losses

WASHINGTON — As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in talks to reopen the government. But Republican losses on election day could change that.

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown “was a big factor” in the party’s poor showing against the Democrats in key races.

“We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately,” Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with the senators to discuss what he would like to do next.

The president’s remarks are a departure from what has largely been an apathetic response from him about reopening the government. With Congress at a stalemate for more than a month, Trump’s attention has mostly been elsewhere.

He spent most of last week in Asia attempting to broker trade deals. Before that, much of his focus was on reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and building a $300-million White House ballroom.

To date, Trump’s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been calling on Republican leaders to terminate the filibuster, a long-running Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the chamber to pass most legislation. Trump wants to scrap the rule — the so-called nuclear option — to allow Republicans in control of the chamber to push through legislation with a simple-majority vote.

“If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” Trump told the GOP senators and warned that with the rule in place, the party would be viewed as “do-nothing Republicans” and get “killed” in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump’s push to end the shutdown comes as voters are increasingly disapproving of his economic agenda, according to recent polls. The trend was reinforced Tuesday as voters cast ballots with economic concerns as their main motivation, an AP poll showed. Despite those indicators, Trump told a crowd at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he thinks “we have the greatest economy right now.”

While Trump has not acknowledged fault in his economic agenda, he has began to express concern that the ongoing shutdown may be hurting Republicans. Those concerns have led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibusters, a move that has put members of his party in a tough spot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an “important tool” that keeps the party in control of the chamber in check.

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block a “whole host of terrible Democrat policies” when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview Monday with Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show.”

“I shudder to think how much worse it would’ve been without the legislative filibuster,” he said. “The truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that is essentially what we would be doing, we would own all the crap they are going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.”

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week he is a “firm no on eliminating it.”

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t,” Curtis said in a social media post.

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who are refusing to vote on legislation to reopen the government that does not include a deal on healthcare.

Budget negotiations deadlocked as Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend federal healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. If those credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums spike.

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by their demands to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to “end the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.”

“Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ letter.

“The election results ought to send a much needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,” Schumer told the Associated Press.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday signal that he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.

“It is time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that is to terminate the filibuster,” Trump told GOP senators. “It’s the only way you can do it.”

If Republicans don’t do it, Trump argued Senate Democrats will do so the next time they are in a majority.

Democrats have not signaled any intent to end the filibuster in the future, but Trump has claimed otherwise and argued that it is up to Republicans to “do it first.”

The fire gutted import cargo terminals areas at Dhaka airport, destroying an estimated $1bn of ‘urgent air shipments’.

A fire that decimated a cargo complex in Bangladesh’s largest airport has caused devastating losses to garment exporters during the peak export season.

The blaze – which ripped through the cargo import area of Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Saturday afternoon – gutted storage areas holding huge quantities of raw materials, apparel and product samples belonging to exporters.

“We have witnessed a devastating scene inside,” said Faisal Samad, director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).

“The entire import section has been reduced to ashes,” he said, estimating losses could reach as high as $1bn.

Smoke continued to rise from the charred remains of the facility on Sunday as firefighters and airport officials assessed the damage.

Among the destroyed goods are “urgent air shipments”, including garments, raw materials, and product samples, added Inamul Haq Khan, senior vice-president of BGMEA.

He warned that the loss of samples could jeopardise future business in the country’s crucial garment industry, worth $47bn per year. “These samples are essential for securing new buyers and expanding orders. Losing them means our members may miss out on future opportunities,” he said.

Cause of blaze unclear

The airport cargo village that caught fire is one of Bangladesh’s busiest logistics hubs, handling more than 600 metric tons of dry cargo daily – a figure that doubles during the October to December peak season.

“Every day, around 200 to 250 factories send their products by air,” Khan said. “Given that scale, the financial impact is significant.”

The cause of the blaze has not yet been determined, and an investigation is under way.

The incident marks the third major fire reported in Bangladesh this week. A fire on Tuesday at a garment factory and an adjacent chemical warehouse in Dhaka killed at least 16 people and injured others. On Thursday, another burned down a seven-storey garment factory building in an export processing zone in Chittagong.

The government said the security services were investigating all incidents “thoroughly”, and warned that “any credible evidence of sabotage or arson will be met with a swift and resolute response.”

“No act of criminality or provocation will be allowed to disrupt public life or the political process,” it said, urging calm.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel after China. The sector, which supplies major global retailers such as Walmart, H&M and the Gap, employs about four million workers and generates more than a tenth of the country’s GDP.

The fire is expected to delay shipments and pose additional challenges in meeting international delivery deadlines.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — James Franklin is out at Penn State.

The school fired the longtime head coach on Sunday, less than 24 hours after a 22-21 home loss to Northwestern all but ended whatever remote chance the preseason No. 2 team had of reaching the College Football Playoff.

Terry Smith will serve as the interim head coach for the rest of the season for the Nittany Lions (3-3, 0-3 Big Ten), who began the year with hopes of winning the national title only to have those hopes evaporate by early October with three consecutive losses, each one more stinging than the last.

Penn State, which reached the CFP semifinals 10 months ago, fell at home to Oregon in overtime in late September. A road loss at previously winless UCLA followed. The final straw came on Saturday at Beaver Stadium, where the Nittany Lions let Northwestern escape with a victory and lost quarterback Drew Allar to injury for the rest of the season.

Franklin went 104-45 during his 11-plus seasons at Penn State. Yet the Nittany Lions often stumbled against top-tier opponents, going 4-21 against teams ranked in the top 10 during his tenure.

