Groups

WASHINGTON — Democrats are struggling to come up for air after outside groups flooded their first round of midterm primaries with campaign cash.

As the Democratic Party fights to regain control of Congress, organizations affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence have dominated the airwaves, sometimes leaving candidates on the sidelines of their own campaigns.

Democratic pollster Zac McCrary said the primaries have “become proxy wars, and the candidates are almost afterthoughts in larger skirmishes.”

Now the Democratic National Committee is advancing a resolution at its New Orleans spring meeting to condemn the surge of spending that has scrambled its primaries and exacerbated tensions within the party.

Candidates who lost have pointed their fingers at special interests, blaming them for derailing their campaigns. Others who are still in the running are courting voters by denouncing deep-pocketed outside groups. Even those who have benefited from the spending have expressed concern.

“It’s definitely a brave new world,” McCrary said.

“We’re not talking about doubling of campaign expenditures,” he added. “We’re talking about 10 times or 20 times more.”

Dan Sena, a former executive director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said party organizations are no longer the ones with the clout to push favored candidates.

“All that’s been completely smashed now,” Sena said. Even if Democrats regain control of the U.S. House, he warned that outside spending could damage the party in the long run.

Referring to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, he said, “You’re going to hand Jeffries a caucus that is divided.”

Democrats bear the brunt of big spending

So far this cycle, outside money in U.S. House races has largely targeted districts particularly friendly to Democrats, meaning the primaries will likely determine who will win the general election in November. After a record number of House members retired this year, many of those seats opened up for the first time in years, drawing dozens of Democratic hopefuls.

In Illinois, for example, there was more than $125 million in outside spending across five open Democratic primaries. In all but one of those congressional races, the outside spending exceeded candidate spending.

While it’s still early in the calendar, there are indicators that many more races could see big spending. Almost 40 seats have already seen more than $1 million in outside spending, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

In Illinois, the top three spenders in U.S. House races were groups affiliated with American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, according to AdImpact, which tracks ad buys in political races, followed by the cryptocurrency-affiliated Fairshake.

AIPAC was founded to support strong ties between the U.S. and Israel, a particularly controversial issue as Democratic hostility toward Israel rises over the war in Gaza. Some Democratic National Committee, or DNC, members wanted to call out AIPAC’s role in primaries, but the final resolution did not.

“We had various resolutions that focused on different industries and groups, and instead of going one-by-one, we passed a blanket repudiation,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement.

Campaign spending has divided Democrats

The latest DNC meeting marks another chapter in longstanding disputes between progressives and the party establishment.

Progressives want the party to adopt official language that all Democratic presidential contenders oppose money from dark-money groups, or super PACs that aren’t required to disclose their donors.

“It’s necessary that we actually have the party do something on this issue, not just say something,” said Larry Cohen, co-chair of Our Revolution, a progressive group founded by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats.

The resolution being advanced at the DNC meeting in New Orleans is viewed by progressives as a step toward that goal. However, some Democrats warn against weakening their candidates when facing a Republican Party that’s flush with cash.

“Provided that we don’t handcuff ourselves in the general elections — because if the Republicans are going to use dark money in general elections, we should be using our money in general elections, too — if you provide an even playing field, I think then that’s fine,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat. “But we just can’t be handcuffing ourselves in the general to lose races.”

Any DNC resolutions would not stop outside groups from surging funds into primary contests or general elections. But some Democrats believe the issue is core to the party’s values.

“We should eliminate any super PAC in a Democratic primary. And I think every presidential candidate in 2028 should pledge that they will not have any super PAC spending in a Democratic primary,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive and possible Democratic presidential contender who co-chaired Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

“That should be a litmus test,” Khanna argued. “If you’re not willing to take that pledge, then you’re part of the problem.”

Askarinam, Brown and Sweedler write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from New York.

Pro-Iran groups have used artificial intelligence to create internet memes in English to try to shape the narrative during the war against the U.S. and Israel and foster opposition to it.

