An American basketball player for the Indonesian league was arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle illegal drugs to the country, police said Thursday.

The Southeast Asian country has extremely strict drug laws, and convicted smugglers are sometimes executed by firing squad.

Jarred Dwayne Shaw, 34, from Dallas, Texas, was arrested May 7, after police raided his apartment in Tangerang regency, just outside the capital, Jakarta, and seized 132 pieces of cannabis candies, said Ronald Sipayung, the Soekarno-Hatta Airport police chief.

The arrest followed a tip from the airport’s customs that reported Shaw had received a suspicious airway package from Thailand, Sipayung said. Cannabis has been decriminalized in Thailand since November 2024. Under Indonesia’s anti-drug laws, Shaw faces up to life sentence or death penalty if found guilty, Sipayung said.

A video circulating on social media purportedly showed Shaw, wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, resisting as he’s being pushed away by police and shouting “Help … help!” when he was about to be arrested.

Shaw has played for several clubs in the Indonesian Basketball League since 2022, and signed a contract with Tangerang Hawk last year. He told police during interrogation that he wanted to share the cannabis candy with fellow basketball players, according to Sipayung.

He said the candy contained a total gross weight of 869 grams (30.6 ounces) of illegal cannabinoid inside a package.

“We are still running the investigation to uncover the international drugs network behind this case and to stop its distribution,” Sipayung said.

Shaw did not make any statement when he was presented by the authorities at a news conference Wednesday wearing a detainee orange T-shirt and a mask with his hands tied.

Tangerang Hawks’ manager, Tikky Suwantikno, told reporters on Thursday that they regretted what had been done by Shaw and the club had immediately fired him as he has breached the contract.

The Indonesian Basketball League banned Shaw from playing for life, said its chair, Budisatrio Djiwandono.

“We don’t tolerate players, administrators or anyone in the field involved in drugs. There is no room for drug users in the basketball world,” Djiwandono said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data showed. Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.

Police in Thailand have arrested a man on suspicion of wildlife trafficking after he was found with two baby orangutans in a basket at a gas station in the Thai capital.

The 47-year-old suspect was apprehended Wednesday as he was about to deliver the two primates to a customer, Thai police said in a statement on Thursday.

Officers discovered the orangutans – one about 1-year-old and the other 1 month-old – in plastic baskets, police said.

Images released by authorities showed one of the orangutans in a plastic basket, wearing a diaper and hugging a soft toy alongside feeding bottles.

The man was arrested on charges of “illegally possessing protected wildlife” under Thai law and could face up to four years in prison, police said.

The man had admitted he was delivering the animals, “but he didn’t say where he got the babies from,” Kasidach said.

Police said they had uncovered an illegal wildlife trade network and were working to find out whether the orangutans had been bred in Thailand or abroad, he added.

The operation was carried out in collaboration with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Justice Commission in the Netherlands, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the police statement said.

The department said that Stefan, the 1-month-old, is in an incubator because of weak health and Christopher, the 1-year-old, has been relocated to a sanctuary run by the agency.

Authorities said the orangutans are believed to have been sold for around 300,000 Thai baht ($9,050).

Orangutans are native to Sumatra and Borneo, two Southeast Asian islands that are home to some of the world’s most diverse rainforests, and have come under threat as a result of deforestation, habitat destruction and poaching.

They are listed as “critically endangered” under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, which assesses extinction risks.

The gentle apes, once found in greater numbers across Southeast Asia, have experienced sharp population declines, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Thailand has long been a hub for the illegal wildlife trade.

Its border area with Myanmar, Laos, and China – known as the Golden Triangle – is a hotspot of cross-border trafficking, illegal wildlife trade and consumption, according to WWF.

It seems some parents in New Zealand just can’t get the message. Once again, King has topped the list of baby names rejected by the country’s Registrar General.

The royal title led the list of banned baby names for 14 years in a row until 2023 when it was replaced by Prince, which ranks second in the latest iteration.

Other regal references including Duke, Majesty and Emperor are also a no-go in the country, which polices birth names under its strict registration law.

New Zealand registered 60,000 births last year and rejected 38 proposed names, according to a letter from John Crawford-Smith, Principal Advisor of the Department of Internal Affairs, in response to a written inquiry.

Under the law, baby names must not be offensive, unreasonably long, or include numbers and symbols. They must also refrain from resembling official titles and ranks “without adequate justification,” according to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021.