Hired in 2014 in the wake of Bill O’Brien’s departure for the NFL, Franklin inherited a team still feeling the effects of unprecedented NCAA sanctions in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

Armed with relentless optimism and an ability to recruit, Franklin’s program regularly churned out NFL-level talent, from Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley to Green Bay Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons. Franklin guided the Nittany Lions to the 2016 Big Ten title and a seemingly permanent spot in the rankings.

There was hope this fall might be the one when Penn State would finally break through and win its third national championship and first since 1986. Yet after three easy wins during a light nonconference schedule, the Nittany Lions crumbled.

Athletic director Pat Kraft said the school owes Franklin — who is due nearly $50 million in a buyout — an “enormous amount of gratitude” for leading the Nittany Lions back to relevance but felt it was time to make a change.

“We hold our athletics programs to the highest of standards, and we believe this is the right moment for new leadership at the helm of our football program to advance us toward Big Ten and national championships,” Kraft said.

Smith now will be tasked with trying to stop the bleeding on what has become a disastrous season. He will have his work cut out for him: Penn State’s next three games are at Iowa on Saturday, at No. 1 Ohio State on Nov. 1 and home against No. 3 Indiana on Nov. 8.

The matchups with the Buckeyes and Hoosiers were expected to be a chance for the Nittany Lions to bolster their CFP credentials. In the span of a handful of weeks, Penn State will instead find itself in the role of spoiler.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press. AP Sports Writer Will Graves in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

Taliban officials say overnight cross-border attacks resulted in killing of 58 Pakistani soldiers; Islamabad says 19 border posts captured.

JOSE MOURINHO takes his Benfica side to Stamford Bridge for Tuesday’s Champions League showdown with former club Chelsea.

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After taking multiple economic hits in his household, Gurvinder Singh, a 47-year-old farmer in Gurdaspur, in India’s Punjab state, took a million-rupee loan ($11,000) from a private lender to marry off his eldest daughter. He saved a portion of that and used it to sow 3 acres (1.2 hectares) of paddy.

He placed his bet on the high-yielding pearl variety of aromatic Basmati rice. A good sale would have given him an earning of nearly 1 million rupees per acre ($11,400 per 0.4 hectares).

But now, Singh’s pearl paddy grains lie submerged in floodwater, buried under layers of soil and sediment.

“I cannot afford this shocking flood at this time in my life. We are ruined,” Singh told Al Jazeera. “This year’s harvest was supposed to cover our debts. But this field is a lake now, and I don’t know how I will start again.”

Singh also had to temporarily leave his home, along with his wife and two children, after the devastating floods hit their village earlier this month. “What will I go back to?” he wondered.

‘A lasting repercussion’

Northern Indian states have been reeling under the impact of heavy monsoon rains, flash floods and swelling rivers that have submerged entire villages and thousands of hectares of farmland.

In Punjab, where more than 35 percent of the population relies on agriculture, the situation is particularly grim. Here, farmers are facing the worst floods in the last four decades, with large tracts of paddy fields inundated just weeks before harvest. The state cultivates rice in nearly two-thirds of its total geographical area.

Gurdaspur, where Singh lives with his family, has been among the worst flood-hit districts in a region that borders three overflowing rivers – Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej – following heavy rainfall in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh state.

At least 51 people have died due to floods in Punjab, and 400,000 more people have been displaced.

Singh’s field of paddy contributes to India’s $6bn worth of Basmati exports. Punjab alone accounts for 40 percent of the total production. Across the border, Pakistan’s Punjab province, also submerged in floods, accounts for 90 percent of the country’s Basmati output, generating nearly $900m.

Initial official estimates put the complete loss of crops in more than 450,000 acres (182,100 hectares) — almost the area of Mauritius — of farmland in India’s Punjab. Independent agricultural economists told Al Jazeera that the final impact of floods could be five times higher than the official estimate.

“The crop is completely spoiled, their machinery is submerged, and the farmers’ houses have washed away,” said Lakhwinder Singh, director of the Patiala-based Punjabi University’s Centre for Development Economics and Innovations Studies.

“Punjab’s farmers have to restart from scratch. They would require a lot of support and investment from the government,” Singh told Al Jazeera.

So far, the Punjab government – governed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is nationally in opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – has announced a 20,000 Indian rupees ($230) allowance for farmers who lost their crops to flood. But that may be too little to deal with the monumental challenges that lie ahead for farmers, said Singh.

Nearly 6 percent of that basmati rice is shipped to the United States, which has slapped a 50 percent tariff on New Delhi. India has traditionally been protectionist towards its agricultural sector, which employs half of India’s population (the world’s largest) – a sticking point in trade negotiations with the administration of US President Donald Trump .

Singh warned the government of India against using the impact of the floods as leverage to liberalise policy to import food grains. “The government must not push the farmers under the bus to reduce the tariffs and get a deal with Trump,” he said. “These Punjab floods could have a lasting repercussion on the future of the agricultural economy.”

‘All we have is water’

The immediate and daunting challenge for Punjab’s farmers will be to get rid of the soil and sediment that have settled over their farmlands, agriculture experts have said.

Indra Shekhar Singh, an independent agricultural policy analyst, said that the extent of the damage could only be determined after the water receded from the fields. “There is excessive sedimentation and mud on farmers’ fields,” he told Al Jazeera. “Another problem is levelling the field, which is another cost, and readying it for the next season.”

In India, the monsoon or “kharif” crop makes up about 80 percent of the total rice production, which is harvested in late September to October. Now, experts say, Punjab’s farmers are racing against time to ready their fields for the next season’s crop, winter’s wheat, which must start by early November to avoid yield losses.

“Paddy fields are taking the worst hit in the floods,” said Shekhar Singh. “Unless there is a miracle, even the conservative numbers suggest heavy losses to farmers.

