UK police have seized a 4-foot-long caiman – a carnivorous reptile native to Central and South America – during a drugs raid in Essex, the force said on Friday.

Officers found the animal at a property in Aveley, a small town in Essex on the outskirts of Greater London.

They also seized a “significant cannabis grow” as well as several weapons including knives, and arrested two people, police said in a statement.

A 36-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of producing cannabis, contravening the dangerous wildlife act and possessing an offensive weapon.

And a 35-year-old woman was arrested on the same charges and also on suspicion of possessing with intent to supply drugs.

Both of them were later released under investigation.

“Drugs cause misery in our communities and we work hard to tackle their production and sale. We know this matters to the public and we value our neighbourhoods so these issues matter to us,” inspector Dan Selby, from the Grays Neighbourhood Policing Team, said in the statement.

Caimans, which resemble small crocodiles and can measure up to 5 feet in length, normally live in the rivers and wetlands found in central and southern America.

Police released a photo of this caiman pictured in a makeshift tank, and entrusted the animal to the RSPCA, Britain’s largest animal welfare charity.

Turkey started hastily organized mass trials on Friday to prosecute some of the hundreds of people who took part in the widespread demonstrations over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the major rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Some 189 people, including journalists, students and activists, were on trial across two overflowing court rooms in Istanbul’s Caglayan justice palace, one of the city’s main courts.

Both courts ruled to split the list of defendants to more manageable numbers after hearing procedural motions by defense lawyers.

Charges against the defendants stem from the protests that erupted after Imamoglu’s arrest on March 19 on corruption allegations — a move critics see as an attempt to sideline a key rival to Erdogan ahead of elections expected to be held in 2028.

At least 1,400 people were arrested during the demonstrations, posing one of the biggest challenges yet to the long rule of Erdogan, who is seeking to extend his presidency.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the trials as politically motivated, citing a lack of evidence and calling the charges incompatible with democratic norms.

A small group of parents and supporters gathered outside the court before the trials to demand justice for students who are among those being prosecuted, holding signs, releasing balloons and chanting “we want justice for our kids.”

“We release these balloons to symbolize their right to freely express themselves, their right to education, and their right to lead free lives,” the group said in a statement.

Eight journalists who were arrested while covering the protests in Istanbul also appeared in court on Friday.

One defense lawyer called for the immediate dismissal of the case and told the court, “The journalists were carrying out their constitutionally protected jobs.”

HRW reviewed the indictments against 650 demonstrators “accused of protest-related offenses,” noting that 120 were charged for assemblies held after an eight-day protest ban expired.

Potential sentences range from six months to five years, yet in some cases the evidence appeared thin. In one case, a rock allegedly held by a protester was cited as a weapon.

Protesters in the capital Ankara were met with police water cannons. In Istanbul, police doused people with pepper spray, and some officers kicked and hit demonstrators after several fireworks and other objects were thrown at riot police near the city’s municipality building, according to Reuters.

Hugh Williamson, HRW’s Europe director, criticized the trials as “a warning against exercising the rights to peaceful protest or free expression,” and urged prosecutors to drop charges without concrete evidence.

Turkey’s record on assembly rights has long drawn scrutiny, with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issuing over 70 rulings against Ankara since 2010 for disproportionate crackdowns, HRW said.

The Council of Europe has called on Turkey to protect “the right to peaceful protest.”

“The presumption of innocence, the use of pre-trial detention strictly as a measure of last resort and the protection of political expression” must all be guaranteed, the Council said.

Despite this, Erdogan’s government has tightened control, with Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit research organization, labeling Turkey “not free” amid censorship and surveillance laws.

As the trials begin, observers have warned of deepening authoritarianism. With 90% of Turkish media under government influence and journalists routinely targeted, the cases underscore a broader erosion of rights under Erdogan, who has ruled since 2003 and could remain in power until 2029.

Elections are not scheduled until 2028 but would need to come earlier if Erdogan, 71, who has run Turkey for 22 years, wants to run again. Imamoglu leads the president in some polls.

Maintaining a good relationship between the United States and Europe has long been seen as a no-brainer by leaders on both side of the Atlantic. After all, it’s this friendship that has led to decades of peace, stability and prosperity.

And then came US President Donald Trump.

In his second term, Trump and his closest aides have repeatedly expressed a deep disdain for Europe, centered mainly around their belief that the continent is taking advantage of the US when it comes to security and trade.

