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‘I put all of my trust in social media’

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Duncan Edmonstone

Banned, unbanned – then banned again

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United States President Donald Trump has marked the 90th anniversary of Social Security with a defence of his administration’s policies toward the programme — and attacks on his Democratic rivals.

On Thursday, Trump signed a presidential proclamation in the Oval Office, wherein he acknowledged the “monumental” importance of the social safety-net programme.

“I recommit to always defending Social Security,” the proclamation reads.

“To this day, Social Security is rooted in a simple promise: those who gave their careers to building our Nation will always have the support, stability, and relief they deserve.”

But Trump’s second term as president has been dogged by accusations that he has undermined programmes like Social Security in the pursuit of other agenda items, including his restructuring of the federal government.

What is Social Security?

Social Security in the US draws on payroll taxes to fund monthly payments to the elderly, the spouses of deceased workers, and the disabled. For many recipients, the payouts are a primary source of income during retirement.

The programme is considered widely popular: In 2024, the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Americans believe Social Security should not be cut in any way.

Additionally, four out of 10 people surveyed sided with the view that Social Security should be expanded to include more people and more benefits.

But the programme faces significant hurdles to its long-term feasibility.

Last year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) published a report that found the costs for old-age, disability and survivors’ insurance outstripped the programmes’ income.

It noted that the trust funds fuelling those programmes “are projected to become depleted during 2033” if measures are not taken to reverse the trend.

At Thursday’s Oval Office appearance, Trump sought to soothe those concerns, while taking a swipe at the Democratic Party.

“ You keep hearing stories that in six years, seven years, Social Security will be gone,” Trump said.

“And it will be if the Democrats ever get involved because they don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s going to be around a long time with us.”

He added that Social Security was “going to be destroyed” under his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden, a frequent target for his attacks.

Criticism of Trump’s track record

But Trump himself has faced criticism for weakening Social Security since returning to the White House for a second term in January.

Early on, Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk laid out plans to slash the federal workforce and reduce spending, including by targeting the Social Security Administration (SSA).

In February, the Social Security Administration said it would “reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure”, echoing Trump and Musk’s rhetoric.

The projected layoffs and incentives for early retirement were designed to cut Social Security’s staff from 57,000 to 50,000, a 12.3-percent decrease.

Under Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has also announced plans to pare back Social Security’s phone services, though it has since backtracked in the face of public outcry.

In addition, Musk and Trump have attacked Social Security’s reputation, with the former adviser telling podcast host Joe Rogan, “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

The two men even claimed Social Security is paying benefits to millions of long-dead individuals, though critics point out that those claims do not appear to be true.

The COBOL programming system used by the Social Security Administration marks incomplete entries with birthdates set 150 years back, according to the news magazine Wired. Those entries, however, generally do not receive benefits.

The Office of the Inspector General overseeing the Social Security Administration has repeatedly looked into these older entries. It confirmed that these entries are not active.

“We acknowledge that almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments,” a report from 2023 said.

It also indicated that the Social Security Administration would have to pay between $5.5m and $9.7m to update its programming, though the changes would yield “limited benefits” in the fight against fraud.

Still, Trump doubled down on the claim that dead people were receiving benefits on Thursday.

“We had 12.4 million names where they were over 120 years old,” Trump said. “There were nearly 135,000 people listed who were over 160 years old and, in some cases, getting payments. So somebody’s getting those payments.”

Questions after ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

Critics have also questioned whether Trump’s push to cut taxes will have long-term effects that erode Social Security.

In July, Trump’s signature piece of legislation, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), cemented his 2017 tax cuts. It also increased the tax deductions for earners who rely on tips or Social Security benefits.

But groups like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan think tank, estimate that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shorten the timeline for Social Security’s insolvency.

“The law dictates that when the trust funds deplete their reserves, payments are limited to incoming revenues,” the committee said in late July.

“For the Social Security retirement program, we estimate that means a 24 percent benefit cut in late 2032, after the enactment of OBBBA.”

Still, Trump has repeatedly promised to defend Social Security from any benefit cuts. He reiterated that pledge in Thursday’s appearance.

“American seniors, every single day, we’re going to fight for them. We’re going to make them richer, better, stronger in so many different ways,” Trump said.

“But Social Security is pretty much the one that we think about, and we love it, and we love what’s happening with it, and it’s going to be good for 90 years and beyond.”

More than 69.9 million Americans received Social Security benefits as of July.

Talks for an undisclosed stake come days after President Donald Trump called for Intel’s CEO to resign.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is in talks with Intel to have the US government potentially take a stake in the chipmaker.

Intel’s shares surged more than 7 percent in regular trading and then another 2.6 percent after the bell on Thursday, following Bloomberg News’ initial report of the potential deal, which cited people familiar with the plan.

It is unclear what size stake the federal government will take, but Bloomberg reports that the deal will help “shore up” a planned factory in Ohio that has been delayed.

The plan stems from a meeting this week between Trump and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the report said.

Tan also met Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“The meeting was a very interesting one,” Trump said on Truth Social on Monday, adding that his cabinet members and Tan are going to spend time together and bring suggestions to him during the next week.

The meeting came after Trump publicly demanded the resignation of Tan over his past investments in Chinese tech companies, some linked to the Chinese military.

Intel declined to comment on the report but said it was deeply committed to supporting Trump’s efforts to strengthen US technology and manufacturing leadership.

“Discussion about hypothetical deals should be regarded as speculation unless officially announced by the administration,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

The details of the stake and price are still being discussed, according to the report.

Struggling business

Any agreement and potential cash infusion will help the years-long efforts to turn around the company’s fortunes. Once the undisputed leader in chip manufacturing, Intel has lost its position in recent years.

The chipmaker’s stock market value has plummeted to $104bn from $288bn in 2020.

Intel’s profit margins – once the envy of the industry – are also at about half their historical highs.

Tan has been tasked to undo years of missteps that left Intel struggling to make inroads in the booming AI chip industry dominated by Nvidia, while investment-heavy contract manufacturing ambitions led to heavy losses.

Any agreement would likely help Intel build out its planned chip complex in Ohio, Bloomberg reported.

Intel’s planned $28bn chip fabrication plants in Ohio have been delayed, with the first unit now slated for completion in 2030 and operations to begin between 2030 and 2031, pushing the timeline back by at least five years.

Taking a stake in Intel would mark the latest move by Trump, a Republican, to deepen the government’s involvement in the US chip industry, seen as a vital security interest to the country.

Earlier this week, Trump made a deal with Nvidia to pay the US government a cut of its sales in exchange for resuming exports of banned AI chips to China.

Protests started last year after deadly collapse of rail station roof, with President Vucic accused of corruption.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Serbia, smashing windows of the governing party’s headquarters in the northern city of Novi Sad, where the country’s antigovernment revolt started more than nine months ago.

The protesters came out in force for a third night on Thursday, following major clashes earlier in the week that saw dozens detained or injured, demanding that President Aleksandar Vucic call an early election.

