Global Pulse

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  • Trump urges new spy chief to fire employees

    Trump urges new spy chief to fire employees

    A new political firestorm has erupted in Washington after former President and current U.S. President Donald Trump publicly confirmed Friday that he is pushing his newly tapped acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, to dismiss large numbers of employees across the U.S. intelligence community, amplifying already fierce criticism over the appointment of a Trump loyalist with zero prior professional intelligence experience to the top national security role.

    Pulte, who currently leads the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, was tapped by Trump this Tuesday to fill the acting national intelligence director post, following the departure of Tulsi Gabbard, who stepped down citing the need to care for her ailing husband. The 45th president has made no secret of his plans for the role, telling reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One that he would not object to widespread staff cuts under Pulte’s leadership, claiming the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been overstaffed for decades.

    Trump first outlined his downsizing agenda in an interview with *The Wall Street Journal*, repeating his long-held belief that the 18-agency U.S. intelligence community is bloated with political holdovers from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations who do not align with his policy and political priorities. “I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump told the outlet. Speaking to reporters Friday, he doubled down on that framing: “If he cut, I wouldn’t mind that… the number of employees in Pulte’s office had been ‘way too high for way too long.’”

    Critics warn that Trump’s push for cuts creates a dangerous opening for him to reshape the nonpartisan intelligence community along political lines, particularly given Pulte’s well-documented history of leveraging his government position to target Trump’s political rivals. As head of the FHFA, Pulte has used access to confidential mortgage records to assist investigations into high-profile Trump adversaries, including Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, and Senate Democratic Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.

    Democrats have been unified in their condemnation of Pulte’s appointment, pointing both to his lack of relevant intelligence experience and his track record of politicizing federal agencies to target political opponents. Even within his own party, the appointment has widened growing rifts between Trump and congressional Republicans, many of whom are already anxious about poll numbers ahead of November’s midterm elections.

    The fallout spilled into legislative action Friday, when Senate lawmakers blocked a bipartisan bill to renew a key foreign surveillance authority in direct protest of Pulte’s appointment. Democrats argued that given Pulte’s history of politicization, they could not support expanding U.S. surveillance powers without ironclad guarantees that intelligence gathering would not be weaponized for political purposes. The legislative collapse upended months of bipartisan negotiations on the top national security priority.

    Trump has sought to de-escalate the backlash by framing Pulte’s appointment as a temporary stopgap, noting Friday that he has already interviewed five candidates for the permanent national intelligence director role. But even that framing raised new alarms: Trump told *The Wall Street Journal* that Pulte’s temporary status actually gives him more latitude to overhaul the intelligence community. “You’re less shackled… It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time,” Trump said.

    Beyond staff cuts, Trump has also made clear he expects Pulte to continue a political project that falls entirely outside the official mandate of the Director of National Intelligence: investigating baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, a falsehood he has repeated since his election loss in 2021. Gabbard, Pulte’s predecessor, was also tapped by Trump to lead this inquiry despite the intelligence community having no official role in overseeing domestic U.S. elections.

  • Israel sent troops to ‘Azerbaijan, UAE, Iraq and Somaliland’ during Iran war

    Israel sent troops to ‘Azerbaijan, UAE, Iraq and Somaliland’ during Iran war

    A bombshell new report published Friday by CNN has laid bare extensive, secretive deployments of Israeli special operations forces and intelligence personnel across four countries in the broader Middle East region, carried out amid Israel’s ongoing open conflict with Iran. Citing four anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the activities, the outlet details that operatives from Israel’s iconic foreign intelligence agency Mossad, alongside elite units of the Israeli military including a specialized airborne rescue detachment from the Israeli Air Force, were positioned in southern Azerbaijan, just kilometers from the Iranian border. At their closest point, these deployments sit roughly 100 kilometers outside of major Iranian city Tabriz, placing critical Iranian infrastructure and military assets well within operational range.

    According to the report, the deployed Israeli personnel have conducted two core mission sets: coordinated drone strikes against targeted individuals and broad, systematic intelligence gathering to map Iranian military movements and facilities. One high-profile strike launched from Azerbaijani soil, a source confirms, was the assassination of Rahman Moghaddam, a senior leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who oversaw the force’s special intelligence operations division. Moghaddam was killed in an attack on March 4. Just 24 hours after that killing, unmanned aerial vehicles targeted Nakhchivan International Airport in Azerbaijan and an adjacent local village. Azerbaijani authorities in Baku immediately pinned the blame for the strike on Iran, a charge Tehran has repeatedly and categorically denied.

