Humane World for Animals UK , the Fur Free Britain coalition, 50 MPs, veterinary experts and celebrities are strengthening calls on the UK government to ban imports of fur.

This comes as new investigative footage shows mink in Chinese fur farms trembling in tiny wire cages before being brutally killed for fur that could end up sold in the UK. And there are concerns that a reset of the UK-EU relationship could make banning fur imports more difficult.

Despite banning fur farming in 2003, the UK continues to import millions of pounds worth of fur from overseas. It has imported more than £60m worth from China in the last decade (2016-2025 inclusive), making China the single biggest source of UK fur imports.

Humane World for Animals campaigners say the UK government is complicit in cruelty for as long as it keeps allowing fur from China and other countries to enter the UK market.

The cruelty of fur farming

The investigation at five farms in Qinhuangdao and Dandong, northern China, reveals thousands of mink, foxes and raccoon dogs kept in barren wire cages measuring one square metre or less.

Many of the animals exhibit signs of psychological distress, such as repetitive head bobbing and pacing, resulting from the lack of stimulation and chronic stress.

Evidence shows the lifeless bodies of mink and raccoon dogs littering the ground below the cages, and pools of blood around the minks’ heads. A mink is seen writhing on the floor where the animal was thrown by a farm worker after being bludgeoned.

In March 2026, the UK government’s animal welfare committee published a damning report condemning the animal suffering involved in the UK fur trade. MPs and campaigners are increasingly concerned that the UK’s sovereign right to ban fur imports could be sacrificed by the government.

In the letter, MPs and Peers state:

We are concerned by recent media reports indicating that the EU reset could compromise the UK government’s ability to ban fur imports and sales.

A handful of EU countries, including Finland and Greece, continue to permit cruel fur farming.

Ruth Jones, MP for Newport West and Islwyn, says:

It’s sickening to think that fur from these animals tormented in tiny cages and brutally killed could end up traded in the UK. We can’t call ourselves a ‘nation of animal lovers’ if we ban cruelty here but then keep shipping it in from overseas.

Reports that the UK-EU reset might remove the UK’s freedom to ban imports of fur are extremely concerning. Labour backed a Fur Free Britain when we were in opposition, and we must not now trade that promise away.

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Claire Bass, senior director of campaigns and public affairs at Humane World for Animals UK, says:

Millions of animals are suffering on farms in countries including China, Finland and Greece so their fur can be shipped to the UK. The global fur trade causes immense animal suffering and virologists are ringing the alarm bell that it could be the source of another pandemic.

Our government must not sign any deals that keep the UK complicit in this cruel, reckless and unnecessary trade.

Former Defra minister Zac Goldsmith says:

One of the advantages of Brexit was that we could boost animal welfare in ways that were not previously possible. At the moment we don’t allow fur farming in the UK, but we do allow imports, which means we have simply exported cruelty.

We can now change that, unless the Brexit ‘reset’ closes that option off. It would be a terrible waste of a real and meaningful opportunity to stand up for animal welfare.

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Potential for disease

Fur farm outbreaks of COVID-19, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, and Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus (SFTSV) have resulted in millions of animals dying or being killed. SFTSV is an emerging infectious disease that affects animals and humans, with symptoms including fever, respiratory and gastrointestinal issues and even death.

Virologists have voiced serious concerns about the fur industry’s potential to drive disease spread to humans and even trigger the next pandemic. A 2024 Nature paper focused on Chinese fur farms identified 39 viruses as high-risk for spillover potential, including 13 potentially high-risk novel viruses. It concluded that fur farming represents:

an important transmission hub for viral zoonoses.

Outbreaks of infectious SFTVS disease on six fox farms in China resulted in “tens to hundreds” of deaths per farm and virologists have warned that:

close contact between farmed foxes and farmers could facilitate the viral spillover from foxes to humans.

Veterinarian professor Alastair Macmillan, formerly head of animal health and welfare evidence base core team at Defra,  says:

As a veterinary microbiologist, I am deeply concerned by the clear potential for disease transmission when highly stressed animals are confined in close proximity, while other species -including geese, ducks, and cats – roam between the cages.

We already know that fur farms can act as incubators for zoonotic diseases, and this footage perfectly illustrates that risk.