New Zealand is part of the British Commonwealth and a constitutional monarchy that calls Charles III its King. It’s not known if the 11 parents who applied to call their child King meant it as an ode to Charles, but all were asked to have a rethink, according to Crawford-Smith.

In 2024, more than 1,000 children in the United States were called King, according to the Social Security Administration. (Liam and Olivia were the top US names last year).

Most of New Zealand’s rejected names had royal links. Ten applications for Prince were rejected, followed by four for Princess. Names like Kingi, Kingz, Prinz, Prynce, and Royallty were also banned – potentially because department staff also consider how names sound when spoken when deciding if they’ll be approved.

Officials also consider community perceptions of the proposed name. That may be why other names, including Sativa and Indica, both strains of cannabis, were rejected.

Fanny, once a popular first name, was also declined.

Parents are given an opportunity to explain their rationale before the Registrar General makes a final decision. “We continue to urge parents to think carefully about names,” Crawford-Smith wrote in the letter. “Names are a gift,” he added.

New Zealand is not the only country that imposes laws to regulate newborns’ names.

In 2015, a French judge in the northern part of the country refused to let two parents name their child Nutella because of the risk of humiliation.

Sweden also has a naming law and has nixed attempts to name children “Superman,” “Metallica,” and “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.”

In the United States, some naming fights have centered on adults.

In 2008, a judge allowed an Illinois school bus driver to legally change his first name to “In God” and his last name to “We Trust.”

But the same year, an appeals court in New Mexico ruled against a man – named Variable – who wanted to change his name to “F— Censorship!”

Indian police have killed 31 suspected Maoist rebels in what is being described as the “biggest ever operation” against the long-running insurgency.

Security forces spent 21 days attempting to capture the rebels along the border of the states of Chhattisgarh and Telangana in central India, Home Minister Amit Shah said Wednesday.

Describing the operation as a “historic breakthrough,” Shah said security forces carried out the “biggest ever operation” against the rebels, killing 31 of them in Karreguttalu Hill, considered a Maoist stronghold.

Indian authorities have been battling Maoist rebel groups, also known as Naxals, across several central and northern states since 1967. Inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, insurgents have over the decades launched attacks on government forces in an attempt to overthrow the state and, they say, usher in a classless society.

“Our security forces completed this biggest anti-Naxal operation in just 21 days and I am extremely happy that there was not a single casualty in the security forces in this operation,” Shah wrote on X, congratulating the soldiers for their “bravery and courage.”

“So far, a total of 214 Naxal hideouts and bunkers have been destroyed in this operation,” a statement from the Ministry of Home Affairs said, adding that hundreds of explosives were recovered during the search.

The insurgents are known as Naxalites in India after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal state where they originated in the late 1960s.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the operation in a post on X.

“This success of the security forces shows that our campaign towards rooting out Naxalism is moving in the right direction. We are fully committed to establishing peace in the Naxal-affected areas and connecting them with the mainstream of development,” Modi said.

The Indian government has cracked down in areas where Maoist groups are active – an approach that, while appearing to reduce the threat level, has been criticized by some observers as heavy-handed and prone to abuse.

Incidents of violence by rebel groups fell from 1,936 in 2010 to 374 in 2024, according to data from the home ministry. The total number of civilian and security-forces deaths have also fallen by 85% during this period, the data shows.

At least 31 suspected Maoist rebels and two police officials were killed in February, in what was described by police as the deadliest combat this year so far.

In 2021, 22 Indian security force members were killed and 31 injured in 2021 during a four-hour gun battle with insurgents, officials said.

The most intense clashes for years rocked Tripoli for a second night and continued into Wednesday morning, witnesses in the Libyan capital said, after Monday’s killing of a major militia leader set off fighting between rival factions.

The United Nations Libya mission UNSMIL said it was “deeply alarmed by the escalating violence in densely populated neighborhoods of Tripoli” and urgently called for a ceasefire.

The latest unrest in Libya’s capital could consolidate the power of Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, prime minister of the divided country’s Government of National Unity (GNU) and an ally of Turkey.

Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and the country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.

A major energy exporter, Libya is also an important way station for migrants heading to Europe and its conflict has drawn in foreign powers including Turkey, Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Its main oil facilities are located in southern and eastern Libya, far from the current fighting in Triopli.

While eastern Libya has been dominated for a decade by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), control in Tripoli and western Libya has been splintered among numerous armed factions.