    Beyond Azerbaijan, CNN’s investigation reveals that Israel has built and maintained a sprawling network of covert operational outposts and bases scattered across the broader Middle East and Horn of Africa, with additional facilities located in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland. The report notes that a portion of these sites were developed with the explicit knowledge and approval of host nation governments, while other covert positions may have been established without the host authority’s awareness.

    Within hours of the report’s publication, the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Washington DC issued a sharp rejection of the claims, telling CNN that Baku dismisses all unfounded assertions that Azerbaijani territory has been used to launch offensive operations against any third country.

    On the Somaliland front, the report confirms that the breakaway region in northern Somalia, which has not received widespread international recognition as an independent state, has hosted hidden Israeli operational positions. Notably, Israel made global headlines in December 2024 when it became the first United Nations member state to formally recognize Somaliland’s sovereignty. As of Saturday morning, Somaliland authorities had not issued any public response to CNN’s reporting.

    The new revelations build on similar reporting published in recent weeks by other major international outlets. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both reported last month that Israel had constructed two secret operational facilities inside Iraq amid its escalating conflict with Iran. Separately, Axios and the Financial Times also confirmed that Israel has deployed active-duty ground troops, an Iron Dome air defense battery, and additional advanced air defense systems to the UAE since the outbreak of the current conflict with Iran.

    CNN’s sources also shared details of pre-planned Israeli covert activity dating back to earlier this year. When large-scale anti-government protests roiled Iran in January, Israeli special operations command finalized preparations for a secret mission along the Azerbaijan-Iran border. The planned operation was designed to lay groundwork for future strikes by establishing long-term surveillance infrastructure in the border region. After the protests wrapped up, Israeli special forces accompanied by stealth aircraft were deployed to install the intelligence gathering equipment, which has since been used to continuously monitor Iranian military movements and key facilities along the border, the report says.

    Diplomatic records confirm that Israel has long maintained deep, formal strategic partnerships with both Azerbaijan and the UAE. For Baku, Israeli cooperation extends across energy development, advanced defense systems sales, and cybersecurity collaboration. With the UAE, Israeli ties focus heavily on expanding economic integration, joint intelligence sharing, and public and private security partnerships.

  • Putin says there is no point meeting Zelensky over ending Ukraine war

    Putin says there is no point meeting Zelensky over ending Ukraine war

    Fresh tensions have flared in the 3-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned down a public request from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy for one-on-one negotiations to end the full-scale war that launched in 2022.

    Zelenskyy published an open letter Thursday that formally called for face-to-face talks with Putin, arguing that the international community cannot afford to wait for renewed U.S. focus on the conflict to push forward peace processes. The letter included a defiant, occasionally mocking tone toward the Russian leader — including jabs at his decades in power and recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory, one of which targeted St. Petersburg just days prior, which Zelenskyy framed as a “visit” to Russia. The Ukrainian president also called for an immediate ceasefire to precede formal negotiations.

    Putin pushed back against the request Friday during remarks at Russia’s annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, dismissing the letter as “rude” and arguing it was never intended to set the groundwork for genuine dialogue. “Was it a way to create the conditions for a face-to-face meeting or a way not to set up a face-to-face meeting? I think it was the second,” Putin told attendees.

    The Russian leader doubled down on his long-held negotiating position, which holds that a ceasefire cannot come before binding peace agreements are reached. He warned that a temporary pause in fighting would only allow Ukrainian forces to regroup and rearm, while Moscow’s core demands remain unaddressed. “The only point [of a ceasefire] is for the Ukrainian side to halt the advance of our armed forces. But we need agreements — not for six months, not for three months, but for the long term,” Putin said. “Let the experts get to work and come up with some solutions. After that, we can meet.”

    Putin reaffirmed that military operations will continue until Russia achieves its stated war aims, which include Ukraine ceding control of the four Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions and permanently abandoning its bid to join NATO. Kyiv has repeatedly rejected these demands, refusing to surrender any sovereign territory and noting that Russia launched its full-scale 2022 invasion eight years after annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, arguing territorial concessions would only embolden future Russian aggression.