In Novi Sad, where a train station canopy collapsed last year, killing 16 people and creating public anger over alleged corruption in infrastructure projects, protesters attacked the offices of the governing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), carrying away furniture and documents, and splashing paint on the entrance.

“He is finished,” they shouted, with reference to the president as they demolished the offices. The police and Vucic’s supporters, who have guarded the office in Serbia’s second-largest city for months, were nowhere to be seen.

In Belgrade, the Serbian capital, hundreds of protesters and SNS supporters threw flares and firecrackers at each other on one of the city’s main boulevards. Police fired tear gas at least two locations to disperse the protesters and keep the opposing camps apart.

Similar protests were held in towns across the country.

Vucic told pro-government Informer television that “the state will win” as he announced a crackdown on antigovernment protesters, accusing them of inciting violence and of being “enemies of their own country”.

“I think it is clear they did not want peace and Gandhian protests. There will be more arrests,” he said during the broadcast.

He reiterated earlier claims that the protests have been organised from abroad, offering no evidence.

The previous night, there were gatherings at some 90 locations in the country, according to Interior Minister Ivica Dacic the following day.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said that 47 people were arrested in Wednesday’s clashes, with about 80 civilians and 27 police officers left injured.

The EU’s Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said on X that the reports of violence were “deeply concerning”.

“Advancing on the EU path requires citizens can express their views freely and journalists can report without intimidation or attacks,” Kos said on X.

The Serbian president denies allegations of allowing organised crime and corruption to flourish in the country, which is a candidate for European Union membership.

A total of 22,000 cases registered in province in 2023; in first five months of 2024, figure had already reached 17,000.

Healthcare providers in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) treated more than 17,000 victims of sexual violence over just five months last year, according to a United Nations report.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, released on Thursday, said the cases were registered in the province of North Kivu between January and May last year, as fighting between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels intensified.

“Many survivors sought care after violent sexual attacks, including penetration with objects, perpetrated by multiple perpetrators,” said the report, which charted crimes like rape, gang rape and sexual slavery.

The conflict, which has killed thousands this year alone and displaced millions, is still ongoing despite a Qatar-mediated agreement between DRC and M23 last month that was supposed to pave the way to a ceasefire, running parallel to United States efforts to broker peace between Kinshasa and Kigali.

Last year’s figure marked a continued surge in sexual violence as the Rwanda-backed M23 rampaged through the east, with a total of 22,000 cases registered throughout 2023. That figure was more than double the previous year’s tally.

In 2023, the spike in violence occurred as the conflict spilled over from North Kivu into South Kivu, forcing UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to withdraw from the latter.

The report said that MONUSCO’s operations narrowed, “owing to military operations and widespread insecurity”. The mission had documented 823 cases of sexual violence in 2024, affecting 416 women, 391 girls, seven boys and nine men.

The UN said that 198 of last year’s cases were perpetrated by DRC “state actors”, including the army. It found that “M23 elements”, which “continued to receive instructions and support from the Rwanda Defence Force”, were implicated in 152 cases.

According to the report, survivors reported that they were exposed to the threat of sexual violence while searching for food in the fields and areas around displacement sites.

Many displaced women had resorted to prostitution to survive, “highlighting the nexus between food insecurity and sexual violence”.

Denis Mukwege, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work combating sexual violence in DRC, told The Times newspaper this year: “When you have people raping with complete immunity – and think they can go on and on without any consequence, nothing will change.”

Guterres’s report charted violations in 21 countries, with the highest numbers recorded in DRC, the Central African Republic, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan.

While women and girls made up 92 percent of victims, men and boys were also targeted.

Former president denies involvement in alleged effort to overturn his loss in the 2022 election.

Lawyers have submitted a final statement on behalf of Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro in a trial focused on his alleged role in a plot to stay in power despite losing the 2022 election.

In a statement submitted on Wednesday evening, Bolsonaro’s legal representatives denied the charges against him and said that prosecutors had presented no convincing evidence.

“There is no way to convict Jair Bolsonaro based on the evidence presented in the case, which largely demonstrated that he ordered the transition … and assured his voters that the world would not end on December 31st,” the document states.

The right-wing former president faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of attempting to mount a coup after losing a presidential election to left-wing rival and current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, who raised alarm in the months leading up to the election by casting doubt on the voting process, has denied involvement in the plot, which allegedly included plans for Lula’s assassination.

The former leader’s legal representatives say the fact that he authorised the transition contradicts the coup allegations.

“This is evidence that eliminates the most essential of the accusatory premises,” they said.

Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet submitted final arguments in July, citing handwritten notes, digital files, message exchanges, and spreadsheets that he said show details of a conspiracy to suppress democracy.

Following Bolsonaro’s election loss, crowds of his supporters gathered outside of military bases, calling on the armed forces to intervene and prevent Lula from taking office. A group of Bolsonaro’s supporters also stormed federal buildings in the capital of Brasilia on January 8, 2023. Some drew parallels to a military coup in the 1960s that marked the beginning of a decades-long period of dictatorship, for which Bolsonaro himself has long expressed fondness.

Bolsonaro and his allies, including United States President Donald Trump, have depicted the trial as a politically motivated “witch hunt”.

A recent survey conducted by Datafolha, a Brazilian polling institute, found that more than 50 percent of Brazilians agree with the court’s decision to place Bolsonaro under house arrest in August. The survey also found that a majority believe that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a frequent target of right-wing ire and central figure in the trial, is following the law.

Respondents also largely disagreed with the claim that Bolsonaro was being persecuted for political reasons, with 39 percent in agreement and 53 percent in disagreement.

Speaking from the White House on Thursday, Trump said Bolsonaro was an “honest man” and the victim of an attempted “political execution”.

The Trump administration has mounted a pressure campaign to push the court to drop Bolsonaro’s case, sanctioning De Moraes and announcing severe sanctions on Brazilian exports to the US. That move has met anger in Brazil and been depicted as an attack on Brazilian sovereignty.

The US president’s words come on the eve of his closely watched Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One day before the leaders of Russia and the United States are set to meet in the US state of Alaska to discuss ending the Russia-Ukraine war, US President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart is ready “to make a deal”.

In an interview on Fox News Radio on Thursday, Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin “wanted the whole thing” – in an apparent reference to his territorial aspirations in Ukraine – but was willing to come to the table and make a deal due to the relationship between the two men.

“I think he wants to get it done. I really feel he wanted the whole thing. I think if it weren’t me, if it were somebody else, he would not be talking to anybody,” Trump told interviewer Brian Kilmeade.

Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday for talks on the more than three-year conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be present at the talks, though Trump has said that should Putin signal a willingness to end the war, another meeting between the two leaders would follow.

“I don’t know that we’re going to get an immediate ceasefire, but I think it’s going to come. See, I’m more interested in an immediate peace deal – getting peace fast. And depending on what happens with my meeting, I’m going to be calling up President Zelenskyy and [saying] let’s get him over to wherever we’re going to meet,” Trump said.

He added that there was the possibility they could simply “stay in Alaska”, but also stressed that if the meeting went poorly, “I’m not calling anyone. I’m going home.”

