A leading federal scientist in Canada has alleged he was barred from investigating a mystery brain illness in the province of New Brunswick and said he fears more than 200 people affected by the condition are experiencing unexplained neurological decline.

The allegations, made in leaked emails to a colleague seen by the Guardian, have emerged two years after the eastern province closed its investigation into a possible “cluster” of cases.

“All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist,” wrote Michael Coulthart, a prominent microbiologist. “A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).”

New Brunswick health officials warned in 2021 that more than 40 residents were suffering from a possible unknown neurological syndrome, with symptoms similar to those of the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Those symptoms were varied and dramatic: some patients started drooling and others felt as though bugs were crawling on their skin.

A year later, however, an independent oversight committee created by the province determined that the group of patients had most likely been misdiagnosed and were suffering from known illnesses such as cancer and dementia.

The committee and the New Brunswick government also cast doubt on the work of neurologist Alier Marrero, who was initially referred dozens of cases by baffled doctors in the region, and subsequently identified more cases. The doctor has since become a fierce advocate for patients he feels have been neglected by the province.

A final report from the committee, which concluded there was no “cluster” of people suffering from an unknown brain syndrome, signalled the end of the province’s investigation.

But leaked emails viewed by the Guardian tell a starkly different story and suggest senior research scientists in Canada’s public health agency (PHAC) remain increasingly concerned over the cause – and the debilitating symptoms – of an seemingly unexplained illness that disproportionately affects younger people.

In an October 2023 email exchange with another PHAC member, Coulthart, who served as the federal lead in the 2021 investigation into the New Brunswick illness, ​​said he had been “essentially cut off” from any involvement in the issue, adding he believed the reason was political.

Coulthart, a veteran scientist who currently heads Canada’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System, did not respond to a request for comment by the Guardian. But in the leaked email, he wrote that he believes an “environmental exposure – or a combination of exposures – is triggering and/or accelerating a variety of neurodegenerative syndromes” with people seemingly susceptible to different protein-misfolding ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Coulthart argues this phenomenon does not easily fit within “shallow paradigms” of diagnostic pathology and the complexity of the issue has given politicians a “loophole” to conclude “nothing coherent” is going on.

“I believe the truth will assert itself in time, but for now all we can do … is continue to collect information on the cases that come to us as suspect prion disease,” Coulthart wrote.

Copies of the email exchange were sent to the parliamentary health committee by a patient advocacy group in March, but it is unclear whether any action was taken. The committee did not respond to a request for comment.

New Brunswick’s health department did not respond to specific questions about Coulthart’s emails.

“Although Dr Alier Marrero has made statements regarding findings and observations with regards to a large number of patients, since May 2023, Public Health New Brunswick has received a total of only 29 complete notifications from Dr Marrero,” a spokesperson for the province’s health department told the Guardian in an email.

“These are being reviewed … to date, Public Health New Brunswick has not received any similar notifications from other physicians.”

Coulthart’s email emerged more than a year after Marrero pleaded with the Canadian government to carry out environmental testing he believed would show the involvement of glyphosate.

Marrero, who initially worked closely with Coulthart, declined to comment on the October emails, instead directing questions to the province’s health authority.

In the years since the cases were first flagged to health officials, those suffering say various levels of government have ignored their plight.

“Politicians don’t want to acknowledge there is something serious going on, because then they need to address it,” said one young woman, adding that ever since the province issued its final report, she has received no assistance or follow-up, despite experiencing worsening symptoms.

She now suffers from muscle tremors and poor coordination, and was told by doctors her visual and memory deterioration is reminiscent of a patient several decades older.

“My condition is progressing and things have been much more challenging,” she said. The woman, who asked not to be named, is unable to cook because her hands are too hard to control and she now relies nearly exclusively on frozen meals. As her memory deteriorates, she requires constant reminders from her smart speaker to take medications, to shower and to eat.

“I miss being able to drive and to have a sense of independence,” she says. “I don’t recognize myself on the inside.”

Elon Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House.

The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.

Meanwhile, Musk is turning up the volume and frequency of his anti-Biden harangues on Twitter/X, the platform he owns.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, Musk has posted about the president at least seven times a month, on average, this year. He has criticized Biden on issues ranging from Biden’s age to his policies on health and immigration, calling Biden “a tragic front for a far left political machine”.

