Ethiopia is supplying the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a genocidal UAE-backed militia, with vehicles modified for war. The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) published a new report on 8 April detailing the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) role in RSF’s shadowy supply chain

The ENDF has reportedly been supplying RSF with military-adapted vehicles for use in the war. HRL used a full suite of open source and satellite imagery in their report. Their latest briefing shows the suspect comings and goings of vehicles and vehicle-carrying trucks to an ENDF base.

HRL concluded:

with high confidence that there is activity consistent with military assistance to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) occurring at an ENDF (Ethiopia National Defense Force) base in Asosa Town in the Benishengul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia between 29 December – 29 March 2026.

RSF, whose main backer is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is currently engaged in a vicious war with the Sudanese government.

War in Sudan

As the Canary has reported, UAE has been a major backer of RSF in its war with the Sudanese government. Turkey, Egypt, Israel and many more countries are pursuing their own interests in Sudan too. British military components has also shown up on the battlefield in RSF hands. The UK is a major arms supplier to UAE.

As the Canary has said in our previous coverage of this poorly understood genocidal war:

The war in Sudan is theoretically between the Arab supremacist RSF and the Sudanese government. But foreign states pursuing their own interests are backing the combatants. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, backs the RSF with arms and equipment. Egypt backs the government, alongside Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Israel has backed both sides at different times.

The mounting death toll is similarly mindboggling:

RSF has killed Sudanese civilians in vast numbers. And some estimates say 150,000 people have died and over 10mn have been displaced by fighting.

You can read more of our reporting on RSF and Sudan here.

New Yale findings

HRL said it had:

reached its conclusions about military assistance being provided to the RSF at the ENDF facility in Asosa based on five interconnected indicators present at the base over a five-month period of satellite imagery and open source data collection.

These ‘indicators’ include many details about ‘technicals’ – light civilian pick up trucks adapted for warfighting.

• Repeating presence of non-ENDF commercial car carriers offloading non ENDF consistent technicals.
• Offloaded unarmed technicals consistent with vehicles allegedly bound to RSF fighters in Ethiopia.
• Increased presence of tents, vehicle traffic, and logistics activity consistent with high tempo non-ENDF military support operations.
• Unarmed technicals are being retrofitted with gun mounts for heavy machine guns at base.
• Technical vehicles consistent with those present at Asosa are observed in open source data from Kurmuk.

You can read the full details in the 8 April HRL briefing here. The operation centres on the military base in Ethiopia’s Asosa Town in the Benishengul-Gumuz region – about 100km from the Sudanese border town of Kurmuk.

HRL reported:

This support occurs from within an active ENDF installation in connection with an armed actor credibly accused of committing acts of genocide and illustrates violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1591 prohibiting arms shipments to those engaged in fighting in the Darfur region.

Ethiopia and the UAE

Ethiopia and the UAE have close economic relations. Utilities Middle East reported on 7 April:

Ethiopia is placing energy and infrastructure at the centre of its deepening partnership with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with a strong focus on power, logistics and large-scale development projects.

In January 2026, both governments stated their commitment to working together on various projects:

Both sides reaffirmed the depth of their longstanding strategic partnership, and the strong foundations of mutual respect and cooperation that define the UAE-Ethiopia relationship.

Both sides reaffirmed their comprehensive and strategic partnership in the promotion and defense of each other’s peace and security, territorial integrity and economic interests.

In the same press release, Ethiopia and UAE even found space to condemn the ‘warring parties’ in the conflict in Sudan – one of which HRL says they are both secretly backing:

The UAE and Ethiopia condemned attacks against civilians by the warring parties. They called on both warring parties to ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian personnel. The two sides underlined that the primary responsibility for ending the civil war lies with both warring parties.

From civilian truck to armed ‘technical’ – thanks to Ethiopia

Activities at Ethiopia’s Asosa base allegedly include equipping the technicals with gun mounts:

HRL has observed activities consistent with the modification of unarmed light technical vehicles to be equipped with gun mounts capable of holding heavy machine guns.

HRL added:

the livery and vehicle type are not consistent with those in standard use by Ethiopia’s armed forces.

The tightly parked vehicle were often seen on satellite imagery next to long, dark objects:

These objects are consistent with the length of a gun barrel, including the 50-caliber machine gun often used by RSF mounted on the back of technical vehicles.