Analysts say the memes appear to be coming from groups linked to the government in Tehran and are part of a strategy of leveraging its limited resources to inflict damage on the U.S., even indirectly. That includes how Iran has used attacks and threats to control the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and maintain a stranglehold on the world’s economy. A ceasefire raised hopes Wednesday of halting hostilities, but many issues remained unresolved.

“This is a propaganda war for them,” Neil Lavie-Driver, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said, referring to Iran. “Their goal is to sow enough discontent with the conflict as to eventually force the West to cave in, so it is massively important to them.”

It’s not the first time memes have been used in a conflict, and they have evolved to include AI images in recent years. AI imagery bombarded Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022. Last year, the term “AI slop” became widely used to describe the glut of imperfect images posted online during the Israel-Iran war to try to destroy the country’s nuclear program.

In the conflict that began Feb. 28 with joint U.S.-Israel strikes, the memes have used well-honed cartoons that lambast U.S. officials.

The memes are steeped in American culture

The memes are fluent not just in English but in American culture and trolling. Published on various social platforms, they are racking up millions of views — though it’s not clear how much influence they have had.

They have portrayed President Trump as old, out of step and internationally isolated. They have referenced bruising on the back of Trump’s right hand that prompted speculation about his health; infighting in Trump’s MAGA base; and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s fiery confirmation hearing, among other things.

“They’re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,” said Nancy Snow, a scholar who has written more than a dozen books on propaganda.

The pro-Iran images circulating online include a series that uses the style of the “Lego” animated movies. In one, an Iranian military commander raps, “You thought you ran the globe, sitting on your throne. Now we turning every base into a bed of stone,” as Trump falls into a bullseye built of “Epstein files,” the U.S. government’s investigative records on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Analysts believe groups making the memes are cooperating with the government

The animations show levels of sophistication and internet access that indicate ties to government offices, said Mahsa Alimardani, a director of Witness, a human rights group working on AI video evidence.

“If you’re able to have the bandwidth needed to generate content like that and upload it, you are officially or unofficially cooperating with the regime,” she said, pointing to severe restrictions Iran has imposed on the internet as part of a crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year.

State media has reposted some of the memes, including some from the account behind the “Lego”-style videos, Akhbar Enfejari, which means Explosive News.

Akhbar Enfejari described itself as an independent group of Iranians with no connection to the government. “We don’t even receive any funding. We’re just a group of friends working voluntarily — paying for our own internet, using our own laptops and computers, and doing all of this ourselves,” the group told the Associated Press on the messaging app Telegram.

The group said it is producing and upload from within Iran to try to disrupt decades-long dominance of Western control of the airwaves.

“They’ve long dominated the media landscape and, through that power, imposed narratives on many nations,” Akhbar Enfejari said. “But this time, something feels different. This time, we’ve disrupted the game. This time, we’re doing it better.”

In addition to the memes coming from pro-Iran groups, Iranian government accounts have trolled the U.S., including in a post Wednesday from Iran’s Embassy in South Africa that said, “Say hello to the new world superpower,” with a picture of the Iranian flag. Both the U.S. and Iran declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire.

Analysts say the deep grasp of U.S. politics and culture is the fruit of more old-school methods of propaganda: a decades-long Iranian government program to promote narratives against the U.S. and Israel.

“This meme war comes from institutions that are very aware what the American public is aware of and pop cultural references that can appeal to them,” Alimardani said.

Messaging from the U.S. and Israel

Analysts say the U.S. and Israel do not appear to be engaging in the same kind of campaign — and given the restrictions Iran has put on internet access in the country, getting such messages to ordinary Iranians would be difficult.

Early in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video that used AI to make it seem like he was speaking in Farsi, in which he urged Iranians to overthrow their government. The White House has published a steady stream of memes, but those are aimed at a U.S. audience and feature clips from American TV shows and sports.

