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The coming week could bring an important moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine, as President Trump’s deadline for the Kremlin to reach a peace deal approaches — or it could simply melt away.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff was expected in Moscow in the middle of this week, just before Trump’s Friday deadline for the Kremlin to stop the killing or face potentially severe economic penalties from Washington.

Previous Trump promises, threats and cajoling have failed to yield results., and the stubborn diplomatic stalemate will be hard to clear away. Meanwhile, Ukraine is losing more territory on the front line, although there is no sign of a looming collapse of its defenses.

Trump envoy expected at Kremlin

Witkoff was expected to land in the Russian capital on Wednesday or Thursday, according to Trump, following his trip to Israel and Gaza.

“They would like to see” Witkoff, Trump said Sunday of the Russians. “They’ve asked that he meet so we’ll see what happens.”

Trump, exasperated that Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t heeded his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, a week ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia as well as introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil, including China and India.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that officials are happy to meet with Trump’s envoy. “We are always glad to see Mr. Witkoff in Moscow,” he said. “We consider [talks with Witkoff] important, substantive and very useful.”

Trump not sure sanctions will work

Trump said Sunday that Russia has proved to be “pretty good at avoiding sanctions.”

“They’re wily characters,” he said of the Russians.

The Kremlin has insisted that international sanctions imposed since its February 2022 invasion of its neighbor have had a limited impact.

Ukraine insists the sanctions are taking their toll on Moscow’s war machine and wants Western allies to ramp them up. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday urged the United States, Europe and other nations to impose stronger secondary sanctions on Moscow’s energy, trade and banking sectors.

Trump’s comments appeared to signal he doesn’t have much hope that sanctions will force Putin’s hand.

The secondary sanctions also complicate Washington’s relations with China and India, who stand accused of helping finance Russia’s war effort by buying its oil.

Since taking office in January, Trump has found that stopping the war is harder than he perhaps imagined.

Senior American officials have warned that the U.S. could walk away from the conflict if peace efforts make no progress.

Putin shows no signs of concessions

The diplomatic atmosphere has become more heated as Trump’s deadline approaches.

Putin announced last Friday that Russia’s new hypersonic missile, the Oreshnik, has entered service.

The Russian leader has hailed its capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds of up to Mach 10 cannot be intercepted. They are so powerful, he said, that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.

Also, one of Putin’s top lieutenants warned that the Ukraine war could nudge Russia and the U.S. into armed conflict.

Trump responded to what he called the “highly provocative statements” by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by ordering the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines.

Putin has repeated the same message throughout the war: He will only accept a settlement on his terms and will keep fighting until they’re met.

Thousands of troops, civilians have died

Russia’s relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. It has pushed on with that tactic despite Trump’s public calls for it to stop over the past three months.

On the 620-mile front line, Russia’s bigger army has made slow and costly progress. It is carrying out a sustained operation to take the eastern city of Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub whose fall could open the way for a deeper drive into Ukraine.

Ukraine has developed technology that has allowed it to launch long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia. In its latest strike it hit an oil depot near Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, starting a major fire.

A government-backed pay rise of 4.2% for police officers in England and Wales “barely treads water”, the association representing front-line officers says.

The Police Federation said the pay rise was “worth the price of a Big Mac per shift” and would not stop “record levels of resignations, record mental health absences or the record number of assaults on officers”.

The organisation, which represents more than 145,000 officers, said it would now ask its members whether they accept or reject the award.

The home secretary said the increase, which is marginally above the current rate of inflation of 4.1% and is recommended by an independent review body, was “a clear signal of our gratitude”.

The amount is also above the 2.8% proposed by ministers in December, for which police forces budgeted.

It will mean the starting salary for a police constable will go up by £1,256 to £31,164. The typical salary for a constable who has been in post for six years will be £50,256 and the average salary for a chief superintendent will be £98,500.

In addition, on-call, away from home and hardship allowances will be increased by £10 and London weighting will also rise by 4.2%.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Our brave police officers work day and night, often making enormous sacrifices to keep us safe.”

She added: “We are committed to investing in the front line and supporting officers who work every day to tackle crime, keep our streets safe and protect our communities.”

The pay award will be supported by £120 million from the Home Office to “help protect police force budgets”, the government said.

The Police Federation said while it welcomed the government’s decision to reject police chief constables’ calls for a pay rise of 3.8%, the award was not enough.

Deputy national chair Brian Booth said: “After more than a decade of real terms pay cuts, this award does little to reverse the long-term decline in officers’ living standards or address the crisis policing faces.”

British Transport Police Federation chair Stuart Cowan said 4.2% “is simply nowhere near enough”.

He said: “Officers who are battered and bruised and stretched to their physical and psychological limits are worth so much more than repeated paltry pay increases.”

But the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said the 4.2% increase was above inflation and “it is essential that we attract and retain the best people into policing through competitive pay”.

NPCC lead for pay and conditions, Asst Ch Officer Philip Wells, said the pay award “is what we believe our officers deserve and reflects the nature of the work they are required to undertake to keep our streets safe”.

He added it was “vitally important that additional costs for pay are fully funded if we are to maintain services and be able to continue to invest in areas such as neighbourhood policing and technology”.

It started with a violent crime. In June, in the centre of Torun, central-north Poland, a Venezuelan man stabbed 24-year-old Klaudia, a Polish woman, to death as she was walking home from work through a park.

That horrific incident led to a silent march by thousands of protesters through Torun on Sunday, July 6. Local media reported that the march had been organised by supporters of the far-right Konfederacja political alliance and people carried signs saying “stop illegal immigration”.

Then came the rumours and misinformation. On July 14, someone in Walbrzych, southwestern Poland, called the police to report a Paraguayan man who had allegedly taken pictures of children on a playground.

The police stopped the man but did not find anything incriminating on his phone. That didn’t stop two Polish men from beating him up soon afterwards. And, the next day, a group of about 50 people stormed the hostel he and other migrants were living in. Some people threw flares into the building, and the owner has since been forced to close the hostel down.

In recent weeks, anti-migrant sentiment in Poland has been on the rise, spurred by far-right rhetoric, which asserts that Poland has been flooded with “unconstrained illegal migration”. Claims that migrants take local jobs and that they pose a threat to Poles both physically and figuratively, with their “foreign lifestyle”, are common and even encouraged by lawmakers.

One MP from Konfederacja – Konrad Berkowicz from Krakow – told TOK FM radio: “Xenophobia is an important element of our national unity. Condemning xenophobia and stifling it in the West has led to rapes and terrorist acts, that’s why we should cherish xenophobia.”

Elmi Abdi, 62, a Somali who came to Poland in 1996 as a refugee, told Al Jazeera: “Today, migrants are seen as responsible for all of Poland’s problems; we are scapegoats that all parties attack, even though politicians know it’s all untrue.” Today, Abdi is head of the Good Start foundation, which supports migrants, offering help with access to language classes, legal assistance and other matters.

“It is sad because we [immigrants] do everything to work safely here, pay taxes, and integrate into society.”

As misinformation – such as in the Walbrzych incident – about immigrants spreads, the Polish Migration Forum, a rights group, has called the atmosphere in Poland “pre-pogrom-like”.

“What distinguishes today’s situation is the violence. We are in a very bad place,” said Agnieszka Kosowicz, head of the forum. “Acts of violence already take place, people are subject to insults, threats and displays of hostility and contempt. This is a very alarming situation that requires a decisive response from the state.”

Rumours of ‘illegal returns’

On July 7, Poland reinstated border controls with Germany and Lithuania. That followed similar restrictions Germany imposed earlier in the year to discourage asylum seekers from entering through Poland.

Poland is also now actively monitoring the return of migrants – both asylum and non-asylum seekers – by the German police, as per European Union rules. These are people who arrived in Poland from outside the EU before crossing to Germany.

These returns of migrants by the German authorities are legal, but as rumours on the internet about “illegal returns” of migrants continue to spread, unofficial, far-right patrols have appeared at the borders to monitor the situation and make “citizen arrests” of individuals they believe to be entering the country illegally – so far without much success.

The EU accused Belarusian and Russian authorities of fomenting the EU’s migration crisis to destabilise the continent, by encouraging people from the Global South to travel to Belarus and then onwards into Europe via Poland.

In 2022, Poland built a fence along the border with Belarus to prevent migrants from entering the country irregularly. The fence, however, did little to physically stop migrants from coming in.

So, in March this year, Poland suspended the right to claim asylum altogether in a bid to deter people from coming.

All of this has served to stir up anti-migrant fear in Poland, which has been further amplified by far-right groups for their own political purposes.

‘We are being humiliated’

The hysteria reached a new high nearly two weeks ago, when, on Saturday, July 19, anti-migrant marches organised by the far-right Konfederacja party and football fans swept through 80 Polish towns and cities, shouting racist slurs and slogans.