While HRL concedes there are many unanswered questions about the vehicles and Ethiopia’s activities, they said:

The vehicles assessed in Asosa are consistent in color and type with vehicles utilized by RSF in battle across frontlines in Blue Nile, Sudan in March 2026

According to Middle East Eye (MEE), who also covered the HRL report, available satellite imagery:

connects the car transporters and other vehicles seen at Asosa with Berbera, the Somaliland city port that hosts a base run by the United Arab Emirates.

UAE continues to deny it is backing RSF. HRL’s forensic investigations say otherwise. Sudan’s civilians are the ones who suffer in the meantime. And they do so in numbers – and under conditions – which are at once horrifying and criminally under-reported.

Featured image via the Canary

How can you tell “normal” age-related language changes from dementia-related ones?

Dr García hopes this will lead to better early dementia diagnosis

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It’s wedding season again! Yay (or nay, depending how you look at it).

There’s nothing more stressful than navigating overly-complicated wedding dress codes.

You can’t wear white (famously), some say you can’t wear black or red, and apparently green is off limits in some circles, too.

Not to mention that you have to factor in whether you’re going to be among the same group of friends as previous years of weddings past.

Add to that the number of separate ceremonies you have to dress for this year, and their respective weather and locations, and you have yourself a sartorial minefield.

The good news is that no one cares about what you’re wearing as much as they do the bride and groom. So fire up those group chats, brainstorm what’s appropriate, but ultimately choose something that feels ‘you’.

Whether you’re witnessing vows on a beach, in a church, at a vineyard, or in someone’s back garden, we’ve found 17 wedding guest dress contenders for the season ahead.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has essentially admitted that they have no plan for increased demand in Access to Work. This demand will come from the tens of thousands of disabled people who they’re pledging to ‘help’ in to work.

The DWP are currently hell-bent on forcing disabled people into work through schemes like WorkWell and the Get Britain Working plan.

They’re targeting those in the Low Capability for Work Related Activity group, which you fall under if you’re too sick or disabled to work. As the name suggests, the department knows these people can’t work, but has instead rebranded them in the press as ‘no work requirements’, making it sound like a choice.

At the same time, they are quietly cutting Access to Work, the scheme which gives disabled people funding to make working more accessible. This can be a support worker, mobility aids or assistive technology. Access to Work has already been struggling with the demand in recent years, and its solution is to cut the support they’ve already approved.

In a recent committee hearing, the DWP even blamed employers, saying many used Access to Work to provide support workers instead of hiring extra staff.

But with the DWP forcing even more disabled people into work, there’s going to be an even higher demand for Access to Work. So surely the department has a plan for this? What do you think?

Ministers are finally holding DWP to account

Labour MP Jonathan Brash asked the DWP in a written question:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Get Britain Working White Paper of 2024, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of increased levels of demand for the Access to Work programme as a result of the increased funding for tailored employment support for Disabled people on out of work benefits.

It’s a fairly reasonable question, as amongst the constant propaganda against disabled people who can’t work and the government’s pledges, there’s been nothing about Access to Work.

The DWP, of course, completely fobbed him off:

Minister for Disabled People Stephen Timms replied:

We are continuing to consider what support we provide in this space in the future. We will make use of the outcomes of the Pathways to Work Green Paper consultation, the Collaboration Committees, and upcoming work of the Independent Disability Advisory Panel to inform the future direction of Access to Work. We recognise the importance of the National Audit Office’s findings and are carefully reviewing their recommendations. These insights will support and strengthen our work to ensure the scheme continues to meet customer needs while delivering value for money.

It’s important to point out that the Pathways to Work green paper consultation was almost completely ignored. It also didn’t consult on the majority of changes the department proposed. The Independent Disability Advisory Panel also has no real influence on policy. And the department spent more time during the NAO inquiry blaming employers and claiming people were getting more than they deserved than on anything else.

Not only is this completely side-stepping the question, but it’s also almost the exact same answer he gave to another question from Brash. The MP for Hartlepool asked less specifically about what steps the DWP was taking to ensure Access to Work had enough resources to meet demand.

The answer was almost exactly the same, except before the above bumph, Timms said:

Demand for Access to Work has increased significantly since 2019/20, with more than double the number of applications in 2024/25. Since March 2024 we have increased the number of staff working on Access to Work claims by 29% from 500 full time equivalent (FTE) to 648 FTE in March 2026. Case managers prioritise applications where the customer is due to start a job within four weeks, we continue to streamline processing, improving consistent decisions, strengthening quality checks and enhancing case manager calls with customers and employers. Further to this, we continue to recruit and train new case managers.