That hedging represents a seeming cautiousness by Trump, who has spoken about being frustrated by Putin’s broken promises in the past.

Speaking from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said Trump’s metric for success could be boiled down to what read he had on Putin.

“He very much made it clear that what success means in this context is him being convinced that Vladimir Putin is serious about peace, and then arranging a second meeting that would involve the Ukrainians,” he said.

Earlier on Thursday, Putin praised Trump, saying he was “making quite energetic and sincere efforts to end the fighting”.

The words came shortly after Zelenskyy met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, where they discussed security guarantees for Ukraine that could “make peace truly durable if the United States succeeds in pressing Russia to stop the killings and engage in genuine, substantive diplomacy”, Zelenskyy wrote on X.

The meeting, said Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, “was about a show of unity ahead of that summit in Alaska”.

Hull noted there was a “sense of some optimism” following the Wednesday call between Trump, Zelenskyy and European leaders.

“[Trump] took a somewhat stronger line against Putin than was expected, saying the Russian president faced severe consequences if he didn’t meaningfully engage in ceasefire talks,” he noted.

Thales

Primary Engineer

TIME

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Who are the other 2025 Time girls of the year?

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that he will move forward with the construction of 3,401 new settlement units in Area E1, located between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement.

The decision comes despite international pressure against construction in the area beyond the Green Line and after a 20-year pause.

Smotrich’s plan aims to link Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem, cutting off Palestinian movement between Ramallah and Bethlehem. The area is considered strategic and could undermine any future political settlement.

Smotrich said: “Construction plans in the E1 area cancel the idea of a Palestinian state and continue the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan we started with the formation of the government.”

He added: “After decades of international pressure and freezes, we are breaking agreements and linking Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem.”

READ: US House Speaker claims West Bank “rightful property of Jewish People”

Torrential rain struck Chisoti, a town in Kishtwar district in Indian-administered Kashmir, on Thursday morning.

At least 37 people have been killed after a sudden cloudburst unleashed torrential rain in Indian-administered Kashmir, a disaster management official said, marking the second major disaster in the Himalayas in just over a week.

The deluge struck Chisoti, a town in Kishtwar district, on Thursday morning. The site serves as a key stop along the pilgrimage route to the Machail Mata temple, a revered Himalayan shrine dedicated to Goddess Durga.

Television footage showed terrified pilgrims crying as water surged through the settlement.

Omar Abdullah, chief minister of the federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, described the situation as “grim” and said confirmed details were slow to emerge from the remote location.

Mohammed Irshad said rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village of Chositi brought at least 100 people to safety.

“Dead bodies of 37 people have been recovered,” said Irshad, a top disaster management official, adding there was no count of any missing people available.

According to Ramesh Kumar, divisional commissioner of Kishtwar, the cloudburst hit at about 11:30am local time. He told ANI news agency that police and disaster response teams were on the ground, while army and air force units had also been mobilised. “Search and rescue operations are under way,” Kumar said.

An official, who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the flood swept away a community kitchen and a security post set up to serve pilgrims. “A large number of pilgrims had gathered for lunch and they were washed away,” the official told the news agency Reuters.

The India Meteorological Department defines a cloudburst as a sudden, extreme downpour exceeding 100mm of rain in an hour, often triggering flash floods and landslides in mountainous regions during the monsoon.

Last week, a similar disaster in Uttarakhand, another Himalayan state, buried an entire village under mud and debris after heavy rains.

The Srinagar weather office has warned of further intense rainfall in several parts of Kashmir, including Kishtwar, and urged residents to avoid unstable structures, power lines and old trees due to the risk of fresh landslides and flash floods.

The Israeli cabinet’s decision to escalate its war on Gaza, disregarding the humanitarian crises it has caused there already, appears to have angered as many in Israel as in the international community, though not necessarily for the same reasons.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to backtrack on his idea of seizing all of Gaza after pushback from a military widely regarded as being exhausted.

Under the new “plan”, Israel will seize Gaza City and, according to an anonymous Israeli official talking to the Associated Press, Gaza’s “central camps” as well as al-Mawasi in the south.

Defending his new idea on Sunday, Netanyahu told journalists that Israel had “no choice” but to “finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas”.

Israel has spent 22 months killing 61,722 people and destroying nearly all of Gaza, ostensibly for that very purpose.

Many in Israel, including the families of the remaining captives held in Gaza, object to the escalation. So why is Netanyahu doing it, and how has this landed in Israel? Here’s what we know.

Why does Netanyahu want to do this?

It’s not clear.

Many in the international community, from the European Union to the United Nations, have condemned the idea. Even many of Israel’s formerly stalwart allies, like Belgium,  Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have condemned it.

In Israel, many suspect Netanyahu’s move aims to shore up his support among the far-right elements that his coalition needs to stay in power, and to drag out a war he feels his political survival depends on.

Do many on the far right support Netanyahu’s plan?

Not as many as he’d hoped.

While hard-right ministers like ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir still support Netanyahu’s coalition, their loyalty seems conditional.

Both had been among a cohort of hard-right politicians who had objected to the suggestion that humanitarian aid be allowed into the enclave in May, following worldwide outrage over starvation there, before falling into line with government policy and Smotrich even diverting extra funds for aid earlier this month.

Both ministers, and their sizeable constituencies, want a full Israeli seizure of all of Gaza, the “razing” of Gaza City, and what they describe as the “voluntary” migration of Gaza’s population, once the territory has been rendered uninhabitable.

On Saturday, Smotrich released a video criticising Netanyahu’s plans to limit the invasion to Gaza City, saying he had “lost faith” in Netanyahu’s leadership. He later clarified that he would remain in government nonetheless.

Does the security establishment fully support Netanyahu’s plan?

No.

Israeli media reports that Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and several senior Israeli officers oppose the plan.

According to leaked reports, Zamir told Netanyahu he was creating a “trap” that would further erode the army and endanger the lives of the remaining captives.

Earlier in the same week, more than 600 former Israeli security officials wrote to US President Donald Trump to implore him to use his influence over Netanyahu to bring the war to a close.

“Everything that could be achieved by force has been achieved. The hostages cannot wait any longer,” the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group said in a post on X, where it shared the letter.

Does the Israeli public fully support Netanyahu’s plan?

No.

Tens of thousands of people, including many of the captives’ families, have taken to the streets to protest against the decision to escalate the war.

In mid-July, a poll carried out by the Israeli Democracy Institute found 74 percent of Israelis supported a negotiated end to the war that would see the return of the roughly 50 captives remaining in Gaza.

Among them were 60 percent who had previously voted for the prime minister’s coalition.

How has society responded?

Loudly.

Groups representing the families of the captives and those of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza are calling for a general strike on August 17.

Many in Israel’s vital tech industry, as well as universities and local authorities, have responded positively.

“The goal”, one of the groups organising the action explained, is “to save the lives of the hostages and soldiers, and prevent further families from joining the bereaved”.

How has the political opposition responded to Netanyahu’s plan?

