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  • Israel’s Smotrich leads settler raid into Joseph’s Tomb in the occupied West Bank

    Israel’s Smotrich leads settler raid into Joseph’s Tomb in the occupied West Bank

    In a provocative move that escalates tensions over territorial and religious claims in the occupied West Bank, hundreds of Israeli settlers, led by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, forced their way into the Joseph’s Tomb compound in the heart of Nablus early Wednesday, protected by heavy Israeli military deployment.

    Israeli troops launched pre-emptive raids on residential areas of the Palestinian city and closed all major entry checkpoints to clear the path for the visit, which included organized morning prayers for the settler group. Official Israeli estimates place the total number of Israelis who entered the compound overnight at approximately 5,000.

    During the visit, Smotrich — who also holds a senior role in Israel’s defense ministry overseeing the civil administration of the occupied West Bank — doubled down on his longstanding goal of cementing permanent Israeli control over the religious site, which falls under the administrative jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Smotrich framed the incursion as a symbolic and political milestone, stating, “Our presence here at Joseph’s Tomb, in broad daylight, is a clear statement: the people of Israel are returning home to all parts of their land. Joseph’s Tomb is living testimony to the inseparable connection between the people of Israel and their land.”

    The far-right minister went on to pledge to formally transfer full administrative control of the compound to the Israeli government, calling the incursion “another step in a historic correction and in strengthening our hold on Samaria” — the Israeli term for the northern West Bank. “We are acting, and will continue to act, so that the Jewish presence here becomes permanent,” he said, before issuing a formal call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to expand Israeli sovereignty over the site, adding that the move “is the most fitting Zionist response to our enemies – deepening our roots in our land.”

    Wednesday’s incursion is the latest in a years-long pattern of accelerating de facto annexation of the West Bank led by Smotrich, who took office as part of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government in December 2022. Under his leadership, Israel has overseen one of the largest waves of land seizure in the occupied territory in decades, alongside a sharp rise in incursions into contested religious and heritage sites across the region. These include the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, both flashpoints for religious and political conflict.

    A recent investigation published by Israeli daily Haaretz this week revealed that Smotrich has prioritized settlement expansion in the West Bank over his core duties as finance minister over the past two years. Between 2024 and 2025, the report found, Smotrich held more than 65 private meetings with Yehuda Eliyahu, his close political ally who until recently led the Settlement Administration within the defense ministry. Eliyahu was appointed last week to head the Israel Land Authority, the state body responsible for managing and allocating public land in both Israel and the occupied West Bank, a move that analysts say will further enable Smotrich’s annexation agenda. By comparison, Haaretz recorded that Smotrich met with senior Finance Ministry officials only around 30 times in the same two-year period.

    The Joseph’s Tomb site itself has been a source of repeated conflict for decades. While many Jewish worshippers revere the site as the burial place of the biblical Prophet Joseph, Palestinians identify it as the tomb of Sheikh Yusuf Dweikat, a local 19th-century Islamic cleric, and it sits within a densely populated Palestinian city. Israeli military-backed settler visits to the site began in the early 1980s after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, and these incursions have consistently sparked widespread Palestinian resistance. Israel withdrew its permanent military garrison from the compound in 2000, but has continued to organize monthly escorted visits for settlers. Since the October 2023 Hamas attack, these incursions have grown dramatically in size and frequency, with far-right politicians and activists repeatedly calling for a full reoccupation of the site and the re-establishment of permanent Jewish presence.

    Multiple senior far-right Israeli figures joined Smotrich on Wednesday’s visit, doubling down on calls for annexation. Tzvi Sukkot, a member of parliament from Smotrich’s own Religious Zionist Party and chair of the Knesset’s Education, Culture and Sports Committee, entered the compound alongside the group. Sukkot has long pushed for full Israeli control of the site, and introduced parliamentary legislation in July 2025 to formally annex Joseph’s Tomb to Israel, a proposal that has not yet moved forward. “From here, we send one demand: restore the Jewish presence,” Sukkot said Wednesday.

    Wednesday’s authorized prayer visit followed a December 2024 order from Defense Minister Israel Katz that formally permitted Jewish worshippers to hold prayer services at the site during the early morning hours. A similar large-scale settler prayer visit was organized at the compound in January 2025, which participants described as “historic.”

    Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council that governs Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, called Wednesday’s incursion “a historic morning marking another step toward the full return of the State of Israel to this sacred compound.” Dagan argued that the status quo of limited, military-escorted monthly visits could not continue, stating that the end goal is “the full and permanent return of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva to its natural place, and for the Israeli flag to fly over Joseph’s Tomb.” The religious yeshiva was first established at the site in the 1980s, but was evacuated alongside the Israeli military post in the early 2000s. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the current head of the yeshiva, echoed Dagan’s call Wednesday, saying he hoped to “return and establish a permanent presence at Joseph’s Tomb” and urging supporters not to “forsake the city of the covenant.”