Dbeibah on Tuesday ordered the dismantling of what he called irregular armed groups.

That announcement followed Monday’s killing of major militia chief Abdulghani Kikli, widely known as Ghaniwa, and the sudden defeat of his Stabilization Support Apparatus (SSA) group by factions aligned with Dbeibah.

The seizure of SSA territory in Libya by the Dbeibah-allied factions, the 444 and 111 Brigades, indicated a major concentration of power in the fragmented capital, leaving the Special Deterrence Force (Rada) as the last big faction not closely tied to the prime minister.

Mohammad Iqbal was working the nightshift at a power plant when he got a frantic call from his family saying artillery shells were exploding around their home.

But dawn brought no relief from the shelling that would continue for four days as India and Pakistan fought their most intense conflict in decades, raising fears of an all-out war.

Iqbal, 47, lives near the town Poonch in India-administered Kashmir, a stone’s throw from the de-facto border with Pakistan, an area of pine-clad foothills and flowery meadows, backdropped by towering, icy peaks.

But the idyll is illusory – Kashmir is one of the world’s most militarized regions and the trigger for multiple wars between India and Pakistan, who both claim the territory in full but control only in part.

Last week the nuclear-armed neighbors traded missiles, drones, and artillery shelling for four days following a massacre of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month that New Delhi blamed on its neighbor, which Pakistan denies.

Two hours after the firing started last Wednesday, Iqbal got news his brother-in-law’s home had been hit.

The shell had exploded at a nearby water tank, obliterating windows and sending shards of glass flying, hitting his brother-in-law and niece.

What followed was a frantic scramble to get the wounded to the nearest hospital.

“As people started evacuating there were a few people in the village with cars so people just poured into whatever vehicle they could find,” Iqbal said.

“For a few hours it was difficult to locate everyone. People got split up. But finally at the hospital my family came together.”

There, he found his brother-in-law, who works as a policeman, critically wounded and medical staff struggling to treat the influx of casualties.

Iqbal’s brother-in-law survived. But two of his neighbors did not.

Pakistan said on Tuesday that 40 civilians had been killed and 121 wounded in Indian firing, and that 11 members of its armed forces had been killed. India has previously said 15 civilians were killed and 59 wounded and that it had lost five soldiers.

For the roughly 15 million people living in the contested region, the latest bout of hostilities has appeared to push a political solution for their home further away than ever.

But the immediate concern in both sides of Kashmir is how long the skies will stay quiet.

“Markets are open again and some people who had left have slowly started coming back,” he said.

“There still is that anxiety about what might happen when night comes,” he added.

On the other side of the Line of Control, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Saima Ashraf shared those feelings.

“Uncertainty still prevails,” she said. “Many believe it (the ceasefire) is not a permanent solution.”

Others are unclear about when they can return to their homes and villages.

“Many of them are waiting to see how the situation develops before making a decision about returning,” Akhtar Ayoub, a local administration official in Pakistan’s Neelum Valley, told Reuters.

Raja Shoukat Iqbal, who lives near the de facto border, described the ceasefire as “essential for the people of Kashmir” who he said were paying a high price on both sides of the divide.

“This peace was also necessary on the international level because both countries are nuclear powers, any mistakes or anger of any country could cause the deaths of two billion people,” he posited.

Flashpoint

Kashmir has been a flashpoint since 1947, when British India was hastily divided into two by its former colonial rulers.

What followed was the birth of two nations: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Millions suddenly found themselves on the “wrong” side of the new border, leading to a frantic and bloody mass migration that tore communities asunder.

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state led by a Hindu monarch, was in a unique position. Pakistan laid claim to the territory, while the prince chose India.

Both Pakistan and India, two nations gripped by fervent nationalism, believe that Muslim-majority Kashmir is an integral part of their countries.

For Pakistan – which was founded as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims – Kashmir’s division is viewed as a grave historic injustice.

The country’s powerful military is run by the general Asim Munir, known for his hardline stance on India. Weeks before the latest conflict, he described Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein,” according to local media reports.

India has long accused Pakistan of funding terror groups in Kashmir, an accusation denied by Islamabad. Pakistan, meanwhile, seeks to position the cause of violence in the region as a result of New Delhi’s alleged “oppression.”

Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed a more uncompromising position on the contested land.

In 2019, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government split the former state into two union territories, giving the government in New Delhi greater control over the Muslim-majority region.

