independent monitoring systems to “ensure the full and effective implementation” of UNDRIP.

“You need to have a group of independent, Indigenous individuals who will have access to how the government is implementing the declaration,” he said. “They should be able to study what they’re doing and make an evaluation whether they’re being effective or not, and then whether there’s failures. They need to highlight those failures to the government, and that’s how you get effective implementation.”

Deer acknowledged how complicated that process could be, which he said highlights the need for a monitoring body. “To implement the declaration, they need a watchdog,” he said. “They need somebody over them to make sure they’re carrying out their responsibilities.”

For many Indigenous nations, health also means cultural and spiritual health. Moses Goods, who is Kanaka Maoli, spoke on behalf of the Nation of Hawai’i and highlighted “the right to remain who we are.” He explained how Indigenous languages serve as memory, identity, and medicine — and are a protected right under UNDRIP.

“Language is a link to our culture. It’s a link to who we are as a people and our identity, which is linked to health. When you take those things away, the health of the people start to decline,” he said. “It was intentionally taken away from us as Indigenous people, as Indigenous Hawaiians, so that we would decline. And it worked to a degree, until now.”

Today, culture continues to be weakened, including with the disruption of access to lands, such as the wildfires that have caused displacement in Lahaina. 

Despite the challenges, Goods noted that coming together as Indigenous Peoples in places such as the UNPFII is an important step. “We keep telling our stories, we keep telling the truth over and over again to each other, and we strengthen each other. And with those numbers, we can make something happen,” he said.

Delegates address the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Tristan Ahtone / Grist

In 2021, Canada passed a law that committed to aligning all government policies with UNDRIP, but Indigenous advocates at the U.N. said there’s still a long way to go for those rights to actually be upheld. 

Ryan Fleming is from Attawapiskat First Nation in the remote Mushkegowuk territory of Northern Ontario and described his community as “frozen in time,” a symptom of the poverty he said is created by Canada.

In 2019, Attawapiskat Chief — then councilor — Sylvia Koostachin-Metatawabin and former chief Theresa Spence endured a 15-day hunger strike to secure change from provincial and federal governments to reenact a dormant task force to address the urgency of water quality in the community and other issues affecting the members.

“Until Canada addresses those structural conditions, then you can’t properly move forward with UNDRIP,” Fleming said.

In an emailed statement, Jennifer Cooper, spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, responded to concerns about Indigenous rights and highlighted the Crown’s efforts, which include an Indigenous advisory council and increased funding.

“As we implement the Building Canada Act and advance nation-building projects, we will honour our commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, Duty to Consult, and Modern Treaties and Self-Government Agreements,” Cooper said. “We have made real progress together, but we know there are still barriers that slow things down. We’re improving how we work internally and bringing greater clarity to the process. We continue to develop rights-based agreements together with our partners in the true spirit of reconciliation, shared prosperity, and partnership.”

The Province of British Columbia, which enacted legislation to enforce UNDRIP in 2019, has recently been under fire for seeking to suspend or amend parts of that law, after a court ruling found the province inconsistent with its own rules. The province has since backtracked, saying it would collaborate with First Nations leaders on a path forward.

“The inherent pre-existing rights of First Nations are part of, and are protected by, international human rights law,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak in a statement at the UN. “[UNDRIP] affirms First Nations rights as human rights. Neither Canada nor British Columbia can extinguish, amend, or suspend First Nations’ human rights and remain a respected member of the international community.”

Fleming noted that discussions and reports at the UN don’t always mean action is being taken to follow UNDRIP. “In practice, you don’t see that coming to fruition,” he said. “We don’t need a new treaty. We don’t need a new agreement. We just need [Canada] to implement the original agreement. We need to honour that, and then we can move forward.”

As the UNPFII heads into its second week, Indigenous people around the world continue to fight for survival and the rights outlined in UNDRIP. Ercilia Castañeda is Kichwa and the vice president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, which represents 15 nationalities and 18 Indigenous Peoples.

“We cannot speak of health while there is tear gas in our communities, while 60 percent of the water sources in the Amazon are contaminated, while 40 percent of our children live with chronic malnutrition, while around 10,000 people have been murdered in 2025,” Castañeda said in a statement at the Permanent Forum. “We cannot speak of human rights while the fabric of community life is being ripped apart.” 

Castañeda called on Ecuador and international bodies like the UNPFII to strengthen and follow legal human rights frameworks.