Sixteen-year-old Nikola, who did not want to give her surname, told Al Jazeera that she had travelled 125km (80 miles) from her home in Gorlice, southern Poland, to attend the march in Krakow. She said she came along after watching videos on YouTube claiming that, in Western Europe, people are “afraid to leave their homes” because of the number of undocumented immigrants.

She said it was important to her to join a cause that “unites Poles today”.

“I wanted to be part of a community. People are showing those at the top that they care about security and that Poland is our country. We should do everything we can to prevent what’s happening in Western Europe,” she said.

“I’d like to feel safe in my city, and I’ve already seen a few people who looked like they are not from here,” she added.

On the march, Nikola joined a large column of several hundred people, many of them wearing Polish patriotic T-shirts and emblems of the Wisla football club, walking to Market Square. On the way, they passed tourists, some of whom were filming the protesters.

Three elderly women proudly waved white-and-red Polish flags among the football fans. “The nation has had enough of what’s happening. It’s waking up because we’re living under terror, being humiliated,” said Danuta, 60, who also did not want to give her full name. “The borders are not sealed and have to be defended by civilians,” she added, referring to the right-wing groups who patrol the Polish-German border.

On Market Square in the centre of the city, the march crossed paths with a smaller counterdemonstration organised by local left-wing groups, and the two groups exchanged insults while separated by the police.

The police did not record any major incidents during the day. But Abdi and other migrants Al Jazeera spoke with by telephone said they did not dare to leave their homes on Saturday.

Fake news fans the flames

According to experts, anti-migrant sentiment in Poland has been spurred by misinformation and fake news about the number of people entering the country, which does not reflect reality.

“Poland is not experiencing any large-scale irregular migration,” said Kosowicz. “Within the Dublin procedure [under EU rules], Germany returns people who claimed asylum in Poland and then crossed into Germany. In 2024, there were 688 such people, and this year – 318. This is nothing new.”

According to the International Migration Outlook report for 2024 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2.2 percent of Poland’s population was foreign-born in 2023. This is low compared with other European countries such as the UK (15.4 percent), Germany (18.2 percent) and France (13.8 percent).

In 2022, 152,000 immigrants obtained residence permits for more than one year in Poland, the OECD said.

At the Polish-Belarusian border, which has been used by migrants from Global South countries trying to reach Europe since 2021, incoming numbers of migrants have not been particularly high, either. According to official data, from January to late June this year, 15,022 illegal crossing attempts were recorded, of which only 5 percent were successful.

In 2024, there were nearly 30,000 attempts, out of which, by contrast, one-third (10,900) were successful. In 2021, before Poland built a fence at the border with Belarus, the number of attempts reached 52,000.

Kosowicz also blames the government, which she says has failed to build awareness about the costs and benefits of development and migration, making all foreigners potential victims of hate attacks.

“A study by Deloitte and UNHCR says that 2.7 percent of Polish GDP comes solely from the work of Ukrainian refugees. But this isn’t the information we hear from politicians,” she said.

Abdi, who is married to a Polish woman with whom he has two children, worries greatly about their future.

“When I arrived here, the Poles welcomed me wonderfully, and I care deeply about Poland; it’s my home. I want it to be safe for everyone,” he told Al Jazeera in fluent Polish.

“At the marches, people shout that they want a white Poland. I’m old enough, I’m not afraid of anything. But I am worried about my children.”

Hulk Hogan, who died Thursday at 71, was a star in pro wrestling, perhaps the star, through its two biggest popularity booms in the mid 1980s and the late 1990s. But after being the biggest star in, there was a lot of controversy along the way and his career ended in a hail of boos.

Hogan burst onto the scene in the 1982 movie “Rocky III,” where he played a pro wrestler called Thunderlips, who was taking on Rocky Balboa in a match for charity. He appeared on “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” and caught the eye of Vince McMahon, who was planning on buying the then-World Wrestling Federation from his father and taking it nationwide, He was looking for a star to build the promotion around. Hogan was wrestling for the American Wrestling Assn. and was growing frustrated that they never gave him the promotion’s championship, which usually led to making more money.

McMahon bought the WWF and started poaching talent from around the country. Hogan signed in late 1983, breaking his AWA contract and no-showing several dates. McMahon quickly put the championship on Hogan, who came into the ring to the song “Real American,” tore off his T-shirt, told his fans to “train, say your prayers and take your vitamins,” and vowed to defeat the heel of the month because “Whatcha gonna do, King Kong Bundy or Paul Orndorff or Kamala or Roddy Piper, when Hulk Hogan and Hulkamania run wild on you.”

It was a formula for success for many years, lifting pro wrestling to the mainstream with appearances on MTV and NBC, where WWF filled in for “Saturday Night Live” every six weeks and drew better ratings, all with Hogan headlining.

In 1989, Hogan tried to branch off into movies, produced by McMahon. They all flopped. “No Holds Barred.” “Suburban Commando.” “Mr. Nanny.” The persona that worked so well in the ring did not translate onto the big screen like it later did for wrestling stars such as Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista.

In 1991, Dr. George Zahorian III was convicted of illegally supplying anabolic steroids. Zahorian also served as the ringside doctor for WWF matches in Pennsylvania. At his trial, it was revealed that Zahorian had supplied steroids to the WWF and its wrestlers. Hogan, hoping to end discussion that he was on steroids, appeared on “Arsenio Hall” in 1992 and said that he has only used steroids on three occasions, all under doctor’s care to rehabilitate muscle injuries.

The outcry was immediate, with wrestlers coming out to says Hogan was lying. Fans, who could see how well-built these stars were, were disillusioned that Hogan would lie. His popularity began to wane and he began to get booed at some appearances. Hogan took a leave of absence from the company.

A much-smaller Hogan returned in 1993 to team with his friend Brutus Beefcake to take on Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster at WrestleMania in Las Vegas. Little did fans know that the plan was for Hogan to end the show as champion once again. When Hogan came out to aid Bret Hart, who had just lost his title to Yokozuna due to having salt thrown in his eyes, Yokozuna’s manager, Mr. Fuji, made an impromptu challenge to Hogan to wrestle him for the title “right now.” Hogan won the title in about one minute.

However, Hogan and McMahon has miscalculated the public’s desire to see Hogan again, especially in the top spot. The reaction was lukewarm at best and Hogan made sporadic appearances until losing the title to Yokozuna that summer. Hogan left WWF and started wrestling in Japan.

In 1994, Hogan signed with the now-World Wrestling Entertainment’s main rival, World Championship Wrestling. He lifted the profile of the company and drew several strong pay-per-view buy rates, but at live shows, fans seemed to be tiring of the trademark red and yellow gear and Hulkamania. WCW’s popularity was on the decline again when it was time for something no one thought they would ever see.

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, two of WWE’s biggest stars, had signed with WCW and presented themselves as “invaders from a big wrestling company up north.” Fans had been dying to see a feud between WWE and WCW, and Nash and Hall, under the guidance of booker Eric Bischoff, were hinting that that was happening. They promised to unveil a mystery third man at the July 1996 “Bash at the Beach” show.

Nash and Hall came to the ring without the third man at that event, promising their ally would be along soon. They started wrestling Sting, Lex Luger and Randy Savage and cheated to get the upper hand, knocking Luger out and injuring Sting. They were about to destroy Savage, when Hogan walked out in the red and yellow gear. Here to save the day again.

Hulk Hogan and Dennis Rodman were briefly aligned after Hogan turned heel and started the New World Order.

(Paula Illingworth / Associated Press)

The crowd was shocked when Hogan turned on Savage and announced himself as the third man. He told the fans they could go to hell. Fans began pelting the ring with garbage as Hogan announced the formation of the New World Order.

The next week, Hogan, now wearing black and white, got pelted with garbage again. But the heel turn worked. WCW began beating WWE in the ratings for the first time. Pro wrestling was on another hot streak, being watched by more people each week (around 13 million) than at any time in history.

The hot streak lasted until 1998, when fans grew tied of the NWO. Hogan left WCW in 2000. He returned to WWE briefly and had a memorable WrestleMania match with The Rock, before leaving again in a money dispute.

Hogan made appearances with other wrestling companies after that, and even returned to WWE to be inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2005 and had what turned out to be his final match for WWE in 2007. He was signed by the TNA promotion after that to put them on the map, but never really gained any traction there.

In July 2015, many media outlets ran excerpt of racial slurs made by Hogan on a leaked sex tape recorded in 2007. In the recording, he is heard expressing disgust if his daughter ever dated a Black man, hoping that he would at least be a basketball player worth millions, dropped a racial slur toward Black people repeatedly and said he was “a racist, to a point.”