Other than the new diseases from floodwaters that may affect the standing crops, Shekhar Singh said that the farmers are also staring at a critical nutritional crisis for the Rabi season.

India’s farmers rely on urea, containing about 46 percent nitrogen, as their main fertiliser; the country is also the world’s largest importer of urea. But stocks have been dwindling: Urea stocks dropped from 8.64 million tonnes in August 2024 to 3.71 million tonnes in August this year.

This monsoon also saw panic buying of urea by farmers across several Indian states. Now, the floods have struck amid an underlying fear that fertilisers may fall short for the upcoming Rabi sowing. There has been a global surge as well in urea prices, rising from $400 per tonne in May 2025 to $530 per tonne in September.

“This would lead to black marketing for fertilisers in impacted states like Punjab, and adds to an existing problem of fake pesticides circulation,” added Shekhar Singh.

Punjabi University’s Singh said that farmers face a “prolonged economic crisis for them that will continue in the coming months”.

Meanwhile, Singh, the farmer from Punjab’s Gurdaspur, is pondering what the future holds for his family.

He had married off his daughter earlier this year to another farmer in Amritsar, one of Punjab’s biggest cities that borders Pakistan. Their farmland is submerged, too.

“I cannot travel to visit them even when we are suffering from the same disease,” he said, before reflecting on the tragedies confronting a region where two sides of a tense border are grappling with the same crisis.

“We were ready to fight a war for these rivers,” Singh said, referring to the hostilities between India and Pakistan earlier this year after an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 civilians. India had suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, which distributes the six rivers between the nuclear-armed neighbours, in response – a move that Pakistan described as an “act of war”.

“All we have now is water,” Singh said.

The University of California’s top leader has raised the “distinct possibility” that financial losses due to the Trump administration’s funding cuts could amount to billions of dollars and extend beyond UCLA to the entire 10-campus system, telling state legislators Wednesday that “the stakes are high and the risks are very real.”

In a letter to dozens of lawmakers obtained by The Times, UC President James B. Milliken said the university is facing “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history” after the Trump administration cut off more than $500 million in grants to UCLA before demanding a $1.2-billion fine over allegations of campus antisemitism.

Milliken outlined the potential losses at the nation’s preeminent public university system under Trump’s higher education agenda in his strongest and most detailed public words since starting the job Aug. 1, days after funding troubles hit UCLA.

UC “receives over $17 billion per year from the federal government — $9.9 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funding, $5.7 billion in research funding, and $1.9 billion in student financial aid per year,” Milliken wrote in the letter addressed to Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. If such funds were lost, Milliken wrote, “we would need at least $4-5 billion per year to minimize the damage.”

“A substantial loss of federal funding would devastate our university and cause enormous harm to our students, our patients, and all Californians. Classes and student services would be reduced, patients would be turned away, tens of thousands of jobs would be lost, and we would see UC’s world-renowned researchers leaving our state for other more seemingly stable opportunities in the US or abroad.”

Milliken, who met with lawmakers in Sacramento last month, penned his message in response to an Aug. 31 letter from Wiener and 33 other legislators, who urged UC leaders to “not to back down in the face of this political shakedown” from President Trump, whose actions the lawmakers said were “an extortion attempt and a page out of the authoritarian playbook.”

In a statement about the letter, a UC spokesperson said the university “is committed to working with leaders in Sacramento and across the country to ensure we have the resources we need to continue generating jobs, life-changing discoveries, and economic opportunity in the face of historic challenges.”

In addition to grant cuts and the $1.2-billion fine demand from UCLA, the Trump administration has also proposed sweeping changes at the Westwood campus. They include the release of detailed admissions data — the government accuses UCLA of illegally considering race when awarding seats — restrictions on protests, and an end to race-related scholarships and diversity hiring programs. The Department of Justice has also called for a ban on gender-affirming care for minors at UCLA healthcare systems.

The Trump administration accuses UCLA of violating civil rights law by not taking antisemitism seriously. Although there have been complaints of antisemitism on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza, a number of influential faculty members, staff and students, including many in the Jewish campus community, have said UCLA has made progress on addressing the campus climate.

“Free speech, academic freedom, scientific research, and democracy are values that have led to Jewish flourishing. These attacks on California, on our immigrant communities, on science, and on LGBTQ people stand in stark contrast to Jewish values,” Wiener wrote in the letter whose signatories included members of California Legislative Jewish Caucus, of which Weiner is co-chair.

Wiener’s letter urged UC leaders to fight the government’s demands as the university negotiates with the DOJ.

“Acceding to these reprehensible demands won’t stabilize the UC system; it will betray our values of protecting and celebrating our most vulnerable communities. Giving in will only encourage further unconstitutional behavior by this administration,” said the letter, addressed to Milliken, the UC Board of Regents and UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

“Concessions by UCLA would establish a damaging precedent for extorting public schools in states with leadership that does not bow down to this President,” Wiener and others wrote, who described federal demands as “extortion,” echoing statements by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We must resist Trump’s extortion to protect public higher education, the economy, our students and California’s values,” the lawmakers wrote.

Although the university has engaged with the Trump administration to restore UCLA funding, no settlement has been reached and there is a wide gulf between the two sides on what terms would be acceptable.

Newsom has called the government’s proposed fine “ransom,” saying he wants UC to sue the administration and not “bend the knee” to Trump.

But the decision over a lawsuit rests with the independent UC Board of Regents. The governor has appointed many but not all of the regents and sits as a voting member on the 24-person board. Newsom can exercise political sway over its moves but, aside from his vote, has no formal power over the body’s decisions.