It’s great that they’re doing this to get people into work, but with the current regime in Access to Work, we’ve no way of knowing how much someone’s needs are being fully met, or if the DWP is giving them the bare minimum. There’s also the fact that over 66,000 people are currently waiting for Access to Work; they can’t even handle the caseload they’ve got.

It’s clear just how little it cares

There’s also a big issue at the moment, as we heard in the NAO inquiry, they previously rushed through so many applications to clear the last backlog that when it came to review, many had their support cut.  What’s stopping them from doing the exact same thing and stripping away the support they’d given in a rush to make up the numbers?

When you examine the DWP’s work even a tiny bit, it’s crystal clear just how little they’re actually going to provide tangible support for disabled people to get back into work. Beyond bullshit courses and low-paying apprenticeships that make them look like they’re helping, they actually don’t give a fuck how well supported disabled people are in work.

They don’t care if disabled people are working themselves to death in supported work. So long as the benefits bill comes down. Because after all, you can’t claim benefits if you’re dead.

Featured image via the Canary

Paul Robeson, the African American singer, actor and activist (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976), married a woman who was part-Jewish, had a Jewish daughter-in-law, and spoke and sang Hebrew and Yiddish. He would have had several Jewish friends who fled Anti-Semitism in Europe and the USA to join the decades-long wave of migration to the burgeoning state of Israel. However, when his political views became too dangerous for the establishment, they came for him.

Paul Robeson: political awakenings

As a descendant of enslaved Africans (his father had escaped from a North Carolina plantation), he empathised with Jews’ search for sanctuary in Palestine, just as waves of his people migrated from the Deep South to the relative safety of the northern United States and Canada.

Old Testament stories that were canonised in the spirituals he learned from his ancestors and sang so beautifully were married in Robeson’s remarkable bass voice and repertoire to the histories and traditions of the two peoples, giving his renditions a poignancy and authenticity unmatched by few (if any) before or since:

Oh don’t you want to go / to dat gospel feast /

Dat promised land where all is peace?

Robeson’s love of Democratic Socialism and Communism was sparked in 1928 when, during a run of Showboat in London, he came across Welsh miners who had walked all the way to the capital to highlight the plight of their exploitation by capitalist bosses.

This encounter disabused him of the notion that only Black people suffered under capitalism, and developed in him the belief that Socialism was the only system under which Africans, other colonised peoples and even white working people could achieve freedom and equality.

Shining

Paul’s star shone brightest between 1939 (when he first sang Ballad for Americans to widespread acclaim) and 1943 (when he performed Othello in what remains the longest-ever run of a Shakespearean role on Broadway), while being a hugely sought-after concert performer and film actor on both sides of the Atlantic. As his Socialism solidified, he used his platform to campaign on issues ranging from trade unionism, racial justice at home, anti-colonialist struggles abroad, and maintaining friendship with the Soviet Union, notwithstanding the post-WWII onset of the Cold War.

It seems that his politics didn’t adversely affect his popularity as an artist for a while, but the authorities in the USA and Britain were very concerned about him espousing his political views repeatedly from the stage, and had him surveilled from about 1941, if not before.

While on tour in Europe in 1949, things took a decisive, ominous turn for Robeson.

The establishment turns

Attending the Paris Peace Conference that April, he made a speech in which he pointed out the absurdity of African Americans being asked prepare to fight against the Soviet Union (where he had experienced no racism) despite remaining second-class citizens in their own country.

This presented the administration with the opportunity to begin the demonisation of this national treasure. His speech was distorted in the American press, convincing the public that he had said African Americans shouldn’t join the armed forces, had expressed greater love for the Soviet Union than for his own country, and compared US policies to those of Hitler and Goebbels. Despite having helped raise money and morale for the war effort, and spent the war years touring US bases singing for troops, Robeson was transformed from national hero to Public Enemy #1 in the space of a few short months.

An outdoor concert he had been booked to give back home to raise funds for the Civil Rights Congress on August 27, 1949 was violently disrupted by vigilantes and had to be abandoned before Robeson got to the ground, outside Peekskill, New York State.

The following week, supported by many trade unions who organised guards for him and the crowd, the concert went ahead, on September 4^th. It was however followed by another riot, where the mob, encouraged by the local police, attacked concert-goers as they left. In addition to numerous vehicles being destroyed, there were many injured, with one Black man losing an eye.