They almost universally oppose it.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid – who has backed the government through much of its war on Gaza – declared the latest escalation a  “disaster that will lead to many more disasters”.

Another opposition figure, Benny Gantz, who served in the government throughout some of its fiercest attacks upon Gaza during the early stages of the war, also condemned the escalation. In a post on X, Gantz characterised the escalation as a “political failure that wastes the tremendous achievements of the [Israeli army]”.

מה כן לעשות כדי להחזיר את החטופים ולנצח?

אני רואה שוב את המחדל המדיני שמבזבז את ההישגים האדירים של צה”ל.
שוב מחכים.
שוב מנהלים משא ומתן בשלבים.
בלי שום יצירתיות.

אפשר אחרת:
קודם כל להודיע – בתמורה להשבת החטופים נהיה מוכנים להפסקת אש קבועה – עד החטוף האחרון.
כל עוד זה לא מתקבל:…

— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) August 8, 2025

Are Israelis more aware of what their country is doing to Palestinians?

Not really.

A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute in July showed that, despite widespread coverage, a majority of Israelis described themselves as “not at all troubled” by “reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza”.

An estimated 227 people have died of starvation as a result of the Israeli siege on Gaza that began in March. A total of 103 of them have been children.

Who: Liverpool vs Bournmouth
What: English Premier League
Where: Anfield, Liverpool in United Kingdom
When: Friday, August 14, at 8pm (19:00 GMT)

How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 4pm (15:00 GMT) in advance of our live text commentary stream.

The new Premier League season kicks off with champions Liverpool entertaining Bournemouth on Friday.

The 20-team English top-flight – still regarded as the best domestic league in world football – will run to Sunday, May 24.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at the season opener at Anfield that will kick it off.

Who is Liverpool’s biggest rival?

Liverpool won the Premier League title by a staggering 10 points, while taking their foot off the gas at the end, in Arne Slot’s first season in charge. The previous season’s champions, Manchester City, suffered a shocking start from which their attempt to win a fifth-straight title never recovered. Arsenal finished second for a third consecutive season and were the Reds’ biggest challengers.

Both sides are expected to push Slot’s side all the way this season, while Chelsea will be in sharp focus following their FIFA Club World Cup final success against UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.

Newcastle and Aston Villa have both been upstarts in recent years, while Manchester United and Tottenham have fallen away. A challenge from any of those four would come as more than a mild surprise.

Who has Liverpool signed for the new season?

Liverpool have been busy in the summer transfer window with Florian Wirtz’s arrival from Bayer Leverkusen, for $156m, heading up an impressive list that includes French forward Hugo Ekitike and Dutch wide man Jeremie Frimpong.

Slot also revealed on Thursday that highly-regarded 18-year-old defender Giovanni Leoni will be joining from Parma. The Reds have also been heavily linked with moves for Newcastle striker Alexander Isak and Crystal Palace defender Marc Guehi.

Trent Alexander-Arnold, Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Caoimhin Kelleher have all departed this summer, while the club is still coming to terms with the tragic loss of Diogo Jota, who died in a car crash last month.

What business has Bournemouth conducted?

The Cherries manager, Andoni Iraola, will have to find a way to cope with the loss of Kepa Arrizabalaga, Dean Huijsen, Illia Zabarnyi and Milos Kerkez, who all moved on from the Bournemouth backline in the summer, the latter joining Liverpool.

Goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic has been brought in from Chelsea for 25 million pounds ($33.9m), while defenders Adrien Truffert and Julio Soler have arrived from Rennes and Lanus, respectively.

Has Liverpool ever lost to Bournemouth?

Yes. Bournemouth have twice beaten Liverpool in 24 previous meetings. The Reds have been overwhelmingly the better side in encounters between the sides, returning 19 wins in that time.

How many Premier League titles have Liverpool won?

Last season’s Premier League success took Liverpool’s number of English top-flight titles to 20, level with fierce rivals Manchester United.

Has Bournemouth ever won a trophy?

No. The south-coast club’s 2015 Championship win, the second tier of English football, remains their most high-profile success.

What the Liverpool manager said

Arne Slot: “The main reason that (winning the title) is so difficult is because there are so many competitors who can win the league.

“It’s unbelievable if you are able to do it in this league. This year will be even harder than before.

“We have lost five to six players who played quite a lot of minutes last season, and brought in four, so it’s normal there is adaptation.”

The new season starts here.

2025/26 🔜 pic.twitter.com/VmoxPb8dbu

— Premier League (@premierleague) June 18, 2025

Liverpool team news

Ryan Gravenberch is suspended following his red card on the final day of last season against Crystal Palace.

Joe Gomez is struggling with an Achilles injury, while fellow defender Conor Bradley has a muscular problem. Both are expected to miss out.

Bournemouth team news

Enes Unal and Lewis Cook both remain long-term absentees due to knee problems.

Ryan Christie, Luis Sinisterra and Justin Kluivert are all nearing returns but it is believed this game will come too soon for all three.

Liverpool predicted starting lineup:

Alisson; Frimpong, Konate, Van Dijk, Kerkez; Mac Allister, Szoboszlai; Salah, Wirtz, Gakpo; Ekitike

Bournemouth predicted starting lineup:

Petrovic; Araujo, Senesi, Hill, Truffert; Adams, Scott; Semenyo, Tavernier, Ouattara; Evanilson

BBC/Shine TV

Upheld complaints

It was not passion that pushed Rahimat Ola* into the medical field. She had dreamed of becoming a writer, but her parents decided they wanted her to be a medical doctor because that was where the money was. After three years, from 2011 to 2013, of failed attempts to get into medical school, she settled for a degree in science laboratory technology with a speciality in microbiology. She took that option because it was the closest to her parents’ dream. 

But her story was not a tragedy, because she soon became interested in it and started nursing another dream of becoming a medical researcher. 

“I wanted to make so many contributions to the world through medical research and just help people,” she told HumAngle. “I rewrote the exam again and got admission to study nursing, but I didn’t take it because I had already fallen in love with medical research.”

During her Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) placement at a clinic, Rahimat’s dedication was such that she continued to volunteer even after the official programme ended. It was during this period that she was involved in an accident that gravely affected her.

“There was this patient who obviously looked sick, but he did not mention he was afraid of needles, so while trying to take his blood sample, he started struggling immediately. The needle pricked him, and as a result, I got pricked too,” she recounted.

Rahimat reported the incident to her senior colleagues immediately, and they asked her to wash her hands. At first, she thought little of it, until the test results for the patient came back showing he had Hepatitis C, a bloodborne virus transmissible through blood.

She tested for the virus after three months, then six months, and a year later, all came back negative. But soon afterwards, she began to notice symptoms, such as cramps and skin sensitivity. The doctors she consulted insisted everything was fine until her mother went back there with her and kept pushing for more tests. It was then that the result returned positive. 

What followed was not only a medical battle but a social one. After she disclosed her condition to the head of the lab, believing it was the right step since she had contracted it at work, her medical information leaked. Stigma soon crept in, with rumours and insinuations circulating among her colleagues. “One of the lab scientists who once made romantic advances towards me started to make sexual insinuations,” she said.  

