International
Another Mexican journalist, Juan Lopez, 62, killed after writing about drug seizure
• Body found with ‘blow to the head’
Another Mexican journalist has been killed after he suffered a blow to the head while investigating a drug seizure and the recovery of stolen goods.
Juan Arjon Lopez, 62, is the latest of a string of journalist killings in the country, with at least 14 murdered so far this year.
The independent reporter was found in the northern border state of Sonora a week after going missing.
The body was identified by his tattoos in the town where he disappeared, San Luis Rio Colorado, showing ‘signs of violence’.
An autopsy showed he died from ‘head trauma due to a blunt blow’, the state Public Ministry said in a statement.
San Luis is across the border from Yuma, Arizona, and has long been known for medical and dentistry offices catering to Americans.
But the area has been hit by drug cartel violence in recent years.
In March, volunteer searchers found 11 bodies in clandestine burial pits in a stretch of desert near a garbage dump in San Luis.
‘He had a webpage (where) he covered security topics, he was known and recognized in San Luis,’ Balbina Flores of Reporters Without Borders told Reuters.
His final news reports on his Facebook page ‘What are you afraid of’ were about a drug seizure and the recovery of several stolen goods.
The state’s chief prosecutor, Claudia Contreras, said investigators would seek to determine if the killing was related to Lopez’s work as a journalist.
Human rights organization Article 19, which tracks murders of journalists, is looking into the case, a press representative said.
San Luis is across the border from Yuma, Arizona, and has long been known for medical and dentistry offices catering to Americans (pictured: Crime scene)
Mexico is the deadliest country in the world for journalists outside of warzones, according to Article 19, which has counted at least 34 media workers killed in relation to work since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018.
Earlier this month, journalist Ernesto Mendez was killed in the central state of Guanajuato in a store he owned.
While organized crime is often involved in journalist killings, small town officials or politicians with political or criminal motivations are often suspects as well. Journalists running small news outlets in Mexico’s interior are easy targets.
In May, Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, director of the online news site El Veraz, and Sheila Garcia, a reporter for the site, were murdered outside a convenience store in the municipality of Cosoleacaque.
The murders of Falconi and Garcia came just four days after journalist Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos was found dead, his battered body wrapped in black plastic, by a dirt road in the northern state of Sinaloa, the stronghold of notorious narco kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s cartel.
Prosecutors said Ramos, who was found by security forces near a junkyard in the state capital of Culiacan in Sinaloa, had died from multiple blows to the head.
Ramos had previously stated that he felt in ‘imminent danger’ for his reporting, even though he largely avoided covering the drug cartels for fear of retribution, sticking mostly to political reporting.
In early February, Heber López , director of the online news site Noticias Web, was shot dead in the southern state of Oaxaca. Reporter José Luis Gamboa was killed in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz on January 10
Before them, in March, the Monitor Michoacán director and reporter Armando Linares was shot dead by gunmen at his home in Zitacuaro, a city in the western state of Michoacán.
Linares’ murder came six weeks after his colleague Roberto Toledo, a camera operator and video editor at Monitor Michoacán, was shot to death as he prepared for an interview in Zitacuaro on January 31.
On March 4, gunmen killed Juan Carlos Muñiz, who covered crime for the online news site Testigo Minero in the state of Zacatecas.
Jorge Camero, the director of an online news site who was until recently a municipal worker in the northern state of Sonora, was murdered in late February.
In early February, Heber López, director of the online news site Noticias Web, was shot dead in the southern state of Oaxaca.
Reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was found shot dead inside her car in Tijuana on January 23, less than a week after crime photographer Margarito Martínez was gunned down outside his Tijuana home on January 17.
José Luis Gamboa was killed in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz on January 10.
(Daily Mail)
There are grave fears for the passengers of a private plane that suddenly vanished mid-flight, sparking a major search off the coast of the US.
US authorities say the Gulfstream G100 lost contact with air traffic control about 2am local time on Saturday (4pm Saturday AET) while flying from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda to Boston Logan International Airport.
The US Coast Guard said the Federal Aviation Administration alerted it after contact was lost with the aircraft – which plummeted from 23,500 feet to 11,000 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.
“We are praying for a safe outcome,” a spokesperson for Latitude Air Ambulance, which operates the missing plane, told City News.
A search is now under way off Nantucket in the air and on water as crews work to locate the missing jet, the Coast Guard said. Data from FlightRadar24 showed a number of aircraft searching south of the island.
Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US.
The plane was en route from Bermuda to Boston when it vanished.
“Air & surface crews have launched in search of the aircraft. Updates will be provided here as info becomes available,” the Coast Guard Northeast District said on X.
The plane was carrying out a medical evacuation in Bermuda – a British overseas territory in the north Atlantic Ocean, according to Clarence Togeretz, Director of Flight Operations at Latitude Air Ambulance.
“We always get rather concerned when our crew doesn’t report to us in a timely manner,” he told NBC News.
“But I will say that again, optimistically and positively, that doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.”
Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.
In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.
In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.
Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.
Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.
Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.
In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.
No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.
The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.
Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.
But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.
Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.
On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)
The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.
The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.
At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.
The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.
The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.
An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.
Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.
Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.
A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.
The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.
The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.
The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”
The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.
– Payments –
Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.
Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.
However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.
In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.
Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.
The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.
An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”
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