The Times analysis showed that over the same period of time, Musk has posted more than 20 times in favor of Trump, claiming that the criminal cases the former president now faces are the result of media and prosecutorial bias.

This is no small matter. Musk has 184 million followers on X, and because he owns the platform he’s able to manipulate the algorithm to maximize the number of people who see his posts.

No other leader of a social media firm has gone as far as Musk in supporting authoritarian leaders around the world. In addition to Trump, Musk has used his platform in support of India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Some of this aligns with Musk’s business interests. In India, he secured lower import tariffs for Tesla vehicles. In Brazil, he opened a major new market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service. In Argentina, he solidified access to lithium, the mineral most crucial to Tesla’s batteries.

But something deeper is going on. Musk, Thiel, Murdoch and their cronies are leading a movement against democracy.

Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier, once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

If freedom is not compatible with democracy, what is it compatible with?

Thiel donated $15m to the successful Republican senatorial campaign of JD Vance, who alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country”. (Vance is now high on the list of Trump vice-presidential possibilities.)

Thiel also donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claimed Trump won the 2020 election and admires Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore.

Billionaire money is now gushing into the 2024 election. Just 50 families have already injected more than $600m into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of this is going to the Trump Republican party.

In 2021, Stephen A Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, called the January 6 attack on the US Capitol an “insurrection” and “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear”. Now he’s backing Trump because, Schwarzman says, “our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.”

Trump recently solicited a group of top oil executives to raise $1bn for his campaign, reportedly promising that if elected he would immediately reverse dozens of environmental rules and green energy policies adopted by Biden. Trump said this would be a “deal” for the oil executives that would avoid taxation and regulation on their industry.

Speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab last January in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon – chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the United States, and one of the most influential CEOs in the world – heaped praise on Trump’s policies while president. “Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked”.

Rubbish. Under Trump the economy lost 2.9m jobs. Even before the pandemic, job growth under Trump was slower than it’s been under Biden.

Most of the benefits of Trump’s tax cut went to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase and wealthy individuals like Dimon, while the costs blew a giant hole in the budget deficit. If not for those Trump tax cuts, along with the Bush tax cuts and their extensions, the ratio of the federal debt to the national economy would now be declining.

But don’t assume that the increasing flow of billionaire money to Trump and his Republican party is motivated solely by tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. The goal of these US oligarchs is to roll back democracy.

When asked if he was becoming more political, Musk admitted (in a podcast in November): “If you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes … Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.”

Communism rebranded? Hello?

A former generation of wealthy US conservatives backed candidates like Barry Goldwater because they wanted to conserve American institutions. Musk, Thiel, Schwarzman, Murdoch and their fellow billionaires in the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything – at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, including Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote.

As Thiel wrote: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

If “capitalist democracy” is becoming an oxymoron, it’s not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It’s because billionaire capitalists like Musk and Thiel are intent on killing democracy by supporting Trump and the neo-fascists surrounding him.

Not incidentally, the 1920s marked the last gasp of the Gilded Age, when America’s robber barons ripped off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the US had to go deep into debt both to maintain their standard of living and to maintain overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.

When that debt bubble burst in 1929, we got the Great Depression. Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler then emerged to create the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed.

If America learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that grew like a cancer in the 1930s, it should have been that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power – as Musk, Thiel, Schwarzman, Murdoch and other billionaires are now putting on full display – which in turn generate strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.

Under fascist strongmen, no one is safe – not even oligarchs.

If we want to guard what’s left of our freedom, we must meet the anti-democracy movement with a bold pro-democracy movement that protects the institutions of self-government from oligarchs like Musk and Thiel and neo-fascists like Trump.

PARIS: In Paris as in London the chief beauty of the season is the velvety greenness of the lawns. The use of a machine is uncommon even in the public parks, and in front of the Louvre this morning teams of men were sweeping together the mowings while other experts were swinging scythes. It is perhaps the most perfect method of keeping grass, though seldom seen in its perfection, and perhaps pursued here because in the heat of summer grass frequently disappears and has to be resown from year to year. The fine seedling grass, like uncut hair, is a characteristic feature of Paris gardens, and would no doubt be liable to be damaged by a machine.