None of the animals on these fur farms is permitted a life that even remotely satisfies their natural behavioural instincts. These are wild, intelligent animals that belong in complex, stimulating environments. Instead, they are locked in barren wire cages, their lives reduced to a meaningless, repetitive loop of eating, sleeping, and wasting away, until the day they are finally killed and skinned.

Fur is a declining trade that needs stamping out

China’s fur trade has been in steep decline with a 90% reduction in animals kept and killed from 87 million animals in 2014 to 8 million in 2025, according to the China Leather Association.

The decline of the trade in China mirrors a similar downward trend worldwide. Globally there has been an 86% decline in the number of animals kept and killed for fur in the last decade, from 140 million in 2024 to 20.5 million in 2025.

You can read the letter from the MPs and Peers here.

Featured image via Humane World for Animals

By The Canary

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President Donald Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for Texas’ Senate GOP race in an eleventh-hour decision, siding with a longtime MAGA ally — and potentially imperiling GOP control of the seat.

Trump’s endorsement Tuesday gives Paxton a late boost over establishment Republicans’ preferred candidate, Sen. John Cornyn, ahead of next week’s May primary runoff, where polls show a razor-thin race. And it comes after the president refused for months to take sides, in spite of heavy lobbying from both Cornyn’s and Paxton’s allies.

The timing of the last-minute endorsement comes as a surprise, months after he was initially expected to jump in: Just on Monday, Cornyn said “the ship has finally sailed” regarding Trump’s stamp of approval.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

Cornyn and his supporters fear that nominating scandal-plagued Paxton, a figure of the far right with significant personal baggage, would put control of the Senate at risk and cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to defend the seat this fall.

As Texas’ top lawyer for a decade, Paxton has faced impeachment, a securities fraud investigation, ethics complaints and an ongoing divorce with allegations of infidelity. Democrats believe they have the best shot in decades at winning statewide in Texas, and Republicans worry that Democratic nominee James Talarico is a formidable opponent.

White House allies predicted that Cornyn’s stronger-than-expected showing in the first round of voting would convince Trump to endorse him. The president played into those expectations when he posted on Truth Social back in early March that the Texas GOP primary can’t “be allowed to go on any longer” and he would announce his pick soon.

But in the end, after more than six weeks of delay, Trump was swayed by the MAGA wing of the party who see Paxton as a true believer in their movement and despise Cornyn for occasionally being at odds with the president.

Paxton is a staunch Trump ally who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And after some White House allies told POLITICO and other media outlets that Trump was looking at endorsing Cornyn, MAGA influencers including Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec led a public full-court press to get Trump to reverse course.

Paxton, ahead of Trump’s decision, said he would consider stepping aside if the Senate chose to eliminate the filibuster and pass the “SAVE America Act,” the elections overhaul bill that has since stalled in the Senate over GOP divisions. That offer was seen among Texas Republicans as a ploy from Paxton to remind Trump that the pair are closely aligned, while driving a wedge between the president and Cornyn, an establishment Republican who is opposed to removing the filibuster.

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Ministers are regularly holding off-the-record meetings with the CEOs and senior staff of England and Wales’ scandal-riddled privatised water and sewage sector.

As the Labour government introduces a new bill anti-privatisation campaigners brand a “gift to shareholders”, the Canary can reveal how water bosses are schmoozing with cabinet ministers behind closed doors.

Water companies schmoozing with Labour in unminuted meetings

Official data from the Department of Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs (Defra) shows that government ministers met with CEOs and representatives of water companies across at least nine separate meetings in the final three months of 2025.

Now, a Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) request the Canary submitted to the department has revealed how ministers attended these meetings entirely unminuted and without formal agendas.

The quarterly release gives a limited description of the purpose of these meetings, as required by the Ministerial Code and further set out in Cabinet Office guidance.

But the lack of documentation raises serious questions over the nature and content of what essentially amounts to secret discussions between the government and the millionaire CEOs of privatised water corporations.

Secretary of state discussions behind closed doors

The off-record meetings included a meeting between secretary of state Emma Reynolds and Thames Water chair Adrian Montague at the end of November.

The department recorded this simply with the description “Discussion on Thames Water”.