‘Our family is together’

India and Pakistan have both claimed victory from their latest conflict.

New Delhi says its strikes inside Pakistani territory – the deepest since one of their wars in 1971 – have eradicated terror camps used to plot attacks on India – including the massacre of tourists last month that sparked the conflict.

Pakistan says its air force shot down five Indian warplanes, including advanced French-made Rafale fighter jets.

On Monday, in his first remarks since the fighting started, Modi said India had “only suspended our responsive attack on Pakistan’s terror and military hubs.”

“In the coming days we will measure Pakistan’s every step,” he said.

Those on both sides of the border have long been living under the threat of shelling and strikes.

“We sat in silence, extremely petrified,” he said. “Praying the next target would not be our family or our home.”

“Smiles plastered across our faces, and we hugged,” he said.

“We now want this ceasefire to stay. Both countries need to find long-term solutions.”

Iqbal, the power plant worker, said he was trying to remain optimistic despite the damage done.

“We are lucky,” he said. “We have only homes to re-build and our family is together. I hope things don’t resume. But there’s no guarantee.”

Kim Kardashian is set to testify Tuesday in the Paris trial of the burglars accused of tying up and robbing the billionaire reality TV star at gunpoint nearly nine years ago.

She is expected to detail her ordeal during the 2016 Paris Fashion Week burglary, where she was robbed of nearly $10 million in cash and jewellery, including a $4 million engagement ring that was never recovered.

It will be the first time Kardashian will face the alleged robbers in court.

The defendants – who consist of nine men and one woman whose ages range from their 30s to their 70s – are facing charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy. Eight of them deny involvement, while two have admitted to lesser offenses.

Several are repeat offenders, with much of the beginning of the trial focused on their past criminal careers.

The trial opened on April 28 at a packed courthouse in the French capital.

The bodyguard, named only as Pascal D., said he found Kardashian “crying hysterically” on his arrival.

Dubbed the “Grandpa Robbers,” of the original 12 suspects, one has since died, and another defendant who has Alzheimer’s disease has been ruled unfit to stand trial. If convicted, some of the remaining defendants could face up to 30 years in prison.

The trial has been delayed for years partly because of major cases like those related to the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

The trial is scheduled to run through May 22, with a verdict expected on May 23.

Three years after it seized control of Mariupol following a brutal 86-day siege, Russia is using a more subtle power to keep its grip on the Ukrainian port city: social media influencers.

Though their follower counts and overall reach pale in comparison to celebrity influencers, experts say that the Kremlin needs local voices to effectively promote life under Russia’s rule.

“Just look what Russia is getting up to in Mariupol,” Pavel Karbovsky, a teacher at one of the blogger schools, said in a recent TikTok video highlighting the construction of new apartment buildings. “Wait, they’re building, not demolishing… this is Mariupol, our Russian town!”

But Russian-backed occupation officials have been actively encouraging creators like Karbovksy to post about the restoration of the “liberated” territories, including in official meetings.

In January, Karbovsky was among a group of content creators invited to meet with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-backed head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Pushilin said in a statement on Telegram that he was “counting” on the group to spread the word that the eastern Donbas region was “being revived.”

“We are all united by an immense desire to restore and revive Donbas. And people should know as much information as possible about the large-scale work that is already underway,” the post continued.

But absent from their videos is any context on the reason for rebuilding.

Russia’s siege of the port city, once known as a hub for trade and manufacturing, was one of the deadliest and most destructive battles since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.

According to United Nations estimates, 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed in Mariupol during Russian attacks, and around 350,000 people out of the pre-war population of about 430,000 were forced to flee. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a recent interview that 20,000 civilians are believed to have been killed, though the death toll is impossible to verify. Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of trying to cover up evidence of civilian casualties, a claim the Kremlin denies.

For Moscow, maintaining control of Mariupol remains a strategic priority and a focus of significant investment. “We are paying a lot of attention to Mariupol,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference in December. In March 2023, he staged a highly choreographed trip to the city, discussing “restoration” efforts with local officials. In a video that circulated online of him meeting residents, a voice off-camera could be heard shouting: “It’s all lies, it’s just for show.”

Training new voices

In September, an organization called the Donbass Media Centre (DMC) opened its “blogger school” in Mariupol. It offers free two-week courses designed to give aspiring influencers a technical grounding in skills like filming and editing, as well as an understanding of how to gain popularity and make money online.