It is pleasant to be reminded that the largest French town has direct and natural communication with the wildlife of the country. The gulls are a happy accident in London; here, in the Parc Montsouris, comparable to Battersea Park for its distance from the centre, the air is alive with swifts from morning to night; no one put them there or fed them or encouraged them to come; and their company is all the more delightful on that account.

Finland endured exceptionally warm weather in May, with temperatures significantly higher than normal by day and night across large parts of the country. The Nordic nation officially recorded 16 heatwave days, breaking the previous high of 14 set in 2018. According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, heatwave conditions are defined as days when temperatures reach 25C.

Average temperatures were 3-4C higher than normal in the south and west, and 1-3C above normal in the north and east. At the Hattula Lepaa observation station, 29.9C was recorded on 31 May, made it the warmest day of the month.

The high temperatures were the result of a large and persistent area of high pressure that sat across much of northern Europe, with unusually high temperatures also observed in Norway and Sweden. Human-induced climate change is likely to have played a part, with temperatures about 2C higher than they otherwise would have been in a pre-industrial climate, according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

It was also extremely dry, with some areas receiving less than 10% of the normal rainfall. There are fears that any sustained dry and warm weather this summer could bring an increased risk of forest fires and drought. The high temperatures have continued into the first few days of June with temperatures in excess of 20C, but they will return close to or slightly below normal by the end of this week as low pressure takes hold.

Meanwhile, prolonged and deadly heatwave conditions that have killed at least 60 people in Mexico are set to continue. A “heat dome” is behind the extreme temperatures the country has been experiencing for more than a month, with many states observing their highest temperatures on record. A heat dome refers to an area of high pressure that stays in the same place for a protracted period of time, trapping very warm air underneath.

The state of Oaxaca recorded its hottest day, with 48C in Valle Nacional on 26 May. Temperatures hit 34.7C at the Tacubaya Observatory in Mexico City on 25 May – its highest May temperature. The same station also hit 33.6C on 1 June, making it the joint warmest June day recorded in the city.

The high temperatures have had a devastating effect on the wildlife, with birds and bats badly affected. Almost 200 howler monkeys succumbed to the extreme conditions, falling from trees in a state of dehydration in the south-eastern state of Tabasco.

Aid shipments into southern Gaza are being squeezed out by commercial convoys, humanitarian organisations say, at a time when Israel’s military push into Rafah has choked off supply routes critical to feeding hundreds of thousands of people.

Deliveries of food, medicine and other aid into Gaza fell by two-thirds after Israel began its ground operation on 7 May, UN figures show. But overall the number of trucks entering Gaza rose in May compared with April, according to Israeli officials.

Part of the reason for the stark difference in accounts of what supplies reached the strip is a rise in commercial shipments.

In May, the Israeli military lifted a ban on the sale of food to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported last week. Traders got the green light to resume buying fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and other goods.

Inside Gaza, residents say there is more food in markets, but prices are many times higher than prewar levels, and after months of fighting and displacement few people can afford to buy much.

A group of aid agencies warned this week that there was a “mirage of improved access”, when efforts to feed Palestinians were on the verge of collapse.

“While Kerem Shalom remains officially open, commercial trucks have been prioritised, and the movement of aid remains unpredictable, inconsistent and critically low,” a group of 20 aid agencies warned this week.

In April, about 5,000 truckloads of aid came through Kerem Shalom and Rafah, the two main crossings into southern Gaza, UN data shows. In the last three weeks of May, just a few hundred came through Kerem Shalom; Rafah has been closed.

Overall, however, Israel says the average daily number of trucks going into Gaza rose in May to about 350, from about 300 in April, and the “vast majority” of recent deliveries passed through Kerem Shalom, said Shimon Freedman, spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli body responsible for humanitarian coordination. There was no priority for commercial shipments, he added.

Ami Shaked, the manager of the crossing complex where shipments are checked by Israeli security, confirmed that truck deliveries for business were outpacing aid, but said it was driven by the commercial interests of logistics firms.