    When asked directly whether he would meet Zelenskyy for talks, Putin responded clearly: “I don’t see any point for now.”

    While Zelenskyy’s overture was met with cautious hope in some international circles, including the White House, where former U.S. President Donald Trump said a meeting between the two leaders “would be great,” the conflict on the ground continued to escalate even as diplomatic efforts stalled.

    On the same day as Putin’s remarks, Ukrainian military officials announced they had struck five vessels carrying unauthorized cargo in the Sea of Azov and off the coast of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, said the targeted ships were involved in stealing Ukrainian grain and transferring fuel and military supplies to Russian forces.

    Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry later confirmed that five civilians were killed in attacks on two of the ships, adding that the vessels were not Azerbaijani-flagged and did not specify who it held responsible for the casualties.

    In another separate incident, a Ukrainian drone detonated in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta this week. Ukrainian military operators said the drone was blown off course by Russian electronic warfare interference, marking an accidental incursion into NATO-member Romanian territory.

    Russia launched a wave of new attacks across Ukraine in the 24 hours prior, killing at least 13 people and wounding 70 more, Ukrainian emergency officials confirmed. Four workers died when a dairy factory outside Kyiv was hit, while a 35-year-old woman was killed in a drone strike on a Kherson petrol station, among other casualties reported across the country.

  • Finding moments of childhood in Gaza, one bubble at a time

    Finding moments of childhood in Gaza, one bubble at a time

    When the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail on May 18 to break Israel’s aerial, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, its cargo held far more than life-sustaining basics. Alongside stockpiles of food, clean drinking water, infant formula and critical medical equipment targeted to Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, the aid mission carried a surprising, gentle addition: portable homemade bubble play kits. These simple kits, crafted from just soap, water, rope and wooden sticks, are the core initiative of Bubbles Not Bombs (BNB), a grassroots humanitarian project dedicated to giving children trapped in war zones and displaced by conflict small, precious moments of respite through mindful bubble play.

    For 15 years, BNB operated under the umbrella of Dr Zigs, a Welsh eco-friendly toy company founded by 56-year-old Italy-born Paola Dyboski that frames play as a foundational tool to support children’s emotional wellbeing in crisis settings. Just recently, the initiative spun off to become an independent non-profit organization, expanding its reach to conflict-hit regions across the globe.

    Dyboski does not minimize the urgent need to deliver basic necessities to Gaza, where the Palestinian health ministry confirms more than 22,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign launched after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. But she has long argued that play itself is a universal human right that no child, even in the midst of active conflict, should be denied.

    Currently, BNB is working to deliver physical bubble kits to children across Gaza and southern Lebanon, where ongoing Israeli military operations have killed more than 3,500 people and displaced nearly one million since March 2024. To bridge gaps in delivery amid restricted access, the organization has already shared simple, open-source digital instructions for making homemade bubbles using locally available materials, so children and caregivers can build their own kits without waiting for external shipments.

    Dyboski explains that the soft, fleeting nature of bubbles, with their inherent joy and lightness, offers children living with chronic trauma a tangible tool to process fear and grief, articulate unspoken difficult feelings, regulate their breathing, and stabilize their emotions amid constant chaos.

    That impact is visible on the ground in Gaza, where Mohamed Abushbeka has cared for his two young nieces since their father was killed in the first weeks of Israel’s military campaign. Last week, BNB reposted a video Abushbeka shared of his older niece, Batool, blowing bubbles inside an overcrowded displacement camp.

    “Bubbles give children these rare stretches of joy, safety, and escape from all the anxiety and brutal reality around them,” Abushbeka told Middle East Eye in an interview. He emphasized that bubble play helps children release overwhelming emotions they often lack the words to name, giving them a brief, tangible sense of freedom. “You see them running, laughing, chasing the bubbles as they float up, then suddenly fall and burst,” he said.

    He added that bubble play is uniquely accessible in a context where most resources are scarce: it is low-cost, simple to make, and children will repurpose any available materials, from plastic cups to discarded small tubes, to make their own wands. For caregivers working to preserve any shred of normal childhood for the next generation, protecting these small moments of play is non-negotiable, Abushbeka said. “One day, Palestinian children will laugh without fear, sleep without bombs, and grow up surrounded by peace instead of loss,” he wrote on his Instagram page.