Similar courses had already been held in Donetsk and Luhansk, and another followed in Melitopol, in the Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia. Karbovsky was one of the teachers.

The DMC was set up by Donbass Media, a pro-Russian news channel mostly operating on social media. In 2024, the DMC won a Runet Prize, a national award of the Russian Federation and Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives that celebrates excellence on the Russian internet. It also has a partnership with “Top Blog,” a competition for content creators run by a Kremlin program called “Russia – Land of Opportunities.” Last year, the most successful DMC students won a trip to Moscow to visit the headquarters of Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook.

Vkontakte is among several Russian social media networks owned by state-run Gazprom-Media. The Kremlin has clamped down its control of social media in recent years, through ownership, internet slowdowns, and, more recently, legislation requiring influencers with over 10,000 followers to register their personal details with Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor.

Karbovsky said the DMC’s aims are not political. “DMC does not have any such goal to create some sort of propagandists – no way. We don’t need this,” he said. “We want people to be able to share their different views about what is happening in the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) and the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and other regions.”

The same month the DMC opened its “blogger school” in Mariupol, graduates of a Russian government program called “The New Media Workshop” opened a media center in Mariupol to teach schoolchildren 14- to 17-years-old photography, filming and how “to work in the social networks.” The free program is funded in part by a Russian presidential grant worth around $12,000. Participants are encouraged to show the positive side of Mariupol.

“We look forward to welcoming talented kids, so together we can talk about the life of our beloved city,” reads an October Telegram post from the media center. In another, a participant in the course interviews children about how Mariupol has changed. “It’s become much more interesting, more colorful,” says one young girl. “It’s developing quickly,” her friend adds.

In March, Rutube – an alternative to YouTube owned by Russia’s Gazprom-Media – announced it was setting up “studios” in cities and towns across the four annexed regions, including in Mariupol, where content creators could access high-tech equipment and training programs. The initiative is part of a joint project with the Russian Military Historical Society, which Putin created by presidential decree in 2012 to “counter attempts to distort” Russia’s military history.

“The world now really needs the truth about the lives of the new Russian citizens who have gone through a lot… but chose to speak Russian, think and dream in Russian,” one of the organizers said in a press release.

Subtle messaging

One of her most popular recent videos, with over 177,000 views, is a montage of both damaged and rebuilt buildings in the city set to a voice-over that states: “Mariupol – the seaside capital of Southern Russia.”

“Look how beautiful,” another content creator, known as “Masha from Mariupol,” says in a TikTok video showing off newly built apartment blocks at sunset. “These apartments are filled with happy people… a wonderful region for family life.”

In other clips, she poses in front of a war memorial, gives a tour of the reopened railway station and shows off construction at the Drama Theater, where hundreds of civilians were killed in a Russian airstrike.

“They are approachable,” he added.

“You cannot use automatically the voices which are familiar for the Russians who live in central Russia or Siberia or Moscow, you need to find local voices who understand how to talk to people who live in these territories,” he said.

A ‘Potemkin’ village

Shiny rooftops of restored, or in some cases newly built, apartment blocks are visible dotted in and around the city center, having mostly replaced buildings destroyed in the war, satellite images from late 2024 show.

But in other areas the scars of the conflict are still visible.

In a satellite image from December last year, a crane can be seen next to the Drama Theater, where the Russian word for children, ДЕТИ, was scrawled in the spring of 2022 – a failed attempt to deter Russian bombs. Russian state media has reported that the theater will be finished this year.

In December, Putin claimed in a press conference that at least 300,000 people had returned to Mariupol and said, “the population continues to grow at a rapid pace.” In March, he signed a decree ordering all residents of the four regions to get a Russian passport by September 10 or leave.

Boichenko said he believes Russians are being lured there not only through positive news stories and social media posts, but also by Russia’s preferential 2% mortgage rate for its “new territories” – a significant draw in a country where market rates are currently as high as 29%.

Russia has promised to provide “compensatory housing” to everyone affected by the war, but in videos circulating mainly on Telegram, groups of Mariupol residents claim they still have not received their apartments and deliver direct appeals to Putin for homes.

In one video that surfaced in January, some hold up a sign that reads “БОМЖИ,” a Russian acronym meaning “homeless people.” One person says they are being offered apartments belonging to residents who left Mariupol. “We earned our apartments, we don’t want other peoples,” she says, urging the authorities to continue building. The Russian-installed mayor of Mariupol has said some residents will be given “abandoned” properties, effectively stripping those who left the ability to return.