The U.S. government-run Voice of America, which for decades beamed news reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press, does still broadcast in Farsi, though it is has been operating with a skeleton staff since Trump ordered it shut down.

“This world order is really changing overnight and the U.S. is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody listens to,” Snow said.

McNeil writes for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Environmental groups on Tuesday asked a federal appellate court panel to drop its temporary halt of a lower court’s order instructing state officials to close an immigration detention center in the heart of the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The Everglades facility remains open, still holding detainees, because the appellate court in early September relied on arguments by Florida and the Trump administration that the state had not yet applied for federal reimbursement, and therefore wasn’t required to follow federal environmental law. State officials opened the detention center last summer to support President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Questions by the three appellate judges during oral arguments in a Miami courtroom focused on how much control the federal government had over the state-built facility and under what circumstances an environmental review was required to be in compliance with federal law. The judges did not indicate when they would rule.

Jesse Panuccio, an attorney for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, told the judges federal funding and federal control of the facility were the two criteria for determining if the federal environmental law would apply and the federal agencies had no control over the state-run detention center.

Florida was notified in late September that FEMA had approved $608 million in federal funding to support the center’s construction and operation.

“You need both,” Panuccio said. “Even with funding, I don’t think that would follow because they don’t have federal control.”

An attorney for the environmental groups said the law requiring a review applied to the facility because the Department of Homeland Security had authorized the funding and immigration was a responsibility of the federal government, not the state.

“What is different about this property is that immigration is constitutionally a federal function,” said Paul Schwiep,” an attorney representing the Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity. “The state has no role.”

The federal district judge in Miami in mid-August ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact according to federal law. That judge concluded that a reimbursement decision already had been made. The appellate court halted the order on an appeal.

The environmental lawsuit was one of three federal court challenges to the Everglades facility since it opened. In the others, a detainee said Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the center under federal law. The challenge ended after the immigrant detainee who filed the lawsuit agreed to be removed from the United States.

In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Fort Myers, Fla., ruled the Everglades facility must provide detainees there with better access to their attorneys, as well as confidential, unmonitored, unrecorded outgoing legal calls.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

TAMPA, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law Monday that gives him along with other Florida leaders the ability to label groups as domestic or foreign terrorist organizations and expel state university students who support them.

The law, criticized by free speech advocates, allows a top official at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to designate a group as a domestic or foreign terrorist organization, with the governor and three other members of the Florida Cabinet approving or rejecting the designation. Besides the governor, the Cabinet is made up of the attorney general, the chief financial officer and the agriculture commissioner, all of whom are elected separately.

Once designated a terrorist organization, a group can be dissolved and it can no longer receive any state funding through school districts or state agencies. Universities also would have to report the status of expelled students attending on visas to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“So this will help the state of Florida protect you. It’ll help us protect your tax dollars,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Tampa. “It’ll help us protect things that should not be happening in the United States of America, but certainly shouldn’t be happening in the free state of Florida.”

DeSantis in December designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhoods as foreign terrorist organizations. A federal judge last month temporarily blocked the enforcement of DeSantis’ executive order.

PEN America, a free speech advocacy group, said the new law has vague language that could restrict education programs deemed to be “promoting” terrorism and that it could target student protesters who criticize Florida officials.

The new law “could chill education at every level,” said William Johnson, PEN America’s Florida director. “The implications are fraught.”

A CLASSIC British rock band’s touring plans have been put on hold until one member gets a bill of clean health.

The band YES was due to embark on an 11-date European tour this month, launching in Glasgow on April 22nd – but the group’s guitarist Steve Howe has to undergo essential surgery, forcing the band to announce a change in plans.

YES was set to play their much-loved 1971 album Fragile in full, after the success of their North American tour in 2025.

But taking to Instagram, the group have issued a statement explaining the need to postpone.

“The upcoming YES ‘Fragile’ UK and EU Tour has had to be postponed as guitarist Steve Howe requires an essential operation that requires recovery time,” read the statement on social media.