    The incursion comes amid growing international concern over Israel’s accelerating settlement expansion and de facto annexation of the West Bank, which violates multiple UN Security Council resolutions and international law rulings that deem all Israeli settlements in the 1967 occupied territories illegal.

  • Inside the rise of the Haftar family’s Dubai-based ‘money man’

    Inside the rise of the Haftar family’s Dubai-based ‘money man’

    As international powers push to unify Libya’s fragmented political and military factions, a 46-year-old Libyan businessman has emerged at the center of explosive allegations linking him to a sprawling network of illicit finance, war profiteering, and smuggling that props up Khalifa Haftar’s eastern Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF).

    Ahmed Gadalla, also known by the alias Ahmed Alushibe, has built a globe-spanning business empire spanning four countries, with a luxury lifestyle that matches his high-stakes commercial portfolio: he resides in Dubai, holds a citizenship-by-investment passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis, wears half-a-million-dollar luxury watches, travels exclusively on private jets, and stays at five-star central London hotels when visiting the UK. His assets include at least eight residential properties in the UAE, a $3.7 million luxury apartment in Toronto (where he maintains permanent Canadian residency and donates to elite private health institutions), and a web of controlled assets ranging from Libyan state-owned enterprises to commercial banks, oil refineries, shipping firms, and private holding companies registered in the UAE, Malta, and the United Kingdom.

    Gadalla’s rise to prominence began long before his current high-profile business dealings. A Benghazi native who earned an engineering master’s degree in the United States, he moved to Dubai as a resident in 2008, and worked selling automotive and household goods for an American firm during the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. After Gaddafi’s fall, he leveraged growing connections to Emirati business and political circles to expand his operations, making his first major international trade trip to Guangzhou, China, in 2012. Today, he openly leads the Alushibe Group, a loose collection of Dubai-based firms he controls, and holds prominent positions including chairman of a major Libyan state-owned steel company, owner of Dubai-based UDS Shipping Services LLC and Malta’s International Seaport Holdings, and director of a central London-based IT firm. UK corporate records even list him as a former co-owner of a retail off-licence in Birmingham between 2019 and 2021, listing his nationality as Kittitian and residence as the UAE. In 2023, he also acquired Benghazi’s notorious Libyan Cement Company, previously linked to fugitive Austrian executive and suspected Russian spy Jan Marsalek, whose ties to the collapse of Germany’s Wirecard remain under global investigation.

    But new, detailed reports from the United Nations Panel of Experts on Libya and U.S.-based investigative non-profit The Sentry pull back the curtain on Gadalla’s operations, alleging that his legitimate business portfolio is a front for a kleptocratic network that funnels billions in stolen Libyan public wealth to Haftar’s LAAF, which has controlled eastern Libya since 2014 with military backing from the UAE and Egypt.

    According to the reports, Gadalla climbed the ranks of eastern Libya’s political and economic system over the past decade with direct backing from Saddam Haftar, son of Khalifa Haftar, and sits at the core of a transnational network accused of money laundering, fraudulent letters of credit, fuel smuggling, and arms trafficking. Investigators allege that Gadalla used his control of multiple Libyan banks, including Wahda Bank and the Bank of Commerce & Development, to fraudulently secure hundreds of millions in letters of credit from Libya’s Central Bank with the backing of LAAF armed groups. One Benghazi-based bank controlled by Gadalla even actively blocked official investigations into the fraudulent credit schemes, the UN report found. The Sentry also claims that Gadalla’s banks helped circulate counterfeit Russian-printed Libyan dinars, destabilizing the country’s already fragile economy.

    The most serious allegations tie Gadalla directly to Haftar’s disastrous 2019–2020 offensive on Tripoli, the UN-backed national capital, which killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Investigators say that in 2018, ahead of the planned invasion, Haftar’s network tapped Gadalla to manage offshore financing for the operation, which drew the bulk of its funding from the UAE and smaller contributions from Saudi Arabia. In 2019, Al Masraf bank, chaired by a Haftar family economic adviser, issued $300 million in loans to three obscure Dubai-based front companies controlled by Gadalla. The funds left the accounts almost immediately, with investigators confirming they directly funded LAAF’s military operations and most likely paid for the deployment of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, who played a key combat role in the offensive. After the offensive collapsed, the $300 million in loans were never repaid, leaving the Libyan public to shoulder the entire loss while Gadalla avoided any accountability, The Sentry reported.