Once the recordings went public, the outrage was immediate. Hogan apologized, saying he used “language that is offensive and inconsistent with my own beliefs.” WWE removed him from its Hall of Fame and terminated the legends contract with him, though Hogan always maintained he resigned. Mattel stopped production of all toys featuring Hogan. His public appearances were few and far between and not well-received. Hogan gave an interview on ABC in which he asked for forgiveness, saying his racism was learned from his neighborhood while growing up in Tampa, Fla., and that racial slurs were commonly used there. Not many believed him.

Three years later, Hogan appeared backstage at a WWE event to give an apology to the wrestlers for his remarks. Afterward, several wrestlers expressed disappointment with Hogan, saying he didn’t apologize for the remarks but warned them instead to be careful what they say because someone could be taping them without their knowledge. The WWE reinstated him to the Hall of Fame.

Hogan began appearing on WWE shows again, but there were almost always pretaped appearances. He hosted WrestleMania 37 in 2021, and was booed. His final live appearance was Jan. 6 this year, when he appeared on the first “Monday Night Raw” on Netflix. It was at the Inuit Dome, and when Hogan came out, he was booed strongly by the crowd. Hogan seemed caught off guard, and after plugging his new beer, went backstage. He blamed the booing on his support for Donald Trump, even though others on the show who also support Trump weren’t booed when they appeared.

It was a sad ending for a man who make pro wrestling what it is today. What will Hulk Hogan be remembered for 50 years from now? It would be interesting to hop in a time machine and find out.

Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It is a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning temperatures rise.

Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey, and reproduce.

They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees, like people, may cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest.

“Just like we go into the shade, sweat, or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,” said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study’s authors.

Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become more difficult. Habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases, and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators.

Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual US Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56 percent of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010.

Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States are used to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples, cherries, and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields.

Back at Isaac Barnes’s hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by maize and soya bean fields.

For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he cannot apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, the bees could die.

Last year, they lost nearly a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier.

It is only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress are contributing to pollinator decline.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget would eliminate the research programme that funds the US Geological Survey Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation’s wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy.

US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his country’s pollinators are in “grave danger”, and he will fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said.

“Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency.

Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would generally be more difficult for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to rise or become scarce.

“Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the US, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.

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The price of Bitcoin (BTC) is expected to reach a high of $162,353 this year (€139,148), before it settles at around $145,167 (€124,418).

That’s according to UK fintech firm Finder’s latest survey, collecting price predictions from 24 crypto industry specialists.

Within responses, high and low estimates range widely, and the most optimistic predictions expect a peak price of $250,000 this year. The average lowest price prediction sits at $87,618, with some predicting that Bitcoin will fall as low as $70,000.

The cryptocurrency has recently reached $120,000 from just below $100,000 at the end of last year. 

“There are a number of factors increasing demand for Bitcoin, including clearer and more favourable regulations, increased utility such as payments, and changing economic conditions,” crypto exchange Zondacrypto’s CEO, Przemysław Kral, told Euronews.

He added that regulations such as the EU’s MiCA contributed significantly to the recent rally. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) sets uniform EU market rules for crypto-assets. This, coupled with an increased interest from institutional players, largely in the form of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), made crypto more accessible for many. 

Cryptocurrency-based ETFs make it easier for investors to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies without having to buy them directly. These funds have exploded in popularity since Bitcoin ETFs began trading in US markets last year. 

Is there a bubble around Bitcoin?

While the integration of crypto into mainstream finance has genuinely boosted interest towards Bitcoin, there is a possibility that a so-called bubble is forming. In other words, the price is being ‘blown up’ by investor interest without fundamentals supporting it. 

According to Northeastern University’s crypto expert and professor of international business and strategy Ravi Sarathy, big institutional investors, including MicroStrategy, have been accumulating large pools of this asset, and it is possible that they are propping up the price of the cryptocurrency. MicroStrategy holds a Bitcoin stash worth approximately $65bn.

After the previous reluctant approach from institutional investors, “new US measures authorising Bitcoin ETF funds have made it easier and more convenient for both institutions and retail investors to invest some of their resources in these higher risk/higher return Bitcoin vehicles”,  Sarathy told Euronews Business. 

Bitcoin issuance has a ceiling of 21 million, driving rising demand in the face of a limited supply. “This has also led to the rise of Digital Asset Treasuries (a corporate strategy, ed.) which seek investor funds to invest in a variety of cryptocurrencies and tokens, including Bitcoin, a further fillip to demand, and fuelling rapid Bitcoin price appreciation,” Sarathy said, adding that after a short reaction to further US legislation, longer-term price appreciation could still continue.

How Washington is fuelling Bitcoin’s rally

Interest in Bitcoin has increased dramatically since US President Donald Trump widely campaigned to make the US the world capital for crypto. The US administration’s support for crypto assets reached new highs recently as the government dubbed this week ‘Crypto Week’. Lawmakers in the House are debating a series of bills that could define the regulatory framework for the industry in the United States. 

“Bitcoin and crypto in general, is being propped up by the Trump administration, ironically given its initial promotion as an alternative to government-backed currencies and support from libertarians,” said John Hawkins, senior lecturer at the University of Canberra.

He believes that the token “lacks any fundamental value, and after 16 years, it has still failed to meet its initial aspiration to be a common means of payment. It remains a speculative bubble.”

Others see Trump’s support as a reason to buy. 

Rouge International & Rouge Ventures’ managing director, Desmond Marshall, said that “Together with Trump’s embrace of digital crypto assets, his sons dealing with huge amounts of crypto projects and the strong US dollar, the US government is already buying large reserves of BTC. This is supported by many businesses venturing into this realm with enterprise crypto strategies.”

The most bullish crypto specialists, expecting a large price increase, bet that Bitcoin could reach $250,000, buoyed by institutional demand.

“Corporate and institutional demand is not slowing down while retail is still absent and nation state adoption is just getting started,” said Martin Froehler, CEO of Morpher trading platform.

Bitcoin’s price has increased nearly 25% since the beginning of the year, despite ongoing uncertainties related to tariff tensions, the conflict in the Middle East, and the lack of monetary policy easing in the US.

Is it the right time to buy Bitcoin?

Around 61% of the experts surveyed believe that it is the right time to buy. 

However, caution is always important, according to crypto exchange Zondacrypto’s CEO, Przemysław Kral.

He told Euronews: “With such hype comes the need for caution. No one knows whether the price will go up or down. We always recommend doing your research and getting educated on Bitcoin before investing in it.” 

Kadan Stadelmann, the CTO at Komodo Platform, believes that Bitcoin is going to steadily grow in value over the next six months before it returns to a bear market (when investors mainly sell instead of buy).

“Considering Bitcoin touched $110,000 already, and there’s still at least six months left in this bull run…I expect the peak around Q1 of 2026 and a bear market to follow,” said Stadelmann.

When asked what their expectations were for the very long term, the crypto experts surveyed by Finer said Bitcoin could reach values of $458,647 by 2030 and surpass $1 million by 2035.

How quantum computing might impact Bitcoin’s cryptographic security

The vast majority of the crypto specialists surveyed (79%) see quantum computing as a threat to Bitcoin’s cryptographic security, as quantum computers could potentially break the encryption standards that secure cryptocurrencies.

A quarter of the experts (25%) think that quantum computers will be able to crack Bitcoin within the next five years, and another 25% find that it’s a realistic possibility within the next five to ten years. The remainder (29%) say it’ll take longer than ten years.

Just 8% say that quantum computers pose no threat, and only a third of the experts are confident that the Bitcoin community is somewhat prepared for this threat. 

Disclaimer: This information does not constitute financial advice; always do your own research to ensure it’s right for your specific circumstances. We are a journalistic website and aim to provide the best guides, tips and advice from experts. If you rely on the information on this page, then you do so entirely at your own risk.

When Vogue tastemaker Anna Wintour announced late last month that she would be stepping down as editor in chief after 37 years, the news sent shock waves through the media business and fashion world.

Wintour, who will remain chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director for Vogue, is a grand symbol of a magazine empire that includes Wired and Vanity Fair: a demanding, glamorous longtime chair of the Met Gala who has set fashion trends and made world-famous designers, some of whom she helped create, bow and tremble. She covers news, she creates news, she is news. Predictably enough, word of her changing status ignited frenzied speculation about who might take on the newly created role of U.S. head of editorial content for Vogue and eventually succeed her.

Condé Nast, which publishes enough other glossy magazines to fill a newsstand (if any still exist), remains very much alive, and it’s the subject of Michael M. Grynbaum’s new book “Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America.” But as Grynbaum makes clear in his book, the Condé sway isn’t quite what it used to be. The company’s most powerful editors, including Graydon Carter (Vanity Fair) and Tina Brown (Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker), have stepped aside. More importantly, the rise of TikTok, Instagram and the like have created a world where almost anyone with an opportunist’s instinct can be an influencer.