Indigenous leaders also repeatedly highlighted the need for direct funding to support UNDRIP implementation. In a presentation, Aluki Kotierk, who is Inuk and the chair of the Permanent Forum, explained the importance of the U.N. Trust Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which she said “contributes directly to facilitating the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

But Kotierk also said support from member states for the fund is minimal. Kotierk noted that there are only three states that contribute annually to the fund. 

New systems, including a policy marker system by the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP, are set to help track that funds reach Indigenous Peoples directly. Indigenous leaders hope that funds for climate and development will reach them without getting delayed through state intermediaries, but the exact process is unclear. The UNDP did not immediately return a request for comment. 

As Indigenous leaders from around the world demanded change on international and domestic levels, Kenneth Deer said that UNDRIP implementation should be a collaborative process.

“The relationship is about coexistence. It’s not about domination of Canada over Indigenous people,” he said. “What we need to offer is solutions, not just come to the U.N. and complain about Canada, but come to the United Nations with solutions.”

The UNPFII is set to run till the end of the week.

Some Connecticut Towing Companies Are Ignoring New Law Aimed at Helping Low-Income Residents

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Ginny Monk
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Connecticut legislators overhauled the state’s towing law last year to make it more fair for low-income residents who couldn’t afford the fees to get their cars back. Those residents sometimes saw their cars sold after being towed for breaking one of their landlord’s parking rules.

The new law, which took effect in October, requires tow truck companies to give owners notice before hauling away a car for minor issues like failing to display an apartment complex’s parking permit or parking in the wrong space. They also now have to be available after hours to allow people to retrieve their vehicles. They have to accept credit cards and provide change when people pay in cash.

But when Elias Natal went to work one evening in December, he discovered his Buick had been towed from his home at Sunset Ridge Apartments in New Haven. And the towing company seemed to ignore the new rules.

The law requires apartment complexes to post signs warning of towing, but interviews with tenants and visits to Sunset Ridge show there were none at the complex, where many people receive state or federal rental aid. The towing company, Lombard Motors, told Natal he was towed for not having a parking permit, even though Natal has photos showing the sticker was displayed on the windshield, as he said the apartment manager instructed him.

When Natal and his partner, Jasmin Flores, discovered where the car was and went to pick it up, Lombard was already closed, and no one was available to return their car, triggering additional storage fees.

By the time they got the money together to pay the fees, it had only been four days, and the tow didn’t require excessive mileage charges since Lombard’s lot was a few blocks away. But Lombard’s fees stacked up to nearly $500. The company demanded cash, which the couple paid. They got their car back but had to argue to get any change.

“Especially after the copious amounts of money that they asked of us, to then not give us back like our minuscule change is just, it’s dehumanizing,” Natal said.

Over the past year and a half, the Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica have investigated towing practices in Connecticut, revealing how state laws favored towing companies, particularly at the expense of people with low incomes. The stories led to a new law, but reporting shows that some towing companies aren’t following it. While the legislature required most involuntary tows from apartments to be triggered by specific complaints, residents said towing companies are continuing to patrol public housing and low-income apartment complexes and tow cars for minor violations.

Brick buildings and trees stand next to a lot with parked cars and a black police car. The scene is framed by window panes.
A police car patrols the parking lot at Samuel Roodner Court in Norwalk, Connecticut. In Norwalk, the top seven property parcels for tows belong to the public housing authority. Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror

Few landlords had more tows in New Haven from 2022 to 2024 than the company that owns Sunset Ridge. And residents say the frequency of towing has picked up even more in recent months after the owner, Capital Realty Group, became more aggressive in response to the formation of a tenants union. In the five months since the new law took effect, Sunset Ridge has had 64 tows, compared with 146 from 2022 to 2024, according to police data. Capital Realty did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Whether landlords and towers are following the law matters because towing in Connecticut has disproportionately occurred in low-income areas. In many cities, public housing complexes and low-income apartments were some of the biggest hot spots for towing before the reforms passed, according to a new CT Mirror and ProPublica analysis of police department tow logs.

The analysis of data from nine of the largest Connecticut cities showed that census tracts where the most tows occurred from 2022 to 2024 tended to have larger populations of renters, larger Black and Hispanic populations and much higher rates of poverty than the state as a whole. The census tract where Natal and Flores live had the second-most tows in the city and a high population of Hispanic and Black residents. In Norwalk, the top seven property parcels for tows belong to the public housing authority.

“It’s such a fish-in-a-barrel situation where people have to put their car somewhere,” said Luke Melonakos, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union, about the difficulty finding parking in some of these housing complexes. “They have no choice but to try to abide by these often very arduous, confusing, often-changing-frequently parking rules.”

Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Shaun Formica said that the agency hasn’t received any complaints of towing companies not following the law, but that complaints about towing overall have gone down. Since the law went into effect in October, there have been seven complaints, compared with 32 from October 2024 to March 2025, records show. Natal did not file a complaint.

Lombard Motors and another company owned by the same group, Anthony’s Hightech Auto Center, were the subject of nine complaints that resulted in fines between 2023 and 2025 before the law took effect, records show. In two cases, the DMV fined them a total of $5,000 for overcharging people to get their vehicles after a tow and ordered Lombard to return more than $1,000 to the vehicle owners. Lombard did not attend the hearings to offer a defense in either case, records show.

The owners of Lombard and Anthony’s did not respond to multiple calls for comment.

The Biggest Towing Hot Spots

A brick building with stairs and windows reflecting a blue sky. A permit parking sign hangs on a wall with a notice saying vehicles without permits will be towed.
One of the most common towing spots in Waterbury, Connecticut, from 2022 to 2024 was the Berkeley Heights public housing complex with 318 tows — more than one tow for each of the 254 apartments there. Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror

Like at Sunset Ridge, the effects of towing have been felt most by people of color and poor families in Connecticut, in part because they are more likely to rent than own their home.

Statewide, about a third of people are renters. In census tracts where the most tows occurred, more than three-quarters are renters. The 50 census tracts where tows occurred most were about 27% Black and 38% Hispanic, compared with 10% and 18% statewide. Connecticut’s overall poverty rate is 10%, but it’s 26% in these census tracts.

Residents of these areas say they face higher levels of towing because public housing authorities and landlords of low-income apartment complexes often have towing companies on contract to patrol their areas. Though the intent might be to deal with abandoned cars or a lack of parking for residents, they say it’s led to overly aggressive towing for minor mistakes that people in wealthier neighborhoods don’t have to worry about.

One of the most common towing spots in Waterbury from 2022 to 2024 was the Berkeley Heights public housing complex with 318 tows — more than one tow for each of the 254 apartments there.

Dyshawn Key was visiting his mother there in April 2024 when shortly after 11 p.m. he noticed a tow truck lifting his car, which was parked outside his mother’s apartment.

He had forgotten to move his car from his mother’s spot, which required a parking permit, and rushed out and begged the driver to stop, but it was too late. Key’s car has been towed at least eight times from Berkeley Heights since 2022, mostly for parking without a sticker.

“They make sure that people are sleeping and there’s nobody around, and they just tiptoe through here and take your vehicle,” Key said. Data shows that almost 90% of tows there happened between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., when apartment offices are typically closed and it’s unlikely that property managers would complain about parking.

An aerial view of a snow-covered parking lot with some cars parked on snow.
A parking lot at the Berkeley Heights housing complex. Residents of public housing say they face overly aggressive towing for minor mistakes that people in wealthier neighborhoods don’t have to worry about. Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror

Fewer tows have happened at Berkeley Heights since the law passed, according to Waterbury tow logs.

Waterbury Housing Authority executive director Chris D’Orso said there is a public road that runs between two of the buildings at Berkeley Heights, and the city monitors it carefully to ensure that people don’t block emergency vehicle or bus access. He said there have also been problems with people leaving stolen cars in the parking lot.

“We were turned into a dumping ground for stolen cars for a while,” D’Orso said.

Still, there isn’t enough parking, he conceded. Though he said most of the tows are driven by complaints, the agency contracts with a towing company.

Like Capital Realty in New Haven, several other landlords showed up multiple times in the data. Zvi Horowitz, a New Jersey-based landlord, through several companies, owns three of the biggest towing locations in Waterbury — Diamond Court Apartments, Wyndham Court Apartments and Bunker Hill Apartments. The three locations, which have 256 apartments combined, had 522 tows over two years.

Horowitz also owns Seramonte Estates in Hamden, a large town north of New Haven, where a tenants union held protests after residents said they were frequently towed for small infractions. The complex accounted for more than half the city’s tows from January 2022 to June 2024.

Paul Boudreau, one of the tenants union’s founders, said it had negotiated for towing to stop at all of Horowitz’s apartments. But since then, he’s gotten calls from tenants who say the towing hasn’t stopped despite the new law.

Horowitz didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Boudreau said that in his work as an organizer around the state, he often hears of people getting towed soon after asking for repairs or reporting problems with housing conditions at their properties.

“They’re still using these tow trucks like hired hitmen to go after tenants, to take their stuff when they complain,” Boudreau said.