    Gadalla is also linked to ongoing illicit smuggling operations stretching across the Sahel and North Africa. The UN Panel of Experts found that Gadalla purchases diverted fuel from armed groups in both eastern and western Libya, then uses his shipping network to illicitly export the fuel to the UAE for resale at massive profit. In July 2025, EU Operation Irini, the mission enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, intercepted the Aya 1—a container ship owned by Gadalla’s UDS Shipping, named after his daughter—en route from the UAE to Benghazi. An inspection found 12 militarized vehicles hidden among the ship’s cargo, which the UN confirmed was destined for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese paramilitary currently fighting a brutal civil war in Khartoum. Gadalla is also accused of facilitating arms shipments that have been diverted to gold trafficking networks linked to the Islamic State in Niger, though he is not personally tied to that specific diversion.

    Gadalla has forcefully denied all allegations against him. In an interview with Middle East Eye, he rejected every claim made in both the UN and The Sentry reports, insisting he has always conducted business lawfully and transparently. He denied owning or controlling multiple Libyan banks, committing letter of credit fraud, financing the LAAF or the Wagner Group, engaging in fuel or arms smuggling, or owning the intercepted Aya 1 container ship. He noted that third-party investigations by global accounting firm Deloitte and Libya’s Attorney General Investigation Unit have already cleared the bank records in question, and said his legal team is formally challenging the allegations made by The Sentry, while he continues to engage with the UN Panel of Experts.

    The exposure of Gadalla’s alleged network comes at a pivotal moment for Libya, where the United States and its Western and regional allies are pushing to unify the Tripoli-based UN-backed government and Haftar’s eastern Benghazi administration after more than a decade of division. In April 2026, Libya’s rival legislative bodies approved a unified national budget for the first time since 2014, a move welcomed by all major global and regional powers including the US, EU states, the UAE, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. A week later, U.S. Africa Command held joint Flintlock military training exercises in Sirte, bringing together troops from both eastern and western Libya for the first time, as part of Washington’s push to reduce Russian influence in North Africa and unify Libyan security institutions.

    But investigators warn that networks like the one allegedly led by Gadalla continue to fuel a war economy that siphons off billions in public wealth, undermining efforts to build a stable, unified Libyan state. As diplomatic efforts for unification move forward, the case of Ahmed Gadalla lays bare how deeply entrenched kleptocratic and militia-linked networks have become in Libya’s post-revolution economic and political landscape.

  • US federal judge blocks US sanctions against UN’s Francesca Albanese

    US federal judge blocks US sanctions against UN’s Francesca Albanese

    In a landmark ruling that upholds core free speech principles, a US federal judge issued a temporary preliminary injunction on Wednesday halting the Trump administration’s sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, finding the punitive measures likely violated her constitutional right to free expression.

    Albanese was targeted with US sanctions in July 2025, just weeks after she published a sweeping, critical report on June 30 that condemned Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. In that document, she identified over 60 major global firms — including tech giants Google, Amazon, and Microsoft — alleging the companies were complicit in shifting Israel’s occupation-based economy into what she framed as an economy of genocide. The report called on the International Criminal Court (ICC), national judicial bodies worldwide to launch investigations and prosecute implicated corporate leaders and companies, and urged UN member states to impose targeted sanctions and asset freezes on the entities named.

    The sanctions imposed on Albanese carried severe practical consequences: she was barred from entering the United States, and was shut out of the US banking system, cutting off access to basic financial services. The legal challenge to the sanctions was brought by Albanese’s husband Massimiliano Cali, a senior World Bank economist based in Tunisia, who filed the civil suit on behalf of himself, Albanese, and the couple’s US citizen daughter. The complaint argued that the Trump administration had unlawfully seized Albanese’s accessible assets without adhering to due process, violated existing US sanctions legislation, and effectively de-banked her, leaving her unable to meet routine daily needs.

    In his opinion accompanying the injunction order, US District Judge Richard Leon emphasized that safeguarding free speech is always aligned with the public interest. The judge further ruled that Albanese’s status as a non-US resident does not strip her of protections under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, noting that the administration targeted her specifically because of the content and message of her public criticism.

    Albanese celebrated the court’s decision in a public post on X, writing, “BREAKING! US court has suspended the US sanctions against me! As the judge says: ‘Protecting the Freedom of speech is always just the public interest’. Thanks to my daughter and my husband for stepping up to defend me, and everyone who has helped so far. Together we are One.”

    The ruling comes amid growing international solidarity with Albanese. Earlier that month, on May 7, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awarded the UN expert the Order of Civil Merit in a clear show of support. A day before that honor, Sanchez formally asked the European Commission to activate the EU’s Blocking Statute, a regulation designed to protect EU individuals and institutions from extraterritorial US sanctions, to shield both the ICC and the United Nations from US punitive measures.