“This decision has been made to ensure that Steve can return to the stage in full health and deliver the performances that fans deserve.

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“We are working hard to reschedule the UK and EU shows to a later date, with full details to be announced after Easter.

“Steve Howe and YES would like to thank their UK fans and hope for their continued support at this time.”

The post explained that tickets would be valid for the rescheduled dates and that the concerts would take place later in 2026.

Fans took to the comments underneath the post to express concern for Steve, wishing him well.

One wrote: “The most important thing is Steve’s health… wishing a full and speedy recovery to one of rock’s greats!”

YES released Fragile as their fourth album – and it’s widely considered their best among fans and critics alike.

The group formed in 1969, but Steve didn’t join until a year later, replacing original guitarist Peter Banks.

The group gained considerable recognition with their third and fourth albums – The Yes Album and Fragile – which were both released in 1971.

The latter included famed single Roundabout.

Over the decades, 20 different members have been part of YES, including founding members Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Bill Bruford and Tony Kaye.

Steve is the only remaining member of his era, now joined by lead singer Jon Davison, drummer Jay Schellan, keyboard player Geoff Downes, and Billy Sherwood on bass.

In 2017, the group had to cut another tour short due to personal circumstances when Steve’s 41-year-old son tragically died from a heart attack.

YES are considered the pioneers of progressive rock by many music fans, known also for their impressive live performances, and are members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The band originally split in 1980, with some members attempting to launch spin-off groups, which mostly failed to take off.

One of these groups ended up comprising mostly of ex-YES members, and in 1983 the band was re-launched.

More incarnations of the group followed, with Steve eventually leaving in the early 1990s, returning later that decade, before the group split again in the early 2000s.

They reformed again in 2009 and have recorded new material and toured on-and-off ever since, marking their 50th anniversary in the process.

In 2024, former keyboardist Rick Wakeman left the group, saying he felt it was “time to call it a day”.

Steve and the other current line-up have continued with the group without Rick over the past two years.

April 3 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s major business groups on Thursday pledged to support government efforts to stabilize energy supply, announcing voluntary measures to reduce consumption as risks grow from instability in the Middle East.

Six economic organizations – including the Korea Economic Association, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other industry groups – said in a joint statement they would take part in nationwide conservation efforts.

“We strongly agree with the government’s call to ensure stable energy supply and promote conservation in preparation for a prolonged Middle East conflict,” the groups said. “We will actively participate in efforts to overcome the crisis.”

The statement comes as the government raised its energy security alert level and introduced additional conservation measures, including expanded vehicle restrictions at public institutions.

Business leaders said ensuring stable energy supplies and improving efficiency have become more urgent than ever, pledging to expand private-sector efforts.

Proposed measures include broader use of flexible work arrangements, such as staggered commuting hours, to reduce traffic demand and energy consumption. Companies also plan to improve manufacturing efficiency and optimize facility operations to cut energy use.

Additional steps include turning off office lighting during lunch breaks and after work hours, as well as encouraging employees to use public transportation.

The groups emphasized that coordinated action among the government, businesses and the public will be essential to address the crisis.

“Voluntary participation is key to spreading a culture of energy conservation,” the statement said, adding that the private sector would play an active role in responding to the situation.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260403010001104

Ten Muslim civil rights groups have issued a joint letter denouncing the arrest of a Palestinian American community leader in Wisconsin, Salah Sarsour.

The president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a vocal Palestinian advocate, Sarsour was reportedly pulled over by 10 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while driving on March 30.

The joint letter explains that Sarsour was transferred to a detention facility in Illinois, then to Indiana, leaving his family “scrambling to determine his whereabouts”.

A lawful permanent resident, he had lived in the US for 32 years, according to the letter, and his wife and children are all US citizens. Sarsour has been in immigration detention ever since his arrest.

“We must be clear that Salah is being targeted on the basis of his Palestinian and Muslim background,” the letter, issued Thursday, said.