“It’s So Retaliatory”

A woman wearing a headscarf and gold hoop earrings stands inside pointing toward a glass door. A parking lot with cars and piles of snow is outside the door.
Galberth, Elias Natal and Jasmin Flores’ neighbor at Sunset Ridge, says a tow truck driver often patrols the complex at night to look for vehicles. Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror

Natal and Flores said they believe they were targeted by their landlord in retaliation for joining a tenants union that is trying to improve conditions at Sunset Ridge.

The day before their car was towed they had canvassed the complex with neighbors and outside organizers as part of the Sunset Ridge Tenants Union, a group of renters calling on Capital Realty to make changes at the apartment complex. In addition to requesting repairs at the complex, tenants said they have been towed unfairly.

“Everyone has had an issue with management or with parking or with the towing company, because it’s so retaliatory,” Flores said.

Tawana Galberth, a union leader, said one of the top complaints about the apartment complex when the union polled residents was towing. Many people reported being towed for small reasons, like being parked over the line. A tow truck driver often patrols the complex at night to look for vehicles, she said.

“When I moved in, I never received clarification. How do we park? Where do we park? Where do we have visitors?” Galberth asked.

Kristy Kaik said the use of parking stickers at the Rockview public housing complex in New Haven hadn’t been enforced for more than a decade. But when her son came home from college for Christmas after the new law took effect, he discovered his car had been towed for not having a sticker.

“I live there for a reason,” she said, describing the assistance including the public health insurance she receives. “I have food stamp benefits, Husky medical, my son is in school. I’m struggling.”

Kaik said there were no signs about parking rules at the complex, which a visit to the site confirmed. So Kaik asked the housing authority to reimburse her for what she says was a wrongful tow. It refused.

The New Haven housing authority, Elm City Communities, did not respond to requests for comment.

Like Flores and Natal, Kaik found that the company, York Service & Towing, would only take cash, telling her that sometimes, people would pay with a credit card then cancel the card before payment went through. She said she also had to argue to get them to hand over her change.

A blond woman wearing a brown jacket and jeans stands next to a window that has light streaming through the sheer white curtains. Hanging on the wall behind her is a basket of flowers.
Kristy Kaik at her home in New Haven. After her son’s car was towed, she said, the towing company would only take cash, even though a new law requires companies to accept credit cards. Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror

Cheryl Maselli, owner of York, said her company follows all the new laws, although something like what happened to Kaik could occur if the person working doesn’t know how to use the credit card machine. She said some of the drivers “are not capable of learning new things.” They also don’t keep much cash on hand in case of robbery, she said, which could have led to the issue with change.

Maselli said her company is “one of the nicest towing companies out there.”

But she said she has to respond to her clients. “My client is a property manager. They want their property neat, clean,” Maselli said. “They don’t want people hanging out. They don’t want cars with faulty equipment, and these are some of the rules that we enforce. So when we do tow a car, the people are obviously angry.”

Trump meets national security team to discuss Iran’s proposal: White House

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Trump meets national security team to discuss Iran’s proposal: White House

United States President Donald Trump (L), US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (C) and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine (R) speak outside the Oval Office of the White House before boarding Marine One en route to Dover, Delaware, on March 18, 2026, in Washington DC, United States. [Celal Güneş - Anadolu Agency]

United States President Donald Trump (L), US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (C) and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine (R) speak outside the Oval Office of the White House before boarding Marine One en route to Dover, Delaware, on March 18, 2026, in Washington DC, United States. [Celal Güneş – Anadolu Agency]

US President Donald Trump met with his national security team on Monday to discuss Iran’s latest proposal, the White House said, Anadolu reports.

“I will confirm the president has met with his national security team this morning … the proposal was being discussed,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the president or his national security team. What I will reiterate is that the president’s red lines with respect to Iran have been made very, very clear, not just to the American public, but also to them as well,” she added.

Her remarks came amid growing diplomatic efforts to revive talks between Washington and Tehran following weeks of war and failed negotiations.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier on Monday that Tehran is “serious” about reaching a deal with Washington, but stressed that any agreement must prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“We have to ensure that any deal that is made … definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point,” he added.

READ: US secretary of state says Iran ‘serious’ about deal

Rubio’s remarks came amid media reports suggesting Iran has floated a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the US lifting its blockade and ending the war, while deferring broader negotiations over its nuclear program to a later stage.

Iran and the US held talks in Islamabad on April 11 but failed to reach an agreement to end the war that began on Feb. 28.

The negotiations followed a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan on April 8, which was later extended by US President Trump.

Trump cancelled a planned trip to Pakistan this weekend by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Efforts are underway to organize another round of talks, though key sticking points include the Strait of Hormuz, the US blockade of Iranian ports and the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

About 20% of global oil supply passes through the strait daily and heightened insecurity has driven up oil prices as well as shipping and insurance costs.