Even after she explained that her doctors said that the earlier negative results might have been due to low viral load at the time of infection, some colleagues refused to believe she had contracted the infection in their lab. 

Rahimat said that the stigma and gossip at her workplace had a serious impact on her.

Such disinformation is a common tactic used to distort, dismiss, and distract to stifle the voices of people, especially women. Gender disinformation is particularly widespread and perpetuates a culture of silence and shame, and also creates room for misogynistic tendencies to thrive. In Nigeria’s healthcare sector, where women make up about 60 per cent of the workforce sector, these dynamics are especially pronounced.

For Rahimat, the whispers and innuendos carried an old, familiar sting. Long before her diagnosis, she faced unwanted sexual advances from some lecturers at a medical school in northern Nigeria. 

A survey of over 30,000 tertiary education students in Nigeria revealed that about 37 per cent of the respondents have experienced a form of sexual violence, with female students reporting twice as many incidents as their male counterparts.

“I knew it would have been worse if my father had not been a lecturer in another faculty in the same school. The moment they learned that, they left me alone, but some persisted,” she said. 

One lecturer, she recalled, sexually harassed her throughout her four years in school. By her final year, while she worked on her thesis, the harassment turned into victimisation.

“He promised me he was going to disgrace me during my thesis defence, and he attempted it. During the defence, before any other lecturers could speak up, he started asking questions he thought I could not answer, but unfortunately for him, I answered the first two and told him the last question was beyond the scope of my study and would research more,” she said. 

At times, even women lecturers blamed her for the harassment, suggesting she did not wear her hijab “properly” for a Muslim, even though the university was not a religious institution. 

After graduating, Rahimat hoped such experiences were behind her. But during her National Youth Service in 2019, while working at a university lab in Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, she faced yet another round of gender prejudice. At first, everything went smoothly, but seven months into her one-year service, the head of the lab started to make sexist remarks, claiming women were lazy and that he preferred male lab technicians. 

Research shows that deep-seated beliefs about gender roles in work environments add to the systemic barriers that make it challenging for women in the workforce. 

Rahimat said she would simply ignore those comments and focus on her job. This shift in her manager’s attitude coincided with the arrival of another male corps member in their team. Tension grew after her new colleague found out that her ₦30,000 stipend was higher than what he received. The school did not recognise him as a lab technician, so he earned only the extra ₦6,000 paid by the state government to corps members. 

Rahimat explained to him that the extra ₦30,000 was paid to her directly by the school, not the laboratory, and that another colleague in the same role as hers was receiving the same amount. Still, the explanation did little to ease the resentment. Soon, the male colleague began spreading rumours that she was being paid more because of personal connections.

The rumours got so serious that Rahimat was summoned to the administrative office. 

“I could remember, the man there said to me that if I wanted to do ‘stuff,’ I should not have done it that obviously. I told him I did not understand what he was saying, and he started to backtrack. I told them that whatever issue there was with the payment was their fault and it had nothing to do with me. Apparently, by ‘stuff’, they meant I had seduced someone to get favours, when in reality I had never even met anyone connected to the organisation before I was posted .” 

Her service year was her first time in Oyo, as she grew up in northern Nigeria. She had moved there alone and did not know anyone, like most corps members. 

Following the administrative summons, she was instructed to refund the extra amount she was being paid. She asked them to put the instruction in writing, and that was when they let her be. At the end of that month, the management announced that she and the male colleague would be transferred to the university’s science laboratory department, where they would work as teaching assistants. 

However, Rahimat soon learnt that she was the only one who was reposted, and the male corps member was made to retain her position, a move she suspected had been the plan all along. 

She felt out of place in her new role and believed the lingering rumours affected how she was treated, but eventually, colleagues began to warm up to her. However, she did not receive payments, as the management claimed they were deducting her “overpayment”.

“I felt hopeless and discouraged,” she recounted. “I felt like a nobody in the system, and it bothered me that I couldn’t change the system. It felt like it was not a safe space for me to be, and I did not want to deal with the medical field anymore.”

Determined not to give up, Rahimat attempted to start her postgraduate studies to pursue her dream of becoming a medical researcher. However, when her sister fell sick with cancer, she became her sister’s primary caregiver, putting her ambitions on hold. 

This rerouted her career path. She took a job as an editor at a publishing house and sold books on the side to support her sister’s medical bills. In 2021, she started a psychology degree.

Now 29, Rahimat said she is content with her writing career and free from the complications of being a woman in the medical field. 

‘Not so casual’ misogyny 

Rahimat is one of many women in medicine who have faced gender discrimination at work. Janet Adam*, a medical doctor in the country’s North West, initially thought she had escaped much of it, until she examined her career more closely and realised that these experiences were normalised. 

For women doctors in Nigeria like Janet, this discrimination often manifests through sociocultural biases, lower pay, and a lack of professional respect. Patients and their relatives sometimes refuse to recognise women as doctors, addressing them as nurses even after being corrected. “I have had several encounters,” she said. “I am a very vocal person, and I have actually changed it for patients.”

According to Eunice Thompson, a labour lawyer and HR and compliance expert, such behaviour can be more than just disrespect; it can be a workplace rights violation.

“Women can seek justice when they experience harassment, abuse, or injustice in the workplace,” she said. “In the course of the work I do, I noticed bullying, verbal abuse, and harassment are a common experience that women go through, and this is a violation of their right to dignity and a threat to their mental health, safety, and career.”

The lawyer advised women to document incidents by keeping a private log of events using screenshots or recordings on their phones, keeping track of the dates and who was present during the event, and if the facility has a HR professional or a complaint channel, they should utilise it even if they do not trust the system, as submitting it in writing is a form of documentation itself. She added that they should request an acknowledgement of the receipt of the complaint. 

Janet believes much of the treatment she has faced stems from her gender, noting that male colleagues rarely endure the same. The pattern, she says, extends to women in other departments, like administrative workers and sometimes even to female patients.  

Sometimes, this misogyny for female doctors translates into patients dismissing their diagnosis or professional advice and seeking a second opinion from a man, she explained. “Even if the male doctors asked if you [referring to a female doctor] didn’t inform them beforehand, they would say you did, but [they] still needed to confirm,” she told HumAngle. 

The disrespect also comes from colleagues. During a ward round early in her career, she asked in Hausa about “the boy” usually present by a teenage patient’s bedside. A senior male colleague, with whom she’d had prior tension, berated her for using the word “boy,” dragging out the criticism “unnecessarily”.

“I don’t think he would have said anything if I [had] asked about the girl staying with the patient, as it is normal to see women, even doctors, being addressed as ‘ke,’ but they never address male doctors as ‘kai”,” she noted. In Hausa language, the informal ‘hey you’ can be seen as disrespectful, especially when there is a professional relationship. 

Janet said she cautioned the colleague not to disrespect her in front of her patients again. The consultant present did not interfere in the matter. 