  • Don’t use GDP to judge China’s strength – look at this instead

    Don’t use GDP to judge China’s strength – look at this instead

    As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to touch down in Beijing on May 14 for a high-stakes bilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese officials are ready to lead with one key economic figure to showcase the country’s perceived resilience: an official 5% GDP growth target and performance figure for 2025. But while the 5% target is a stated policy goal, analysts argue that a far more telling indicator of China’s actual economic health lies in an unpublicized metric that reveals deep structural inefficiencies: the Incremental Capital Output Ratio, or ICOR.

    ICOR measures how much new investment is required to generate one additional unit of economic output. In a healthy, efficient economy, this ratio remains low, as capital flows to productive, high-return projects. When capital is misallocated — flowing into unneeded infrastructure, unprofitable projects, and overcapacity that cannot be absorbed by domestic demand — the ratio climbs, and in China, it has been rising sharply for decades.

    Calculated as gross capital formation as a share of GDP divided by real GDP growth, ICOR is not an official Chinese data point, but it can be derived from public data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. During China’s high-growth era between 2000 and 2007, ICOR held steady at around 3.9, meaning 3.9 percentage points of GDP in investment was required to generate 1 percentage point of GDP growth. For comparison, during their own rapid growth periods, South Korea and Taiwan posted far lower ICORs of 3.2 and 2.7 respectively, indicating that even at its economic peak, China’s investment efficiency lagged behind its regional peers.

    China’s investment productivity began a steady decline after the 2008 global financial crisis, when Beijing rolled out a massive large-scale stimulus package to offset falling export demand. Between 2008 and 2019, China’s ICOR climbed from roughly 4.5 to 7.2, nearly doubling the pre-crisis baseline. Economists attribute this shift to the exhaustion of China’s easy growth drivers: the most productive coastal manufacturing expansion, cross-regional infrastructure buildout, and rural-to-urban labor migration had largely run their course by the 2010s, leaving less high-return opportunities for new investment.

    The upward trajectory of ICOR has only accelerated since 2020. Using China’s official GDP figures, the country’s current annual ICOR stands at approximately 8.5, with a five-year rolling average approaching 9. When adjusted using more conservative, independent growth estimates from the Rhodium Group, a U.S.-based independent research firm that pegs China’s 2025 actual growth between 2.5% and 3%, the implied ICOR jumps to between 14 and 17. Even the most favorable interpretation of official Chinese data confirms a clear trend: the Chinese economy is rapidly losing investment efficiency, fueled by a flood of subsidized credit directed to politically prioritized projects rather than commercially viable opportunities.

    Beijing has built a reputation for consistently hitting its pre-set GDP growth targets, so much so that even senior Chinese officials have publicly questioned the legitimacy of the official numbers. Rather than treating GDP as a natural economic output, Chinese authorities treat the target as a non-negotiable policy goal, achieved through directed credit allocation to state-linked entities. State-owned enterprises, local government financing vehicles, and politically connected real estate developers access below-market-rate borrowing that does not reflect underlying project risk, and pour capital into ventures that would fail basic commercial return tests. The end result is a growing pile of excess production and unused capacity that Chinese consumers do not want, created solely to hit arbitrary growth metrics.

    Unable to absorb this surplus domestically, Beijing redirects it to global markets, selling goods below production cost and effectively exporting the losses from its domestic capital misallocation to trading partners around the world. This dynamic has major implications for the agenda of the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, challenging the conventional narrative that frames U.S.-China economic relations as a competition between a declining U.S. and a dynamically rising China.

    Over the past two decades, the U.S. has maintained a relatively stable ICOR, reflecting an economy where investment and output grow in rough, sustainable proportion. By contrast, China’s economy now requires exponentially more investment to generate every additional yuan of GDP, a structural weakness that undermines claims of inherent Chinese economic strength. China is now structurally dependent on continuous credit expansion and steady export revenues to service its growing debt load and maintain domestic political stability. This means that U.S. trade policy tools such as targeted tariffs can apply direct pressure to the core mechanisms Beijing relies on to manage domestic order, particularly the export revenues that keep its debt system functioning.

    That does not mean unilateral U.S. trade action is the most effective strategy, the analysis argues. Instead of walling the U.S. off from global trade alone, Washington should pursue coordinated action with like-minded allies to address the root of the problem: Beijing’s subsidized overcapacity model. Every major global economy is already coping with a flood of underpriced Chinese exported surplus, so a coordinated multilateral framework that targets subsidized overproduction at its source will create far more sustainable leverage than unilateral tariffs, which risk isolating the U.S. from the global partners it needs to enact meaningful change.

