Breaking news: The world’s most valuable company reported that data centre revenue, the primary driver of its growth, grew 117% year-on-year. https://ft.trib.al/0tup6ll
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argued that artificial intelligence needs significant limits or else the harm to humans will outweigh any potential good. https://cnn.it/3UB5OVC
As part of a Russia-linked campaign ahead of important regional elections in Germany, fake posts claim that politicians and business leaders want to divide the country once again. DW Fact check reveals what’s behind it.
As part of a Russia-linked campaign ahead of important regional elections in Germany, fake posts claim that politicians and business leaders want to divide the country once again. DW Fact check reveals what’s behind it.
What happens when we stop talking to each other? New research suggests we’re speaking hundreds of words less every day than we were just a few years ago. The decline may have profound consequences for how we form relationships and build communities. DW host Jared Reed speaks with author Dr Valeria Pfeifer, whose research shows we’re speaking around 338 fewer words per person per day, every year. Evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar explains why conversation may be about much more than exchanging information – it’s one of the ways humans create community. And as face-to-face interaction gives way to texting, social media and video calls, they explore what we might lose when conversation becomes less common. Could fewer everyday conversations mean weaker relationships, greater loneliness and more divided communities? And if talking to other people is a skill, what happens when we stop practicing it? Link to the research: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1…#dwcurrentaffairs Chapters: 00:00 What happens when a society stops talking? 01:20 We’re rapidly losing spoken words 02:32 Aren’t we just being more efficient? 03:57 The evolutionary purpose of language 05:26 Is digital communication an adequate substitute? 07:00 Conversation in person is a skill 08:55 Possible impacts at a time of increased loneliness 10:19 Quality friendships help our wellbeing 10:59 Conclusion
Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency uncovered a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory in an Oyo State forest in June 2026. Authorities arrested one Mexican national and four Nigerians. NIGERIA NATIONAL DRUG LAW ENFORCMENT AGENCY
Mexican cartels, including Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, are expanding meth production in Africa by placing their own cooks in industrial-scale labs in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and related networks in Mozambique.
Major seizures in 2024–2026—including Nigeria’s largest meth-related bust and repeated finds in South Africa—show a shift from using the continent mainly as a transit zone toward local production under a franchise-style model.
Investigators link the expansion to porous borders,remote ungoverned areas, and alleged protection-for-financing arrangements with local armed or criminal groups, raising public-health and security risks across the region.
Methamphetamine cooks supplied by Mexican drug cartels have been discovered working at several drug laboratories in Africa over the past two years.
Several arrests, including Nigeria’s largest-ever meth bust in May, have occurred as Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels expand their operations under a franchise-style business model. The cartels are accused of funding continental terrorists, armed groups and criminal groups that help them produce and move the drugs.
“The relationship between cartels and drug use and terrorism is very, very simple,” Nigerian organized crime expert Faisal Sanusi Ibrahim told news service Deutsche Welle (DW). “The terrorists give the cartels protection, while the cartels give the terrorists financing. We have porous borders. We have a large part of forests ungoverned. We also have a situation where you have cheap labor … and also the trans-Atlantic route for the shipping.”
Nigerian authorities seized precursor chemicals and drugs worth $363 million when they raided a clandestine, industrial-scale lab in a heavily forested area in Ogun State in mid-May.
“The volume of what was recovered here, that’s enough to cause a lot of issues — public health issues, security challenges, not only in … Nigeria, but in the sub-region,” Femi Babafemi, director of media and advocacy for Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), told DW.
In June, the NDLEA uncovered another meth lab in a forested area of Oyo State and arrested five suspects, including one Mexican national. NDLEA Chairman Mohamed Buba Marwa described the facility as “a sophisticated, factory-scale methamphetamine production center run by a highly organized transnational criminal syndicate.”
Mexican meth cooks have operated in Nigeria since 2016, but the recent local arrests and significant meth busts in Kenya and South Africa — areas that historically have been used as transit hubs for drugs — show that the cartels are increasingly sending their own chemists to produce meth.