Of course, the government has so far actively refused to bring Thames Water into special administration. It has repeatedly fallen back on water industry spin to justify pursuing a ‘market-led’ – privatised – solution. Now, ministers and Ofwat are poised to sign a deal that would allow it to dodge fines for the next four years.

Another meeting Reynolds hosted at the end of October included a “Discussion on water operations” with Severn Trent CEO Liv Garfield.

Days earlier, Severn Trent was one of just two major water suppliers that regulator Ofwat did not order to make ‘underperformance’ payments to its customers. This is where the regulator forces companies failing to meet certain pollution targets to pay up. As a result, this is meant to reduce customer bills.

In practice, however, it doesn’t actually mean customers see a reduction in their water bills. This is because parasitic private suppliers have been simultaneously hiking these. In reality, then, underperformance payments simply mean Ofwat forces companies to reduce an already raised bill. Nonetheless, Severn Trent’s supposed ‘overperformance’ meant it evaded these payments.

However, fast-forward to April 2026, and the Environment Agency revealed that the company had wracked up the highest bill for fines over pollution incidents. These totalled £4.6m – the highest total of any provider within the 2025-26 financial year.

Rubbing shoulders with water privatisation lobbyists

On 9 December, the environment secretary also held a ‘Water Investor Roundtable’ to discuss “water sector investability”. But the register entry fails to disclose attendees. And of course, according to Defra’s response to the Canary’s EIR request, Reynolds held the roundtable entirely unminuted.

As such, there’s no public record of the companies involved in these conversations. Of course, it’s likely that discussions on ‘investability’ concern the water sector’s and corporate capitalist creditors’ vested interests in maintaining the privatised status quo.

Defra minister Emma Hardy also held a number of meetings with CEOs of major water companies off-the-record. This included two meetings with South East Water boss David Hinton in December.

At the beginning of May, Hinton stepped down from his role after scathing criticism from the EFRA parliamentary committee. The committee had issued a damning report documenting the company’s routine failures. This included a two-week water outage in Tonbridge Wells during November 2025 that left 24,000 properties without water. It declared no confidence in SEW’s leadership team.

Hardy also held an unminuted meeting with industry trade group Water UK that same month. The lobby body has been a staunch defender of privatised interests in the sector.

Dodging public scrutiny over water privatisation: a feature of this Labour government

The Canary’s recent EIR request also wasn’t the first time Defra ministers hosted unminuted meetings with the water sector.

We previously submitted an EIR request concerning ministerial meetings with Water UK. This revealed that Defra ministers had hosted four separate off-the-record discussions between October and December 2024.

Previously, the Good Law Project also found that ministers had taken no minutes in nine meetings with water companies. The meetings took place between July and September that same year.

The Canary hasn’t (yet) obtained minutes and agendas for all the meetings Labour ministers have held with water companies. Nevertheless, a clear pattern is emerging that points to dodging public scrutiny as a shameful feature of this government.

Separately, the Canary also discovered that former environment secretary and shady Labour Together-linked MP Steve Reed had failed to publish a record of his meetings in the ministerial register. This was for the first quarter of 2025 – and to this day, there’s still no entries. As such, not only would meetings Reed held with water companies be off-the-record – currently, they’re entirely scrubbed from it.

Room to ‘bend and break the rules for profit’

Given all this, anyone might think the government has something to hide. Its continued failure to even temporarily nationalise Thames Water could have something to do with it. Instead, the government continues to tinker around at the edges of the glaring problems of privatised water.

And this Labour administration full-well knows that sewage pollution is a hot button issue for the electorate. If meetings were to show ministers getting chummy with the privatised water racket, that might just blow an irreparable hole in their – already dire and plummeting – popularity.

On the Canary’s findings, Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at anti-privatisation campaign group We Own It, said:

Water is one of our most vital resources. We are dependent upon it, and we pay increasingly high bills for it. So it is insulting that fundamental decisions about our water system are being made without us, behind closed doors – without even a public record of what was said.

It is hardly surprising that – following these conversations – the government produced a water White Paper which is a gift to shareholders, with new measures which will give water companies even more room to bend and break the rules for profit.

A single regulator will be ripe for corporate capture. Plans for a ‘tailored approach’ for each water company will even further reduce consistency and transparency.To make these reforms into law would be a dangerous step in the wrong direction – favouring faraway shareholders over the people that use and pay for our water system.