They say the US has for decades been subsidizing Europe’s inadequate defense spending, while getting slapped with tariffs and trade barriers in return.

But their dislike seems to be at least partly rooted in ideology.

Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump’s foreign policy is an extension of the culture wars that he and his administration are leading against liberalism at home.

“And Europe is considered to be one of the bastions of that liberalism,” she said.

She said Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement has been largely inspired by people’s disappointment with globalization.

Growing frustration with Europe

Few in the Trump administration have shown as much contempt for Europe as Vice President JD Vance.

Just weeks into his tenure, Vance stunned European leaders by using his speech at the Munich Security Conference to berate them over free speech and migration. He went as far as suggesting that the biggest threat to European security wasn’t Russia or China, but “the threat from within,” which he characterized as “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

He followed that up a wide-ranging interview with British website UnHerd on April 15 where he shared his and the president’s frustration with European leaders.

“The reality is – it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true – that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidized by the United States of America,” he said.

“It’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.”

But the extent of his dislike for the continent was laid bare when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat of Trump’s top officials on the nongovernment messaging app Signal.

Vance suggested calling off a US attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who had been disrupting key international shipping routes for months, because it would help European economies more than it would America’s.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said in the chat.

That remark was in line with Trump’s long-held belief that European countries have been able to underspend on defense because they knew the US would step in and bail them out.

He has threatened to take the US out of NATO and questioned Article 5 of the treaty, the principle of collective defense – a key pillar of the alliance that has only been invoked once in its history, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

Clash over defense spending

Trump made defense spending a major issue when he first became US commander in chief and 22 out of NATO’s then 27 members were spending less than the agreed upon 2% of their GDP on defense.

Things have changed since then – partly because of Trump’s pressure, but mostly because of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which was a major wake-up call for Europe.

In 2024, only eight out of the expanded alliance’s 32 members didn’t meet the target.

And while it is true that the US has invested a lot of money and manpower into Europe’s security, experts say the picture is a lot more nuanced than how Vance and other top Trump lieutenants present it.

“Americans didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts,” Ruge said. “Regardless of the administration, the US has rarely done something on the foreign policy front, which hasn’t been to the benefit of or in line with (the) national interests of the United States.”

Sudha David-Wilp, vice president of external relations and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, agreed with that assessment – and warned that pulling away from the time-tested alliance could end up costing the US.

The US was able to rely on the support of its European allies on a number of occasions, even when it didn’t necessarily benefit their own political standing – such as when they refused to condemn the decision by the US to kill Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, or when they supported the US invasion of Afghanistan and contributed troops to the multinational force there as required by NATO’s Article 5, even though majorities of their citizens opposed it.

“Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Does it need reform? Yes. But by tearing it all down, it could make (the world) more dangerous and riskier for the United States,” David-Wilp said.

US push for European independence

Trump and those close to him have long pushed for the US to pull back from its traditional role as the world’s policeman, warning against America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.

The paradox of this, Ruge said, is that Vance and other “restrainers” are aligned with many European countries who have in the past criticized US interventions abroad.

Vance said as much in the interview with UnHerd, when he suggested that if Europe was a “little more willing to stand up” to the US, it “could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”

Both Germany and France opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion, a stance which greatly angered the Bush administration. The then-Secretary of State Colin Powell threatened France with “consequences” over its decision to stand up to Washington. An anti-French sentiment took hold across the US — with actions like “French fries” being renamed “freedom fries” in establishments around the country.

“If you think about the Signal chat, where they’re going into the action of bombing of Houthis in Yemen and saying ‘we’re going to give the bill to Europeans,’ well, there’s an amount of hypocrisy, because American action – especially in the Middle East and North Africa – has produced huge amounts of liabilities for Europe,” Ruge said.

Scrutiny over security

The US has a vast network of military bases across Europe, with some 80,000 service members deployed there, down from a 20-year peak of 105,000 at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The current number is roughly one fifth of what it used to be during the Cold War.

The strategy of stationing American troops closer to conflict zones dates back to World War II and has proven to be beneficial time and time again.

While different administrations have tinkered with the number of troops and locations of bases, the US has always maintained a significant military presence around the world.

“One can certainly make credible arguments that it’s important to move assets to regions like the Indo-Pacific, but it still makes sense to have a presence in Europe, because having a presence in Europe also helps the United States when it comes to out-of-area conflict,” David-Wilp said.