According to the InSight Crime think tank, Mexico’s meth industry has grown more sophisticated over the past two decades, and the country produces some of the purest meth globally.This makes Mexican meth producers attractive partners for criminal networks, according to Jason Eligh, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).
“It is likely that there has been an initial contact [between Mexican and Africa-based criminal actors] where production has significantly changed because the Mexican model of production is superior to the model that has existed in the past in Africa,” Eligh told InSight Crime.
In recent years, Mexican cartels have expanded their meth operations into South Africa, which is considered one of the world’s largest consumer markets for crystal meth. This was underscored in July 2024 when two Mexican nationals were arrested at an industrial-scale meth lab on a farm in Groblersdal, a small town in Limpopo Province. Authorities discovered large quantities of precursor chemicals with an estimated street value of 2 billion rand ($122 million).
This was one of South Africa’s largest-ever drug busts, and it preceded three more major meth busts involving Mexican nationals over the next 18 months.
“All of those labs are located in quite remote areas; not many people get in there, not a lot of prying eyes,” Willem Els, a counterterrorism expert at the Institute for Security Studies, told ADF. “In these areas they compromise the [property] owners. We saw they arrested some of these Mexicans at the Botswana border and got information that a Nigerian national in Botswana is arranging to bring the Mexican cooks from the Sinaloa and other cartels that are diversifying, then they deploy them at these clandestine labs. They are typically there for one month to four months, then they keep on rotating them.”
The Sinaloa cartel has tried to expand its South African operations to neighboring countries. In Mozambique, authorities arrested three people, including two Mexican nationals, in April 2026 at Maputo International Airport. Authorities said the cartel wanted to establish itself in Maputo province.
Kenya’s growing role in Mexican meth production was highlighted in September 2024 when authorities arrested six people, including a CGNJ member, in the countryside near Namanga, a community on the border with Tanzania. Although remote, the Namanga lab sat along traditional trafficking routes and had easy access to seaports and airports in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Eligh told ADF last year.
About Africa Defense Forum
The Africa Defense Forum (ADF) magazine is a security affairs journal that focuses on all issues affecting peace, stability, and good governance in Africa. ADF is published by the U.S. Africa Command.
In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy. She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500.One fails, nobody gets paid.The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%. She handed out the checks herself.
In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.
When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months. You’ve probably heard that part.
Here’s the part you haven’t: The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.
She built her county an entire hospital. She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women’s center in it.
In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees. Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.
In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn’t be released back into the wild, no press release. And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it. She didn’t owe North Carolina anything, but she helped anyway.
She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn’t read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did. Rest in Peace, Dolly
Iranian President Pezeshkian and Russian President Putin are expected to meet next week in Kyrgyzstan, after the two countries signed a $25 billion deal to build new nuclear plants.
Russia’s continued trade with Iran is a clear rejection of Trump’s Economic D-Day against Tehran, despite US warnings of tough measures against countries trading with Iran.
In this video, John Mearsheimer examines the latest developments involving Iran and the United States and explores what they could mean for the strategic balance in the Middle East. The discussion focuses on Iran’s military and geopolitical position, U.S. foreign policy, regional security, and the difficult choices facing American policymakers. Mearsheimer provides his perspective on how recent developments could influence Washington’s strategy and the calculations of Iran, Israel, and other regional powers. The analysis also considers the risks of escalation, strategic miscalculation, shifting alliances, and prolonged confrontation. Rather than presenting dramatic claims as established facts, this video examines the broader geopolitical forces and possible scenarios shaping the current situation. If you follow John Mearsheimer, Iran, U.S. foreign policy, military affairs, Israel, and Middle East geopolitics, this discussion offers valuable context and analysis. Watch until the end for Mearsheimer’s assessment of what could happen next and what these developments could mean for America, Iran, Israel, regional stability, and the wider international security environment.
In this clip, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges argues that the growing tensions between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu reveal the limits of American influence over Israel. He explains how the political power of the Israel lobby and continued US military support constrains Washington as the economic and military costs of the conflict with Iran mount. Hedges also argues that the war has strengthened hardliners in Iran, depleted US military resources and benefited weapons manufacturers and war profiteers, while leaving ordinary people to bear the economic consequences.
canisgallicus 