The newly built Nevsky neighborhood that Putin visited in 2023, for example, is not connected to the sewage system, they said.

They added that the posts from content creators do not accurately portray reality in Mariupol. “It is targeted at people who do not live (in Mariupol) and do not know this entire situation,” the woman said.

And pro-Russia content creators can’t rewrite history, Boichenko added. “This propaganda, these made-up clips that they are doing now in Mariupol, will not help. Russia has committed a crime in Mariupol, and the people of Mariupol know it,” he said.

Chiclayo’s main plaza was raucous with the sounds of hammering and music, people milling in anticipation as the scaffolding went up for vast digital screens in front of the city cathedral. Saturday’s open-air mass would be a very special one: a celebration marking the ascendency of Pope Leo XIV, the world’s first American pope – but better known here as Robert, the world’s first Chiclayano pope.

Through the cathedral’s open doors, a line of women formed in front of the confessional in preparation for the big evening. A children’s chorus performed on the steps, competing with the thumping bass of secular life down the street, where two men in short shorts were leading a dance class. Banners draped around the square showed Leo’s smiling face, 10 feet high. Signs outside a local restaurant touted its goat stew as his favorite lunch order, back when he lived here.

Inside the cathedral, Amalia Cruzado, 52, silently sobbed in the pews, her arms outstretched.

“It’s a day of miracles. Chiclayo is so blessed,” she said. After praying, she would head home and pick up the rest of her family to attend the evening mass; her elderly father, suffering from cancer, desperately needed a miracle for his health.

Pope Leo was born in the United States as Robert Prevost, but for his adopted nation of Peru – where he acquired citizenship in 2015 – he is a Chiclayano, a son of the bustling northern Peruvian city where he served as bishop for years, after working as a priest in the countryside.

Here, everyone has a story about him.

Back in the 1980s, Nicanor Palacios was an altar boy with Leo during his early priesthood in nearby Piura, and traveled the area with him for services. “Being the junior priest, he was often sent out in the field,” recalled Palacios, now an airforce technician. “He would take us out in the parish’s jeep to have lunch.”

“It wasn’t hard for him to fit in. There was a small village back then, called Kilometer 50, on the Pan-American Highway. He’d take us there for dry meat and fried plantains. He liked that type of stuff and liked to go to the country. He’d eat just like a northern Peru farmer: yucca, fried fish, maybe a bite of fried meat.”

“What I liked most was his advice, because many young people, even back then, they would get lost, but he was just a young man, 24 or 25 years old, very serious and full of advice,” said Palacios, whose mother died when he was young and for whom Leo and the other altar boys become a second family, he says.

Many years later, as a bishop in Chiclayo, Leo’s accent was still “very American,” according to local priest Emerson Lizana, 30, but his presence felt deeply familiar in this northern Peruvian outpost.

“The way he treated people, his presence enveloped you in a sense of trust. He had a Latin American heart,” Lizana said, describing how the then-bishop became part of the daily life of Chiclayo, visiting the city’s poorest neighborhoods and carrying a cross through deserted streets during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Searching for truth and searching for God

Chiclayo is a city famous for the fervor of its faithful, even in deeply Catholic Peru. According to a 2017 census, Peru’s population is 90% Christian and 76% Catholic – more than Italy and far more than in Leo’s native United States, where Catholics are under 20%.

Leo, widely considered a progressive pope and ideological successor to Pope Francis, worked closely with the neediest in Chiclayo, coordinating local NGOs, churches and religious groups in the late 2010s to assist a flood of Venezuelans fleeing political chaos and economic collapse in their home country.

But his tenure has not been without criticism – three women allegedly abused by a local priest released a letter in September last year accusing Leo of failing to fully investigate their claims while he was bishop. The new pope has also been called upon by Catholics for Choice to change his views on abortion; an X account under Prevost’s name previously shared articles critical of reproductive rights and “gender ideology.”

“We are very worried. As you may have noticed, there is a lot of emotion in the province and in the region about the appointment of the Pope who was from Chiclayo. Ultra-conservativism, fundamentalism, new movements can emerge from evangelical and Catholic roots,” she said.

“Above all it is the Church that has maintained this idea of being against abortions, that abortion is also a sin, that it is murder. And this continues to be referred to and repeated by the Peruvian authorities.”