“The means of glamour production were brought to the masses,” Grynbaum tells The Times in an interview taking place after Wintour’s announcement. “If you look at TikTok and Instagram, a lot of people are re-creating the status fantasies that Condé Nast was notorious for: the real estate tours of somebody’s mansion that are right out of Architectural Digest, or the fit check and outfit of the day that ascended from GQ, Vogue and Glamour.”

The man most responsible for the Condé Nast that readers know today was Samuel Irving “S.I.” Newhouse Jr., better known as Si. The son of a first-generation American who built a massively successful newspaper chain and purchased Condé Nast in 1959, Si took the family’s rather sleepy and traditional magazine business and injected a shot of sex, celebrity and pizzazz. The Newhouses were for many years seen as arrivistes and interlopers, a perception tinged with antisemitism; New Yorker institution A.J. Liebling, himself Jewish, labeled the elder Newhouse a “journalist chiffonier” — a rag picker.

When Si took over as chairman of Condé Nast in 1975 — and then bought the New Yorker in 1985 — he set about to become a sort of outsider’s insider, obsessed with status and the good life and determined to shape a collection of magazines that represented aspirational living. And he insisted that his most valuable employees walk the walk. To work at the company at its peak was to live extravagantly by a journalist’s standards.

Grynbaum, who writes about media, politics and culture for the New York Times and grew up reading Condé Nast magazines, was struck hard by that extravagance. “I was writing about magazine editors who had 24-hour town car service, limousines that would drive them around to their appointments, wait outside at the sidewalk while they ate a giant lunch at the Four Seasons restaurant, and it all got expensed back to Condé Nast,” he says. “Empire of the Elite” is laden with comical examples of privilege. One of my favorites: the Vogue editor who “charged her assistant with the less than exalted task of removing the blueberries from her morning muffin; the editor preferred the essence of blueberries, she explained, but not the berries themselves.”

Author Michael M. Grynbaum, who writes about media for the New York Times, was struck by extravagant expense account spending at Condé Nast.

(Gary He)

The Condé Nast glory era really kicked off in the 1980s, as conspicuous consumption swept through the land. “The idealism of the 1960s was yielding to the materialism of the 1980s, a new preoccupation with the navel-gazing, ego-stroking life,” Grynbaum writes. But much of Newhouse’s approach now seems like standard operating procedure. When he bought the New Yorker, a set-in-its-ways magazine with a limited readership and articles that could take up half an issue, it had largely turned up its nose at the idea of soliciting new subscribers. He tapped Tina Brown, a brash Brit then serving as Vanity Fair editor, to run the magazine in 1992. This set off culture clashes that resonated throughout the industry — and yielded some piquant anecdotes.

For example: Some at the magazine were aghast when Brown assigned Jeffrey Toobin to cover the O.J. Simpson murder trial, a subject they saw as beneath the magazine’s standards. Critic George W.S. Trow actually resigned, accusing Brown of kissing “the ass of celebrity culture.” Brown responded that she was distraught, “but since you never actually write anything, I should say I am notionally distraught.”

Newhouse, who died in 2017, made FOMO fun. It should be noted that he also helped create Donald Trump. GQ featured him on its cover when he was, as Grynbaum writes, “a provincial curiosity”; of more consequence, Newhouse, as the owner of Random House, came up with the idea for “The Art of the Deal,” the 1987 Trump business manifesto ghostwritten by magazine journalist Tony Schwartz.

Wintour has been a powerful force in the Condé Nast machine; her turning over the daily reins of U.S. Vogue signals even more change for a company that has seen plenty of it. “I think it is an acknowledgment on her part that she won’t be around forever, and that there needs to be some kind of succession plan in place,” Grynbaum says. “It’s amazing how much the influence and power of Vogue is predicated on this one individual and her relationships and her sway.”

Condé Nast isn’t what it used to be, because print isn’t what it used to be. Like so many legacy media companies, it hemorrhaged money as it proved slow to adjust to the digital revolution. At times “Empire of the Elite” reads like an ode to the sensuous experience of reading a high-quality glossy magazine, and wondering who might be on next month’s cover and what (or who) they’ll be wearing. Condé Nast still means quality. But the age of empire is mostly over.

Taking a longer view all those figures are significantly higher than they were in preceding decades.

Opta’s analysis of Rugby World Cup tournaments, external shows an average ball-in-play time of less than 32 minutes in 2003, and just over 28 minutes at the inaugural 1987 edition.

Phil Dowson, Pollock’s director of rugby at Northampton, was a back row himself, with a 16-year top-flight career and seven England caps to his name before he moved into coaching.

He cites former Wallabies David Pocock and Phil Waugh, England’s Neil Back and ex-Harlequins flanker Will Skinner as back rows of yesteryear who excelled despite lacking the heft.

“All those were athletic, maybe not as much as Henry Pollock, but they would have created a ton of turnovers and covered a lot of ground,” he told BBC Sport.

“But perhaps we are in a cycle at the moment with the increased amount of ball in play – I think naturally that will drop the weights of people because you can’t keep moving if you are a big unit.

“I think that is key to the athleticism and weight of some of the guys.

“There have been loads of horror stories about players being repeatedly told to bulk up and then either got injured or couldn’t move around as they wish or lost that key attacking threat.

“We are conscious of that and finding that balance between power and speed is incredibly important.”

Lions head coach Farrell, who has picked Pollock, Morgan and Earl as the back row for their final pre-Test series warm-up game, has his own balance to strike.

Australia have their own fast-forward fetcher in the excellent Fraser McReight. Yet Will Skelton (135kg, 21st 4 lb) and Rob Valetini (117kg, 18st 6lb) also loom as heavyweight Wallaby forward options.

Does Farrell add ballast to his back row by including Ollie Chessum, more usually a second row, to counter their direct threat?

Or does he go for a warp-speed selection that runs the legs off the Wallabies and prioritises a breakdown battle the Lions have struggled to master so far?

Spoil a tactic or follow a trend? His choice will be fascinating.

Published on
25/06/2025 – 8:08 GMT+2

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Investors kept an eye on the Middle East on Wednesday as a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel appeared to hold after initial shakiness.

Both sides claimed victory; Iran’s president said Israel had suffered a “historic punishment”, while Israel’s prime minister argued the offensive had removed “the Iranian nuclear threat”.

A new US intelligence report nonetheless found that Tehran’s nuclear programme had only been set back by a few months by US strikes. Washington denied the findings of the leaked report.

Early in Europe, Brent crude had risen around 1.15% to $67.91 a barrel, while WTI was 1.21% higher at $65.15. The prices suggest the market has still not fully calmed after the conflict in the Middle East, with investors continuing to monitor the shaky ceasefire.

US President Trump rebuked both countries for violating the announced ceasefire on Tuesday. 

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen,” he said.

On his social media platform, Truth Social, he wrote: “Israel, do not drop those bombs. If you do, it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home, now!”

Trump claimed that neither Iran nor Israel “know what the f*** they’re doing”.

Stocks, meanwhile, rose modestly on Wednesday. Dow Jones futures rose 0.06% to 43,452.00, while S&P 500 futures gained 0.05% to 6,149.25.

In Asian trading, the Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.44% to 3,435.60, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.31% to 38,910.93, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 0.78% to 24,364.79, while South Korea’s Kospi was almost flat, rising 0.01% to 3,104.20.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 notched up 0.09% to 8,563.20.

The US Dollar Index was up 0.13% at 97.98 although the currency has still failed to recover from losses seen earlier this year. The euro rose less than 1% against the dollar while the Japanese Yen dropped around 0.12% against its US safe-haven alternative.

“The situation in the Middle East is fluid. While the downside risks have subsided, the situation can change quickly and the balance of risks remains weighted toward higher oil prices,” said Ryan Sweet, Chief US Economist at Oxford Economics, on Tuesday.

Born and raised in Houston, singer-songwriter Kane Rodriguez grew up surrounded by music. His grandfather, father and brother are musicians, and the sounds of cumbia, banda and norteño were ever present in his house.

The 22-year-old Texican launched his music career by playing with his brothers in a cumbia group in his teens but says he always felt more of a calling toward corridos. He leaned into his musical tastes at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, uploading videos on TikTok of himself singing and playing his guitar.

His first big hit was his 2022 melancholic cover of Aldo Trujillo and Legion RG’s “El Chaman,” which tells the story of an enigmatic character whose emotional availability contradicts his tough-guy appearance. The clip was just him and his guitar in front of a plain background while being filmed at an upward angle — nothing fancy, but his voice and musicality shined.

“I started seeing myself grow and grow, and then a couple videos would go viral, and people asked for more,” Rodriguez said in a recent interview. “I guess people really like how I sound just with the guitar, so I just try to keep recording. … I think TikTok, for me, is a big part [of my success].”

The singer and multi-instrumentalist released his debut studio album, “La Batuta,” in April under Warner Music México.

