GUADALAJARA, Mexico: When Rubi Cruz recognized her husband’s belongings among personal items found at a suspected Mexican drug cartel training camp, she feared the worst – that he had become a victim of forced recruitment.
The discovery of bones, shoes and clothing at a ranch in the western state of Jalisco has shone a spotlight on the ruthless tactics of violent criminal groups in a country where more than 120,000 people are missing.
Cruz’s husband Fermin Hernandez, then 33, was kidnapped in 2021 from his home in the town of Tala near the Izaguirre ranch by gunmen who shot him in the leg.
She spotted what she believes are his personal items, including a wallet and T-shirt, in images released by a civil society group that went to look for the remains of missing persons at the site last month.
“I felt a lot of pain, a lot of sadness,” the 31-year-old restaurant worker told AFP, her husband’s image and the words “your wife is looking for you” printed on her long-sleeved T-shirt.
According to the government, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the drug trafficking groups designated terrorist organizations by US President Donald Trump, lured recruits with fake job adverts.
They were given firearms and other training at the Izaguirre ranch, Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said last month, based on the testimony of an alleged cartel recruiter who was arrested.
“They even took the lives of people who resisted the training or tried to escape,” he said.
Disappearances have soared in Mexico since the government declared war on drug trafficking groups in 2006.
Around 480,000 people have been murdered in a spiral of violence since then.
Veronica Cruz – of no relation to Rubi Cruz – fears her son Robert Reyes is also a victim of forced recruitment by a drug cartel.
The teenager disappeared a year ago after traveling to Jalisco, lured by an offer of work painting houses.
Robert’s mother, 42, believes he was also at the Izaguirre ranch because he once sent a message from the area.
She had tried to keep him away from the neighborhood’s gangs and drugs, but said she never imagined her son would be forced to join a cartel.
At the age of 16, the high school dropout traveled from his home in a suburb near Mexico City to Jalisco a year ago to earn money to buy a motorcycle, disobeying his mother.
Weeks later, he called his sister, crying.
“I’m a hitman. My friend was just killed... If I don’t get out of here, I’ll watch over you from heaven,” he said, according to his mother.
Later, a man who said he was Robert’s friend wrote to his sister via social media to tell her that he had died in a shootout.
“I thought hitmen wanted to do that work. I never thought cartels were taking people away,” his mother said.
The government says it has taken down dozens of social media pages recruiting for criminal groups.
But on video-sharing app TikTok, jobs are still offered in Jalisco with “meals and lodging,” featuring nicknames for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Jalisco state accounts for 12 percent of the roughly 127,000 missing people in Mexico, mainly young men.
Many disappearances are linked to forced recruitment because gangs need armies to control their territory and to generate illicit income, according to Jorge Ramirez, a researcher at the University of Guadalajara.
The victims are often poor young people without access to education, he said.
In 2024, around 30 young people were reported to have disappeared after attending what they believed would be job interviews in the Jalisco state capital Guadalajara.
Despite her fears, Rubi Cruz still hopes to find her husband alive.
Veronica Cruz’s optimism has waned, but she still wants answers.
“Maybe I’m not looking for justice, but I want to know where my son is – whatever it takes,” she said.
Cartel recruitment at heart of Mexico’s missing persons crisis
https://arab.news/px3de
Cartel recruitment at heart of Mexico’s missing persons crisis
- Jalisco New Generation Cartel lures recruits with fake job adverts, according to the government
- Disappearances have soared in Mexico since the government declared war on drug trafficking
Conflict and climate drive record global hunger in 2024, UN says
That marked a 5% increase on 2023 levels, with 22.6% of populations in worst-hit regions experiencing crisis-level hunger or worse.
"The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises paints a staggering picture," said Rein Paulsen, Director of Emergencies and Resilience at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"Conflict, weather extremes and economic shocks are the main drivers, and they often overlap," he added.
Looking ahead, the U.N. warned of worsening conditions this year, citing the steepest projected drop in humanitarian food funding since the report's inception -- put at anywhere between 10% to more than 45%.
U.S. President Donald Trump has led the way, largely shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides aid to the world's needy, cancelling more than 80% of its humanitarian programs.
"Millions of hungry people have lost, or will soon lose, the critical lifeline we provide," warned Cindy McCain, the head of the Rome-based World Food Programme.
Conflict was the leading cause of hunger, impacting nearly 140 million people across 20 countries in 2024, including areas facing "catastrophic" levels of food insecurity in Gaza, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. Sudan has confirmed famine conditions.
Economic shocks, such as inflation and currency devaluation, helped push 59.4 million people into food crises in 15 countries -- nearly double the levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic -- including Syria and Yemen.
Extreme weather, particularly El Nino-induced droughts and floods, shunted 18 countries into crisis, affecting more than 96 million people, especially in Southern Africa, Southern Asia, and the Horn of Africa.
The number of people facing famine-like conditions more than doubled to 1.9 million -- the highest since monitoring for the global report began in 2016.
Malnutrition among children reached alarming levels, the report said. Nearly 38 million children under five were acutely malnourished across 26 nutrition crises, including in Sudan, Yemen, Mali and Gaza.