Abortion access is heavily restricted in Peru; in 2023, the United Nations accused Peru’s government of violating the rights of a 13-year-old girl who was refused an abortion following years of rape by her father, and then imprisoned by local authorities after she miscarried.

Still, for a pope, Leo’s social progressivism in other areas is seen locally as an overall “good direction” by some rights advocates.

“We don’t expect that suddenly the Pope goes out and defends the rights of women, but perhaps he will take a position that is a bit more human, and less stigmatizing of women who interrupt their pregnancies,” said Rossina Vasquez, director of a women’s rights group in Peru.

An interest in seeking truth and justice is part of the worldview of Augustinian priests like Leo, according to Friar Pipé, teacher at an Augustinian-run school in the outskirts of Chiclayo.

“For us Augustinians, God is the truth, and for us searching for the truth is searching for God,” said Pipé. “What I hope is that Leo can be a pope who becomes a sign of unity for the church: we can always do better, through dialogue and understanding, both inside our Church and with other religions,” he added.

Pipé, 30, was personally ordained by Leo in 2023 and blessed him in return per tradition; a blessing that he now jokes may have played some role in Leo’s chances during the Vatican’s conclave to select a new pope last week.

He remembers watching a broadcast of the process on YouTube as it played out in Rome, his fellow Augustinians erupting in whoops of joy and triumph when Leo’s name was called out.

With a Chiclayano pope, now anything is possible, Pipé joked.

“Let’s see,” he laughed. “When Benedict was the Pope, Germany won the World Cup. Then Francis was the Pope, and Argentina won… now, Robert is Pope, either Peru or the USA are going to win the World Cup.”

But for believers like Amalia Cruzado, who have little but their faith, the sense that this is a particularly blessed time for Chiclayo is no laughing matter.

In her modest neighborhood, where Cruzado says children often go hungry or cannot afford shoes, dust rose on Saturday evening as a taxi bumped down the unpaved street, the decal on its rear window reading “La Bendición de Dios.”

It was finally time for the evening mass.

Her family of eight piled in – freshly dressed and coiffed, from her 9-month-old grandson to her 79-year-old father – for a hair-rising ride through traffic back to the darkening square. Street lights flickered on as they arrived, police still hard at work cordoning off the cathedral’s steps for the night’s rituals.

Cruzado hoisted her grandson in one arm and shepherded her father toward the front, past crowds taking selfies in front of the Pope’s illuminated likeness. Soon prayers would begin, followed by a familiar order: readings from the Bible, the homily by Chiclayo’s new bishop, communion.

“Papa! Amigo! El pueblo esta contigo!” congregants chanted in the crowd, blasting airhorns and lifting their children in the air as if it were a home team game. “Pope! Friend! The people are with you!

“Let me tell you, the Pope has two hearts: one is for where he was born, but the other one is for here, for us, the humble people of Chiclayo,” Cruzado said. “He is our Pope.”

Dozens of boxes of Nazi material confiscated by Argentinean authorities during World War II were recently rediscovered in the Supreme Court’s basement, the court said on Sunday.

The 83 boxes were sent by the Germany embassy in Tokyo to Argentina in June 1941 aboard the Japanese steamship “Nan-a-Maru,” according to the history that the court was able to piece together, it said in a statement.

At the time, the large shipment drew the attention of authorities, who feared its contents could affect Argentina’s neutrality in the war.

Despite claims at the time from German diplomatic representatives that the boxes held personal items, Argentine customs authorities searched five boxes at random.

They found postcards, photographs and propaganda material from the Nazi regime, as well as thousands of notebooks belonging to the Nazi party. A federal judge confiscated the materials, and referred the matter to the Supreme Court.

It was not immediately clear why the items were sent to Argentina or what, if any, action the Supreme Court took at the time.

Eighty-four years later, court staffers came across the boxes as they prepared for a Supreme Court museum.

“Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during the Second World War,” the court said.

The court has now transferred the boxes to a room equipped with extra security measures, and invited the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires to participate in their preservation and inventory.

Experts will also examine them for any clues about still-unknown aspects of the Holocaust, such as international financing networks used by the Nazis.

Argentina remained neutral in World War II until 1944, when it broke relations with Axis powers. The South American country declared war on Germany and Japan the following year.

From 1933 to 1954, according to the Holocaust Museum, 40,000 Jews entered Argentina as they fled Nazi persecution in Europe. Argentina is home to the largest population of Jews in Latin America.