Continued growth in streaming subscriptions and strong domestic tourism to its theme parks propelled Walt Disney Co.’s fiscal third quarter earnings, even as its theatrical results dipped, the company said Wednesday.

The Burbank media and entertainment giant reported $23.7 billion in revenue for the three-month period that ended June 28, up 2% compared with the same quarter a year earlier. Earnings before taxes totaled $3.2 billion, 4% higher than a year ago . Earnings per share were $2.92, up from $1.43 last year.

“We are pleased with our creative success and financial performance,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said in a statement. “With ambitious plans ahead for all our businesses, we’re not done building, and we are excited for Disney’s future.”

The company’s entertainment division, which includes its studios, Disney+, Hulu and linear television business, reported $10.7 billion in revenue, 1% higher than a year earlier. Its operating income, however, totaled $1 billion, down 15% compared with the previous year. That was the result of lower results in content sales and licensing, which includes theatrical distribution, and linear television.

Disney’s content sales and licensing unit reported revenue of $2.3 billion, up 7% compared with a year ago , but recorded a loss of $21 million in operating income. The company attributed that to lower theatrical distribution results during the third quarter of this year, when it released Disney and Pixar’s original animated film “Elio,” which struggled at the box office, as well as Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts*,” which received strong critical reviews but had a middling commercial performance.

The earnings only captured part of the theatrical results for the live-action adaptation of “Lilo & Stitch,” which would go on to gross $1 billion in global box office revenue. The quarterly earnings were also negatively impacted by the comparison to last year’s “Inside Out 2” box office performance.

Disney’s linear networks including ABC and the Disney Channel continued to struggle, reporting revenue of $2.3 billion, down 15% compared with last year. Operating income fell 28% to $697 million. Part of that decline was due to the lower international results stemming from the company’s Star India merger.

Still, Disney’s streaming business saw gains during the third quarter, posting a 6% increase in revenue to $6.2 billion and operating income of $346 million, compared with a loss of $19 million a year earlier.

The company now has 183 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions.

Disney’s theme parks also boosted revenues, despite concerns about a drop-off in international tourism to the U.S. fueled by trade tensions. The experiences division, which includes the Disney theme parks, cruise line and Aulani resort and spa in Hawaii, reported revenue of $9.1 billion, up 8% compared with the previous year. Operating income rose 13% to $2.5 billion.

Disney said visitors spent more at the parks during the third quarter, and that its domestic parks and experiences operating income increased 22% to $1.7 billion.

Disney’s sports unit, which includes ESPN, reported revenue of $4.3 billion, down 5%, due to higher programming and production costs for the NBA and college sports rights and the lack of NHL Stanley Cup Finals rights, which Disney has every other year. Operating income was $1 billion, up 29% from last year.

Felix Yupenda depends entirely on his harvests to sustain his family. He is a local farmer in Wukari, Taraba State, North East Nigeria, who grew up on the farm and has worked there for over 30 years.

“I learnt how to cultivate yam and cassava from my father, but I also supplement it with other crops like rice, beans, and Guinea corn,” he told HumAngle.

He had planted yam seedlings weeks ago, taking advantage of the moist soil left behind by an early rainfall. But since then, the rains have ceased, and he is worried that his seedlings might rot in the hardened earth. He is also concerned about the other supplementary crops like maize and beans, which are beginning to dry up. 

“Scientists say we won’t have rain in the coming days, and we are currently seeing the signs, but everything is in God’s hands. We are still praying,” Felix moped. 

He noted that in situations like this, farmers only hope and pray for divine intervention, as rainfall is a natural phenomenon beyond their control. But he is anxious. 

“If the rain doesn’t come, then I’m finished, I don’t have any other job that will sustain my wife and kids aside from farming.” 

Dry skies 

Taraba is undergoing a flash drought, as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) predicts a cessation of rainfall lasting more than 21 days from mid-July. Catastrophic rainfall is anticipated by the end of August. The state is experiencing erratic rainfall, with dry spells of up to five days after each rain episode in Jalingo, the state capital, and surrounding areas.

Fidelis Nashuka, the Director of Planning, Research, and Statistics at the Taraba State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, told HumAngle that drought is becoming a recurring issue. He noted that Taraba experienced a severe episode last year despite not being traditionally classified as drought-prone.

“Last year’s drought affected crop production, and many farmers lost their crops to it,” he said. 

While the state is experiencing signs like erratic rainfall, Fidelis hopes the aftermath will not be as severe as last year. He said the signal, though devastating, might be a good sign for residents, especially farmers, to start working towards mitigating the drought. 

“This is July. We are expected to have full rainfall at its peak across all the states, but we are experiencing variations in different areas, which is a matter of concern, and if care is not taken, the rains may cease while our crops are yet to mature,” he added. 

He stated that the most at-risk communities are in northern Taraba, especially those bordering Adamawa and Gombe states. He explained that these areas are facing a significant reduction in rainfall compared to Taraba’s southern and central areas. The affected areas include Zing, Yorro, Lau, Karim Lamido, and others. 

HumAngle interviewed Ephraim Tor, a farmer from the Bali Local Government Area. He expressed concern that his community is currently facing drought and, like many other farmers, is anxious about the future. “Last year, my maize dried up, and I got almost nothing,” he said.

Ephraim added that rice farmers in Bali were struck the hardest, and while the skies remain dry, many are growing anxious. “We are just waiting for God to give us rain because there is nothing we can do,” the local farmer complained. 

Fidelis noted that areas previously receiving consistent rainfall for five to six months each year have recently experienced a decline. This reduction now affects the southern parts of Taraba and the central area, where noticeable changes in rainfall patterns are observed. The environmental researcher explained that the drought is beginning to impact food production and trade, as buyers from neighbouring states may stop coming due to decreasing harvests.