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Instead, this government should be bringing water into public ownership, starting with the collapsing Thames Water. Under public ownership, we can make water truly democratic, with decisions being made on Boards where Environmental Groups, Households and Workers are represented.

Ultimately, ministers rubbing shoulders with the corporate criminal bosses of England and Wales’ sewage scandal-laden water industry in clandestine conversations may make people legitimately wonder whose interests this government serves.

But of course, the answer to that has long been obvious with this shower of corporate-captured ministers.

Featured image via Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

By Hannah Sharland

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The Kenyan state is ramping up its repression against activists, particularly anti-imperialist and communist organisers. Hundreds recently mobilised against the Africa Forward Summit (AFS) conference in Nairobi.

At least 11 protestors were arrested as they marched against the AFS as part of the Pan-Africanism Summit Against Imperialism (PASAI) on 12 May. Among those arrested were British, French, Greek, and South Korean revolutionary party delegates.

Officially the ‘Africa Forward Summit: Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth’, AFS is the first major high-level French-led summit to be held in any non-francophone African nation.

Opponents such as the PASAI consider AFS to be a neo-colonial enterprise, orchestrated and led by the openly imperialist, neoliberal Macron regime in France. France currently seeks to strengthen its regional influence in Eastern Africa as its powerful grip is shaken off in the Western continent.

Repression of Kenyan communists

The following day, 13 May 2026, General Secretary of the Kenyan communist party (CPMK) Booker Omole attended a court hearing in Nairobi on a case linked to his previous arrest and abduction. During the proceedings, the court adjourned the matter and scheduled the next hearing for 27 May 2026.

Reports from supporters and observers described the case as politically charged, with growing criticism over the circumstances surrounding his arrest and detention.

Omole stated outside court that this repression has been mounting for the past decade. He said:

The communists of this country have been charged on organising street protests to defend the poorest of the poorest … Comrades, now we are criminals … now we are “narcos”; now we are “small-arms traders”; now we are “terrorists”.

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African masses mobilise against imperialism

The AFS comes as France’s notoriously extractive ‘post’-colonial France-Afrique arrangement in the Western continent and Sahel region suffers a string of defeats. These include the loss of military outposts and control across its former colonies.

National sovereigntist figures and military leaders in nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali often frame their political platforms in anti-French-imperialist terms.

The PASAI counter-summit was arranged to agitate against what organisers call:

a rebranded offensive of imperialist recolonization disguised behind the mask of environmental diplomacy and financial reform.

Arrests were made after protesters attempted to disrupt the gathering at the Kenyatta International Convention Center, where French President Macron himself was hosted.

William Ruto’s increasingly authoritarian administration hosted Macron, gathering with various African rulers, elite autocrats, careerist politicians and neoliberal loyalists.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo, a Tanzanian socialist organiser, wrote of the protests:

The response from the Kenyan security apparatus was predictable: brute force, arrests, intimidation, and disappearances – all in service of protecting imperial prestige and suppressing dissent.

Three weeks before, some 53 Kenyan protestors appeared in courts – ten in one dock and 43 in another courthouse – charged with blocking a road and “free movement of the people” during one demonstration.

Ongoing repression and waning British control

The recent mobilisations and subsequent arrests come after a tumultuous couple of years for Kenyan President William Ruto’s elite-led, comprador government.

June 2025 saw at least 50 people killed by police gunfire in anti-government protests. The BBC framed this such that you’d suspect one prominent arrestee, Boniface Mwangi, of being partially guilty; yet multiple human rights groups blamed the state’s enforcers.

The protests followed shockingly similar demonstrations led by Gen-Z in June 2024, in which Ruto deployed the military and government forces killed dozens of activists.

Ruto and the Kenyan ruling class gained recognition as a major NATO non-member ally – a status also held by Israel – in 2024, indicating the international priorities of the present regime. Pan-Africanists, they are not.

The BBC labelled this NATO alignment “crucial for regional security” at the time.

The US, UK and now likely French military intelligence interests in the country stem from a desire to maintain trade openness, or rather trade dependency. British oversees officials show regular contempt for the highly unequal and impoverished nation.