Love Song

Coming across this story in my research for my first play, Call Mr. Robeson, I realised that the Peekskill Riots was an extremely important but greatly underappreciated episode in American history, with Robeson being the crucible in which the combination of anti-Communism, anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism violently coalesced to reveal the USA as being as close to fascism as it had ever been.

Although it forms one of the highlights of the stage play, I had always thought it warranted separate dramatisation. Various ideas and events finally crystalised in an audio play, Paul Robeson’s Love Song.

One of its inspirations was the role the media played in manufacturing a fake ‘Anti-Semitism crisis’ in Britain’s Labour Party as a means of preventing Jeremy Corbyn from becoming UK Prime Minister. The political assassination of this overly-decent man, I argue, paved the way for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing rampage around the Middle East.

Set in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020 during the protests that followed the near-fatal police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, a pair of middle-aged siblings discover a unique Paul Robeson record in their late mother’s house, suggesting a romantic link between their grandmother and Robeson, dating back to the time of the Peekskill Riots. The open display of alt-Right Anti-Semitism in Charlottesville (“Jews will not replace us”) makes them recall their mother recounting what she had observed in the 1940s.

Robeson: gone but not forgotten

Written and recorded during the pandemic on basic microphones and laptops in bedrooms and kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic, Paul Robeson’s Love Song was premiered on his birthday, April 9, 2021. It remains relevant five years later, during the even-more-dangerous Trump era 2.0.

Also relevant are these words from Mr. Robeson himself from 1949: at an Anti-Apartheid rally in London, he noted that in South Africa, nationalists had succeeded in setting Africans against Indians in Natal, warning that “… they have provoked a fratricidal clash which unless checked very quickly may have the same tragic consequences for the non-European people of South Africa as the Arab-Jewish conflicts had for the people of Palestine.”

Tayọ Aluko is a playwright, actor and singer based in Liverpool. His stage play, Coleridge-Taylor of Freetown, will be performed in London in May.

Tickets to listen to Paul Robeson’s Love Song between April 29 and May 1 and then participate in an online Q&A with the author and some of the creatives can be purchased here.

Featured image via the Canary

Before the direct action group was unlawfully banned, Palestine Action targeted giant insurance corporation Allianz for its support for Israel. Now, rather than follow the example of other firms and cut its ties to the genocidal colony, the company is suing six activists for occupying and throwing paint at its Guildford office during two anti-genocide protests in 2024 and 2025.

Allianz: a disgrace

Allianz reportedly ended its insurance of Israel’s biggest arms-maker Elbit in November 2025 after a sustained protest campaign, but maintains other contracts with firms involved in Israel’s weapons industry.

The firm has refused to pause its lawsuit until criminal trials related to the protests are concluded. The protesters have applied to the courts to force the firm to do so. One of them, Seren John-Wood, said that Allianz was seeking “unfair advantage”:

This is an unprecedented and unusual extra step that is being conducted parallel to criminal proceedings.

The burden of proof is significantly lower in civil courts. We believe that in a criminal court we will be found not guilty. In a civil court, they will have an extremely unfair advantage; we are unable to afford legal representation whereas, according to their own annual report, they made a record operating profit of €17.4bn (£15.1bn) last year. There is no legal aid available for civil courts.

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Another, George Elliott, said that the firm had done more damage to its own reputation than the protesters had done to its offices:

Allianz brought on its own reputational damage and embarrassment, as well as any other alleged harm to its business and/or employees, by opting to insure Elbit Systems.

Featured image via the Canary

The US and UK-backed Israel breached the ceasefire reached on Wednesday by indiscriminately bombing Beirut in Lebanon, but it seems like our leaders, like Yvette Cooper, are more interested in reopening the Strait of Hormuz without the accountability of their main ally in the Middle East unleashing genocidal violence in Beirut.

The Strait of Hormuz

Labour ‘Friend of Israel’ Cooper is furious at Iran for closing a shipping lane but has nothing but lip service for Israel bombing Beirut, hitting 600 schools and 30 universities, and violating yet another ceasefire. Nothing on all the B-52 planes taking

Further, she knows full well that the Strait of Hormuz is actually open for peaceful nations – the Spanish, French,  Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese have all gotten their ships through. So the idea that the Strait is closed is simply not true.

Iran has re-closed the vital Hormuz Strait to oil tankers connected in any way to its aggressors and has again hit US facilities in the Gulf. Iran continues to allow vessels belonging to peaceful nations to pass.