    None of this data suggests China is on the brink of imminent economic collapse. China’s governing system has already demonstrated a striking ability to manage gradual deterioration: rolling over bad debt, extending repayment timelines, and pushing underlying imbalances into the future rather than addressing them. But managed gradual decline is not the same as economic strength, and Beijing has so far shown no willingness to tackle the core structural imbalances driving falling investment efficiency on its own. While Beijing will continue to tout its 5% official growth figure as proof of economic resilience ahead of the summit, the real metric to watch is the one Chinese officials will not discuss: the rising hidden cost of generating every unit of that growth. This analysis comes from Daniel Swift, a senior research analyst for economics, finance and trade at the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a retired U.S. diplomat.

  • British PM battles to stay in power amid rebellion

    British PM battles to stay in power amid rebellion

    Just months after ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule with a historic 2024 general election victory, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer finds himself locked in a desperate battle to retain his job, as internal party unrest triggered by disastrous local election results paves the way for a potential leadership challenge from his former deputy, Angela Rayner.

    The crisis erupted last week when Labour suffered catastrophic losses across regional and local polls. Voter backlash stripped the party of its decades-long control of the devolved Welsh Parliament for the first time in history, while it failed to close the gap with the pro-independence Scottish National Party at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Far-right Reform UK and left-wing Green Party made massive gains at Labour’s expense, reflecting widespread public discontent with Starmer’s performance over his 22 months in office. To date, four junior government ministers have resigned, more than 80 Labour members of Parliament have publicly called for his departure, and yet Starmer has remained defiant, vowing to hold onto power despite the growing mutiny within his own party. “I know I have my doubters, and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will,” he stated during a defiant appearance earlier this week.

    A major new development upended the crisis on Thursday, when Rayner announced that UK tax authority HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had cleared her of allegations of deliberate wrongdoing connected to a past tax affair. The 46-year-old left-wing working-class champion was forced to step down from her posts as deputy prime minister and housing secretary in September over an underpayment of property duty on a southern England flat purchase, which also found her in breach of the ministerial code. On Thursday, she confirmed that HMRC had exonerated her of claims she intentionally sought to evade tax, after she settled £40,000 ($54,000) in outstanding tax obligations. “I welcome HMRC’s conclusion, which has cleared me of any wrongdoing,” Rayner said in an official statement. “I set out to pay the correct amount of tax. I took reasonable care and acted in good faith, based on the expert advice I received, and HMRC has accepted this.”

    The clearance removes a major barrier to Rayner entering a leadership contest, prompting widespread speculation that she could soon throw her hat into the ring. While she has stopped short of directly calling for Starmer’s resignation and told media she would not be the one to trigger a leadership race, she told *The Guardian* that she would step into “whatever role I can” to deliver the change party members and voters demand. Earlier this week, she issued a blunt assessment of Labour’s electoral collapse, writing “What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change.”

    Beyond Rayner, other potential challengers are also positioning for a run. Multiple UK media outlets reported Thursday that Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a 43-year-old figure popular with Labour’s centrist and right-wing factions, was preparing to resign imminently to launch a leadership bid. Streeting is unpopular with the party’s left-wing base, which broadly favors Rayner or Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham for the top job. However, Burnham is currently ineligible to run, as he does not hold a seat in the Westminster Parliament.

    Under Labour Party rules, any candidate seeking to challenge Starmer must secure the backing of 81 Labour MPs – equal to 20% of the party’s parliamentary cohort – to trigger a formal leadership contest. With more than 80 MPs already having called for Starmer to step down, the threshold is within reach for a coordinated challenge, leaving Britain’s government facing a period of unprecedented political instability just six months into its first term after ousting the Conservatives.

  • Hungary summons Russian ambassador to protest attack in Ukraine near its border

    Hungary summons Russian ambassador to protest attack in Ukraine near its border

    BUDAPEST — In a move that signals a sharp break from the pro-Kremlin policies of Hungary’s previous administration, new Prime Minister Péter Magyar has summoned Russia’s top envoy to Budapest to answer for a massive Russian drone assault that struck western Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region, just across Hungary’s northern border.

    The Wednesday attack was part of one of the longest and largest Russian air barrages of the war to date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Moscow launched more than 800 drones across 20 Ukrainian regions, hitting Transcarpathia directly. The multi-hour assault left at least six civilians dead and dozens more injured, among them multiple children.

    Transcarpathia hosts a large ethnic Hungarian community, making the strike a direct matter of national concern for Budapest. Russian Ambassador Evgeny Stanislavov was scheduled to meet with Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán at the foreign ministry at midday Thursday, where top Hungarian officials will deliver a formal rebuke of the attack.

