Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. What is it about the Met fashion gala that leads one to think fondly of the guillotine?
The noted wit Dorothy Parker once deadpanned: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to.”
2. The Trump regime, oligarchy, and the fight for socialism
This speech was given by Joseph Kishore, National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (US), at the International May Day 2026 Online Rally, held Friday, May 1.
3. Higher oil prices to come as reserves fall at record pace
One of the reasons for the assumption of a relatively rapid return to “normal” has been the release of oil from global reserves, which has helped contain the rise in the oil price below the levels to which it would otherwise have climbed.
But reserves are now being run down at a record rate.
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A foretaste of what that could mean came with the collapse of the low-cost airline Spirit earlier this week. The company said that a “sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices” in recent weeks left it with no alternative but to cease operations, because sustaining the business required “hundreds of millions of dollars of additional liquidity” that it did not have and could not procure.
The immediate issue is how many more companies like Spirit there are in the US and globally. It has been calculated that global airlines have cut 2 million seats from their flight schedules for May in just two weeks, with thousands of flights cancelled as a result of the doubling of the price of jet fuel.
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While less developed economies are the hardest hit, at least so far, the effects of the war are being felt everywhere, not least in the US, where prices have soared despite its supposed fuel independence. And the collapse of Spirit Airlines is a warning of what is to come, not least in the auto industry.
The three major US car firms, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, are reporting that the hit from higher commodity prices will be $5 billion this year. This comes on top of the $6 billion increase in costs flowing from the higher US tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
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The inexorable, relentless logic of the capitalist profit system dictates that the massive cost inflation set off by the war will result in ever-deepening attacks on the working class in every corner of the world, from Asia to the Americas, from Europe to the Indo-Pacific and Africa, through job cuts, unemployment and the intensification of speedup and exploitation, combined with intensified attacks on all democratic and social rights.
But at the same time, as Karl Marx remarked more than 150 years ago, no problem ever arises without at the same time providing the material conditions for its resolution. And that is the case here.
The war against Iran and the accompanying onslaught against the working class the world over have created the objective conditions for a unified global counteroffensive, which must be given conscious expression in the erupting struggles of the working class everywhere through the advancement of the political struggle for international socialism.
4. Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship exposes the continuing threat of zoonotic spillover
The casualties outline a tragic and complex medical crisis that has already crossed multiple international borders. The initial fatality involved a 70-year-old Dutch man, who developed symptoms roughly five days after the April 1 departure and died aboard the ship on April 11. His 69-year-old wife collapsed while in transit to the Netherlands and subsequently died in a Johannesburg hospital, later testing positive for the virus. A German woman died later on the voyage, while a British passenger was medically evacuated to South Africa where laboratory results confirmed his hantavirus infection. Furthermore, Swiss authorities have confirmed the virus in a man who had disembarked the ship in April and returned home to Switzerland, bringing the total number of confirmed and suspected cases to eight and raising the possibility of wider geographic spread.
This event is far from a routine cruise ship illness cluster. Hantavirus is predominantly a rodent-borne pathogen, transmitted when humans inhale aerosolized particles from infected animal excreta. The specific strain has now been confirmed as the Andes virus, as announced on May 6. This particular strain is endemic to South America and uniquely capable of limited human-to-human transmission among close contacts.
Because the first victim exhibited symptoms a mere five days into the voyage, officials speculate the initial infection occurred prior to embarkation in Argentina. Typically, the incubation period for the Andes virus-associated hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome is about 2 to 3 weeks, with published series showing a median of 18 days and a reported range of roughly 7 to 39 days in one well-described outbreak study.
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The clinical picture is initially deceptive. Early symptoms are nonspecific and include fever, malaise, muscle aches and gastrointestinal issues, such as nausea and abdominal pain. However, the condition rapidly worsens, progressing to a severe cough, shortness of breath and acute respiratory distress as fluid fills the lungs. Severe cases necessitate immediate intensive care.
Because there is no specific cure or widely used antiviral treatment, medical intervention is purely supportive, relying on mechanical ventilation and fluid management to prevent shock. This pathogen is rare, but it is deeply feared precisely because it begins with ordinary flu-like symptoms before triggering a sudden and often fatal respiratory collapse, with mortality rates reaching approximately 38 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with some outbreaks recording higher rates.
Historical records suggest hantavirus hemorrhagic disease was likely first described in the Huangdi Neijing, an ancient Chinese medical text written between 475 and 221 BCE. Throughout modern history, the pathogen has frequently emerged during periods of social, military and ecological upheaval.
The virus has been proposed as a cause of trench nephritis during the American Civil War and among British soldiers in Flanders during the First World War. During the Second World War, a 1942 outbreak struck German and Finnish soldiers in Lapland, while roughly 10,000 Japanese soldiers stationed in Manchuria developed hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. The virus formally gained its name following the Korean War, when approximately 3,200 United Nations soldiers contracted what was then called Korean hemorrhagic fever near the Hantan River in 1951.
In the Americas, the clinical understanding of the pathogen shifted dramatically during the 1993 Four Corners outbreak in the Southwest United States. Elevated rainfall from the 1992 to 1993 El Niño climate event fueled a massive expansion of the local rodent food supply and population, leading to a cluster of unexplained and highly fatal acute respiratory distress cases, notably among the Navajo people. This ecological spillover led to the discovery of the Sin Nombre virus and the recognition of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. In the United States, public awareness of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome gained renewed attention last year following the death of Betsy Arakawa, the wife of the late actor Gene Hackman, who succumbed to the infection in New Mexico.