Years later, the lack of professional respect she experienced from colleagues would echo in her interactions with patients’ relatives. In 2024, while working at an orthopaedic hospital in the same region, her colleagues informed her of the son of an elderly patient, who was known to throw his weight around, constantly referencing the fact that he came from Europe to take care of his sick father. 

“The day I resumed work, I went to check on the patient, but the son kept interrupting me, asking unnecessary questions. I told him I could not comment because I hadn’t fully read the patient’s folder and had just come to check in,” Janet recounted. 

However, he ignored her explanation and continued with the questions. When Janet turned to monitor the nurse who was taking the patient’s blood pressure, the man suddenly began to yell at her. “He accused me of being disrespectful,” she said. 

He eventually asked her to leave the room. As she walked away, the patient’s son started to come menacingly close, as though about to hit her. When Janet asked him if he wanted to slap her, he demanded to know what she would do about it if he did. Due to the threat of violence, she reported the incident to her line manager, saying she would not treat the patient again.

The confrontation didn’t end there. The man followed her to the reception, continuing to shout. Frustrated, Janet said she shouted back at him, prompting him to bring out his phone to “record the disrespect”. “I slapped the phone from his hand and told him he could not aggravate me and then try to record my response,” she recounted. 

It was not the first time she had felt the need to use extraordinary measures to tackle situations like that. “Even in medical school, I ensured not to tolerate things like this,” Janet said. 

A 2023 study by the Nigerian Medical Association shows that 45.5 per cent of 165 women doctors in Nigeria’s South South have experienced physical violence from both patients and/or other staff in their work environments.

Twenty-five-year-old Halima Bala*, who is currently practising in Katsina, northwestern Nigeria, echoes Janet’s experience of being bullied by a patient’s relative.

“A nurse and I were the only ones on duty, and the patient’s relative, who was a big man, started shouting at both of us because there weren’t any empty bed spaces, and we had to be cautious because we didn’t know what he might do to us,” Halima recounted. “He mysteriously became calm and civil when a male colleague came to interfere. I was so upset. I even felt like I didn’t want to treat his daughter anymore, but my anger softened when I saw the state the patient was in, and I believe there is no patient I should refuse to see.”

When incidents like this happen, the hospital can either take the doctor off the case or, in more severe cases, which Halima has never witnessed personally, choose not to treat that patient. Yet, in her experience, the default approach is to side with the patient. When the hospital apologised to the man who had disrespected her instead of holding him accountable, Halima said it reinforced her understanding of how deeply entrenched and unjust misogyny can be.

However, she noted that these experiences did not deter her; if anything, they encouraged her to excel at everything she does. 

Eunice said women can report such abuse to professional bodies like the Medical and Dental Council or Nursing and Midwifery Council, and if internal channels fail, they may go public or seek community support to push for accountability.

“If harassment is verbal or slanderous, people often dismiss it, but it is harmful, especially when you can prove it’s targeted and persistent. Record it and write exactly what was said, and get a trusted colleague who can serve as a witness or offer support, and you can sue for defamation too,” the labour lawyer added. 

‘As a woman, you should…’

When 54-year-old Hadiza Husseini* chose to study pharmacy out of her love for helping people change for the better, she assumed it would be less consuming compared to being a doctor, hence she would be able to raise her family. While she can not recall experiencing gender discrimination and assault during her undergraduate studies, Hadiza said she came face-to-face with the challenge after she gave birth to her third child. 

“I had a very misogynistic boss at that time, who would constantly make sexist comments about my womanhood and motherhood. I ignored him, but one day I completely lost it. I told him to leave all the work for me that day, and he would see that my gender or baby would not stop me from doing every work that was supposed to be done,” she recalled. 

He stopped bothering her afterwards. 

However, the impoliteness did not end. Years after she became a chief pharmacist, making her the third in command in her department at that time, her deputy director, who was a man, turned to her after a meeting one day and asked her to clear the dirty cups they had been drinking from since she was the only woman in the room.

“I was shocked and dumbfounded and struggled to wrap my head around it,” she recounted. “Even my junior colleagues turned to stare at him. I instinctively said, ‘What?’ and he said he thought I wouldn’t mind because I was a woman and I would enjoy doing it.”

Most of the people who drank from the cups were not only younger but also much lower in rank than her, and they were all still in the room.

Since then, there have been several other acts of gender discrimination that Hadiza has challenged. “There are people in my office who call me the minister of women’s affairs because I do not allow anyone to disrespect a woman in front of me,” she noted.

Research shows that workplace conflict, which could be a product of power imbalance, gender discrimination, resource allocation, transgenerational strain, and interprofessional relationships, affects the experiences and well-being of Nigerian medical practitioners.

In Nigeria, there is no strong anti-workplace discrimination law, but there are still legal protections that are available. Eunice, the labour lawyer, noted that Chapter 42 of the Nigerian Constitution, which states that nobody should be discriminated against based on sex, even if you are the only woman in the room or team, is one of those laws. 

She also cited other laws that could be useful, such as the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) and the Laws of Torts, which recognise psychological abuse as a form of violence.

“The International Women’s Rights Treaty is also a powerful advocacy tool, although it has not been fully domesticated in Nigeria. However, a law is only as useful as a system that enforces it, and enforcement is weak in Nigeria,” Eunice noted. “That is why we need more legal knowledge alongside community power and support. The fact that these things are common does not make them right. Women deserve to be treated with dignity and fairness.”

Bullied yet underpaid

Globally, nursing remains a female-dominated profession, and Erica Akin* says her nine-year career has been marked by frequent bullying from both healthcare practitioners and patients alike. “Nurses on duty get blamed for every problem in the hospital, even while it is glaring that they are not at fault. If a lab scientist does not come to get a patient’s blood for investigation, or if the patient waits too long in line to see the doctor, the nurse gets blamed,” she said. 

Erica, now 34, became a professional nurse in 2016 after passing her qualifying exams on her first attempt. Despite the rigorous training and pressure during her studies, she found the workplace equally challenging. She says bullying is normalised in the sector, leaving her feeling unappreciated, and it often worsens when she stands up for herself. 

“It only challenges me to be smarter and more efficient at my job to avoid disrespect of any kind,” she told HumAngle, adding that she is also concerned about how nurses are significantly underpaid in the healthcare sector. 

While her federal-level salary is higher than in private facilities, she believes it still undervalues nurses’ workload. “The startup salary for the [federal government’s] Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS 9) is about ₦215,000, while private hospitals may pay ₦30,000 to ₦60,000, depending on the facility,” she said. 

‘Twice as hard’

“The medical system is very toxic,” Jamilat Abdulfattah, a medical practitioner who works in Kwara State, North Central Nigeria, claimed, adding that earning her white coat has not been an easy ride. “People respect male doctors more than females, and even other health workers vividly show dislike towards you because you’re a female.”

The 26-year-old sees this as a result of the general misogynistic notion that women cannot perform as well as men. Oftentimes, this makes her feel underappreciated and sometimes pushes her to work twice as hard as her male colleagues just to get appropriate respect; on some days, it means going to work early. 