    “The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia,” Magyar announced publicly during a Wednesday press briefing in southern Hungary’s Ópusztaszer, confirming the diplomatic summons. “She will tell him the same and ask for information on when Russia and Vladimir Putin plan to finally end this bloody war that began more than four years ago,” the prime minister added.

    As of Thursday morning, the Kremlin has not issued any public response to the summons.

    The diplomatic action is widely viewed as a defining turning point in Hungarian foreign policy. For 16 years, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán maintained unusually close ties to Moscow, even after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, defied widespread EU and NATO consensus to isolate the Kremlin. That era ended in April, when Magyar defeated Orbán in a historic general election, ending the former leader’s long hold on power. Since taking office, Magyar has pledged to roll back Orbán’s legacy, prioritizing rooting out systemic corruption and aligning Hungary more closely with EU and NATO collective security goals.

    Zelenskyy welcomed Hungary’s new stance, calling the summons a powerful, important signal from Budapest. “Moscow has once again shown itself to be a common threat not only to Ukraine, but also to neighbouring countries and Europe as a whole,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media, thanking Magyar for his firm stance.

    The diplomatic summons comes amid already heightened tensions between Moscow and Budapest. In March, ahead of the election that unseated Orbán, Ambassador Stanislavov published a public Facebook open letter to Magyar, denying Russian interference in Hungarian politics to support Orbán, a long-time Kremlin ally. “It’s really not worth scaring Hungarians with imaginary Russian threats,” Stanislavov wrote at the time, adding that the Russian embassy’s only goals were maintaining normal bilateral relations, pursuing mutually beneficial cooperation where possible, and protecting the interests of Russian and Hungarian citizens.

    This report includes contributions from correspondent McNeil in Brussels.

  • Rescuers search rubble of Kyiv flats after massive Russian strikes kill two

    Rescuers search rubble of Kyiv flats after massive Russian strikes kill two

    Three straight days of deadly Russian aerial assaults have rocked Ukraine, leaving at least two people dead and 40 others injured after a massive overnight barrage of missiles and drones targeted multiple cities across the country, including the capital Kyiv. Ukrainian officials confirmed the attacks marked a sharp escalation of hostilities that began immediately after a three-day US-brokered ceasefire expired late Monday. The truce, which saw only minor violations along the frontline and no large-scale air attacks, gave way to renewed violence on Tuesday, when nine Ukrainians were killed. An additional six people lost their lives in strikes across the nation on Wednesday, three of them in the western city of Rivne.

    In Kyiv, one of the hardest-hit targets in the latest overnight wave of attacks, a nine-story residential apartment building suffered partial collapse after being directly hit. Emergency rescue teams launched a search operation at dawn Thursday to pull any remaining survivors trapped under the rubble of the destroyed structure. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klychko, who toured the damaged site early Thursday, confirmed that 18 apartments were completely destroyed in the strike, and critical civilian infrastructure was also damaged, disrupting the capital’s municipal water supply for local residents. As of Thursday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that dozens of people had already been pulled from the rubble, though emergency workers still hold fears that more victims remain trapped beneath the debris.

    Beyond the partially collapsed apartment block, the overnight attack left damage to multiple other civilian sites, including additional residential buildings, a local school, and a veterinary clinic, Zelensky added. In a public statement following the strikes, Zelensky pushed back against any suggestions that Russia is seeking to de-escalate the conflict, saying the large-scale assault was “definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end.” He called on Ukraine’s international allies to speak out firmly against the renewed attacks, rather than remaining silent.

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the assault as an “especially difficult night for Kyiv,” and noted that Russian drones and missiles targeted regions far beyond the capital. Strikes were also reported in Kremenchuk, Bila Tserkva, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Odesa, spread across central, eastern, and southern Ukraine. In a social media post, Svyrydenko made an urgent appeal for international support: “Ukraine needs help in strengthening its air defense. This is the only way to save our people and our cities.”

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha condemned the attack as “barbaric” and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of prioritizing aggression and terror over diplomatic efforts to end the war. He pointed out that the large-scale assault coincided with a high-stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and urged the two world leaders to use their diplomatic leverage to force Moscow to end its invasion. “I am certain that the leaders of the United States and China have enough leverage over Moscow to tell Putin to finally end the war,” Sybiha said.

    The latest round of military escalation comes as Ukrainian officials are also grappling with a domestic political corruption scandal. In a separate development in Kyiv on Thursday, a Ukrainian court ordered 60 days of pretrial detention for Andriy Yermak, formerly one of Zelensky’s closest top aides. Yermak is currently a suspect in a money laundering investigation tied to a £7.5 million luxury construction project built outside Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s national anti-corruption agencies. The court ruled that Yermak could be released on bail of £2.35 million ($3.2 million) if he wears an electronic monitoring tag, but Yermak says he does not have the funds to cover the bail amount and will seek financial support from friends and acquaintances. Yermak has forcefully denied all the allegations against him, calling them baseless. He says he will appeal the ruling, and has no plans to leave Ukraine, stating publicly: “I’m staying in Ukraine. I have nothing to hide.”