READ: Germany calls on UN to take responsibility for settling Iran conflict

Dad of Two Killed by Bull Rampaging Through Festival

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Dad of Two Killed by Bull Rampaging Through Festival


A night of celebration turned into pure nightmare fuel in southern Spain after a 30-year-old father was brutally gored to death during a chaotic bull-running event locals chillingly call the “street of hell.”

Santiago Barrero San Roman was taking part in the annual San Marcos festivities in the town of Beas de Segura when the terrifying attack unfolded Friday evening. What started as a traditional spectacle quickly spiraled into horror as a raging bull locked onto Roman in the narrow Calle Palomares — a stretch infamous for its dangerous runs.

Shocking footage captured the moment Roman tried to take cover behind a barrier, crouching near a barrel as the animal charged wildly through the packed street. In seconds, the situation turned deadly. The bull thrashed, hooked him with its horns, and violently tossed him into the air.

Witnesses watched in horror as Roman was dragged along the ground, desperately trying to escape while the animal continued its relentless assault. Panic erupted as bystanders scrambled for safety. Several men rushed in, attempting to distract the bull, while others yanked on a rope tied to the animal — but nothing could stop the frenzy.

The bull rammed Roman into a wooden fence and continued to gore him, reportedly piercing his torso and ribs. He was eventually pulled away and rushed to a nearby hospital, but despite desperate efforts by medics, he died roughly an hour later.

Roman, a local fighting bull breeder, was part of a new generation in Spain’s bullfighting world. He had recently launched his own project tied to the well-known Torrestrella ranch and was working to expand a herd he inherited from his family. Friends say he grew up immersed in rural life, learning the trade alongside his father and grandfather.

Now, he leaves behind a pregnant wife and a young child — a devastating loss that has shaken the tight-knit community.

Festival organizers, the Hermandad de San Marcos, released a statement expressing “deep sorrow” and offering condolences to Roman’s family. Despite the tragedy, the multi-day festival continued, with a moment of silence held in his honor.

The fatal incident comes just days after another gruesome bull encounter rocked Spain. Legendary matador Morante de la Puebla was severely injured in Seville after a bull gored him during a performance at the packed Maestranza arena.

In that shocking moment, the animal ignored his cape and charged straight into him, striking from behind and driving its horn into his body, causing a serious internal injury. He was rushed into emergency surgery and later described the ordeal as “the most painful goring” of his career.

As Spain’s controversial bull-running traditions continue to draw thrill-seekers, this latest tragedy is a grim reminder of just how quickly the spectacle can turn deadly.

National Science Board eviscerated; Trump admin fires all 22 members

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National Science Board eviscerated; Trump admin fires all 22 members

All 22 members of the National Science Board were terminated by the Trump administration via a terse email on Friday.

The administration has provided no explanation for purging the board, which helps steer the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent advisory body for the president and Congress on scientific and engineering issues, providing reports throughout the year. The ousters represent another severe blow to the NSF and the overall scientific enterprise in America.

Members received a two-sentence email saying that, “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were “terminated, effective immediately.”

Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and director of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics, was among those terminated. After reaching out to fellow board members and finding that they, too, had been terminated, he described the move to The Los Angeles Times as “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”

NSB members are appointed by the president and serve six-year terms, which overlap to provide continuity. Other members who spoke to reporters at Nature News told the outlet that the board was set to meet on May 5 and planned to release a report on how the US is ceding ground to China on scientific endeavors.

Assault on science

The NSF and the board were established by President Harry Truman in 1950. “We have come to know that our ability to survive and grow as a Nation depends to a very large degree upon our scientific progress,” Truman said after creating them. “Moreover, it is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership.”

The loss of all board members is just the latest attack on the NSF. Last year, the Trump administration proposed cutting its $9 billion budget by 55 percent, terminated hundreds of its active research grants, significantly slowed the pace of new grant awards, and laid off or forced out a massive chunk of its staff. Its director, a Trump appointee, resigned under the assault. Trump has nominated biotech investor Jim O’Neill, who lacks scientific expertise, to be the next NSF director.

Roger Beachy, a terminated board member, told Nature he was concerned about political interference and suspected the board may have been cleared out to make way for O’Neill’s hand-picked members. The Trump administration has a track record of such moves. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expelled all 17 members of an influential vaccine advisory board and replaced them with allies, who are largely unqualified but share Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. Trump also packed the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology not with leading scientists and researchers but with tech billionaires, including leaders of Meta, Google, Oracle, and Nvidia.

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