It was co-signed by organisations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and the US Council of Muslim Organizations.

The groups noted that, under President Donald Trump, a number of immigrant activists, scholars and foreign students had been targeted for deportation based on their pro-Palestinian solidarity.

“His detention reflects a troubling trend we’ve seen with Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Mohsen Mahdawi and other voices critical of Israeli oppression,” the groups wrote.

“This administration is weaponizing the U.S. justice system to advance the interests of a foreign state, Israel, at a time when it is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.”

The groups have launched an online campaign for Sarsour’s legal defence. By Thursday afternoon, it had earned over $35,500 in donations.

While the Trump administration has yet to issue a statement about Sarsour’s arrest, it has taken a hardline approach to pro-Palestinian activism.

When running for re-election in 2024, Trump pledged to crack down on protesters denouncing human rights abuses during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

According to statements obtained by the Washington Post in May 2024, Trump reportedly called the protest movement a “radical revolution” and said that, if he were elected, he planned “to set that movement back 25 or 30 years”.

Within months of taking office in January 2025, Trump proceeded to take action.

Starting in March 2025, his administration moved to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds from universities that saw protests unfold on their campuses, citing claims of anti-Semitism.

Federal agents also arrested legal permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student leader, stripping him of his green card.

One scholar, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkiye, saw her student visa revoked for co-signing a pro-Palestinian opinion piece in her school’s student newspaper.

The arrests and subsequent efforts to rapidly deport the activists and scholars have prompted widespread condemnation as a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and protest.

Officials in Wisconsin have been among the leaders to denounce Sarsour’s arrest as the latest in a series of efforts to stifle free speech. Two local alderpersons, JoCasta Zamarripa and Alex Bower, called the situation a “nightmare”.

“This is an illegal detention of a longtime permanent U.S. resident, as Mr Sarsour is a Milwaukeean who is lawfully present in our community,” they wrote in a joint statement on Thursday.

“The unacceptable activities by ICE — and especially illegally detaining citizens without due process — must stop immediately. How dare federal ICE agents come into our community and unlawfully detain a grandfather, a faith leader, a Wisconsinite!”

State Senator Chris Larson, meanwhile, underscored that the federal government has yet to offer any reasons publicly for Sarsour’s arrest.

“We have already seen numerous Muslim activists unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the Trump Administration for their beliefs and their speech,” Larson wrote.

“These Unconstitutional assaults on our freedoms should alarm all of us. When any individual or group is targeted by the government for their speech, all of our freedoms are threatened.”

Legal groups in Uganda have announced that a dozen deportees from the United States are expected to land in the country, following a deal with President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the Uganda Law Society and the East Africa Law Society announced they had gone to court to challenge the deportation, which they called “an undignified, harrowing and dehumanising process”.

“We have approached the Courts of Law in Uganda and the region, seeking bespoke reliefs designed to arrest this patent international illegality,” Asiimwe Anthony, the vice president of the Uganda Law Society, wrote in a statement.

“Our perspective of the matter is broader than a single act of deportation. We view it as but one gust from the ill winds of transnational repression that are blowing across our world.”

Thursday’s deportation marks the first confirmed instance of deportees being transferred from the US to Uganda.

The 12 people reportedly landed at the Entebbe International Airport, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Kampala, by private aircraft. No identifying information was provided about the deportees.

But the deportation is the latest example of Trump’s far-reaching efforts to offload immigrants to “third countries”, where they have no personal connections — and may not even know the language.

Scrutiny of third country deportations

So far, Trump has struck deals with a number of countries to accept deported foreigners. They include at least six African countries, among them Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Rwanda, Eswatini and South Sudan.

The deal with Uganda came to light last August. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the agreement was a “temporary arrangement” and that priority would be given to deportees from other African countries.

Unaccompanied children and people with criminal records would not be allowed under the deal, according to the ministry’s statement at the time.

It is unclear whether Uganda received payment for its decision to accept third-country deportations.