    Leigh Evans, a Welsh emergency nurse, paramedic and activist with four medical aid missions to Gaza under his belt, has witnessed first-hand the constant trauma that shapes daily life for Gaza’s children, and the heartbreak of seeing them robbed of the chance to just be kids. “I think children’s need to play and develop as whole human beings should be a major part of what we count as essential aid,” Evans said.

    He reflected on how Gazan families work tirelessly to preserve small bits of normalcy even amid widespread destruction, recalling invitations to share meals in partially bombed-out homes, where families leaned on cooking and play to comfort their children when death could come at any moment. Evans has long integrated BNB’s bubble kits into his solidarity work: he joined the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, used bubble play during the 2025 Global March to Gaza, blew bubbles during a peaceful Red Line solidarity rally in West Wales last week, and joined activists in a direct action outside Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in March, where bubble play was used to disrupt production of munitions deployed in Gaza.

    “Bubbles are wonderfully therapeutic,” Evans said. “They offer a small but incredibly powerful form of psychological relief for children in conflict zones, letting them be children in a place where they would otherwise have no space for that.”

    Sabine Choucair, a Lebanese performer and co-founder of Clown Me In, an organization that brings arts programming to children in crisis zones, frames bubbles as uniquely magical for young people. “Bubbles are magical, like small globes that reflect everything around children,” she explained. “They bring kids together and give them a low-stakes way to experiment and play.”

    Choucair, who has 20 years of experience performing for children in refugee camps and disaster zones across the world, recently partnered with BNB by sharing a video of her original activity “Pop the Fear”, where children are invited to name their fears, visualize placing them inside a bubble, pop the bubble to release the fear, then blow new bubbles to make space for joy and hope.

    Speaking of the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, where children are once again displaced, forced out of school, and forced to re-live the trauma of bombardment and home loss, Choucair pushed back against the narrative that mental health and play support are secondary to basic aid. “Imagine re-living the loss of your home, hearing drones and bombs again, and being out of school once more,” she said. “How are we supposed to survive if our mental state is destroyed?”

    Mental health experts echo this framing, noting that even when basic survival needs are unmet, psychosocial support for children facing repeated bombardment, displacement and grief is not a secondary priority—it should be a core component of any emergency response. A powerful video from the Gaza-based Sameer Project illustrates this impact, showing a young girl channeling her fear of shelling and famine into popping bubbles, before sharing her wish to be reunited with her mother, who was killed in the conflict.

    “It’s a simple but deeply effective way to help children process trauma,” Dyboski said. “Creating moments of play is healing. They can feel a sense of control and make the experience their own.”

    Beyond Gaza and Lebanon, BNB has already begun distributing bubble kits to children in Myanmar and at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, home to the world’s largest refugee camp. The organization is working to expand access to Sudan in partnership with local group Let’s Have Hope, though shipment challenges have delayed entry to date. It also plans to send kits to children in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia’s Tigray region, both sites of ongoing protracted conflict.

    “We need to make sure children not only survive but are also able to grow into human beings who can live, love and function fully,” Evans said. Citing UNICEF data that an estimated 473 million children worldwide currently live in active conflict zones, Dyboski says the work is far from over. “We’ve got a lot of children to reach.”

  • Labour contender Andy Burnham declines to say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

    Labour contender Andy Burnham declines to say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

    As the race for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party slowly takes shape ahead of a upcoming by-election, two prospective contenders have staked out contrasting positions on the highly charged question of whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide, exposing deep internal divides within the party over Middle East policy.

    Andy Burnham, the sitting Mayor of Greater Manchester who is running to become Member of Parliament for Makerfield in the June 18 by-election — a step widely seen as paving his way to challenge Keir Starmer for the party leadership and eventually the post of prime minister — laid out his stance in a Thursday interview with *The Guardian*. When pressed to label Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, Burnham declined, arguing that the gravity of such an accusation puts it beyond his ability to rule on from his current position. “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester,” he told the outlet.