In South America, the Andes virus presents a uniquely dangerous profile because it is the only hantavirus definitively known to be capable of human-to-human transmission. The profound risk of this specific strain was starkly demonstrated during the 2018 to 2019 outbreak in the Patagonian town of Epuyen, Argentina, located roughly 870 miles from the MV Hondius departure port of Ushuaia. In that outbreak, a single individual with an environmental exposure to rodents infected others at crowded social events, sparking a transmission chain that resulted in dozens of infections and 11 deaths. This was documented in the study, “‘Super Spreaders’ and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina,” published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2020. The virus is endemic to Argentina and neighboring regions, corresponding directly to the travel history of the initial victims.
Public health authorities are acutely focused on this detail because most hantaviruses do not spread from person to person. The Andes virus is the solitary exception that keeps epidemiologists on high alert. With human transmission now confirmed, this development will likely alter contact tracing protocols, isolation guidance and future global risk assessments for maritime travel. However, the definitive source of the pathogen remains under investigation, and the full transmission chain has not yet been established.
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Perhaps what is most critical is not the headline-grabbing attention of this devastating event, but the far deeper implications. The MV Hondius is not an ordinary transport vessel. It is a luxury expedition ship catering to an affluent and internationally mobile clientele. However, the biological risks these passengers encountered originate in ecological zones profoundly shaped by broader social and environmental processes. The cruise itself is symbolically important, illustrating the commodification of nature where pristine environments are sold as exclusive experiences. While the wealthy experience this danger as an exceptional and shocking news event, the upstream risks are generated by a global system that routinely exposes workers and rural communities to the same ecological hazards.
Modern travel and the circuits of global capital turn localized spillovers into international crises within a matter of days. A pathogen maintained within a specific South American rodent ecology can suddenly appear in Europe and Africa almost immediately, traveling on the infrastructure of international mobility. The Hondius itinerary demonstrates exactly how mobile capital and leisure carry biological risks across borders faster than public health systems can process them.
This unfolding event is inextricably linked to the ongoing fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the systematic dismantling of the public health infrastructure that protects humanity. We are living through a period of compounding biological risk; an era defined by successive pandemic emergencies in which the institutional capacity to respond has been deliberately weakened.
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The hantavirus cluster is, in an unintended resonance, the canary in the coal mine — and the ship now sailing toward the Canary Islands carries that warning on the very infrastructure of global mobility this outbreak lays bare. Human encroachment into wildlife habitats drastically increases the opportunities for zoonotic spillover.
As detailed in the study, “Global perspectives on infectious diseases at risk of escalation and their drivers,” published in the Scientific Reports journal in November 2025, climate change and socioeconomic factors are intensifying zoonotic spillover risks. Deforestation, agricultural expansion, increasing wildlife trade, and shifting climate patterns force wildlife into closer proximity with human populations, creating the exact conditions that produce the next outbreak.
5. Australia: Six months since the fatal Endeavor mine explosion in Cobar
Six months have passed since the explosion at Polymetals Resources’ Endeavor mine near Cobar, New South Wales (NSW), that killed workers Patrick “Ambrose” McMullen, 59, and Holly Clarke, 24, and left 24-year-old Mackenzie Stirling with serious injuries. But halfway to the first anniversary of the tragic incident, there is still no official explanation for what took place on October 28, 2025.
The New South Wales (NSW) Resources Regulator, the government agency in charge of mining safety, has not said a word since publishing a threadbare four-page interim report in November, nor given a timeframe for when it will produce a final report.
Based on previous fatal incident investigations, the workers’ families and colleagues could well wait another year or more. Even then, the official investigation will likely be a whitewash, shielding the company from responsibility entirely or at most calling for a token fine and a slap on the wrist.
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The corporate media, having descended on the town of 3,500 on October 28, had all but abandoned the story by the end of the month. The reopening of the mine was completely covered over by the major outlets, and reported only briefly in mining industry publications from the standpoint of celebrating Polymetals’ rising share price.
Only the World Socialist Web Site has given voice to the concerns of mining workers and Cobar residents over the premature reopening and the broader implications of the explosion for the mining industry. The WSWS has consistently called for a full investigation, directed and overseen by workers, to conclusively determine and expose the cause of the incident.
6. Crisis in New Zealand government over Iran war
Foreign Minister Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, released emails sent in early March which indicate that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wanted the government to express stronger support for the criminal US-Israeli war.
7. One year of the Merz government: war, militarism and social devastation
The Merz-Klingbeil government is the most right-wing and hated government in the history of the Federal Republic. The struggle against it requires an independent socialist perspective.
8. Australia and Japan boost military ties against China
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has proclaimed that the country will play a “more proactive” role in the Indo-Pacific, amid a flurry of regional visits all directed against Beijing.
9. Trump administration attacks Costa Rican media to silence opposition to fascistic puppet regime
Despite the right-wing character of La Nación, the visa revocations are a naked attack by a Hitler-inspired imperialist regime seeking to crush even limited criticism of its puppet government.
Under conditions of the ongoing war on Iran that is disrupting the world economy and the Canada-US trade war that has hit our facility here in Hamilton, Ontario, for over a year now, Management aims to offload the crisis onto our backs through real wage cuts and continued job insecurity.
The Scottish National Party appears headed for a fifth consecutive electoral victory, thanks to Labour’s rotten right-wing record, which has fueled Reform UK's growth in Scotland.
12. UK to lead European “Northern Navies” force against Russia
The Northern Navies would center on the Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led grouping of 10 European countries.
As soon as details of the “groundbreaking agreement” were released on April 15, opposition went viral among postal workers who slammed the proposed deal.
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