Other countries, though, have signed multimillion-dollar deals. El Salvador was given nearly $6m to imprison deportees from the US, Equatorial Guinea got $7.5m, and Eswatini nabbed $5.1m.

There is no official estimate about the total cost of these third-country deals, but Senate Democrats in the US have estimated that at least $40m in funding has been given as incentives for countries to accept deportations.

Most of those funds, the Democrats added, were disbursed in lump sums before any deportees arrived. They also note that those funds are separate from the additional costs of the deportation flights: US military aircraft can cost $32,000 per hour to operate.

“Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump Administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments, while turning a blind eye to the human costs,” Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said in a February statement.

“For an Administration that claims to be reigning in fraud, waste and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.”

Critics have also questioned whether the countries receiving US deportees are adequately safe.

In the past, the US has criticised Uganda for “significant human rights abuses”, citing reports of extrajudicial killings, life-threatening prison conditions, and torture and other degrading treatment from government agencies.

It also noted that Uganda had government restrictions against human rights and civil society organisations, and that consensual same-sex conduct was outlawed.

According to the United Nations, Uganda already plays host to nearly 1.7 million refugees and asylum seekers, as people flee violence in neighbouring countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.

An ‘authoritarian project’?

In his letter on Thursday, Anthony, the vice president of the Uganda Law Society, called the US deportations part of a “broader authoritarian project” that his group felt compelled to oppose.

“This development and the attendant illegalities that accompany it are reminiscent of a dark past that the global family of humanity supposedly put behind itself in the pursuit of the ideal that every human being is born equal,” Anthony wrote.

He added that US actions under Trump were paving the way for similar policies elsewhere.

“In the United States, the militarisation of society has given carte blanche to captured democracies in Africa to carry on with despotism unchecked,” he said.

Still, the Trump administration has defended the deportations as legal under the US Immigration and Nationality Act, which has loopholes for removals to “safe third countries”.

The Trump administration has also pointed to diplomatic assurances from the “third countries” in question that US deportees would not face persecution.

The “third-country” policy has, however, faced numerous legal challenges. While the US Supreme Court has largely let such removals proceed, a lower court once again ruled in February that the policy could infringe upon immigrants’ due process rights.

In the case of Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, lawyers have even argued that his deportation to a country far from home was evidence of “vindictiveness” on the part of the Trump administration.

Uganda has been floated as one of the destinations for Garcia, who was wrongfully deported in March 2025 and then returned to the US in June, only to face deportation proceedings once more.

Trump has pushed an aggressive programme of mass deportation since returning to the White House for a second term in 2025.

At least 675,000 people have been removed under his administration as of January, according to US government statistics.

MEXICO CITY — Environmentalist groups accused Mexico’s government of lying about the source of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, something authorities promptly denied.

The spill of off the coast of the southern state of Veracruz has spread more than 373 miles and into seven nature reserves. Turtles and other marine life have been found on sea shores coated in oil, and fishermen have been unable to work in waters they have fished for decades.

Mexico’s government reported that 800 tons of hydrocarbon-laden waste have spilled into the ocean. The government said the spill started in March and the sources were a ship anchored off the coastal state of Veracruz and two sites from which oil naturally flows.

On Monday, a group of 17 organizations — including Greenpeace Mexico, the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking and the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights, or CEMDA — contradicted that claim and said that satellite images they captured show the root of the spill was actually a pipeline from Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, and that a large oil slick appeared in early February.

“All this lack of information is causing massive economic and environmental damage. So far no one has been held accountable,” Margarita Campuzano, spokesperson for CEMDA, said Tuesday.

Images from February circulated by the activists match images obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday through Copernicus, the European climate agency. The photos show a boat floating over a sea clouded with what the groups say is oil, which appears to be streaming out of a platform.

The groups said that the boat in the images is Árbol Grande, which specializes in pipeline repair — implying that the government knew about the spill before it had reported it and “hid it.”