Forced displacement also exacerbated hunger. Nearly 95 million forcibly displaced people, including refugees and internally displaced persons, lived in countries facing food crises, such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia.
Despite the grim overall trend, 2024 saw some progress. In 15 countries, including Ukraine, Kenya and Guatemala, food insecurity eased due to humanitarian aid, improved harvests, easing inflation and a decline in conflict.
To break the cycle of hunger, the report called for investment in local food systems. "Evidence shows that supporting local agriculture can help the most people, with dignity, at lower cost," Paulsen said.
Health Rounds: Novel approach to HIV vaccine shows early promise
The first human clinical trials testing a new strategy to protect against HIV infections have yielded promising early results, according to two separate reports published on Thursday in Science.
The trials tested “germline targeting” HIV vaccines, which aim to activate immune system B cells in their naive, or germline, state, inducing them to become specialized cells that produce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs).
By delivering a variety of HIV immunogens – typically, viral protein fragments - germline vaccines train the B cells to produce antibodies that can recognize and block a broad range of different strains of HIV from infecting healthy cells.
Germline targeting requires an initial dose to prime the correct B cells, and subsequent doses to guide their maturation until they can produce effective bnAbs, the researchers reported.
"Across the participants we saw an immune response that indicates that we're on the right track,” Rogier Sanders of Amsterdam UMC, senior investigator on one of the trials, said in a statement.
“We saw that we can target the cells that we need to target with atomic precision. The next step is to further stimulate these cells to secrete broadly neutralizing antibodies," Sanders said.
In a separate paper, a different team of researchers reported on two early trials that used mRNA-encoded nanoparticles produced by Moderna to successfully prime the germline B cells, although a small proportion of patients had skin reactions to the vaccines.
The mRNA technology, similar to that used in Moderna's COVID-19 shots, would allow for faster vaccine development, the study authors said.
One of the trials was conducted in the United States and the other in Rwanda and South Africa. The majority of HIV patients live in Africa, but germline targeting has not previously been attempted there.
The researchers said the mRNA approach appeared to work with both North American and African populations, opening the door to further testing of germline-targeting vaccines for "African populations in most need of an HIV vaccine.”
EASING THERAPIES FOR SOME PROSTATE, CERVIX CANCERS
Two new studies suggest that patients with certain cancers might do just as well with a shorter course of radiation or a less extensive surgery as with standard treatments.
In JAMA Oncology, researchers reported that in men who require radiation after undergoing the most extensive type of surgery for prostate cancer, a form of high-dose radiation delivered in just five sessions known as stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) appears to be as safe as conventional treatment delivered daily for up to seven weeks.
SBRT is a well-established treatment for prostate cancer, but its use after a radical prostatectomy has been limited due to concerns about the shifting position of the prostate bed and nearby healthy tissues.
The researchers tracked 100 men treated with SBRT in the single-arm study. Two years after the treatment, outcomes and side effects were similar to what the researchers had seen in the past from patients who received the longer-course treatments.
If randomized studies and longer follow-up confirm the results, “this approach could remove a major barrier to post-surgery radiation therapy,” study leader Dr. Amar Kishan of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA said in a statement.
In JAMA Network Open, a separate team of researchers reported that women with low-risk early-stage cancer of the cervix do as well after simple hysterectomy as after modified radical hysterectomy or radical hysterectomy.
Among 2,636 carefully selected patients treated for stage IA2 or IB1 cervical carcinoma at accredited cancer hospitals, there was no difference in survival rates at 3 years, 5 years, 7 years or 10, or in postoperative outcomes after the three types of surgery.
Trump says Iran has a proposal from the US on its rapidly advancing nuclear program
ABU DHABI: U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran has an American proposal over its rapidly advancing nuclear program as negotiations between the two countries go on.
Trump's remarks represent the first time he's acknowledged an American proposal is with Tehran after multiple rounds of negotiations between U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Negotiations have gotten into the “expert” level — meaning the two sides are trying to see if they can reach any agreement on the details of any possible deal. But one major sticking point remains Iran's enrichment of uranium, which Tehran insists it must be allowed to do and the Trump administration increasingly insists the Islamic Republic must give up.
Trump discusses proposal on Air Force One
Trump made the comment aboard Air Force One as he ended his trip to the United Arab Emirates, the last stop on his three-nation tour of the Middle East that also included Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
At nearly every event he attended in the region, he insisted that Iran could not be allowed to obtain a nuclear bomb — something American intelligence agencies assess Tehran is not actively pursuing though its program is on the cusp of being able to weaponize.
A reporter asked Trump: “On Iran, has the U.S. given them a formal proposal? Has Steve Witkoff handed that over?”
“They have a proposal,” Trump responded. “But most importantly, they know they have to move quickly, or something bad is going to happen.”
Trump did not elaborate on the substance of the proposal and Iran did not immediately acknowledge having it. On Thursday, Araghchi spoke to journalists at the Tehran International Book Fair and said that Iran did not have any proposal from the Americans yet.
Araghchi also criticized what he called conflicting and inconsistent statements from the Trump administration, describing them as either a sign of disarray in Washington or a calculated negotiation strategy. Witkoff at one point suggested that Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67%, then later began saying that all Iranian enrichment must stop.