“This problem is the same on two sides (of the crossing), the Palestinian sides choose to take the goods of the businessmen … the Israelis the same,” he told journalists at Kerem Shalom.

“Because if I have a contract with UNWRA [the UN agency for Palestinian refugees], they will pay, for example, 2,000 shekels for each truck. The market now (for) pure business is between 7,000 and 10,000 for each truck, so they prefer to take the goods of the businessmen.”

Aid organisations dispute that, saying they have long-term contracts for trucks, and when limited capacity to enter Gaza and move through a military zone is allotted to commercial trucks, it exacts a toll on the ability to ship in aid supplies.

Obstacles include lack of permits from Israeli troops to drive to Kerem Shalom, and roads into the collection area that are snarled by commercial vehicles waiting to load and unload.

“The Israeli military operation and activities since 6 May have been crippling to the humanitarian response,” said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNWRA.

“(The reasons) include restrictions imposed on our movement, including to pick up humanitarian supplies from Kerem Shalom. The Israeli authorities have not been giving us enough authorisations to move …. Also the area around Kerem Shalom has very, very quickly become extremely dangerous.”

Aid workers have long called for more trade into Gaza, to complement the supplies they can deliver. Food for sale allows those who can afford it to have a healthier, more varied diet, and potentially take some pressure off the demand for aid.

But if bringing more food to markets comes at the cost of aid deliveries, it will deepen rather than relieve the hunger crisis that is escalating in southern Gaza. Last week, two child deaths from malnutrition were reported in Deir al Balah hospitals.

“For the largest period in the war, Israeli authorities were almost exclusively allowing humanitarian supplies, although not enough of them. This made a whole population of 2 million people rely on humanitarian handouts and relief,” Touma said.

“Then they started bringing in commercial supplies, once people had depleted their resources, and there’s a huge issue of cash shortages in Gaza. Very, very few people will be able to afford those supplies that are coming in.”

After months of war, many Palestinians are running out of money, and almost all have trouble accessing cash. Most have been out of work for months, and those still getting salaries or with savings in the banks cannot use card or electronic payments, because power and communications networks barely function.

The very few ATMs that are still functioning have queues many hours long, a low cap on how much can be withdrawn, and a percentage must be paid to protection groups that prevent theft and rioting at the cash machines.

Claude the koala became Australia’s cutest thief and a viral sensation when he was filmed munching on seedlings at a nursery near Lismore last September.

But fame has only made him more brazen, with the hungry marsupial now helping himself to a weekday feed in front of staff at Eastern Forest Nursery.

New photos show Claude making a meal of eucalyptus seedlings in broad daylight as a nursery worker looks on. He reached the plants after climbing a shade cloth and down a pole.

Previously the koala would raid seedlings at night or on weekends when no one was around.

“We had no idea that a koala would actually come into the nursery and feed directly on our plants. I would never have believed it until I saw Claude sitting there on the pole,” nursery manager Humphrey Herington said.

“We all found it quite amusing, but at the same time, he has caused quite a lot of damage and continues to come back and visit the nursery.”

Adorable though Claude may be, conservationists say his behaviour highlights a serious problem – there isn’t enough food in the heavily cleared local environment in the NSW northern rivers for koalas to eat.

“Claude and his friends raiding the nursery to eat seedlings shows they’re desperate for food trees,” said Maria Borges from WWF Australia.

“This area in the northern rivers, especially around Lismore, is heavily cleared and it’s really missing good quality habitat for them.

“We need to plant more trees and urgently stop tree clearing especially around the northern rivers which is a stronghold for koala populations in New South Wales.”

Five hundred seedlings that Claude had munched on have just been planted in the local area to help provide food for him and his friends.

The seedlings were unsuitable for sale but still viable, so Herington donated them to WWF Australia, which is funding a larger community tree-planting project.

Community groups have planted 400,000 seedlings in the region and are aiming to reach 500,000 by the end of the year.

The property of NSW Greens MLC Sue Higginson is one of the locations for the new tree plantings.

She said it was wonderful Claude had brought so much attention to the area but said his story highlighted the need to take the plight of endangered koala populations in northern NSW seriously. In the Northern Rivers region, koala habitat has been cleared for activities including agriculture, predominantly for the creation of pasture.