    That said, Burnham did not shy away from criticizing the scale of Israel’s military operation. He made clear he holds serious concerns about what he described as the disproportionate level of destruction inflicted on Gaza, and called for a full independent investigation to hold responsible parties to account. His comments come against a backdrop of mounting death and humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave: since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, Israeli military operations have killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with an additional 170,000 wounded. Thousands more remain unaccounted for, presumed dead under rubble from Israeli airstrikes and ground operations. Humanitarian groups have also documented that Israel has implemented a deliberate policy of blocking entry of food, clean water, medicine and other essential supplies to Gaza’s civilian population, creating widespread famine; even when aid has been allowed in after global public outcry, the volume has been far too insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2 million trapped residents.

    Multiple prominent human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and leading Israeli human rights groups, have formally concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, a finding echoed by dozens of leading global genocide studies experts. Last year, a United Nations commission of inquiry also reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

    Burnham’s position is notably more muted than that of another likely Labour leadership challenger, Wes Streeting, the recently resigned UK Health Secretary who has also publicly stated his ambition to replace Starmer as prime minister. While Streeting has never publicly accused Israel of genocide or war crimes, internal details that emerged late last year revealed he privately stated that Israel was carrying out war crimes “before our eyes” and that the Israeli government was using the “language of ethnic cleansing.” This week, while he did not repeat those private accusations publicly, Streeting defended his decision to share a dossier of graphic images showing injured Palestinian children in Gaza with fellow cabinet ministers. He told reporters he was “horrified by the war in Gaza” and had worked behind closed doors to pressure the British government to act with what he called the moral urgency the crisis demands. “That included sharing the eyewitness testimony of doctors on the ground in Gaza, whose accounts needed to be heard at the highest levels of government to ensure that what was happening in Gaza wasn’t a war without witnesses,” Streeting explained.

    Streeting also launched a sharp rebuke of Starmer’s leadership on the issue, saying that while multiple cabinet ministers pushed for a stronger policy shift on Gaza, their efforts repeatedly ran into intransigence from the top. “We often felt like we were hitting up against a brick wall. Our concerns and motives were dismissed,” he said. Streeting sought to frame his position as balanced, noting that he has long backed both Israel’s right to self-defense and the Palestinian people’s right to an independent sovereign state, pointing to his past record as a backbench lawmaker when he called for sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, his meeting with survivors of the October 7 attack, and his status as the first shadow cabinet minister to visit Israel.

    Disclosed documents released earlier this week showed a sharp negative reaction from senior Labour figure Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former cabinet minister, Labour peer and former UK ambassador to the U.S., who described Streeting’s criticisms of Israel as “wild” and “hysterical” and claimed the contender was “experiencing an early midlife crisis.”

    Unlike Streeting, who publicly backed the Labour leadership’s initial support for Israel’s post-October 7 war on Gaza, Burnham broke ranks with Starmer’s team just weeks after the conflict began, joining London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar to issue a joint statement calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire. Their statement expressed “profound concerns about the loss of thousands of lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.” Burnham also became one of the most prominent proponents within the Labour Party of pressing the government to formally recognize a Palestinian state, a step Starmer’s government ultimately took last September.

    In a rare show of unity with Starmer, however, Burnham defended the Labour leader’s recent diplomatic clash with U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump had publicly attacked Starmer, claiming the UK had failed to provide sufficient support for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iranian military targets, despite Britain granting the U.S. access to British military bases to carry out strikes on Iranian missile sites. Burnham argued that Starmer’s approach had been correct, noting that “normally you would want a good relationship with the US, but if you can’t agree with them, then say that as well. That’s the only way I think to deal with him [Trump].” He added that while the US-UK special relationship remains important to Britain, that does not mean the UK should blindly align with every U.S. policy position. “We’ve got in trouble in the past when that happens, so no, I think the approach that Keir has taken is the right one”, Burnham said.

    This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and broader global affairs.

  • Zverev to face Cobolli in French Open final after beating Mensik

    Zverev to face Cobolli in French Open final after beating Mensik

    The 2025 French Open men’s singles final is set, after two dramatic days of semi-final action that saw a veteran chasing a long-awaited milestone and an Italian rising star advance under unexpected circumstances. Germany’s Alexander Zverev, the tournament’s second seed and world number three, fought past 20-year-old Czech rookie Jakub Mensik in a four-set thriller on Friday to book his spot in Sunday’s championship match, where he will face Italy’s Flavio Cobolli. For Zverev, the match marks his fourth appearance in a Grand Slam final, and a chance to claim the first major title of his decorated career.