On the edge

Abdullahi Sanda, a large-scale commercial farmer from the Lau LGA, seemed anxious while speaking to HumAngle. The cessation of rainfall had caused him many sleepless nights due to the distressing experiences he faced last year. 

He cultivates maize and rice but primarily focuses on large-scale rice farming. He stores the harvested rice and sells it to traders and businesspeople from Kano and other states. With his extensive land, Abdullahi typically harvests over 200 bags of rice at the end of each farming season, but last year was quite different.

“Since my years of farming in this region, I’ve never experienced drought until last year. They said it is climate change,” Abdullahi said. 

In 2024, it was reported that farmers across several LGAs in Taraba lost crops worth millions after rainfall ceased for weeks. 

“Last year, after planting, we sprayed pesticides, which we normally do as a form of weeding in July. This pesticide requires moisture to take effect, but then, the weeds didn’t die because there was no rain,” he recounted. “The rice farm dried up to the extent that one matchstick, if lit up, can set it ablaze. After spending a lot of money on the pesticides, we realised that even if we buy another one, it won’t work because there was no moisture, so we hired people to weed it manually.”

Manual weeding cost Abdullahi over ₦500,000 due to his farm size.

“We didn’t budget for that expense, but sometimes you must take risks. The manual weeding was beneficial, but the rains returned late,” he sighed. He explained that when a bag of rice is planted, it should yield at least 30 to 35 bags. Despite planting around 10 bags last year, which was expected to produce about 300 bags, he ultimately harvested only 194 bags. “It was a massive loss. I have another small farm, and I planted rice there, but the rice didn’t even germinate.”

Despite recording a low harvest, Abdullahi was lucky. Many rice farmers cleared their farms, planted rice, and waited for it to germinate, but due to a lack of rainfall, it didn’t germinate, he said, expressing fear over signs of drought in his region because of the short and irregular rainfall.

“This year, I bought about ₦183 000 worth of weed pesticides sprayed across the rice farm, but there was no rain. So yesterday, I bought another batch worth ₦65,000 and I’m waiting for the rain to come before I spray it because the pesticide requires moisture and I can’t afford to make another loss.”

If another drought hits this year, the farmer said he would be forced into debt like other farmers in Wukari. They had planted yams, groundnut, and rice, but didn’t reap anything when the rain ceased last year. Everything came to a standstill. The groundnuts dried up, and the yam seedlings withered.

To recover from the loss, farmers in his area had to sell the little crops they harvested at a cheaper rate because they were in dire need of money to clear debts and make ends meet. The crash in the prices of farm produce was a huge loss to farmers. For instance, a measure of maize usually sold for ₦700 was now sold for ₦400 because the farmers needed the cash.

Something similar might happen this year, Fidelis warned.

Not a drought-prone state

The drought situation in Taraba is attributed to climate change and human factors like deforestation. From 2018 to 2023, massive deforestation occurred in Taraba, which is now affecting the state’s climatic conditions. Gembu, a town known as one of the coldest places in Nigeria, is experiencing a sharp temperature increase.

“Till today, we are experiencing an increase in deforestation, even though the government is trying its best. We see people from outside Taraba coming into the state to cut down trees and produce charcoal,” Fidelis stated, adding that the state has a law prohibiting the felling of trees under 15 years old. “They cut down trees below 10 years and economic trees, and now, we are seeing the effects.”

Ephraim pleads with the government to provide farmers with subsidised fertilisers to help cushion the adversity. However, Fidelis observed that the government is doing its best to create awareness of building community resilience and mitigation strategies for adapting to changes in weather conditions. He urged local communities to grasp the effects of climate change on agricultural areas and how they can contribute to mitigating its impact.

“The gap is that more trees are being felled and planting is not in the same ratio with the rate of cutting, so if this kind of scenario continues, our weather will keep changing,” Fidelis stressed. 

To withstand the looming drought, he called on farmers nationwide to opt for seedlings that can mature quickly if planted. He said those who grow crops that require a longer time to mature are at a disadvantage. For those into rice farming, which requires adequate rainfall, Fidelis advised that they opt for specific seedlings that don’t need much water. He charged the media and civil society organisations to do more to create awareness of climate change and the relevance of tree planting.

While hoping the drought forecast doesn’t materialise despite its signs, Felix is looking forward to making something out of his yam farm for consumption, if not for commercial purposes. 

“Right now, my main concern is what my family will eat because education and clothing have become a luxury,” he said. 

Abdullahi said he has no choice but to invest in strategies to withstand the drought since it is gradually forming a pattern. Some methods involve digging boreholes around the farm and using solar panels to power water machines to supply the farm with water. Abdullahi is willing to adapt this technique, even though it is expensive. 

 “I just pray we don’t experience much loss this year,” he said. 

The federal government has paid California dairy farms more than $230 million to subsidize losses in milk production resulting from bird flu, records show, an amount that the dairy industry expects to climb higher as more claims for damages are processed.

The H5N1 bird flu has swept through more than 75% of California’s 1,000 dairy farms since August 2024, sickening cattle and leading to steep dropoffs in milk production.

Farmers were able to get relief under a U.S. Department of Agriculture program known as the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-Raised Fish Program, or ELAP. The program usually provides assistance for farmers impacted by wildfires, drought and flooding but was opened up for dairy farmers last year as bird flu began ravaging their cows.

U.S. Department of Agriculture records show that 644 payments were made to 359 California dairy farms between November 2024 and June 2025 totaling $231 million. The average per farm payment was about $645,000, and ranged from $2,058 to the Pereira Dairy Farm, in Visalia, to $4.4 million to Channel Islands Dairy Farm, in Corcoran.