A 2020 NSW parliamentary inquiry found koalas would be extinct in the state by 2050 without urgent action.

Governments continue to permit the clearing of koala habitat, including for native forest logging operations on the mid-north coast and in areas that have been promised for conservation in a proposed great koala national park.

“We’re in one of the most biodiverse, rich areas on this continent, but historical clearing has seriously degraded the area,” Higginson said.

“I’m privileged to be a custodian of this little patch of the northern rivers. My job, while I’m here, is to make this place better.

“We’re doing this because we have an incredible koala population hanging on for dear survival right here.”

Alessandra Sampaio fell to her knees and wept as she clambered on to the boat’s deck and came face to face with the remote riverside clearing where her husband’s life was extinguished and hers turned upside down.

The sound of Sampaio’s lament mixed with birdsong and the voice of an Indigenous shaman echoed through the jungle where the British journalist, Dom Phillips, and his Brazilian comrade Bruno Pereira were shot dead in June 2022.

“Dom and Bruno are here! Save them! Their spirits are lost here! We can’t see them but they are here!” the 85-year-old medicine man, César Marubo, cried out, imploring his people’s God and creator, Kana Voã, to guide their souls towards paradise.

“Take them by the hand and lift them up into heaven!” Marubo pleaded, his eyes also filling with tears.

On the riverbank before them, framed by Amazonian money trees laden with bright red fruit, two wooden crosses marked the spot where Phillips and Pereira were ambushed and murdered, allegedly by a trio of illegal fishers who are in prison awaiting trial.

“What I most want is to leave this pain behind,” Sampaio had said the previous evening, as she prepared to make her first journey to the place where Phillips’s final reporting mission came to a sudden end.

Sampaio’s visit, marking the two-year anniversary of a crime that shocked the world, was part of a deeply personal quest to come to terms with the loss of her husband, a longtime Guardian reporter who was writing a book about the Amazon when he was killed.

“I’m not angry. I’ve never felt anger, I just miss him so much,” said Sampaio, who wears the wedding ring recovered from her husband’s body around her neck.

But the pilgrimage was also designed to announce the creation of the Dom Phillips Institute, which will honour the journalist’s legacy through educational initiatives raising awareness of the complexities and magnificence of the Amazon and its original inhabitants.

“We don’t want to be frozen in pain and frustration. We want to forge ahead,” Sampaio said as she journeyed by boat along the Itaquaí river towards the shrine activists have built at the scene of the crime. “We must transform this pain into a positive movement – and give new meaning to everything that happened.”

Sampaio said the institute would be guided by the qualities for which her husband was known: tenderness, a burning desire to listen, and respect for diversity and life.

“I think that if Dom was here talking to me now he’d say: ‘Go Alê: move forwards, learn more, make contacts, help to echo this message about this incredible thing that is the Amazon and all of its beauties,’” Sampaio said before travelling to the memorial on the same vessel Indigenous searchers used in their dogged 10-day battle to find Phillips and Pereira after they disappeared while heading to the rivertown of Atalaia do Norte.

Members of those search teams accompanied Sampaio during last week’s visit to pay tributes of their own.

“It was such a tragedy and we are here to celebrate them,” said Binin Carlos Matis, an Indigenous activist who worked with Pereira trying to defend his ancestral home in the Javari valley Indigenous territory, a Portugal-sized sprawl of jungle that is home to the world’s largest concentration of isolated peoples.

Orlando Possuelo, an Indigenous expert who helped coordinate the search operation and continues to work in the region, hoped the memorial would also remind frontline activists of the dangers that their struggle to preserve the Amazon involved. “We don’t want the Javari valley to be filled with crosses,” he said.

The headquarters of Possuelo’s Indigenous monitoring group, Evu, in Atalaia do Norte was the first stop on Sampaio’s two-day tour of the isolated rainforest region near Brazil’s tri-border with Colombia and Peru.

There, she heard distressing reports about the ongoing assault on the Javari valley territory where illegal fishers, poachers, miners and drug traffickers continue to operate despite government pledges to crack down. “There are 300 points of invasion,” Possuelo told Sampaio, pointing to a map peppered with coloured dots denoting the different threats.