According to research by the Atlantic Council, it would cost the US taxpayer nearly $70 million more per year to rotate military forces in and out of Europe rather than have them based in Germany and Poland.

The huge investments the US has been making into defense in Europe and elsewhere have also directly benefited the American economy.

Because while Trump and others often make it sound like the US is pouring cash into Europe, and Ukraine in particular, what the US is mostly doing is pouring money into American defense contractors.

“In terms of what the alliance has given to the US, besides all the other benefits, just in terms of the economy – the benefit (the) American economy has drawn from this in terms of weapon sales and weapon production is huge,” Ruge said.

Of the more than $175 billion in aid that the US Congress has appropriated to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than $120 billion has been spent directly with US companies or on US Forces, according to conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.

And according to the Kiel Institute, which monitors aid to Ukraine, European countries have provided even more aid to Ukraine than the US – first by using their own existing arsenals and then by procuring weaponry from Western defense industries. With four out of the top five global defense contractors being American companies, US industry is getting a sizable chunk of this new business.

European unity benefits the US economy

Trump has made his personal contempt for the European Union clear on multiple occasions in recent months. He even complained to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, incorrectly, that the bloc was making it difficult for him to expand his golf resort in Ireland.

Last month, Trump claimed the EU was “formed to screw the United States” when announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

It was a strange suggestion given that the EU would likely not exist if it wasn’t for the post-war push by the US to help form it. President Harry Truman was a great advocate of European unity and his and subsequent US administrations have supported European integration, seeing a united Europe as a more prosperous trade partner and stable ally.

In Trump’s worldview, the US is being “screwed” by the EU because it is running an overall trade deficit with the bloc. But, just like with defense spending, the issue is more complex than Trump might suggest.

The US and the EU have the largest trading relationship in the world, having traded $1.4 trillion worth of goods and services in 2023, according to the latest available official data. And while the US ran a trade deficit with the EU in goods, it had a surplus in services.

The two sides have been balancing on the edge of a trade war after Trump unveiled 25% tariffs on European steel, aluminum and car exports, and 20% “reciprocal” tariffs on all other goods. The EU said it would retaliate but then put a pause on the planned countermeasures after Trump announced he’d temporarily halt the tariffs.

But while a full-blown trade conflict has been avoided for now, trust between the two sides of the Atlantic has been fractured – perhaps irreparably.

A striking portrait of a young Palestinian boy who lost both arms in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City has been named Press Photo of the Year.

Photographer Samar Abu Elouf, who is also from Gaza, met nine-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour three months after an explosion severed one of his arms and mutilated the other. Ajjour and his family were evacuated to Doha, Qatar, where Abu Elouf is based, to receive medical treatment.

“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how, when Mahmoud first came to the realization that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you?’” Abu Elouf wrote in her accompanying notes on the image, which was taken for and published in The New York Times.

The photo is a stark reminder of the long-term costs of the war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands and led to widespread destruction and displacement of its residents. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates about half of those killed are women and children. Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza was triggered by the deadly October 7 rampage by Hamas militants.

“Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged Nine.” Mahmoud Ajjour, who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, finds refuge and medical help in Doha, Qatar, on June 28, 2024.

“This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo, in a press statement.

The jury observed three central themes — conflict, migration, and climate change — in the entries this year, says Lucy Conticello, director of photography for Le Monde’s M magazine and one of the judges.

“Another way of seeing them is as stories of resilience, family, and community,” Conticello said in a press statement.

The contrast in the winning photo — light and dark, beauty and pain — captured the attention of the judges, she added.

The winning photo was selected from nearly 60,000 entries submitted by 3,778 photographers across more than 140 countries.

Two other works were selected as runners-up: an otherworldly image of Chinese migrants warming themselves by a fire after crossing the US-Mexico border, and a haunting image of a young man walking to his village, once accessible by boat, along a desert-like riverbed in the Amazon.

“Droughts in the Amazon” shows a young man walking along the dry riverbed of the Solimoes River in Brazil.

“Life Won’t Stop.” A groom poses for a portrait at his wedding in Omdurman, Sudan.

Winners were also selected for regional categories, including an ethereal image of a stranded Boeing jet surrounded by floodwaters at Salgado Filho International Airport in Brazil, and a groom at his wedding in Sudan.

The winning images are currently on display in a traveling exhibition, which opens today (April 18) in Amsterdam at De Nieuwe Kerk, followed by shows around the globe, including in London, Jakarta, Sydney and Mexico City.