Those payments are expected to go much higher, however, as more claims are submitted and processed. Many of the payments issued in May and June were for outbreaks in 2024, suggesting there are more to come.

The relief payments were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Farm Forward, a nonprofit group that advocates against factory farming. The group asserts that the subsidies help prop up industrial-scale dairy operations that perpetuate the spread of bird flu.

“These are mega industrial operations that are fueling an outbreak,” said Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward’s executive director. “Bird flu spreads in exactly the kinds of environments that we’re paying to preserve.”

Anja Raudabaugh, the chief executive of the industry’s largest state trade group, Western United Dairies, said the payments have “ensured our dairy communities and their workers stay employed and healthy. Until we get approval of a dairy cow vaccine, weathering this storm has only been possible with the assistance of the milk loss payments.”

Jonathan Cockroft, managing partner of Channel Islands Dairy Farms, said while the payments helped with the roughly 30% drop in milk production his farm experienced, his losses exceed the $4 million he received.

He said the virus caused cows to abort their pregnancies, and often prevented them from getting pregnant again. A dairy cow that doesn’t give birth doesn’t produce milk. In other cases, he said the udders were so scarred by the disease that the cows were unable to produce milk at levels prior to infection.

“There’s a whole other version I’m not sure the public understands, which is the huge impact on reproduction,” he said.

He also noted many animals died — especially when the outbreak first hit last fall, and the newness of it combined with the blazing heat of the Central Valley felled 10% to 15% of many California herds.

Joey Airoso, a dairy farmer in Tipton, received a $1.45-million subsidy for an outbreak at his farm last October.

He said the outbreak has cost him more than $2 million “just on milk income and that does not include the over $250,000 of extra care costs” required to treat cows with medicines, extra staffing and veterinary consultations.

And it doesn’t cover the cost of the cows that died — which can’t produce milk or be sold for meat. The average dairy cow costs about $3,500, Cockroft said.

Jay Van Rein, a spokesperson for California’s Department of Food and Agriculture, said the loss payments are “the most realistic way for producers to recover and to avoid huge disruptions in the food supply of these products.”

USDA officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but a former top USDA official who left the agency in January said it was important to provide dairy farmers relief once the agency identified H5N1 bird flu in a handful of Texas herds in March 2024. By then the disease had been spreading for weeks, if not months, making containment to one state impossible.

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and we knew that we were going to need to support producers, and we knew that the quicker we could get some assistance out to them to help them test, the better off we were going to be, and the faster we’d be able to bring the infection under control,” he said.

Farm Forward’s DeCoriolis and others, however, say these programs perpetuate an agricultural industry designed around containing hundreds, if not thousands, of genetically similar animals into confined lots — veritable playgrounds for a novel virus. He also noted the federal relief programs don’t come with any strings attached, such as incentives for disease mitigation and/or biosecurity.

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Canada, said handing out subsidies to farms without trying to understand or investigate the practices they are using to quash the disease is a mistake.

“What are they doing on the farms to prevent reinfection?” she said.

The USDA payments were based on a per cow milk production losses over a four-week period. According to Farm Forward’s data, several farms received more than one subsidy. While roughly half received just one payment, 100 farms received two payments, 58 received three, 19 received four and two received six separate payments.

At one farm in Tulare County, four USDA payments were submitted once a month between November 2024 and February 2025. At another, payments stretched from December 2024 to May 2025.

Rasmussen said the multiple payments most likely stemmed depending on specific circumstances at the dairies involved.

Cockroft of the Channel Islands Dairy said he and other farmers have seen waves of reinfection and milk tests that remain positive for months on end. He said he knew of a farm that was in quarantine for nine months.

When herds are quarantined, animals are not allowed to be transferred on or off site. In California, a farm is under quarantine for 60 days after initial virus detection. It can’t move out of quarantine until tests show its milk is virus-free — for three weeks in a row.

Van Rein, the state agriculture spokesperson, said the average time under quarantine is 103 days. He said that of the 1,000 herds in California, 940 are not under quarantine; 715 of those had previously been infected and released from quarantine.

A quarantined farm can still sell milk, however, even if the milk tests positive. Pasteurization has been shown to kill the virus.

The relief payments are another sign of how the U.S. government supports the agricultural industry, which is considered by some to be vital to the national interest.

“We’ve decided politically that this is an industry that we want to support, that was hit by something that obviously wasn’t their fault, and we’re going to help them, because it was a disastrous thing that hit the industry,” said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis. “If we thought about these payments as we’re using our tax money to help somebody who’s in need, because their family is poor, that’s not the case.”

Israeli military says it shelled targets in Syria in response to a pair of projectile launches.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned an Israeli strike on the Syrian province of Deraa, saying that it caused “significant human and material losses”, the state news agency SANA reports.

The strike came after the Israeli military said that two projectiles had crossed from Syria towards Israel on Tuesday, and fell in open areas in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, though the Syrian Foreign Ministry said these were “reports that have not been verified yet”.

The ministry reiterated that Syria has not and would not pose a threat to any party in the region.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the projectiles.

“We believe that there are many parties that may seek to destabilise the region to achieve their own interests,” the ministry added.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he held Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa responsible for the projectiles.

“We consider the president of Syria directly responsible for any threat and fire towards the State of Israel, and a full response will come soon,” Katz said.

Syria and Israel have recently engaged in indirect talks to ease tensions, a significant development in relations between states that have been on opposite sides of the conflict in the Middle East for decades.

Several Arab and Palestinian media outlets circulated a claim of responsibility from a little-known group named the Muhammad Deif Brigades, an apparent reference to Hamas’s military leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in 2024.