When asked about Israel’s breach of the agreed ceasefire terms by bombing Lebanon on Wednesday and the Strait of Hormuz being opened, the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said

We want the ceasefire to continue. We don’t want a return to conflict, and we crucially want to see the Strait of Hormuz reopened because this is crucial for the global economy and for tackling the cost of living crisis here at home, and no country should be allowed to hijack these international shipping routes that impact the entire world and its economy.

We do want to see the ceasefire extended to Lebanon. I am deeply troubled about the escalating attacks we saw from Israel in Lebanon yesterday. We are seeing the humanitarian consequences, the huge mass displacement of people in Lebanon, so we do strongly want the ceasefire extended to Lebanon but we also need to maintain that ceasefire that is applying currently accross Iran and crucially get the Strait reopened as well.

Foreign sec @YvetteCooperMP tells Sky News she is “deeply troubled” by the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and wants the ceasefire to be extended to the country.

She adds that “it is crucial that Iran is not allowed to introduce tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.” pic.twitter.com/JrCOpxglu9

— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 9, 2026

Lebanon strikes get lip service only

Cooper concentrates most of her wrath on Iran, closing the Strait rather than the British-backed Israel’s unspeakable violence that not only violated ceasefire terms but was a grotesque escalation.

Cooper went on to say she is speaking with the International Maritime Organisation in London about their proposal to get the first ships moving, the trapped ships that are trapped in the Strait of Hormuz, and it is also crucial that Iran is not allowed to introduce tolls, calling it an international transit through the high seas, so it cannot be allowed to apply tolls and restrictions on that route as it reopens.

Let’s first examine Cooper’s claim about the Strait. She may be familiar with the 1994 San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.

Well, according to the Conversation:

Under the law of naval warfare, states are generally divided between belligerents (those engaged in armed hostilities) and neutrals (those not involved in the war).

The line between belligerents and neutrals is not always an easy one to draw. In the Middle East, at a minimum, Iran, Israel and the US could be classified as belligerents.

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According to the San Remo Manual, ships flagged to neutral states, including their warships, may exercise their navigational rights under general international law through a belligerent’s strait.

It is recommended that neutral warships give notice of their passage as a precautionary measure. A belligerent must not target neutral ships – they are not considered military objectives and must not be fired upon.

During this conflict, Iran’s territorial sea (which includes the waters within the Strait of Hormuz) counts as an area of naval warfare. The belligerent states are legally required to have due regard for the legitimate rights and duties of neutral states in an international strait.

Here is the UK’s problem, under this legal framework, the United Kingdom is not a neutral state.

By actively backing Israel’s military operations, providing weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover, the UK has made itself a party to the conflict. Cooper knows this and is conveniently glossing it over.

That means the UK is a belligerent state, just like the US and Israel. Had the UK chosen to act as a true neutral, rather than as a US vassal, it would have the legal standing to demand unimpeded transit through the Strait of Hormuz. But as a belligerent, it has no such right. Cooper cannot have it both ways, arming one side of a war while posing as a defender of international shipping law.

UK is supporting an illegal war

Contrary to Keir Starmer’s claims that the UK role is only defensive, the government has allowed US bombers to use its airbases at home and on the colonised Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. The UK, whatever the government claims, is becoming more deeply entangled in this runaway war.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini put it well on Channel 4 News. She said the Strait of Hormuz is actually open if you’re not part of the war. The Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese have all gotten their ships through. So the idea that the Strait is closed is just not true. It’s only closed if you are supporting the illegal war. Naraghi also pointed out that the US-Israel aggression has hit 30 universities and 600 schools.

When Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy quoted Trump saying that some Iranians wanted the US to bomb it, she quickly responded that it was “egregious” and “absurd” to suggest that in a country of 93 million people suffering from toxins from petrochemical plants that were bombed, that they chose it.

#C4News “The strait of Hormuz is actually open if you’re not part of the war”

“The Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, have got ships through”

“The idea that the strait of Hormuz is not open is not true”

“It is closed if you are supporting the illegal war”

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“They have hit… pic.twitter.com/HHNvyCFKve

— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) April 6, 2026

Labour Friends of Israel member Cooper should be ashamed. While Israel bombs Beirut and burns through yet another ceasefire, Britain’s Foreign Secretary saves her outrage for Iran closing a shipping lane. Cost of living crisis in UK is Labour’s making – not Iran’s – enough gaslighting.

Featured image via the Canary