The LP’s intricate instrumentation works deftly to complement Rodriguez’s gravelly vocals and his swashbuckling lyrics, telling tales of romantic conquests, occasional sadboi reflections and living it up with his compas over the course of 13 tracks.

The “Se Volvieron Locos” artist has been touring the U.S. since his album’s release and was scheduled to perform at Downtown L.A.’s Peacock Theater — in a billing with Chino Pacas, Estevan Plazola, Los Caimanes De Sinaloa, T3R Elemento, El de La Guitarra and Omar Ruiz — but the show was canceled because of the temporary L.A. curfew and the ongoing ICE raids in the city.

Rodriguez fans can rejoice, however, as the singer has a show scheduled for June 20 at El Farallon Event Center in Lynwood. Ahead of his performance, Rodriguez spoke about his rise to fame, collaborating with other artists and his hopes for the future.

This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

This is your first studio album. What was the process of recording it like?

It took a while, a cool seven months to get it done. But we picked the right songs and we got the right songwriters. We added different genres, so it took us a while, but I think it was worth it. It’s a big jump from [playing] live to the studio.

How do you think being from Houston informs your work as an artist, and what kind of obligation do you feel to represent the city?

Right now in Houston there’s really not that many corrido artists, so I think being one of the few ones from Houston really helped because I get a lot of support from my hometown.

I grew up in the southeast part of Houston [in an area] called Pasadena, on a little trailer park. It wasn’t nothing too crazy or nothing too bad. I think growing up in a neighborhood like that made me hungrier to make it out of the hood. That just helped me build up.

I think right now Houston needs somebody that could rep them and take them to the next level on the corrido side, and I think I have that responsibility. I want to take that responsibility, and hopefully we can make it bigger.

You’re now on tour and collaborating with big artists. How does it feel to continue to grow in popularity, and how are you managing that emotionally and professionally?

It’s a dream come true. I’m coming from playing in backyards like almost every day, playing 10 hours a day. To play in front of people with big artists — it’s just crazy. It’s really hard to to believe, but I try not to get too excited or get too comfortable. We try to keep our feet on the ground. It’s sort of incredible how everything is building up real fast.

Who are some of the acts you’ve had the chance to work within a professional space that you kind of can’t believe actually happened?

For sure Legado 7 — they’re OGs. I think everybody would listen to them back in 2018, 2019 when I was in high school. So getting the chance to be in the studio and make a hit song with them is even crazier.

And Adrian L Santos also. That fool’s from my family’s hometown over there in Mexico. He’s real poppin’ and a real humble guy. Working with him was one of the best experiences.

Being a musician can feel sometimes, from the outside looking in, like it’s not a “real job,” but getting that cosign from a label changes things. What was your family’s reaction to that moment?

At first they were real iffy, because a lot of people don’t make it out in music. It’s real hard. So they were there, mentally. But the good thing about my parents is they let me do it. They stood back. They’d seen the hunger that I had for it and knew I wouldn’t listen — I’d just keep doing it. Right now they’re real proud, and I’m happy to see them like that.

You’ve got your album out, you’re going on tour — where do you see it going from here? Where are you trying to go?

My vision in the next two years is: I’m trying to sell out stadiums. That’s one of my goals. My biggest dream is to have thousands of people sing my songs.

Brian Gavidia had stepped out from working on a car at a tow yard in a Los Angeles suburb Thursday, when armed, masked men — wearing vests with “Border Patrol” on them — pushed him up against a metal gate and demanded to know where he was born.

“I’m American, bro!” 29-year-old Gavidia pleaded, in video taken by a friend.

“What hospital were you born?” the agent barked.

“I don’t know, dawg!” he said. “East L.A., bro! I can show you: I have my f—ing Real ID.”

His friend, whom Gavidia did not name, narrated the video: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks.”

In a statement Saturday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said U.S. citizens were arrested “because they ASSAULTED U.S. Border Patrol Agents.” (McLaughlin’s statement emphasized the word “assaulted” in all-capital and boldfaced letters.)

When told by a reporter that Gavidia had not been arrested, McLaughlin clarified that Gavidia had been questioned by Border Patrol agents but there “is no arrest record.” She said a friend of Gavidia’s was arrested for assault of an officer.

As immigration operations have unfolded across Southern California in the last week, lawyers and advocates say people are being targeted because of their skin color. The encounter with Gavidia and others they are tracking have raised legal questions about enforcement efforts that have swept up hundreds of immigrants and shot fear into the deeply intertwined communities they call home.

Agents picking up street vendors without warrants. American citizens being grilled. Home Depot lots swept. Car washes raided. The wide-scale arrests and detainments — often in the region’s largely Latino neighborhoods — contain hallmarks of racial profiling and other due process violations.

“We are seeing ICE come into our communities to do indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or people who appear to them to be immigrant, largely based on racial profiling,” said Eva Bitran, a lawyer at ACLU of Southern California.

When asked about the accusations of racial profiling, the White House deflected.

Calling the questions “shameful regurgitations of Democrat propaganda by activists — not journalists,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson chided The Times reporters Saturday for not reporting the “real story — the American victims of illegal alien crime and radical Democrat rioters willing to do anything to keep dangerous illegal aliens in American communities.”

She did not answer the question.

McLaughlin said in a statement, “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”

She said the suggestion fans the flames and puts agents in peril.

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence,” she said. “We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” she said.

Customs and Border Protection officers are stationed at the federal building in Los Angeles on Friday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The unprecedented show of force by federal agents follows orders from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration plan and a Santa Monica native, to execute 3,000 arrests a day. In May, Miller reportedly directed top ICE officials to go beyond target lists and have agents make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer specific questions about the encounter with Gavidia and said that immigration enforcement has been “targeted.” The agency did not explain what is meant by targeted enforcement.

But a federal criminal complaint against Javier Ramirez, another of Gavidia’s friends, said Border Patrol agents were conducting a “roving patrol” in Montebello around 4:30 p.m. when they “engaged a subject in a consensual encounter” in a parking lot on West Olympic Boulevard. The complaint noted that the parking lot is fenced and gated, but that, at the time of the interaction, the gate to the parking lot was open.

The enforcement was part of a roving patrol in what John B. Mennell, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said was a “lawful immigration enforcement operation” in which agents also arrested “without incident” an immigrant without legal status.

Gavidia said he and Ramirez both rent space at the tow yard to fix cars.

On video captured by a security camera at the scene, the agents pull up at the open gate in a white SUV and three agents exit the car. At least one covers his face with a mask as they walk into the property and begin looking around. Shortly after, an agent can be seen with one man in handcuffs calmly standing against the fence, while Ramirez can be heard shouting and being wrestled to the ground.

Gavidia walks up on the scene from the sidewalk outside the business where agents are parked. Seeing the commotion, he turns around. An agent outside the business follows him and then another does.

Gavidia, whom Mennell identified as a third person, was detained “for investigation for interference (in an enforcement operation) and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.”

“Video didn’t show the full story,” he said in a statement.

But it is unclear from the video exactly what that interference is. And Gavidia denies interfering with any operations.

CBP, the agency that has played a prominent role in the recent sweeps, is also under a federal injunction in Central California after a judge found it had engaged in “a pattern and practice” of violating people’s constitutional rights in raids earlier this year.

U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who oversaw raids that included picking people up at Home Depot and stopping them on the highway, has emerged as a key figure in L.A. He stood alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday at a news conference where Sen. Alex Padilla — the state’s first Latino U.S. senator — was handcuffed, forced to the ground and briefly held after interrupting Noem with a question.

“A lot of bad people, a lot of bad things are in our country now,” Bovino said. “That’s why we’re here right now, is to remove those bad people and bad things, whether illegal aliens, drugs or otherwise, we’re here. We’re not going away.”

Bovino said hundreds of Border Patrol agents have fanned out and are on the ground in L.A. carrying out enforcement.

A federal judge for the Eastern District of California ordered Bovino’s agency to halt illegal stops and warrantless arrests in the district after agents detained and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — in the Central Valley shortly before President Trump took office.

The lawsuit, brought by the United Farm Workers and Central Valley residents, accused the agency of brazenly racial profiling people in a days-long enforcement. It roiled the largely agricultural area, after video circulated of agents slashing the tires of a gardener who was a citizen on his way to work, and it raised fears that those tactics could become the new norm there.

The effort was “proof of concept,” David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent under Bovino, told the San Diego investigative outfit Inewsource in March. “Testing our capabilities, and very successful. We know we can push beyond that limit now as far as distance goes.”

Bovino said at the news conference that his agents were “not going anywhere soon.”

“You’ll see us in Los Angeles. You’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said.

Bitran, who is working on the case in the Central Valley, said Miller’s orders have “set loose” agents “with a mandate to capture as many people as possible,” and that “leads to them detaining people in a way that violates the Constitution.”

