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Vying for control of Cuba's assets if regime falls
HAVANA, Cuba, 17 September 2026 (Guardian) - Spanish hotel chains. A Canadian mining firm. European shipping giants. Visa and Mastercard. Scores of foreign companies have been driven out of Cuba this summer over fear of being hit with potent, new secondary sanctions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told Axios last month there are “no escape valves” from his unprecedented pressure campaign against the island. But not everybody is losing out. A growing cast of Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump cronies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s key assets, charging top dollar to help clients navigate the ever-expanding web of sanctions, and positioning themselves for lucrative business opportunities in the case of regime collapse. |
Insect remains reveal burial practices in the Canary Islands
DURHAM, UK, 16 September 2026 (Phys.org) - Archaeologists have analyzed insect remains preserved in the 7th to 9th centuries AD funerary cave of Cruz de la Esquina, Gran Canaria, and found that it was used by the island's Indigenous people for food storage before being adapted into a burial site. |
The women saving Borneo: battling fire, patriarchy and super El Niño
LONDON, UK, 16 September 2026 (Guardian) - Irma puts on her heavy rubber boots as she prepares for a volunteer firefighting shift in her village of Sungai Putri, on the Indonesian side of Borneo island. Dressed in full safety gear she heads into fire zones on her motorbike, the air thick with toxic smoke. The 39-year-old is a member of the Power of Mama, Indonesia’s first-ever all female firefighting team, formed to protect one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. |
Houthis seize strategic Red Sea islands
LONDON, UK,15 September 2026 (Guardian) - Yemen’s Houthi militants have seized two strategic islands in the Red Sea, reinforcing the Iran-backed group’s ability to control a key shipping route, as concerns mount that the world is facing a new oil supply crisis. The seizure of the islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish is the latest in the militant group’s swift advance across Yemen’s Red Sea coast, after the capture of the port of Mokha and Perim island in the Bab al-Mandab strait. The islands lie 160km north of the strait which is a chokepoint that connects the Red Sea to the open ocean and Saudi Arabia's key Asian markets. |
Indonesian wildfires threaten orangutan research site in Borneo
LONDON, UK, 15 September 2026 (Guardian) - Wildfires in Indonesia are sweeping through a critical research site for Bornean orangutans and are now threatening a celebrated research camp, home to one of the world’s longest-running studies of wild apes. In the past few days, the fires have burned within 200 metres of Rangkong research station, a satellite of Cabang Panti research station, which lies about four miles north in Gunung Palung national park |
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