International

Chilean mother travels 1,300 kilometers on foot to try to save her son with dystrophy

In the city of Ancud, one of the most important of the Chiloe archipelago, in the south of Chile, there is no hospital, so if one of its about 165,000 inhabitants gets sick, he must take the ferry and travel about 50 kilometers to reach the neighboring city of Puerto Montt, the nearest place.

Camila Gómez, a young mother, decided to take a trip but this time to walk to the Palacio de la Moneda, in Santiago de Chile, more than 1,300 kilometers from her home, to raise funds and make visible the drama of her son Tomás, who suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, one of the so-called “rare diseases”, which almost no one worries and no one finances.

Its main objective is to help collect the nearly four million dollars that costs a vital treatment that does not exist in Chile – it must be imported from the United States – and that would help stop the progression of the child’s ailment, barely five years old.

“Tomás has Duchenne muscular dystrophy in a neuromuscular degenerative disease that gradually weakens the muscles, the respiratory system and the heart, which leads to premature death,” he explains in one of the highs of his journey.

“In Chile there is no type of treatment for this disease, but in the United States there are several treatment options, there are three and here they told me that it was not possible to cover a medicine that is abroad. And it motivated me to do this walk, this physical effort,” he adds.

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Gómez regrets that no one, neither the precarious public service nor the greedy private insurance, has offered him an exit in the country, although his son “does have options abroad.

“That’s why we decided to walk, to make the disease visible and take it very particularly to collect the 3.9 million dollars that the drug that is administered for the only time in a lifetime costs. So far (its administration) is approved until the age of four and five. Tomás is five and a half years old. So we are against time,” she urges in anguish.

Even so, hope has not been erased from his face and sometimes, especially when asked about solidarity, he outlines a smile of love and trust.

“We are all aware of the great health deficit, that Chile is a country very backward in health, unlike other more developed countries and we are all aware of that. So people have empathized, supported and contributed to the campaign,” he says.

Along with this mother, who left Ancud on April 28, her husband and father of Tomás, Alex Ross, a friend Álvaro Neira and Marco Reyes, president of the Duchenne Families corporation in Chile, who has two teenage children with the same disease and who proposed the Ross Gómez family to the odyssey.

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“I am the logistical support for Camila and Marco who have been walking from Chiloé. I assist them on the way, usually with a change of clothes, food, food, I manage the lodging,” explains Alex.

“(Camila) Walk through Tomás, because we are against time, but he also does it so that no mom has to do it,” he says.

Camila’s third objective is to be able to speak in person with the President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, to urge him to promote a bill to Congress that allows improving the coverage of rare diseases in the country, and medical assistance in rural areas, abandoned by the state in a country where the privatization of health care prevails.

Neira joined the walk because he was moved by Tomás’ suffering but also because he is worried that “in Chile we do not have the means, a clinic where we can have these medicines, that we have to go to this.”

Tomás was diagnosed in March 2023 with Duchenne’s syndrome, the most common but also most severe form of this type of muscular dystrophy that is triggered by a defective gene that affects dystrophin, a protein that helps keep the body’s cells intact.

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It causes problems when walking and running, fatigue, learning difficulties and heart and respiratory deficiencies, and those who suffer from it usually have a life expectancy of between 20 or 30 years in difficult conditions.

With more than 700 kilometers of love in her terrified legs, this mother hopes to arrive in the Chilean capital at the end of this month of May from Chiloe, where there is a movement so that the spending on a bridge that they believe is unnecessary, is dedicated to the construction of a perentory hospital

International

FBI Warns of Possible Iranian Drone Attack on U.S. West Coast

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned police departments in California about a possible Iranian plan to carry out a drone attack against the west coast of the United States, according to a report published Wednesday by ABC News.

The warning was issued through a memorandum sent to agencies participating in a Joint Terrorism Task Force, outlining the possibility of a surprise attack involving unmanned aerial vehicles launched from a vessel off the U.S. coastline.

According to the document, intelligence suggested that in early February 2026 Iran may have considered an attack against unspecified targets in California if the United States carried out airstrikes on Iranian territory.

However, the memo also noted that authorities lack additional details about the timing, method, specific targets, or individuals responsible for the alleged plan.

Reports cited by U.S. media indicate that the alert coincided with the start of a military offensive by the administration of Donald Trump against the Iran, a development that has heightened tensions across the Middle East.

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Law enforcement sources with counterterrorism experience told the Los Angeles Times that the warning is part of a routine precautionary advisory based on information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The sources emphasized that there is no credible indication of an imminent attack and no evidence that Iran currently has the capability to successfully carry out such an operation.

California is home to the largest Iranian community in the United States. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than half of Iranian immigrants in the country lived in the state in 2019, including around 140,000 people in Los Angeles County alone.

The city also hosts a neighborhood widely known as “Tehrangeles,” where a large Iranian community began settling in the 1960s and continued to grow following the Iranian Revolution.

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International

Trump Says Iran Is Welcome at 2026 World Cup but Warns of Security Concerns

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said Thursday that the national football team of Iran is “welcome” to participate in the 2026 World Cup, although he suggested it might be safer for the team not to take part in the tournament.

“The Iranian national soccer team is welcome at the World Cup, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be there, for their own safety,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

His comments came a day after Iran’s sports minister, Ahman Donyamali, said that there are currently no conditions for the country to participate in the tournament following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during a military offensive launched on February 28 by Israel and the United States.

“After the corrupt government killed our leader, there are no conditions that allow us to take part in the World Cup,” the Iranian official said. He added that the country has faced two wars in the past eight or nine months, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths, making participation in the tournament unlikely.

On Tuesday, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, met with Trump at the White House.

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Following the meeting, Infantino said that Trump reiterated that Iran’s national team would be allowed to compete in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

“We discussed the current situation in Iran and the fact that the Iranian team has qualified to participate in the FIFA World Cup 2026. During the conversation, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote on Instagram.

International

Iran issues threat to Trump as conflict escalates over Strait of Hormuz

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, threatened U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, warning him to “beware of being eliminated.”

The Republican president had warned on Monday that he would strike Iran “very hard” if the Islamic Republic blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed since the war began eleven days ago.

“Iran is not afraid of your empty threats. Others more powerful than you tried to destroy the Iranian nation and failed. Beware that you are not eliminated,” Larijani wrote on X.

Earlier, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — the ideological military force of the Islamic Republic — also said their forces would move to block oil exports from the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military offensive against Iran is far from over.

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“Our aspiration is that the Iranian people free themselves from the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, that depends on them. But there is no doubt that with the measures taken so far we are breaking their bones, and we are not finished yet,” Netanyahu said in a statement.