“I observed that my male colleagues can just slack off, and people still respect them as doctors,” she said. “As a woman, I am always on edge and pushing myself to go the extra mile so I won’t be seen as less than, and every mistake is ascribed to my gender.”

“However, I don’t let it get to me. I call out misogynistic behaviour most time. But when it’s coming from a senior colleague, I will have to endure because the hierarchical system would not allow me to do certain things, or else I can risk getting kicked out of the system. So instead, I focus on what I can control and let what I can not control go,” Jamilat told HumAngle.

She is hopeful that these irregularities will change in the future. 

“Most of us plan to break the cycle of bullying,” she said.

Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed to protect the identities of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of harassment or further discrimination. The names of the institutions where they work have also been withheld.

President Donald Trump’s administration wants to overhaul the nation’s visa programme for highly skilled foreign workers.

If the administration does what one official described, it would change H-1B visa rules to favour employers that pay higher wages. That could effectively transform the visa into what one expert called “a luxury work permit” and disadvantage early-career workers with smaller salaries, including teachers. It could also upend the current visa programme’s lottery system used to distribute visas to eligible foreign workers.

“This shift may prevent many employers, including small and midsize businesses, from hiring the talent they need in shortage occupations, ultimately reducing America’s global competitiveness,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association whose practice includes representing employers in the H-1B process.

It’s hard to find US workers in certain types of specialty fields, including software engineers and developers and some STEM positions.

A White House office proposed the change on August 8, Bloomberg Law reported. Once the proposal appears in the Federal Register – the daily public report containing notices of proposed federal rule changes – the plan will become subject to a formal public comment period. It could be finalised within months, although it is likely to face legal challenges.

Joseph Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The New York Times in July that H-1B visas should favour companies that plan to pay foreign workers higher wages. The proposal Bloomberg Law described was in line with that goal.

PolitiFact did not see a copy of the proposal, and the White House did not respond to our questions. But the Department of Homeland Security submitted the proposed rule to a Trump administration office in July, the Greenberg Traurig law firm wrote.

Trump sought to reform the H-1B program during his first term but made limited progress. In January 2021, near the end of Trump’s term, the Department of Homeland Security published a final rule similar to the current proposal, but the Biden administration did not implement it.

Work visas were not a central part of Trump’s 2024 immigration platform, but it was a point of debate in the weeks before he took office, with billionaire businessman Elon Musk – a megadonor to Trump who would briefly serve in his administration – speaking in favour of them.

What are H-1B visas?

The H-1B visa programme lets employers temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty fields, with about two-thirds working in computer-related jobs, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most H-1B visa holders come from India, followed by China.

Currently, prospective H-1B employers must attest that they will pay the H-1B worker actual wages paid to similar employees or the prevailing wages for that occupation – whichever would result in the highest pay.

To qualify for the non-immigrant visa, the employee must hold a specialised degree, license or training required by the occupation. The status is generally valid for up to three years and renewable for another three years, but it can be extended if the employer sponsors the worker for permanent residency, which includes permission to work and live in the US.

Leopold said that the proposed change goes beyond the law’s current wage mandate.

“This statutory mechanism is designed to prevent employers from paying H-1B workers less than their American counterparts, thereby protecting US workers from displacement,” Leopold said.

Congress caps new H-1B visas at 85,000 per fiscal year, including 20,000 for noncitizens who earned advanced degrees. The government approved 400,000 H-1B applications, including renewals, in 2024, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Amazon has led the nation’s employers since 2020 in its number of H-1B workers, Pew found.

The New York metro area received more H-1B application approvals than any other metro area; College Station, Texas had the highest concentration of approvals.

What could change with H1-B visas?

The proposed policy favours higher-paid employees, experts said.

Malcolm Goeschl, a San Francisco-based lawyer, said the rule will likely benefit tech companies, including many specialising in artificial intelligence. Such companies pay high salaries, including for entry-level positions. He said it will harm traditional tech companies’ programmes for new graduates.

“There will likely be plenty of lottery numbers available at the top of the prevailing wage scale, but very few or none at the bottom,” Goeschl said. “You may see young graduates shy away from the US labour market early on because of this. Or you could see companies just pay entry-level workers from other countries much higher salaries to get a chance in the lottery, leading to the perverse situation where the foreign workers are making a lot more money than similarly situated US workers.”

The prevailing wage requirements are designed to protect US jobs from being undercut by lower paid foreign workers.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the change would likely make it nearly impossible for recent immigrant college graduates, who tend to earn lower wages, to launch their careers in the United States on an H-1B visa.

“The short-term benefit would be the people who get selected are more productive, but the long-term cost might be to permanently redirect future skilled immigration to other countries,” Bier said. “It would also effectively prohibit the H-1B for many industries that rely on it. K-12 schools in rural areas seeking bilingual teachers, for instance, will have no chance under this system.”

Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, some school districts have hired H-1B visa holders, including smaller districts such as Jackson, Mississippi, and larger districts, including Dallas, Texas. Language immersion schools also often employ teachers from other countries using this visa programme.

Why is there a debate about H-1B visas?

The debate around H-1B visas does not neatly fall along partisan lines.

Proponents say the existing visa programme allows American employers to fill gaps, compete with other countries and recruit the “best minds”. Critics point to instances of fraud or abuse and say they favour policies that incentivise hiring Americans.

In December, high-profile Republicans debated the visa programme on social media.

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer denounced the programme and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called it a “scam”. On the other side, billionaire Elon Musk, a former H-1B visa holder whose companies employ such visa holders, called for the programme’s reform but defended it as an important talent recruitment mechanism.

Trump sided with Musk.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told the New York Post in late December. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great programme.”

Senator Bernie Sanders disputed Musk, saying corporations abuse the programme as a way to get richer and should recruit American workers first.

Such visa debates have continued.

When US Representative Greg Murphy, a urologist, argued on X August 8 that the visas “are critical for helping alleviate the severe physician shortage”, thousands replied. Christina Pushaw, a Republican who works for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pushed back: “Why not figure out the causes of the domestic physician shortage and try to pass legislation to address those?”

New Delhi, India – “My right eye swells up in the heat, so I stopped going to the landfill last year,” says 38-year-old Sofia Begum, wiping her watering eyes. Begum married at the age of 13, and for more than 25 years, she and her husband have picked through mountains of rubbish at Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill, scavenging for recyclable waste they can sell to scrap dealers.

Dressed in a ragged, green and yellow kurta, and sitting on a chair in a narrow lane in the middle of the slum settlement where she lives beside the dump site, Begum explains that she came into contact with medical waste in 2022, which infected her eye.

Her eye swells up painfully when it is exposed to the sun for too long, so she has had to stop working in the summer months. Even in winter, she struggles to work as much as she used to.

“Now I can’t work as much. I used to carry 40 to 50 kilograms [88-110lbs] of waste a day. Now my capacity has reduced to half,” she says.

As temperatures in Delhi soared as high as 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in June, causing the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue an “orange alert” for two days, three rubbish sites at Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla in India’s capital city became environmental ticking time bombs. Choking with rubbish and filled far beyond their capacity, these towering waste mountains have become hubs for toxic fires, methane leaks and an unbearable stench.

