Hi

I also despise the religious fundamentalists who have held unto power by abusing Iranians’ justified fear of the west. They have imposed medieval rules for the people all the while stealing and monopolising Iran’s rich resources. They have killed and imprisoned countless people from student activists to union workers. This can no longer go on.

Are we not worried about the possibility of foreign intervention in Iran? Of course we are. We have learnt that lesson through years of struggle. It’s in our blood. Does that mean we should lay down and allow a bunch of ancient fucks ruin our country? No. Enough is enough.

The arbitrary choice between islamic fundamentalism and American imperialism is false. We are fighting for an authentic third way.

China has always opposed illegal unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law, and urges the US to immediately stop its blockade of Cuba and coercive pressure on the country, and to stop violating the Cuban people's rights to survival and development, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said at a regular press conference on Monday.

Mao made the remarks when asked to comment on recent remarks by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who warned that the impact of the US blockade against Cuba has reached "extreme levels," constitutes threat of "genocide", and called for a special session of the UN General Assembly on July 7.

Mao said the US has imposed a comprehensive blockade and illegal sanctions on Cuba for more than 60 years, bringing severe hardship to the Cuban people. Recently, the US has further escalated relevant blockade and sanctions measures, seriously affecting Cuba's basic livelihoods and drawing widespread concern from the international community.

Can you find them? ◑.◑

Buenos Aires, Argentina – “By the 10th or 15th of the month, I usually have to borrow money just to buy groceries and pay basic expenses,” says Victoria Pereira, 33 year old Argentine who works at a multinational firm. She is one of thousands of people suffering from the country’s soaring household debt delinquency.

According to the latest data from Argentina’s Central Bank (BCRA), the delinquency rate for bank loans reached 11.5% in March, while it hit 30.5% for digital wallets (fintech credit).

For traditional banks, the figure more than tripled compared to a year ago, when it stood at just 3.3%. While payment arrears in the fintech sector were already higher—at 20% in the same month of 2025—the rate still increased by 50%.

The trend reflects steeply rising credit card debt and personal loans, which experts say are driven by two key factors: a sharp drop in purchasing power since Javier Milei became president and stubbornly high interest rates.

While prices have surged by 303.6% since Milei came to power in November 2023, wages have failed to keep up. For formally registered workers, salaries saw an average decline of 13% in real terms in the period to February 2026. This drop varies significantly between the private (-8%) and public (-22.1%) sectors, according to a report by the Center for Research and Training of the Argentine Republic (CIFRA).

The strongest impact on salaries is that families are struggling to cope with continuous price hikes for utilities such as light, gas, water and transport.

Since Milei took power, utilities expenses for a household in Buenos Aires have increased 800%, according to the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economics (IIEP) of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.

Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was in the midst of a four-week shift onboard a vessel off the Atlantic coast working on the Revolution Wind Project in August last year when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order on the project.

“No one really knew what was going on. We didn’t know what it meant for us. We just knew that everything was up in the air,” said Kilday. “You plan your whole life around being gone for 28 days, and to come out here and have it thrown up in the air, worrying what does this mean for me, for my pay for the next four weeks, what’s going to happen? There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Construction on the project is done on shifts of 28 days on and 28 days off, with workers residing on a vessel on the ocean and taking helicopters to work on the turbines.

A federal court granted an injunction to block the stop-work order in September last year. In December, the Trump administration issued another 90-day stop-work order, citing national security, before a second judge issued an injunction in January.

When the second stop-work order was issued, Kilday was celebrating Christmas with his family and preparing for another four-week shift.

“That was really difficult,” he said. “I just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about. Six months out of the year we’re away from home, and for what little time we do have at home, not to be able to just focus all of that time and energy on our families, it’s tough. It’s not a great feeling to be worried about your job when you’re supposed to be home.”

“We’re proud of the work that we do out here, and we want to be able to continue to do it. We think it’s important work,” added Kilday. “When I’m at home, and I drive down my street, I look up at those power lines. I helped create the power that’s running through those power lines, and I’m proud of that.”

Revolution Wind announced in March that it began delivering power to New England, citing the work of more than 1,000 local union workers, and is expected to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses. The project’s construction is over 90% complete.

In June, the Trump administration abandoned an effort to try to halt all wind projects and leases across the US, giving up a challenge in court to a judge tossing Trump’s executive order to freeze all permitting and leasing for wind projects.

Instead, the Trump administration has opted to buy out wind project leases.

Trump’s Department of Interior has completed four deals so far to cancel wind project leases, paying energy corporations a sum of more than $2.6bn, including paying $765m to Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York and Maine and nearly $900m to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California.

“I think it’s a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases,” Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. “These projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they’re providing good-paying union jobs for thousands.”

Crowley said that workers would have had long-term job stability from working on these projects. He noted the Trump administration had lost in court in its attempts to issue stop-work orders on five wind projects in the Rhode Island area.

“We’re five for five taking on the Trump administration,” he said. “What the Trump administration is doing is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology.”

Will Gonzalez, a construction laborer with the Laborers’ local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, worked on the Vinyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, a project the Trump administration attempted to halt in January. The project is now completed and fully operational.

He criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to halt wind turbine projects, claiming the opposition from Trump stems from his experiences trying to stop a wind turbine project near his golf course in Scotland, losing an appeal in December 2015.

“It’s a personal vendetta,” said Gonzalez. “Good union jobs – we shouldn’t be trying to take those off the table. That just doesn’t make any kind of sense. Families obviously need good jobs … why take those jobs away?”

Gonzalez said he and his co-workers were leaving training and certifications unused because of the halting of wind power projects.

“All of us that worked on that Vinyard Wind 1, obviously, we would have loved to segue right into another project,” he said. “We’re fully trained, ready to go, willing and able, so it directly affected us. But you move on. You [have] got to move on. You can’t sit and dwell on that, because that’s not going to pay the bills.”

The White House directed comment to the Department of Interior.

A spokesperson for the department denied the cancellation and stop-work orders of projects had had any impact on jobs, even on projects under construction when halted. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking for clarification and did not comment on Trump’s prior animus toward wind turbine projects involving his golf courses.

“No jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment,” the spokesperson said.

“Rather than waiting years for the projects to materialize, the Trump administration is prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains that can create jobs now and deliver economic benefits faster.