  • Dust storms and lightning kill at least 96 people in northern India

    Dust storms and lightning kill at least 96 people in northern India

    Deadly extreme weather has left northern India reeling, with official confirmation Thursday placing the death toll from a wave of dust storms, heavy rainfall and lightning at no less than 96, with dozens more injured. The destructive weather system swept across multiple districts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state by population, late Wednesday, leaving a trail of destroyed property and disrupted communities in its wake.

    According to local officials, most fatalities stemmed from falling trees, collapsing poorly built structures, and direct lightning strikes, common hazards during pre-monsoon storm events. Emergency response teams including police and disaster management units quickly mobilized, deploying chainsaws and heavy cranes to clear fallen vegetation that blocked critical road and railway links across hard-hit districts.

    Pre-monsoon storms are a routine seasonal occurrence across northern India between March and June, when hot summer temperatures give way to the annual south Asian monsoon rains that replenish the region’s water supplies. But this latest event brought unusually intense and destructive conditions that have caused widespread harm.
    Narendra N. Srivastava, a senior local administrative official, noted that emergency crews have already been deployed across all impacted areas. Damage assessments confirm widespread destruction to residential buildings, agricultural crops, and electrical power infrastructure, with rural communities bearing the brunt of the impact.

    Residents of the hardest-hit districts described sudden, terrifying onslaughts of extreme wind that upended daily life in minutes. In Prayagraj district, local resident Ram Kishore recalled the rapid onset of the storm, saying that within just a few minutes of the storm’s arrival, the entire sky turned pitch black. Flying tin roofing sent residents scrambling for shelter indoors, he added, with the sound of falling trees echoing through neighborhoods throughout the evening.

    In neighboring Bhadohi district, another local resident, Savitri Devi, shared her family’s narrow escape after their mud-built home was severely damaged by strong winds. Devi said the family fled outside immediately when their home’s walls began shaking from the force of the wind; the roof collapsed just moments after they escaped. The family spent the night taking shelter at a relative’s home, left homeless by the storm.

    In response to the disaster, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has issued urgent orders for all involved agencies: complete full relief operations across affected areas within 24 hours, and expedite the distribution of financial compensation and emergency life-saving aid to all families impacted by the extreme weather.

  • UK leadership contenders expected to launch bids to unseat prime minister after days of maneuvering

    UK leadership contenders expected to launch bids to unseat prime minister after days of maneuvering

    LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing an imminent open challenge to his leadership of the ruling Labour Party, as two high-profile political figures have cleared the path for a leadership contest set to unfold Thursday.

    Wes Streeting, the current UK Health Secretary, has secured the required number of endorsements from Labour Members of Parliament to formally launch a challenge against Starmer for both party leadership and the office of prime minister, according to close allies of the Health Secretary. Streeting is expected to make his official challenge announcement later Thursday.

    The second major development came from former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who confirmed Thursday she has resolved outstanding tax disputes with UK tax authorities that forced her resignation from the Cabinet in September 2024. Speaking to the Guardian, Rayner said Starmer needs to “reflect on” his hold on the premiership, adding that she stands ready to take part in any leadership contest triggered by Streeting’s challenge. A prominent figure aligned with Labour’s left wing, Rayner has long pushed for more aggressive progressive policies including a higher minimum wage and increased taxation on the wealthiest Britons.

    Calls for Starmer’s resignation have mounted rapidly over the past week after the Labour Party recorded catastrophic losses in nationwide local and regional elections. The poor election outcome amplified widespread voter frustration over what many see as the glacial pace of policy change under Starmer’s 10-month-old government.

    Despite the growing mutiny within his own party, Starmer has remained defiant, pledging publicly to hold onto his position. He has warned that opening a leadership contest at this juncture would throw the British government into crippling chaos, at a moment when the administration should be prioritizing urgent national and global issues: the ongoing UK cost of living crisis and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

    Under formal Labour Party rules, any candidate seeking to challenge the incumbent party leader must secure the public support of at least 81 of the party’s 403 sitting House of Commons MPs. In recent days, more than that threshold of Labour lawmakers have publicly called for Starmer to step down, clearing the signature hurdle for any challenger.