It’s a slow-burning public health threat that, every year, blights the lives of the tens of thousands of people who live in the shadow of these rubbish heaps.

Making a living from toxic work

Waste pickers are usually informal workers who earn a living by collecting, sorting and selling recyclable materials like plastic, paper and metal to scrap dealers. They are typically paid by those who buy the materials they forage, depending on the quality and quantity they can find and sort.

As a result, they have no stable income and their work is hazardous, particularly in the summer months.

According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature, the temperature at these landfill sites varies based on the size of the dump. The temperature from dumps exceeding 50 metres (164 feet) in height generally lies between 60 and 70C (158F) in the summer. This “heat-island effect” is caused by the decomposition of organic waste, which not only generates heat but also releases hazardous gases.

“These landfills are gas chambers in the making,” says Anant Bhan, a public health researcher who has specialised in global health, health policy and bioethics for 20 years. “Waste pickers work in extreme heat, surrounded by toxic gases. This leads to long-term health complications,” he explains.

“Additionally, they are exposed to several gases, like the highly flammable methane, which causes irritation to their respiratory system. The rotting waste also leads to skin-related complications among the waste pickers.”

Ghazipur, which now towers at least 65 metres (213 ft) high – equivalent to a 20-storey building – has become a potent symbol of Delhi’s climate crisis.

Begum’s eye started swelling up in the intense heat last year. “I went to the doctor and he suggested surgery to treat my eye, which would cost me around 30,000 rupees ($350) but I don’t have that kind of money,” she says.

Like other waste pickers, Begum says she is reluctant to visit the government hospital, where she could receive free treatment, as it can take six months to receive a diagnosis there. “It is a waste of time to stand in queue for long hours at the cost of work days, and the diagnosis takes months to come through,” she explains. “I prefer going to the Mohalla Clinic; they check the Aadhaar Card [a form of identification] and instantly give medicines.”

The Mohalla Clinics, an initiative started by former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, offer free primary healthcare, medicines and diagnostic tests to residents in low-income areas.

A ticking time bomb

On a blazing summer day in July as temperatures reach 40C (104F), Tanzila, 32, who also lives in the slum next to the landfill site, is preparing for her night shift of waste picking. “It’s just too hot now,” she says. Tanzila, a mother of three children aged eight to 16, who has done this job for 12 years, says she passed out from dehydration while working under the sun last year. “Now I only go at night. During the day, it feels like being baked alive.”

Slender and dressed in a full-sleeve red, floral kurta with a headscarf, Tanzila appears exhausted and weary. She explains that when she did work during the day. “I would go early in the morning, come back around 9am, then again go around 4pm and come back around 7pm. But for the past two years, I have been going with other women only at night during summers because it has become harder to work during the day in this weather.”

Sheikh Akbar Ali, cofounder of Basti Suraksha Manch and a former door-to-door waste picker, has been campaigning for the rights of waste pickers across 52 sites in Delhi for the past 20 years. He explains that the conditions can be more dangerous at night than during the day.

“There are many vehicles like the tractors and JCBs operating on the landfills at night, and the waste pickers who work at night wear torchlights on their head, which indicates their visibility on the landfill. However, waste and gas leaks are more visible during the day.” This is because fires and smoke can more easily be seen in the daylight.

Despite the government’s repeated assurances that these rubbish mountains will be cleared, little has changed on the ground. In the latest assurance made in May 2025, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Delhi’s environment minister, claimed that the “garbage mountains” would be completely cleared by 2028, contradicting his own statement from April 2025, in which he had said that they would “disappear like dinosaurs” in five years.

As the summer heat accelerates the decomposition of organic waste, the release of hazardous gases has worsened the air quality in Delhi, something environmentalists and public health experts have sounded the alarm over.

According to a report from AQI, an open-source air quality monitoring platform based in New Delhi, since 2020, satellites have detected 124 significant methane leaks across the city, including a particularly large one in Ghazipur in 2021, which leaked 156 tonnes of methane per hour.

Even though the same work which puts food on the table also makes them ill, waste pickers like Begum and Tanzila say they have little choice other than to continue with their work. “Garbage is gold to us. We don’t get bothered by the smell of waste. It feeds our families, and why would we leave?” asks Tanzila.

Their labour, unrecognised as a profession by the government, comes with few protections, no health insurance and no stable income. Rubbish pickers must fashion their own safety gear from whatever they can afford – such as used disposable masks which can be bought in the market for 5 to 10 rupees (6 to 11 cents) – but nothing is particularly effective at keeping workers free from hazards.

“They don’t wear gloves because the heat makes their hands sweat easily and they aren’t able to hold waste properly. Even the masks are a total waste because all the sweat gets collected in the mask, which makes it difficult for them to breathe,” adds Akbar.

When climate change and waste mismanagement meet

New Delhi’s civic bodies, which are under pressure from environmental and health activists to demonstrate some visible progress in tackling the city’s waste and pollution problems, have largely responded with quick fixes, most notably plans to build four incinerator plants in Okhla, Narela, Tenkhand and Ghazipur. But experts warn that such infrastructure-centric solutions only mask deeper problems and could also cause further environmental damage.

Incinerators often release various harmful pollutants such as dioxins, furans, mercury contamination and particulate matter into the air, which pose serious health risks, they say.

According to a 2010 report by the World Health Organization, dioxins are “highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer”.

Furthermore, if incineration plants replace landfill-based recycling, many fear the erasure of their livelihoods altogether.

“Delhi’s shift to incinerators has completely excluded informal waste pickers, particularly women,” says Bharati Chaturvedi, founder of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. “It threatens their livelihoods and pushes them into deeper poverty. It is an environmental disaster in the making. Incinerators emit toxic fumes and undermine recycling efforts.”

“Beyond just closing landfills or building incinerators, we need to ensure that waste pickers have alternative livelihoods and are part of the formal waste management system,” says Chaturvedi.

“This is not just about clearing garbage,” she argues. “It’s about including waste pickers in the formal economy. It’s about creating decentralised, community-level waste management systems. And it’s about acknowledging that climate change and poverty are deeply interconnected.”

Activists and public health professionals advocate for the creation of a decentralised waste system, one that includes segregating waste into separate places according to type, ward-level composting (processing organic waste locally to avoid transportation), and robust recycling systems.

Formalising the role of waste pickers by offering legal recognition, fair wages, protective gear and access to welfare schemes would not only empower one of the city’s most vulnerable communities, but it would also help build a climate-resilient waste management model, say environment activists.

Back at the Ghazipur landfill, the reality remains grim. Fires break out with increasing frequency, and the acrid air clings to nearby homes. For residents and waste pickers, the daily battle against the heat, stench and illness is a matter of survival.

“Nothing has changed. The garbage grows, and we keep working,” says Shah Alam, Tanzila’s husband, who used to work solely as a waste picker but now also drives an electric rickshaw to earn a living. “During summers, more people fall sick, and we lose workdays. But what other option do we have?”