Days earlier Evu activists had chased off a gang of five poachers who had invaded the protected Indigenous territory, confiscating tapir and peccary meat and hundreds of tracajá river turtles they were trying to smuggle out and sell. On the eve of Sampaio’s arrival, an Evu member was assaulted at a local bar – an attack members suspect was motivated by their work.

But Sampaio also heard heartening accounts of how Evu had ramped up its activities in the two years since her husband was killed while reporting on the group’s fight to protect Indigenous lives. Evu’s membership has doubled to about 40 since Phillips and Pereira were murdered, with plans for a 116-strong force in the coming years patrolling each of the Javari valley’s six main waterways.

The next day Sampaio visited the base of the Indigenous association Univaja, which served as the nerve centre of the 2022 search effort, to discuss her plans for the institute and ask local leaders how it could help their cause. “They will not silence Dom’s voice,” she told them.

Representatives of the Matis, Marubo and Mayoruna peoples took turns to voice their hopes and fears over the region’s future.

Teacher Nilo Marubo spoke gloomily about how a lack of education and opportunities was driving an exodus of young people from Indigenous villages. “When they arrive in the cities they end up getting mixed up in alcoholism, drugs and even [criminal] factions,” he said.

Marina Mayuruna, a 27-year-old activist, denounced the violence affecting Indigenous women and girls. “Some men will tell you this doesn’t happen. But it does – and it’s the women who suffer,” she told Sampaio.

Clóvis Marubo, a 58-year-old leader, feared younger generations were becoming disconnected from traditional ways of life as western culture marched deeper into the region.

“There’s been such a big change in the past 40 years. We are losing our culture. Our culture is becoming folklore,” he said, ruing how many youngsters no longer knew how to hunt monkeys or peccary, use bows and arrows, or speak their native tongues.

Silvana Marubo lamented the unabating threats to Indigenous activists and their non-Indigenous allies. “I worry who the next Doms and Brunos will be,” she said, telling Sampaio: “Your pain is our pain … your tears are our tears. Your struggle is our struggle.”

Sampaio listened intently as her Indigenous hosts spoke, engrossed by their oration just as her journalist husband had been. At times tears rolled down her cheeks. At others she smiled and laughed, radiating hope and admiration as she heard their petitions.

Outside, Phillips’s 53-year-old widow caught constant glimpses of the Amazonian treasures and peculiarities that had so captivated her partner. The boisterous yellow-rumped cacique birds feasting on mangoes in trees lining the rivertown’s streets. Dolphins cavorting in the waters below. The phantasmagoric statues of snakes, jaguars and saints adorning Atalaia do Norte’s squares.

One afternoon Sampaio took part in a Matis whipping ritual called mariwin, where men wearing ceramic masks and covered in fern leaves thrash participants with palm stalks to frighten off evil spirits. Sampaio winced as the lash struck her back but vowed to return to the Javari valley to ensure the Dom Phillips institute’s first project benefited a place he had loved and where he was lost.

“I don’t want to be stuck with this [negative] image of the Javari. For me the Javari is a world waiting to be discovered,” she said, staring out across the bronze-coloured waters where her spouse once roved. “This is a special place for me.”

The last time Igor De Santis ran for mayor in Ingria, a tiny village surrounded by forests and mountains near Turin, he won an easy landslide victory. But he faces a tough challenge in his bid for a fourth mandate, after his mother joined a rival camp.

Ingria, one of the smallest villages in Italy, is home to 46 inhabitants. A further 26 people, registered to vote from abroad, make up the electorate.

De Santis, 42, has led the administration since 2009 and had expected competition in the mayoral race from an opposition councillor, 70-year-old Renato Poletto. The situation became more complicated when Stefano Venuti, a Milan resident who has a second home in Ingria, threw his hat into the ring. “We weren’t expecting that,” said De Santis.

And then the micro-race was fully upended by Poletto announcing that he had secured the support of De Santis’s mother, Milena Crosasso, and had put her forward for a councillor position in the ballot to elect a new council on 8-9 June, as part of a list comprising nine women and one man. In all, 30 people – about two-thirds of the village’s inhabitants – are now competing for positions.