Pemex called the information and images circulated by the groups “inaccurate” and said the Árbol Grande boat traverses the Gulf of Mexico continually, “carrying out preventive inspections of platforms and specialized spill response operations.”

Campuzano called for greater transparency and more aggressive investigations by authorities.

“They’re trying to dilute their responsibility when technology makes it very easy to know where this occurred and who is responsible,” she said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday denied the accusations during her morning press briefing and said that up until now, “no leak has been reported” in state oil infrastructure and that such natural seeps in the Gulf have happened in the past.

She said the government was investigating with scientists whether the spill was “due to these natural seeps in the area, which have been reported on many occasions and are well-documented in scientific literature, or a leak from one of the facilities.”

Sheinbaum said that it was more probable that the spill came from the natural seeps, and added that teams were hard at work cleaning up the spill and mitigating the effects.

While government officials recognized the impacts on turtles, birds and fish, and the spread to protected ecosystems, they also insisted that it had not caused “severe environmental damage.”

The accusations come as environmental groups in the United States have also raised alarm after the Trump administration exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act, saying environmentalists’ lawsuits threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Critics said the move could harm marine life and also doom a rare whale species.

Janetsky writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Teresa de Miguel in Mexico City contributed to this report.

In the densely populated neighbourhoods of southern Tehran, the 11th Criminal Investigation Base once stood as a mundane symbol of local law enforcement. Its detectives investigated economic crimes, fraud and petty thefts.

The building housed no ballistic missiles, no uranium centrifuges and no military command centres. Today, it is a crater. In the opening wave of the United States-Israel war on Iran, warplanes wiped the local police station off the map.

It was not an isolated incident. An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations unit has verified that at least 75 internal security sites were destroyed or damaged in bombardments by Israel and the US from February 28 to March 10. The targeted facilities included local police stations, criminal investigation headquarters, public security offices and checkpoints operated by the Basij paramilitary force.

Al Jazeera mapped the strikes using open-source data, cross-referencing field reports with satellite imagery to confirm the destruction. However, conducting independent verification has grown increasingly difficult. On March 6, commercial satellite providers Planet Labs and Vantor restricted imagery over the Middle East, later expanding the blackout to impose a 14-day delay on all images of Iran.

While the companies said the blackout prevents hostile actors from endangering civilians, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein recently revealed a leaked US Space Force directive dictating how commercial satellite firms describe damage. The leak exposed a deliberate US effort to control the flow of information and obscure the reality of the battlefield.

Targeting population centres

The spatial distribution of the 75 verified strikes revealed a clear and deliberate strategy. Warplanes bypassed isolated military installations to hit the infrastructure Tehran uses to police its citizens.

The capital alone absorbed 31 strikes, more than 40 percent of the total targets. Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province, suffered eight strikes. The remaining targets were clustered tightly in major western and central cities, including Isfahan, Kermanshah and Hamedan. Meanwhile, Iran’s sprawling eastern and southeastern provinces remained largely untouched by this campaign.

By overlaying the strike coordinates with demographic maps, the investigation shows a near-perfect alignment with urban density. More than 70 percent of Iran’s population lives in these targeted western urban areas.

The strikes systematically targeted the Law Enforcement Command, known as FARAJA, and the Basij network. FARAJA, elevated in 2021 by late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to operate alongside the military, is currently led by Ahmad-Reza Radan. It manages daily urban law enforcement and riot control. The Basij, an immense volunteer paramilitary force deeply embedded in Iranian neighbourhoods, acts as the state’s ultimate tool for social control.

Engineering state collapse

The pattern of the US-Israeli air strikes points to an objective far removed from dismantling nuclear facilities or degrading military infrastructure. It reveals a calculated attempt to engineer the collapse of the Iranian state.

On February 28, US President Donald Trump launched the war and in a video address urged Iranians to take over their government once the bombs stopped falling. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed this sentiment in Farsi, calling on millions of Iranians to take to the streets and describing the military strategy as breaking the Iranian government’s bones.