    Zverev’s path to the final required every bit of his 11 years of Grand Slam experience against Mensik, who was competing in his first ever major semi-final. The young Czech had already fought through two draining five-set matches to reach the last four, and fatigue gradually took its toll over the course of the two-and-a-half-hour contest. Zverev struck first, breaking Mensik’s serve in the 11th game of a tight opening set after saving three break points that would have put the 26th seed up 5-3. The German dominated the second set, dropping only four points on his own serve and breaking Mensik twice to take a two-set lead.

    Mensik briefly turned the tide after calling a medical time-out early in the third set for a nagging neck injury. His improved use of drop shots caught Zverev off guard, and he broke to take a 4-2 lead before closing out the set 6-3 — the only second set Zverev has dropped through the entire tournament. But the young Czech could not maintain his momentum. Unforced backhand errors gifted Zverev an early break in the fourth set, putting him up 2-0, and the veteran never looked back. Zverev closed out the 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 win on his first match point when Mensik sent a backhand into the net. Along the way, Zverev drew some criticism from spectators for disputing two line calls and received a time violation warning, but his ability to navigate through physical and mental pressure has kept his title dream alive.

    In the other semi-final, 10th seed Cobolli did not even take the court, after his compatriot and childhood friend Matteo Arnaldi withdrew just one hour before the match due to a sudden viral illness. Arnaldi, ranked 104th in the world, had pulled off a Cinderella run to the semi-finals, winning two back-to-back marathon matches in the third and fourth rounds before his quarter-final opponent Matteo Berrettini retired due to injury. Arnaldi said that despite feeling good through most of the tournament, he woke up suffering from dizziness and decided a withdrawal was the only responsible decision.

    “It’s tough — for how the tournament was, for how many hours I spent on court, I felt pretty good,” Arnaldi told reporters. “Every time I get up I feel dizzy and not the best… so that was the right decision for me.”

    Cobolli, who advanced to his first ever Grand Slam final via walkover, shared his disappointment for his friend and compatriot. “It’s tough for me to speak also. When he came to me an hour ago I almost cried,” he said. “At the same time I’m happy with the result this week.” Cobolli has been one of the tournament’s most impressive performers, dropping just two sets through five matches, including a standout quarter-final win over fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada.

    For Zverev, Sunday’s final will be the culmination of years of near-misses at the sport’s biggest events. He has fallen short in three previous Grand Slam finals, most recently losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the 2023 French Open, and held a two-set lead over Dominic Thiem in the 2020 US Open final before collapsing in five sets. He also entered the French Open in the middle of a 14-month title drought, dating back to his win at a small clay-court event in Munich in April 2024. With tournament favorites Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner exiting early in the second and third rounds respectively, Zverev has handled the pressure of being the top remaining seed well, losing only two sets across six matches to reach the final. He also holds a 3-1 career winning record against Cobolli, making him the clear favorite to lift the trophy on Philippe Chatrier Court.

    After reaching the final, the 29-year-old reflected on his journey to the championship match, leaning into his lighthearted approach to pressure. “This is a Grand Slam, it’s best of five, things are going to happen, opponents are going to play better. I managed it,” Zverev said. “Pure emptiness, there’s absolutely nothing in my head. We’re athletes, very few of us have anything in our heads. Sometimes it’s easier to be stupid and not to think too much. I hope to play another great match on Sunday.”

  • Astronauts return to ISS after sheltering during air leak repair attempt

    Astronauts return to ISS after sheltering during air leak repair attempt

    A sudden acceleration in an ongoing air leak on the International Space Station (ISS) triggered emergency shelter protocols Friday, sending five of the outpost’s seven crew members to a docked SpaceX Dragon capsule as two Russian cosmonauts attempted targeted repairs on the affected Russian segment of the station.

    The leak, located in the PrK transfer tunnel connecting to Russia’s Zvezda service module, has been a persistent issue for the orbital complex for roughly six years, caused by gradual cracking that has flared up and been patched intermittently. A new development emerged last month, however, following the docking of a new Russian cargo vessel: Roscosmos, Russia’s national space agency, detected a faster rate of pressure drop in the tunnel, indicating the leak had worsened. That prompted mission teams to schedule a more extensive repair operation Friday to address the problem permanently, rather than relying on temporary fixes.