    Both Streeting and Starmer hail from the moderate faction of the centre-left Labour Party, a dynamic that could split establishment party support in a contest. Beyond Streeting and Rayner, other potential candidates are already being tipped to enter the race. Andy Burnham, the popular and widely respected Mayor of Greater Manchester, has emerged as a frequent name in leadership speculation, though he currently sits outside Parliament — a requirement for any Labour leader. Sources close to Burnham indicate that a sitting Labour MP could step down to trigger a by-election that would allow Burnham to win a parliamentary seat ahead of any leadership vote. Burnham fueled speculation this week when he canceled his regular weekly appearance on BBC local radio, citing a need to “prioritize discussions arising from last week’s elections.”

  • Bone appetit: Paris pups lap up treats at dog-centric spots

    Bone appetit: Paris pups lap up treats at dog-centric spots

    Paris, the global capital of culinary art, is expanding its gourmet tradition beyond two-legged patrons, welcoming a wave of new establishments that cater first and foremost to the city’s four-legged canine residents, filling a long-unmet need for local pet owners.

    At Casa del Doggo, a canine-focused patisserie run by Parisian entrepreneur Clara Zambuto, fluffy one-year-old Pomeranian Loulou is a regular face. After finishing his €5 “Le Merveilleux” treat—crafted with dog-safe ingredients including banana puree, cream cheese, apple, and beef—Loulou lets out a satisfied woof, a response any restaurant owner would be thrilled to receive. Nearby, the glass display case holds a lineup of pet-friendly sweets that look nearly indistinguishable from human pastries, from heart-shaped “Le Mignon” made with sweet potato, cream cheese, and blueberry to croissant and baguette-shaped treats for pups who crave a classic Parisian snack vibe.

    Zambuto’s journey into opening the dog bakery grew out of her own experience as a dog owner. After adopting her three-year-old Pomeranian Hulk, she grew frustrated that she couldn’t bring her pet along for the quintessential Parisian ritual of stopping for coffee and a snack. “I’d often go for walks with him… pop into a cafe like a proper Parisian, but he’d soon get bored,” the 26-year-old explained. “I thought it was a shame there weren’t places in Paris where, while you’re having a quick coffee, you can also treat your pet. Now dogs are really like our children for most of us—we want to be able to take him everywhere.”

    What began as homemade treats in Zambuto’s kitchen eventually grew into a full storefront, with a trained professional pastry chef now helping craft pet-safe recipes that strictly avoid ingredients toxic to dogs, including chocolate, avocado, grapes, and onions. That doesn’t mean unlimited snacking, though: Lolita Sommaire, a veterinarian specializing in canine and feline nutrition, notes that moderation is just as important for dogs as it is for humans to prevent unhealthy weight gain. “If they’ve been to a patisserie, you need to adjust their next meal, cut back a little, or get them doing more exercise,” she advised. “But if it’s once a month, it’s not a big deal.”

    Casa del Doggo is far from the only dog-first spot popping up across the city, which is home to an estimated 100,000 registered and unregistered canines. At Le Bone Appart, a dog cafe named as a playful nod to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, dogs can roam freely across a bench-lined outdoor terrace while their owners relax. On a recent afternoon, Marley, an American shepherd sporting a tiny fashion beret, could be found lapping up the last bits of a chantilly-based “pup cup” off the pavement.

    Le Bone Appart owner Rebecca Anhalt, a US native who moved to Paris, launched her space after she received a steep fine for letting her five-year-old whippet Napoleon off-leash in a public park. “I wanted to create a place where people could come and not fear… being scolded for having your dog,” she said.

    Local advocacy groups have long pushed for more pet-friendly public spaces in Paris. The organization Paris Condition Canine points out that while the city does offer more than 40 off-leash areas for dogs, these existing spaces are “insufficient, unevenly distributed, and sometimes ill-suited” to meet the needs of the city’s large dog-owning population. The demand for more pet-friendly amenities has even seeped into local politics: during Paris’ 2026 mayoral race, incumbent mayor Emmanuel Gregoire launched an Instagram account dedicated to photos with local dogs, while rival candidate Rachida Dati hosted a dog-focused social aperitif to win over pet owners.

    For many regulars, these dog-centric spots offer more than just treats for their pups—they create a welcoming third space outside of work and home that strengthens bonds between owners and their pets, and builds community among fellow dog lovers. Sarah Elgamal, Loulou’s owner, describes herself as the Pomeranian’s “mother,” and says trips to the patisserie boost her connection with her pet. It “improves our connection, because we’re both in a third place that’s neither work nor home,” the 32-year-old pharmacist explained.

    Anhalt notes that even with dogs as the top priority, many human visitors come for the social connection with other pet owners as much as for their pups. “Dogs are a really good connector,” she said. One recent transplant to Paris now visits the cafe every day with his 17-year-old dachshund, just to “be part of the group and meet people.” After all, Anhalt adds: “you’ll talk to anybody about your dog.”