The military planning, however, preceded events on the ground that Trump and Netanyahu pointed to for justification for their war. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz revealed in early March that Israel had been planning to strike Iran in mid-2026, long before January’s deadly government crackdown across Iran against economic protests.

This approach aligns with a broader Israeli doctrine. Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government adviser, previously told Al Jazeera that Israel has no interest in a smooth political transition in Tehran. What Israel wants is the collapse of the government and the state, Levy said, adding that if the repercussions spread to Iraq, the Gulf and the entire region, that is better from Israel’s point of view.

A failing strategy

Still, a month into the war, the US-Israeli strategy to spark an internal revolution through the systematic destruction of Iran’s internal security apparatus appears to be failing.

Iranians are living under daily bombardments. As missiles destroy civilian infrastructure and oil refineries burn, daily survival has eclipsed any coordinated political uprising. The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Iran has warned that civilians are facing a simultaneous military and human rights crisis.

Rather than collapsing, Iran’s internal security apparatus has adapted. During Ramadan, FARAJA deployed 24-hour patrols across Tehran, and riot police shut down public gatherings before the Persian New Year holiday. After the March 17 assassination of Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani, Israeli forces released footage of strikes on mobile Basij checkpoints, indicating that Iranian security forces are still controlling the streets.

The US attempt to dismantle state security from the air mirrors its disastrous 2003 de-Baathification policy in neighbouring Iraq, which barred members of the former ruling Baath Party from holding government jobs, dismantled local policing and birthed a devastating sectarian war. Unlike in Iraq, Washington today has no troops on the ground in Iran to fill a security void it is trying to create.

Beneath the rubble of the 11th Criminal Investigation Base and dozens of stations like it, the US and Israel are aiming to bury the Iranian state and spark a popular revolt. Instead, they have trapped millions of civilians in a burning country.

March 19 (UPI) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation took down two websites that belong to an Iran-linked hacker group after it staged a global cyberattack on an American medical equipment company last week.

Two websites used by the group Handala — one that contained information about its hacks and the other used to dox people it alleges work with the Israeli military and related companies — were pulled down by the FBI on Thursday, NBC News and Techcrunch reported.

Handala was behind a “wiper attack” on the medical device maker Stryker’s computer system on March 11, which it said was in retaliation for a deadly strike on the Shajareh Tayyiba girls school in Minab, Iran.

“Law enforcement authorities determined this domain was used to conduct, facilitate, or support malicious cyber activities on behalf of, or in coordination with, a foreign state actor,” a message left on both websites by the FBI said.

Portage, Mich.-based Stryker, which employs 50,000 people worldwide and manufactures a variety of medical devices, including orthopedic implants, surgical instruments and imaging systems, was forced to shut down for the day because of the global attack.

The attack affected the company’s internal Microsoft corporate environment and was not a ransomware attack, it said four days after the attack, after determining that no malware had been installed and the system was able to be restored.

Handala, which has been active since Oct. 7, 2023, is believed to be linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, American and Israeli cyber security experts have said.

The group is thought to have attacked Stryker because it was awarded a $450 million contract by the Department of Defense last year, and said at the time that the attack specifically was in response to the U.S. bombing of the school.

Handala acknowledged on Telegram that its websites were no longer under its control, and said that the “aggressive action reveals the extent to which the enemies of truth will go to silence voices that unveil their atrocities.”

“To all truth-seekers and defenders of justice, we inform you that the Handala RedWanted website, which was dedicated to exposing Zionist crimes and raising global awareness, has also been seized and taken offline by order of the FBI,” Handala said, noting that a new website is under construction.

In the wake of the attack, experts have told UPI it should be a wake-up call for a wide swatch of U.S. companies that may have similar gaps in security, especially because rather than demanding ransom, the purpose of this attack was to destroy information and wreak havoc.