In Montebello, a 78% Latino suburb that shares a border with East Los Angeles, Border Patrol agents took Gavidia’s identification. Although they eventually let him go, Ramirez, also American and a single father of two, wasn’t so lucky.

Tomas De Jesus, Ramirez’s cousin and his attorney, said authorities are accusing him of “resisting arrest, assaulting people” after agents barged into a private business, “without a warrant, without a probable cause.”

“What is the reasonable suspicion for him to be accosted?” De Jesus questioned. “What is the probable cause for them to be entering into a private business area? … At this moment, it seems to me like they have a blanket authority almost to do anything.”

Ramirez has been charged in a federal criminal complaint with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. Authorities allege that Ramirez was trying to conceal himself and then ran toward the exit and refused to answer questions about his identity and citizenship. They also allege he pushed and bit an agent.

Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez said he’d watched the video and called the situation “extremely frustrating.”

“It just seems like there’s no due process,” he said. “They’re going for a specific look, which is a look of our Latino community, our immigrant community. They’re asking questions after. … This is not the country that we all know it to be, where folks have individual rights and protections.”

A third individual was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.

Even before the video was looping on social media feeds, Angelica Salas — who heads one of the most well-established immigration advocacy groups in Los Angeles — said she was getting reports of “indiscriminate” arrests and American citizens being questioned and detained.

“We have U.S. citizens who are being asked for their documents and not believed when they attest to the fact that they are U.S. citizens,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “They just happen to be Latino.”

The Supreme Court has long held that law enforcement officers cannot detain people based on generalizations that would cast a wide net of suspicion on large segments of the law-abiding population.

“Some of the accounts I have heard suggest that they’re just stopping a whole bunch of people, and then questioning them all to find out which ones might be unlawfully present,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law School.

An agent can ask a person about “anything,” he said. But if the person declines to speak, the agent cannot detain them unless they have reasonable suspicion that the individual is unlawfully here.

“The 4th Amendment as well as governing immigration regulations do not permit immigration agents to detain somebody against their will, even for a very brief time, absent reasonable suspicion,” he said.

Just being brown doesn’t qualify. And being a street vendor or farmworker does not, either. A warrant to search for documents at a work site also is not enough to detain someone there.

“The agents appear to be flagrantly violating these immigration laws,” he said, “all over Southern California.”

Gavidia said the agents who questioned him in Montebello never returned his Real ID.

“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be picked out, like, ‘This guys seems Latino; this guy seems a little bit dirty.’

“It was the worst experience I ever felt,” Gavidia said, his voice shaking with anger as he spoke from the business Friday. “I felt honestly like I was going to die.”

On Saturday, Gavidia joined De Jesus in downtown L.A. for his first-ever protest.

Now, he said, it felt personal.

Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan was renting a luxury New York townhouse for $40,000 a month, enjoying the fruits of his highly lucrative investments in cryptocurrency. But in May, his 17-room Manhattan home became a torture chamber in which he was held by kidnappers for 17 days.

Carturan’s captors, John Woeltz and William Duplessie, who wanted access to his cryptocurrency accounts, used brutal methods in their bid to prise open Carturan’s Bitcoin wallet, purportedly containing some $28m worth of cryptocurrency. Among other torture methods, they hung him from the building’s roof, shocked him with electrical wires and threatened him with a chainsaw.

When all else failed, they forced him to smoke crack cocaine. Ultimately, they were unsuccessful. After more than two gruelling weeks, Carturan managed to escape the townhouse and Woeltz and Duplessie were subsequently arrested and charged with kidnapping and assault.

Carturan’s ordeal was one of the latest in a spate of “wrench attacks”, which include so-called “crypto kidnappings”, combining high-tech cybertheft with old-fashioned thuggery and have been taking place in several countries around the world.

Have arrests for crypto kidnapping attacks been made elsewhere?

Yes. On May 31, 26 people were charged for several attempted kidnappings of a top figure in France’s cryptocurrency world, French prosecutors said.

It was the culmination of a police investigation into an “attempted kidnapping by an organised gang” of the daughter and grandson of the CEO of crypto firm Paymium in Paris on May 13, and “other unsuccessful plans”, a failed attempt on the same targets the day before, and another attempt near the western city of Nantes on June 2.

“Eighteen people have been placed in pre-trial detention, three have requested a deferred hearing, and four have been placed under judicial supervision,” the Paris public prosecutor’s office said, concerning the Paris attack. The suspects are all aged between 16 and 23.

France has been the centre of several attacks on prominent crypto entrepreneurs in recent months. But crypto-linked kidnappings have occurred in other countries, too.

Where else have crypto kidnappings taken place?

In addition to the recent attempted abductions in Paris, a group of criminals kidnapped David Balland, cofounder of the cryptocurrency firm Ledger, and his wife in central France in January.

In a particularly gruesome turn of events, the kidnappers cut off one of Balland’s fingers and sent the video of the mutilation to Ledger. Within two days, however, the French gendarmerie had freed both victims.

Nine suspects are under criminal investigation in that case.

In December 2024, the wife of crypto investor and influencer Stephane Winkel was kidnapped from the couple’s home in Belgium. She was rescued after her kidnapper crashed his car during a dramatic police chase.

Canada and Australia have also witnessed high-profile kidnappings, with crypto executives and traders abducted and forced to pay ransoms ranging from $40,000 to $1m in digital assets.

It is unclear whether the recent spate of crypto kidnappings is connected in any way.

What is cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin, which began trading in January 2009, was the very first cryptocurrency. This form of monetary exchange allows people to bypass central banks and traditional payment methods. It is now a functioning, decentralised monetary system, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Bitcoin was first used in a transaction in 2009, valued at just $0.004 per Bitcoin. Yesterday, Bitcoin’s price closed at nearly $101,576 per Bitcoin – about 53 percent higher than a year ago, and nearly 2.5 trillion percentage points higher than in 2009.

Initially, the digital currency was favoured by internet libertarians who were drawn to the idea that money should be free from government interference. It quickly gained more mainstream popularity, and the price has shot up.

More recently, United States President Donald Trump has taken steps to mint several cryptocurrencies, meaning they would be included in a “Crypto Strategic Reserve”, boosting their price even more in the process.

While cryptocurrency thefts are nothing new, they have historically involved hacking digital accounts holding large sums of the currency. In 2022, for instance, internet thieves stole an estimated $570m from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

But as Bitcoin and other digital assets continue to climb in value, criminals are shifting their efforts from online hacking to real-world extortion, via kidnappings and torture.

How do criminals target victims in crypto kidnappings?

Victims are not hard to find.

Some crypto tycoons, many of whom are young men, have a habit of flaunting their wealth on social media or by appearing at cryptocurrency conferences, which allows criminals to easily identify targets.

Many have continued to flaunt their wealth in spite of the 2016 Kim Kardashian kidnapping incident. The US reality TV star was tied up in her hotel room in Paris as robbers made off with millions of dollars worth of jewellery. The men – dubbed the “grandpa robbers” because of their ages – were later caught and sentenced to prison by a French court.

That was not a crypto attack, but as more crypto tycoons have appeared, there is little to differentiate them from the fabulously wealthy like the Kardashians.

Even those with large crypto wealth who are more cautious about displaying their wealth on social media and in public have been exposed to criminal activity via data breaches at cryptocurrency exchanges, however.

In May 2025, Coinbase Global announced that hackers had managed to obtain personal information, including the home addresses of almost 70,000 customers in the previous few months, putting thousands at risk of attack or extortion.

Besides hacking the accounts of crypto millionaires for this sort of information, criminals have also bribed insiders at crypto exchanges for customer data. This information is then used to select and find high-value targets for kidnappings or home invasions.

Why are crypto kidnappings on the rise?

It is easier to steal money from a digital wallet than from a traditional bank account, and kidnapping is one way to do this.

Attackers simply need to gain access to someone’s cryptocurrency account password, as there’s no third-party financial institution to protect the funds held in the digital wallet.

Transactions on an open-ledger blockchain – the technology which facilitates cryptocurrencies – are also permanent, meaning transactions are irreversible.

And, unlike cash, jewellery and gold, thieves don’t need to carry away the stolen cryptocurrency with them. With a few clicks, money can simply be moved from one account to another.

Furthermore, cryptocurrency’s ability to skirt traditional law enforcement also means it is much easier to launder, making it popular with internet-based drug dealers.

Therefore, if criminals can force a victim to give up their account, they can gain immediate access to vast wealth – hence the rise in physical attacks and kidnappings.

Can you get insurance against a crypto kidnapping?

Yes, you can. At least three insurance companies which provide services for cryptocurrency investors are in the process of designing policies specifically for abductions, called kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies, according to a report by NBC News.

Becca Rubenfeld, chief operating officer at AnchorWatch – a crypto insurance firm aiming to launch K&R protection later this year – said that fear of violence was a key talking point at this year’s annual Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference, in May.