The Canary’s Joe Glenton wrote in 2025 of Britain’s waning colonial control in Kenya:

Before and since occupation the British have treated Kenya as a resource to be exploited … Yet it seems that grip has loosened in recent years as more and more Kenyans rail against this “occupying presence.”

The characterisation of British troops as an “occupying presence” actually comes from a report authored and published by British MPs into the countries’ bilateral relations.

Yet despite arrests, disappearances, killings and intimidation of organisers, the people of Kenya are doubtless wise enough to recognise that one European imperialist power is no better than another.

French imperialism: alive but declining

Speaking at the AFS, Macron made remarks of a typical neoliberal, post-political style:

It is a new philosophy … not looking backwards, neither left nor right, as my friend the President Ruto says, but to look ahead of us.

Macron stated that he wishes to be by the side of Africa “for its own agenda,” and noted the return of looted colonial-era artefacts and his desire to “co-invest” in Africa. Macron even went so far as to absurdly call the French “the real Pan-Africanists” – perhaps what he envisions is continent-wide French recolonisation.

Perhaps more than any other European imperial power in Africa, France maintained a decades-long stranglehold on fledgling post-independence nations. Particularly effective in this was the 1945 imposition of a French-controlled CFA Franc currency.

The CFA Franc was pegged to the French Franc until 2002, when it converted to the Euro, but it remains printed entirely in the Bank of France. Even bloggers from the elite-coded London School of Economics recognise it as “monetary imperialism.”

The CFA has no independent value beyond its conversion rate to the Euro, which remains controlled by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), frequently run by appointees of the French Treasury.

French corporations and a local Francophile ruling class have long upheld control over the region. This ran through military occupation, then CFA-style economic coercion, alongside a comprador elite class and often violence through proxy militias.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo wrote also about France’s eyes on Africa:

Imperialism does not invest in Africa to liberate Africans. It invests to secure markets, extract resources, discipline governments, and reproduce dependency under modern financial and military arrangements.

But Macron was shunned on his trip by some schoolchildren in favour of a famous marathon runner. So too can we expect the Kenyan people to shun French imperialism in favour of their sovereignty.

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By Cameron Baillie

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While navigating difficult circumstances during his life and football career, international striker Aymen Hussein always returned strongly to shine. Now, he’s fulfilling a long time promise to fans to lead Iraq to the 2026 World Cup.

Iraq, Aymen Hussein and a viral video

It was 10 years ago when Hussein first promised to take his country’s national team to the World Cup, a dream that came true after a long journey through the qualifiers, the Asian play-offs, and then the final stage in the global play-offs in Mexico, where he played 21 full matches on his journey back to the World Cup spotlight.

Things became difficult for the team after Hussein suffered career-impacting injuries. At one point, this prompted fans to call for him to be excluded from the national team, but Hussein would come back stronger every time, whether in the qualifiers or the continental championships.

The 30-year-old began playing football with clubs in Duhok and played for several Iraqi teams. His professional career started in Qatar, the UAE and Morocco, before returning to Iraq, where he scored more than 100 goals.

Hussein contributed to Iraq winning the 2023 Gulf Cup title in Basra and scored 93 goals wearing the ‘Lions of Mesopotamia’ jersey. The most precious of which was his goal against Bolivia, which announced Iraq’s arrival at the World Cup.

Hussein continued to spread joy to his country and all Arabs, writing a historical chapter in his football journey filled with lessons and achievements.

From the moment Iraq made its historic second return to the World Cup after 40 years, a video of Hussein promising to lead Iraq to the World Cup in 2016, went viral. In 2026, his promise is finally being fulfilled.

Fighting mentality and team spirit

Iraq’s national team coach, Graham Arnold, confirmed that the Lions of Mesopotamia will enter the 2026 World Cup with a fighting mentality and team spirit, relying on discipline and determination in facing one of the toughest groups in the tournament.

During a press conference in Baghdad, Arnold said that the Iraqi national team is aware of the magnitude of the challenges that await it in the World Cup, especially after being placed in a group that includes France, Norway and Senegal. However, he stressed that the players will enter the tournament with great confidence and a desire to honour Iraqi football.

Featured image via Rodrigo Oropeza/ Getty Images

By Alaa Shamali

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