The statement from the group could not be independently verified.

The Israeli army said it attacked southern Syria with artillery fire after the projectiles launched at Israel.

Residents said that Israeli mortars were striking the Wadi Yarmouk area, west of Deraa province, near the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The area has witnessed increased tensions in recent weeks, including reported Israeli military incursions into nearby villages, where residents have reportedly been barred from sowing their crops.

Israel has waged a campaign of aerial bombardment that has destroyed much of Syria’s military infrastructure. It has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and taken more territory in the aftermath of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s removal in December, citing lingering concerns over the past of the country’s new government.

Around the same time that Israel reported the projectiles from Syria, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile from Yemen.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they targeted Israel’s Jaffa with a ballistic missile. The group has been launching attacks against Israel in what they say is in support of Palestinians during the Israeli war in Gaza.

General Anil Chauhan, India’s chief of defence staff, has admitted that an unspecified number of fighter jets were shot down during its conflict with Pakistan last month.

The acknowledgement of aerial losses by the country’s highest ranking general comes weeks after the two South Asian neighbours were engaged in their heaviest fighting in decades, which involved fighter jets and cruise missiles.

Indian officials had previously refused to confirm or deny Pakistani claims of downing Indian jets. The conflict was triggered after gunmen killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam town on April 22.

India’s first official admission of a loss of fighter jets came during Chauhan’s interviews on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.

What was the conflict between India and Pakistan?

India carried out strikes on what it called “terror infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. India blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan for the April 22 attack.

An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings. India accused the TRF of being an offshoot of the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan denied involvement, condemning the Pahalgam attack and calling for a neutral investigation.

India claimed to have targeted at least six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the first day of the conflict. Pakistan initially asserted that it had downed six Indian fighter jets in retaliation. But a senior Pakistan official told Al Jazeera five Indian aircraft were lost in the aerial battle.

India did not confirm or deny the Pakistani claims. “Losses are a part of combat,” Air Marshal AK Bharti, India’s director general of air operations, said at a news conference on May 11.

The Indian embassy in China called reports of the downing of jets “disinformation”.

After that, tit-for-tat cross-border attacks across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, rattled the region, renewing fears of a nuclear war.

On May 10, United States President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had reached a ceasefire, potentially averting a “nuclear disaster”. India and Pakistan have given competing claims on casualties in the fighting, but more than 70 people were killed on both sides.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but administer only parts of the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.

Here is what Chauhan said in recent interviews with the Reuters news agency and Bloomberg TV:

On the downing of Indian fighter jets

Chauhan admitted that India suffered air losses on the first day of fighting without giving details.

In an interview with Reuters, he said: “What was important is why did these losses occur and what we’ll do after that.”

The Indian general said that after the losses, the Indian army “rectified tactics” and then went back on May 7, 8 and 10 “in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes”. He added that the Indian air force “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances” on May 10.

Islamabad acknowledged that its airbases suffered some minimal losses but denied that it lost any planes.

When a Bloomberg reporter asked Chauhan about Pakistan’s claims that six Indian jets were downed, Chauhan responded that this information was incorrect.

He went on to say: “What is important is … not the jets being downed but why they were downed.” Some media outlets inferred that his statement appeared to imply that a number of jets were lost in the aerial battle.

The general did not provide details about the number of jets downed or specifics about what these rectified tactics were.

The Pakistani military said India did not fly its fighter jets in the conflict again after suffering the air losses.

On the risks of nuclear war

Media reports suggested that some attacks were near Pakistan’s nuclear sites but the nuclear infrastructure itself was not a target.

“Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre [3.3ft] to whatever was our selected mean point of impact,” Chauhan said in the interview with Reuters.

Chauhan had previously provided assurances that India was not considering using nuclear weapons during the conflict. The chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, has done the same for his country.

“I think there’s a lot of space before that nuclear threshold is crossed, a lot of signalling before that. I think nothing like that happened. There’s a lot of space for conventional operations which has been created, and this will be the new norm,” Chauhan said.

The Indian general added that on both sides, the most “rational people are in uniform” during conflict because they understand the consequences of “this kind of conflict”.

“I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So why should we assume that in the nuclear domain there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?”

On Chinese role

The Indian chief of defence staff said that while Pakistan enjoys a close alliance with China, there was no sign that Beijing helped Islamabad during the conflict.

China sits on India’s northern and eastern borders and controls a barely inhabited northeastern zone in Kashmir called Aksai Chin.

“We didn’t find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,” Chauhan said.

When Chauhan was asked whether China provided Pakistan with intelligence information such as satellite imagery, the Indian general responded by saying that such information is commercially available and Pakistan could have obtained it from China or other sources.

However, Chauhan said “almost 80 percent of the equipment” in Pakistan has been procured from China in the past few years.

From 2020 to 2025, China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Chinese jets got a boost after media reports said Pakistan used Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets in the air battle. The Chinese government did not officially confirm that the J-10C jets were used to down Indian jets, but China Central Television, a state broadcaster, posted on social media on May 17 that the jets achieved actual combat results for the first time.

What’s next

Chauhan said that while hostilities have ceased, India would “respond precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan”. He added that this will be a new normal for India.

“So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7.”

The president of the main opposition Indian National Congress party said Chauhan’s admission warrants a review of India’s defence preparedness.

“There are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,” Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post on Saturday.

Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added: “The Modi Govt has misled the nation. The fog of war is now clearing.”

“We salute [the Indian military’s] resolute courage and bravery,” Kharge said. “However, a comprehensive strategic review is the need of the hour.”

The Congress party has called the Pahalgam attack a “security and intelligence failure” and sought accountability, given that India-administered Kashmir is directly governed from New Delhi.