“I did ask [my mother] to join me but after she saw that Poletto’s list was mostly women she decided to go with them,” said De Santis. “They are all volunteers who have worked really hard for the village.”

Crosasso said that the rivalry would not impact family harmony. “Both my son and I want the best for the community and this is an opportunity to give voice to women’s points of view without weakening family bonds,” she said.

Ingria is in Italy’s Soana Valley and experiences similar issues to other mountain villages, such as depopulation, scant services and challenges with snow during winter. Since 2022, when it was named as being among Italy’s “most beautiful” villages, it has also had to deal with an increase in tourism.

“There has been an incredible spike and we have to manage this,” said De Santis. “There are few residents, but a lot of second homes. Our main aim is to preserve Ingria’s beauty.”

Venuti told Corriere della Sera newspaper that he decided to run for mayor after being urged to do so by locals. “I’ve integrated very well,” he said.

Despite the competition, De Santis, whose grandfather was mayor of Ingria for 30 years, said he was “optimistic” that he could win.

College students celebrating Memorial Day weekend by California’s Shasta Lake left behind hoard of trash, according to US Forest Service officials.

Last weekend, approximately 3,000 students from the University of California, Davis and the University of Oregon partied at Shasta Lake, a 30,000-acre reservoir in the golden state, and left piles of debris cluttered around the lake.

According to forest service officials, despite being asked to clean up after themselves, the students left behind trash including cups, cans, plastic wrappers and pool floats.

Speaking to CBS, Shasta-Trinity National Forest recreation staff officer Deborah Carlisi said that staff members handed out trash bags to students for them to pack up their items.

“Some students used them, some students didn’t,” Carlisi said. A three-person cleanup crew ultimately spent six hours picking up the trash around the lake. Nevertheless, not all the trash was removed.

Due to rocky beaches, high water levels and dangerous water conditions, cleanup crews will not be able to pick up the trash at the bottom of the lake “until late next month or early July”, said Carlisi.

“What was left behind in the lake could be damaging to our fish and wildlife, which is a big problem. If a deer goes down to the water and eats a plastic wrapper, that would make them sick,” she added.

In response to the litter, the University of Oregon issued a statement in which it apologized for its students’ actions.

“The garbage left behind does not represent the values of our institution. We are sorry for the impact to the island and extra work for the forest service,” the statement said, KGW 8 reports.

“We are investigating this event and working with the US Forest Service and our students to remediate the damage and hopefully prevent similar actions in the future. This is not a university sanctioned or sponsored event but is attended by university students, many of whom are members of university-recognized fraternities and sororities,” the university added.

Similarly, the University of California, Davis announced that it was investigating the incident, saying, “The university was disappointed to learn of this conduct, and is exploring ways of working with students to help restore the site or otherwise address the situation. We are still assessing information from the forest service.

“Students are expected to comply with all laws, and failure to do so may result in discipline under the university policy on student conduct. Student visits to Shasta Lake over Memorial Day weekend are not sanctioned or sponsored by the university,” it continued.

The Guardian has reached out to the forest service for comment.

A New York City couple who were “magnet fishing” in a lake caught more than they had bargained for when they pulled out a safe that had $100,000 cash inside.

James Kane and Barbie Agostini tossed a line with a strong magnet attached to the end into a lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on 31 May, Friday afternoon.

The couple managed to open the safe and found the cash, bundles of $100 bills, with an estimated value of $100,000, though the money was damaged by the water.

In an interview with NY1, James Kane explained they began magnet fishing during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the allure of treasure-hunting without having to spend a lot of money on equipment. Magnet fishing simply involves putting a rope with a strong magnet on it into water with the hopes of retrieving metal objects.

No one expected a safe to be on the end of the line though. Let alone one stuffed with cash.

“We pulled out and it was two stacks of freaking hundreds,” said Kane.

The couple said they contacted the New York police department about the find and said they were told there was no crime attached to the cash and there was no way to identify the original owner of the safe, meaning they were allowed to keep it.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Agostini. “I lost it.”

The couple said they’ve never found anything like this, citing some of their previous finds, including old guns, World War II grenades, a full-sized motorcycle, foreign coins, and jewellery.