“They’re [cryptocurrency holders are] tense,” Rubenfeld told NBC. “I’m not saying that because I’m trying to sell insurance, but overall, the mood is a very good environment for me.”

Kidnapping and ransom insurance is not uncommon for high-profile corporate executives.

What else are crypto investors doing to stay safe?

Elsewhere, security experts are urging investors to avoid sharing details of their crypto holdings online, even with friends, and to use pseudonyms and new digital wallet addresses for each transaction.

Increasingly, crypto traders are avoiding making social media posts with geotagged photos, especially any that show themselves with luxury items, or revealing their travel plans.

In 23-year-old Draper, British tennis fans believe they may just have found their next serial Grand Slam contender.

British former world number four Tim Henman told BBC Sport recently that Draper’s best attributes – his left-handed serve and crunching forehand – could “work on any surface”.

Prior to this year, though, Draper had never won a match at the clay-court major with most of his success coming on hard courts or grass.

However, he has made huge strides on the surface this season and reached his first clay final in Madrid in April.

Managing to avoid the injuries that have plagued him in the past has enabled Draper to reach a significantly higher level of fitness, which has been key to his improvement on the slower surface.

Now just the world number 62 stands between him and another Grand Slam quarter-final.

And while Draper has enjoyed the best year of his career, Bublik fell from a high of 17th in the rankings in 2024 to as low as 82nd in March.

That prompted a radical change of approach that led to the Kazakh taking a trip to Las Vegas that month to blow off some steam.

“My fall was not linked with lack of attitude and lack of practising,” he said.

“It was the exact opposite. I just burned out because I was waiting for the results to come.

“I was like, if I practise more, if I hit better forehands, it will come. It didn’t, and then I got to the point of ‘OK, why am I sacrificing so much? For what?'”

Asked if the trip to Nevada was a training trip, Bublik added: “No, Vegas, Vegas, like a hangover thing Vegas.

“It was a good three days. I had just let it all out. I said, I’m useless now, I can’t win a match, so let it be, let’s see how it goes.”

It worked as Bublik won his next event, the Challenger tournament in Phoenix, Arizona, having arrived from Vegas three hours before his first match. He also triumphed on clay in Turin last month.

The 27-year-old is slowly climbing the rankings again – but Draper will be keen to ensure a first Grand Slam quarter-final appearance has to wait.

May 30 (UPI) — More than 200,000 undocumented migrants have left the Dominican Republic this year, including at least 145,000 Haitians deported by immigration authorities.

The figure marks a 70% increase from the same period last year and is part of a plan by President Luis Abinader and the National Security and Defense Council to reduce the number of undocumented migrants in the country.

The Dominican Republic’s General Directorate of Migration has stepped up immigration operations and deportations of Haitians since October 2024, when a new immigration law took effect.

International organizations have raised concerns about the impact deportations have had on the Haitian community in the Dominican Republic. Many people now live in fear of being detained and expelled, which has limited their access to basic services such as healthcare and education.

The Caribbean nation has barred entry to pregnant Haitian women in their third trimester, saying its healthcare system cannot cover the cost of childbirth for undocumented foreigners.

The United Nations condemned the deportation of 900 pregnant or breastfeeding Haitian women from the Dominican Republic in recent months.

U.N. Secretary-General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the International Organization for Migration provided assistance at the border to an average of 30 such women each month during their deportation, calling the practice a violation of international standards.

Dujarric added that nearly 20,000 Haitians were repatriated from the Dominican Republic between April and May 2025, the highest number on record for that time period.

The Dominican Republic has tightened its immigration policy by partially closing its border with Haiti and building a 160-kilometer border wall equipped with sensors, cameras and watchtowers. The government said the measures aim to curb irregular migration, smuggling and insecurity.

The DGM defended the immigration operations, saying they comply with human rights standards.

“Our actions are carried out with strict respect for the fundamental rights of those involved, ensuring dignified treatment, proper safety and hygiene conditions, and due process in accordance with national and international human rights standards,” the agency said in a press release.

Haiti is facing one of the worst crises in its recent history, marked by widespread violence from armed gangs that control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince. These groups have carried out attacks on public institutions, mass killings, and prison breaks, displacing more than 1 million people and leaving the transitional government, led by the Presidential Transitional Council under Fritz Alphonse Jean, in collapse.

The insecurity has overwhelmed Haiti’s health system, forcing hospital closures, driving medical professionals to flee the country, and triggering outbreaks of diseases such as cholera. The crisis is compounded by severe food insecurity, with more than 5 million people struggling to access adequate food and thousands living in famine conditions.

At least 260 miners have been brought to the surface in South Africa after being stuck underground at a gold mine for 24 hours.

Africa is at the centre of a rising demand for minerals and precious metals.

Lithium is essential to the transition away from fossil fuels, used for batteries in electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies.

But in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rights groups continue to denounce the dangerous working conditions of children in artisanal mines, particularly for cobalt.

So, are the continent’s critical minerals at a critical juncture? And what will be the impact of the global scramble for Africa’s natural resources?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Claude Kabemba – Executive director of Southern Africa Resource Watch

Christopher Vandome – Senior research fellow at Chatham House Africa Programme

Maurice Carney – Co-founder and executive director, Friends of the Congo

Abi Smitton

‘Rising prices have gone too far’

‘Higher benefits have been wiped out by costs’

Abi Smitton

‘My pension gets less every year’

Peter Murphy

May 20 (UPI) — Rising sea levels caused by man-made climate change will see hundreds of millions of people forced to flee inland from coasts even if the rise in the global temperature stays within the 1.5 degrees Celsius target of the Paris Climate Agreement, a British and American team of scientists said Tuesday.

With an estimated 1 billion people around the world living less than 33 feet above sea level and around 230 million at 3 feet 3 inches or less, even 8 inches of rise by 2050 would result in average global flood losses of $1 trillion or more a year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, according to their study published in the Communications, Earth and Environment journal.

The scientists from the universities of Durham, Bristol, Wisconsin-Madison and Massachusetts Amherst synthesized multiple lines of evidence to show that a 1.5 degrees Celsius would result in unmanagable sea level rise and that even if it remained at the current 1.2 degrees Celsius of heating a rise of several meters could be expected in the coming centuries.

With the melting ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica now exceeding thermal expansion of the oceans as the main driver, that level of sea rise would cause extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and make adaptation measures, which have long lead times, more challenging to implement.

Analysis of previous periods when the Earth was in a warming phase, recent audits of ice-sheet mass and numerical modeling indicate that even current temperatures could “trigger rapid ice sheet retreat” that would push to the limit any mitigation from adaptation measures.

Even the current 1.2 degrees Celsius of warming might generate “high” rates of sea level rise — categorized as greater than 0.4 of an inch a year — sufficient to create problems that would be very difficult to adapt to.

A cooler global mean temperature was therefore imperative to maintain ice sheet equilibrium because a rapid collapse of one or more ice sheets would result in a sea level rise of several meters with “catastrophic consequences for humanity.”

“To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesise to be at or below 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial, which is similar to the 1980s when ice when ice sheets were broadly in balance, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a ‘safe limit’ for ice sheets,” said the study.

The scientists said some of the worst impacts could be avoided by cutting carbon emissions to rapidly reduce global mean temperatures to below +1.5 degrees Celsius, which the average surface air temperature reached in 2024 for the first time.

However, the study found that even overshooting temperature thresholds temporarily could result in sea level rises of several meters, referencing another piece of research that found that even under a “net zero” emissions scenario sea level rise in the year 2300 would be 1.6 inches higher for each decade the the temperature stays above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

THOUSANDS of households on Universal Credit will continue getting a huge pay rise in the coming days.

Benefit payment rates rose by 1.7% on April 7, in line with the consumer price index (CPI) level of inflation for September 2024.

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It’s important to note that, although the new rates are now in effect, most people won’t see an increase in their payments until later this month or in June.

This is because those on Universal Credit have to wait a bit longer to receive the uprating because of how the benefit is assessed.

It means that the date you’ll receive the pay boost will depend on when your last assessment period was.

Universal Credit is paid monthly and is based on your circumstances each month.

This is called your “assessment period”, and it starts the day you make your claim.

The new Universal Credit rates will not come into effect until after the first full one-month assessment period, which starts on or after April 7.

Those whose assessment periods started after April 7 saw their benefits rise as early as May 13.

However, those whose assessment periods started before this date could be waiting until June 12 to receive the payment boost.