General Anil Chauhan appears to confirm India lost at least one aircraft during the brief conflict with Pakistan earlier this month.

India’s chief of defence staff says the country suffered initial losses in the air during a recent military conflict with neighbouring Pakistan, but declined to give details.

“What was important is, why did these losses occur, and what we will do after that,” General Anil Chauhan told the Reuters news agency on Saturday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.

India and Pakistan were engaged in a four-day conflict this month, their worst standoff since 1999, before a ceasefire was agreed on May 10. More than 70 people were killed in missile, drone and artillery fire on both sides, but there are competing claims on the casualties.

India says more than 100 “terrorists” were killed in its “precision strikes” on several “terror camps” across Pakistan, which rejects the claim, saying more than 30 Pakistani civilians were killed in the Indian attacks.

New Delhi, meanwhile, says nearly two dozen civilians were killed on the Indian side, most of them in Indian-administered Kashmir, along the disputed border.

The fighting between the two nuclear powers was triggered by an attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22 that killed 26 people, almost all of them tourists. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for supporting the armed group behind the attack, an allegation Islamabad denied.

During their conflict, Pakistan had also claimed to have downed at least five Indian military jets, including at least three Rafale fighters. But Chauhan on Saturday dismissed it as “absolutely incorrect”, confirming his country had lost at least one aircraft.

“I think what is important is that, not the jet being down, but why they were being down,” he told Bloomberg TV in a separate interview in Singapore.

On May 11, a day after the ceasefire, India’s Air Marshal AK Bharti told reporters in New Delhi that “all our pilots are back home”, adding that “we are in a combat scenario, and that losses are a part of combat”.

Chauhan said on Saturday India switched tactics after suffering losses in the air on the first day of conflict and established a decisive advantage.

“So we rectified tactics and then went back on the [May] 7th, 8th and 10th in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes,” he said.

Islamabad has denied it suffered any losses of planes but has acknowledged its airbases suffered some hits, although losses were minimal.

Chauhan said while the fighting had ceased, the Indian government had made it clear that it would respond “precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan”.

“So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7,” he said.

Chauhan also said that although Pakistan is closely allied with China, which borders India in the north and the northeast, there was no sign of any actual help from Beijing during the conflict.

“While this was unfolding from [April] 22nd onwards, we didn’t find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,” he told Reuters.

Asked whether China may have provided any satellite imagery or other real-time intelligence to Pakistan during the conflict, Chauhan said such imagery was commercially available and could have been procured from China as well as other sources.

A MAJOR car brand is reportedly looking to raise £5billion including a loan guaranteed by the UK government after axing 20,000 jobs.

Cash-strapped Nissan, Japan’s third-largest carmaker, is already facing £4billion in losses – its worst annual loss in a quarter century.

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But now, the company are said to be considering raising more than 1 trillion yen – just over £5 billion – from debt and asset sales in a bid to prop up Nissan.

The struggling Japanese automaker plans to issue as much as 630 billion yen in convertible securities and bonds, including high-yielding US dollar and euro notes, according to Bloomberg News.

The move would also include a £1billion syndicated loan guaranteed by the British government, the documents show.

Sale-and-lease-back plans for its Yokohama headquarters, plus properties it owns in the United States, are also reportedly on the cards.

The aggressive fundraising plans underscore Nissan’s rapidly deteriorating financial and operational position, despite efforts by newly appointed chief executive Ivan Espinosa to turn the company around.

In addition, Nissan is reportedly seeking to sell part of the stakes it owns in Renault and battery maker AESC Group, as well as plants in South Africa and Mexico.

Bloomberg News cited sources as saying Nissan’s board did not appear to have approved the funding proposal yet, leaving it unclear whether it would happen.

The proposal was also slated to include the rollover of some debt, the report said.

A Nissan representative said the company does not comment on speculation.

It comes after Nissan said they could part ways with its global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, to fund the company’s urgent restructuring plan.

After having moved to the 22-story high-rise in 2009, the car manufacturer is now facing mountains of debt and is on track to cut 20,000 jobs, shut several of its plants and slash billions in costs.

With a glitzy gallery, the flashy headquarters can showcase more than thirty motors and stands in stark contrast to their previous offices.

The company have said that part of their plan has called for reviewing assets that can be sold in a desperate bid to pay for the restructuring.

With its own headquarters in sight, thought to be worth approximately £500 million, Nissan would structure a deal so it could continue to use the site through a lease so its offices and operations remain in place.

A company spokesperson said: “Nissan is considering all possibilities to recover its business performance, but there are no specifics to share at this point of time.”

The move is not unprecedented, however, with McLaren doing something similar with its HQ in Woking in recent years.

Nissan confirmed in April that it was anticipating losses of up to £4 billion, its worst annual loss in a quarter century.

Nissan is also planning to close seven factories by 2027, including two domestic sites which are thought to be the Oppama and Shonan plants, saving £2.6 billion in the process.

There have also been reports of downsizing or a partial sale of its Tochigi assembly plan and test centre facility north of Tokyo which was recently equipped with manufacturing technologies to assemble electric vehicles.

To underline the dire financial situation, the motor company is even halting the development of certain models to cut its expenses.

While the car company has been hit hard by the effects of Donald Trump’s tariff war, Nissan’s new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, has admitted the company’s financial trouble started a decade ago.

He said: “This is not something that happened in the last couple of years.

“It’s more of a fundamental problem that probably started back in 2015, when management thought this company could reach [annual global vehicle sales] of around eight million.

“There were heavy investments both in terms of planned capacity as well as in human resources, but the reality today is we are running at around half that volume. And nobody did anything to fix that until now.”

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