“We are hearing many contradictory statements from the United States — from Washington, from the president, and from the new administration,” Araghchi said. “Sometimes we hear two or three different positions in a single day.”
Talks have been held in Oman and Rome
Iranian and American officials have been in Oman and Rome for the negotiations, always mediated by Oman's Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, a trusted interlocutor between the two nations. The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the U.S. has imposed on the Islamic Republic, closing in on half a century of enmity.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels. Meanwhile, Israel has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own if it feels threatened, further complicating tensions in the Mideast already spiked by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Meeting diplomats, pope highlights inequality, injustice
VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV recalled his immigrant roots as he spoke out Friday against global inequality and injustice, including "unworthy" working conditions, in a speech to diplomats accredited to the Vatican.
The 69-year-old, who became the first US head of the Catholic Church on May 8, also highlighted climate change, migration and artificial intelligence as some of the world's key challenges.
"In this time of epochal change, the Holy See cannot fail to make its voice heard in the face of the many imbalances and injustices that lead, not least, to unworthy working conditions and increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden societies," the pontiff said.
"Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities -- between opulence and destitution -- that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies."
The son of a father of French and Italian descent and a mother with Spanish origins, the Chicago-born pontiff recalled how "my own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate".
"All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God."
The pope, who spent around two decades as a missionary in Peru, added that "my own life experience, which has spanned North America, South America and Europe, has been marked by this aspiration to transcend borders in order to encounter different peoples and cultures".
He highlighted as "challenges of our time" issues including "migration, the ethical use of artificial intelligence and the protection of our beloved planet Earth".
Leo has made several calls for peace in his first week as pontiff, echoing his late predecessor, Pope Francis.
Within this context, he said there was "a need to give new life to multilateral diplomacy and to those international institutions conceived and designed primarily to remedy eventual disputes within the international community".
Citing traditional Catholic values, he emphasised the importance of "investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman".
He also encouraged "respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike".
Although the audience was private, the audio of Leo's speech was relayed to journalists in the Vatican press office, with an official transcript provided.
Iran, European powers to hold nuclear talks in Turkiye
TEHRAN: Iran is set to hold talks with Britain, France and Germany in Turkiye on Friday, after US President Donald Trump said a nuclear deal with Tehran was "getting close".
The Istanbul meeting follows Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's warning of "irreversible" consequences if the European powers move to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran that were lifted under a 2015 deal.
The so-called E3 were parties to that agreement along with China, Russia and the United States.
But Trump effectively torpedoed the deal during his first term in 2018, by unilaterally abandoning it and reimposing sanctions on Iran's banking sector and oil exports.
A year later, Iran responded by rolling back its own commitments under the deal, which provided relief from sanctions in return for UN-monitored restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities.
The three European powers have been weighing whether to trigger the 2015 deal's "snapback" mechanism, which would reinstate UN sanctions in response to Iranian non-compliance -- an option that expires in October.
Such a stance "risks provoking a global nuclear proliferation crisis that would primarily affect Europeans themselves, Iran's top diplomat warned.
However, writing in the French weekly Le Point, he also noted that Tehran was "ready to turn the page" in its relations with Europe.
Friday's meeting with the European powers comes less than a week after a fourth round of Iran-US nuclear talks which Tehran called "difficult but useful", and after which a US official said Washington was "encouraged".
Araghchi said Friday's talks will be at deputy foreign ministers level.
Ahead of the talks, China, which held recent talks with Iran on its nuclear programme, said it remained "committed to promoting a political and diplomatic settlement of the Iran issue."
It also "valued Iran's commitment to not develop nuclear weapons, respected Iran's peaceful use of nuclear energy and opposed all illegal unilateral sanctions," according to Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.
Speaking on a visit to Qatar Thursday, Trump said the United States was "getting close" to a deal with Iran that would avert military action.
"We're not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran," he said.
The Oman-mediated Iran-US talks were the highest-level contact between the two foes since Washington abandoned the nuclear accord in 2018.
Since returning to office, Trump has revived his "maximum pressure" policy on Tehran, backing nuclear diplomacy but warning of military action if it fails.
On Thursday, US news website Axios reported that the Trump administration had given Iran a "written proposal" for a deal during the fourth round of talks on Sunday.
Araghchi denied the report, saying "we have not been given anything".
He added however that "we are ready to build trust and transparency about our nuclear programme in response to the lifting of sanctions."
Trump has said he presented Iran's leadership with an "olive branch", adding that it was an offer that would not last for ever.
He further threatened to impose "massive maximum pressure", including driving Iranian oil exports to zero if talks failed.
Iran currently enriches uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67 percent limit set in the 2015 deal but below the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead.
Tehran insists its right to continue enriching uranium for peaceful purposes is "non-negotiable" but says it would be open to temporary restrictions on how much uranium it enriches and to what level.
On Wednesday, Iran's atomic energy agency chief Mohammad Eslami reiterated that Tehran "does not seek nuclear militarisation", adding that enrichment was under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog.
"The dismantling of enrichment is not accepted by Iran," he stressed.