Here’s how your previous assessment period affects when you’ll get the payment boost:

• March 17 to April 16 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 21
• March 18 to April 17 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 22
• March 19 to April 18 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 23
• March 20 to April 19 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 24
• March 21 to April 20 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 25
• March 22 to April 21 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 26
• March 23 to April 22 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 27
• March 24 to April 23 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 28
• March 25 to April 24 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 29
• March 26 to April 25 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 30
• March 27 to April 26 – increase applied in May, you’ll get it in your payment on May 31
• March 28 to April 27 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 1
• March 29 to April 28 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 2
• March 30 to April 29 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 5
• March 31 to April 30 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 6
• April 1 to April 31 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 7
• April 2 to May 1 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 8
• April 3 to May 2 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 9
• April 4 to May 3 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 10
• April 5 to May 4 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 11
• April 6 to May 5 – increase applied in June, you’ll get it in your payment on June 12

Here’s a full list of the new benefit rates for 2025-26 so you can check how much extra you might get.

Universal Credit

Universal Credit standard allowance (monthly)

• Single, under 25: £316.98 (up from £311.68)
• Single, 25 or over: £400.14 (up from £393.45)
• Joint claimants both under 25: £497.55 (up from £489.23)
• Joint claimants, one or both 25+: £628.10 (up from £617.60)

Extra amounts for children

• First child (born before April 6, 2017): £339 (up from £333.33)
• Child born after April 6, 2017 or subsequent children: £292.81 (up from £287.92)
• Disabled child (lower rate): £158.76 (up from £156.11)
• Disabled child (higher rate): £495.87 (up from £487.58)

Extra for limited capability for work

• Limited capability: £158.76 (up from £156.11)
• Work-related activity: £423.27 (up from £416.19)

Carer’s element

• Caring for a severely disabled person at least 35 hours a week: £201.68 (up from £198.31)

Work allowance increases

• Higher work allowance (no housing): £684 (up from £673)
• Lower work allowance (with housing): £411 (up from £404)

Everything you need to know about Universal Credit

PALM SPRINGS — Along the main thoroughfare of this desert city, just a block from a vibey, adults-only hotel and a gastropub serving boozy brunches, a new apartment building with a butterfly-wing roof inspired by Midcentury Modern design is nearing completion.

The property, called Aloe Palm Canyon, features 71 one-bedroom units with tall windows offering natural light and sweeping views of Mt. San Jacinto, plus a fitness room and laundry facilities. When it opens this summer, serving lower-income seniors over age 55, the complex will become the latest addition to the Coachella Valley’s growing stock of affordable housing.

A decade ago, this desert region known for its winter resorts, lush golf courses and annual music festivals produced just 38 units of affordable housing a year, while the low-wage workers powering the valley’s lavish service industry faced soaring housing costs and food insecurity. Fast-forward to this year, and affordable housing units are planned or under construction in all nine Coachella Valley cities, including the most exclusive, and in many unincorporated areas.

Aloe Palm Canyon, geared toward low-income seniors, will feature affordable one-bedroom units with sweeping views of Mt. San Jacinto and an airy communal room.

At least some of that momentum can be credited to a Palm Desert-based nonprofit organization that in 2018 set an ambitious 10-year goal to reduce rent burden — or the number of people spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs — by nearly a third. Lift to Rise aimed to do this by adding nearly 10,000 units of affordable housing in the Coachella Valley by 2028.

Some seven years into its decade-long push, Lift to Rise appears well on its way to that goal. It counts 9,300 affordable housing units in the pipeline as of April. That figure includes those in the early planning stages, as well as 940 units starting construction soon, 990 under construction and 1,405 affordable housing units completed.

It is notable progress in a state where the dire shortage of low-income housing can seem an intractable problem. Now, some officials and elected leaders say Lift to Rise may offer a path forward that could be replicated in other regions.

The Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, stretches from the San Gorgonio Pass to the north shores of the Salton Sea. Its major employment sectors — leisure and hospitality, retail and agriculture — generally produce the area’s lowest-paid jobs, putting the cost of renting or buying a home out of reach for many.

Coastal areas have a reputation for being unaffordable, but the desert region has a higher share of rent-burdened households than Riverside County as a whole, the state or nation, according to American Community Survey data compiled by Lift to Rise.

Addressing the situation comes with its own complications.

Lift to Rise helped create a loan program to smooth the flow of funding for affordable housing, including the Vista Sunrise II complex in Palm Springs.

Many California housing and climate policies tend to support the development of affordable housing in dense, pedestrian-friendly communities with easy access to public transportation, said Ian Gabriel, Lift to Rise’s director of collective impact. Such adaptations are difficult in the Coachella Valley, where suburban-style neighborhoods, limited public transportation and months of triple-digit heat have lent themselves to a car-centric lifestyle, he said.

And although state policy — and funding priorities — often focus on alleviating chronic homelessness in major urban areas, he said, the Coachella Valley also needs housing for low-wage farmworkers who aren’t homeless but are living in dilapidated, financially untenable conditions.

All of that makes it harder for the region to compete for state affordable housing dollars, he said.

“We’re not saying other folks in coastal areas shouldn’t be getting money,” Gabriel said. “We’re saying we need more equitable distribution and a path forward that isn’t just a one-size-fits-all, because it’s not fitting for our region.”

Lift to Rise has built a network of more than 70 people and organizations — among them residents, county officials, funders and developers — with a shared goal of increasing affordable housing in the region.

One of the group’s early steps was to create an affordable housing portal to track developments in the pipeline and, maybe more important, determine what factors are holding projects back.

In assessing those bottlenecks, Lift to Rise identified a need for stronger advocacy, both at the local level and in the policy sphere. So it has launched an effort, Committees by Cities, to help residents develop leadership skills and advocate for affordable housing at public meetings.

The Vista Sunrise II complex, located on a DAP Health campus, offers affordable housing for low-income people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS.

Modesta Rodriguez is a member of the Indio chapter, attending city council hearings and passing along information to her neighbors. Although she and her family have lived in a development specifically for farmworkers for a decade, she wants to ensure her four children — the oldest of whom graduated from San Diego State University this month — can find housing in the eastern Coachella Valley.

“It’s not as if they are going to begin their careers making a lot of money,” Rodriguez said, seated in the kitchen of her tidy three-bedroom apartment. “For us, these projects are very good, because I know at least they will help my daughter.”

Mike Walsh, assistant director of Riverside County’s Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions, said Lift to Rise and its army of advocates should get credit for helping to change the narrative around affordable housing in the Coachella Valley.

“When affordable housing projects pop up, they have a built-in network to turn folks out and support those projects, where in the rest of the county, there’s not that same sort of ease of turning people out,” Walsh said.

Walsh recalled that a teacher, a farmworker and a social worker — essentially a cross-section of local residents — spoke up at a recent county meeting. “It drowns out NIMBYism,” said Heidi Marshall, director of the county’s housing and workforce solutions department.

Lift to Rise aims to spark wider conversations about the need for affordable housing in the Coachella Valley with billboards along the 10 Freeway.

The organization aims to spark wider conversation about the fight for affordable housing and living wages through eye-catching billboards that the nonprofit buys along the 10 Freeway during spring music festival season in the Coachella Valley. “Born too late to afford a home, and too early to colonize Mars” is among their slogans.

And when an analysis revealed low-income housing developers were having trouble getting predevelopment financing, Lift to Rise set out to create a funding mechanism to help get projects off the ground.

The result is a revolving loan fund known as We Lift: The Coachella Valley’s Housing Catalyst Fund. The $44-million fund, supported by public and philanthropic dollars, is intended to bridge financing gaps and accelerate development.

Solar panels rise above a parking lot at the Aloe Palm Canyon complex in Palm Springs.

The developer behind the Aloe Palm Canyon complex in Palm Springs, the West Hollywood Community Housing Corp., benefited from three loans from the fund totaling more than $11 million. It has already paid back two of those loans.

“I don’t know any other regions in California that are doing this at this level of support,” Anup Nitin Patel, the corporation’s director of real estate development, said during a toasty morning tour of the construction site.

Another Palm Springs project — a partnership between the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition and DAP Health, a local healthcare provider — received a $750,000 predevelopment loan that was repaid at the start of construction.

“It’s going to be something I can sustain, a game-changer for me,” Sean Johnson said of his new home in DAP Health’s Vista Sunrise II development in Palm Springs.

Last June, Sean Johnson moved into that development, which is for low-income people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS. After struggling to find stable housing, he said it’s a relief to pay a monthly rent of $718 for a studio apartment.

“It’s going to be something I can sustain, a game-changer for me,” he said.

Lift to Rise is seeking a $20-million allocation in the next state budget to scale up its work. As part of that request, it is asking for a one-time $10-million investment into the Catalyst Fund to expand lending capacity across Riverside County.

Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) and Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) submitted a budget request on the organization’s behalf. Padilla said it’s a worthy expenditure, especially as California faces a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.

In lean budget situations, Padilla said, the state should focus its investments on programs that are having meaningful impact and have the data to prove it.

“In tough budget times, you have to be very strategic,” he said. “And this is a good example of [an effort] that’s proven some pretty impressive results.”

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.