    Friday afternoon, the two Russian crew members, station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev, began preparations to access the crack using a saw. The approach sparked concern from NASA mission control in Houston, which ordered five of the seven-person ISS crew to move to the docked SpaceX Dragon capsule Freedom, their designated emergency lifeboat, as a precaution. The five astronauts — Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Chris Williams of NASA, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, all of whom arrived at the station in February — were instructed to don their spacesuits and stand by for a potential emergency undocking and return to Earth. Unlike many spacecraft that only ferry crew to and from the station, docked crew capsules remain permanently attached as lifeboats, ready to depart for Earth within minutes if the station faces an irreparable catastrophic threat. Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev retained their own escape route via the separately docked Soyuz MS-28 crew capsule.

    Within hours of the shelter order being issued, Roscosmos directed its cosmonauts to pause the repair work, and NASA subsequently lifted the safe-haven protocol. In a public statement posted to the social platform X, NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens confirmed: “Given this development, Nasa has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station.”

    Russian state news agency Tass, citing official comments from Roscosmos, reported that at no point during the incident did the leak or repair attempt pose a threat to the safety of the crew or the ISS’s critical onboard systems.

    The ISS, the largest human-made object ever placed in orbit, stretches roughly the length of an American football field. It has been continuously occupied and operated by a multinational consortium led by the United States and Russia since 1998, with additional partners including Canada, Japan, and 11 European nations through the European Space Agency. The long-running orbital outpost has weathered a series of incremental structural issues over its decades in operation, including the recurring cracking in the Zvezda module that first emerged six years ago.

  • Trump’s back-and-forth on troops in Europe potentially cost millions, US officials say

    Trump’s back-and-forth on troops in Europe potentially cost millions, US officials say

    Amid ongoing confusion sparked by conflicting White House directives on U.S. troop levels in Europe, the U.S. military remains stuck waiting for clear guidance from the Pentagon — a state of uncertainty that has upended the lives of service members and already drained tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

    The chaos traces back to a diplomatic dispute between former President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran conflict earlier this year. Shortly after Trump ordered 5,000 U.S. troops withdrawn from Europe, he reversed course and announced he would deploy the same number of troops to Poland, leaving NATO allies stunned and military planners scrambling. The Trump administration has maintained that planned troop reductions in Europe have long been in the works and coordinated with alliance partners, but the sudden about-face on deployments has thrown that planning into disarray.

    Two weeks before the officials spoke with AP, Trump announced the Poland deployment on social media — a decision that came on the exact same day the Pentagon had formally issued orders to cancel a scheduled rotation of troops bound for the country, one defense official recalled. At the time of the cancellation order, the unit’s heavy equipment was already en route to Europe. U.S. Transportation Command, the branch responsible for moving troops and military gear across global supply lines, confirmed that just moving that equipment to Poland already cost $32 million.

    The repeated last-minute changes have forced military planners to “retroactively engineer” new policy to match the president’s latest public statements, the official added.

    The 4,000-strong 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team from the 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, had its rotational deployment to Poland scrapped in a Pentagon memo issued in early May, with European allies only notified of the change two weeks later. Hundreds of troops already received pre-deployment orders and were just hours from boarding flights to Poland when they were told to stand down, while roughly 1,000 advance personnel already in Eastern Europe remain in limbo, with no official confirmation of whether they will be recalled to the U.S.

    Military leaders are still awaiting detailed instructions from the Pentagon on how to implement Trump’s order to deploy 5,000 troops to Poland. Current working assumptions within the defense department suggest the troops will be drawn from units already stationed in Europe, rather than adding a new deployment from the continental U.S.

    Beyond the $32 million already spent to move the canceled rotation’s equipment, additional unbudgeted costs are likely mounting. U.S. Transportation Command had chartered a dedicated vessel to carry the incoming unit’s gear to Poland and return the outgoing rotation’s equipment to the U.S. It remains unclear how much of the $32 million could have been saved if the cancellation order had been issued before the deployment process began, but defense experts note that any unscheduled repositioning of personnel and gear was not included in the Pentagon’s annual budget.

    Calculating the full cost of the last-minute deployment changes is extremely complex due to the number of overlapping moving parts, according to Joe Costa, former senior Pentagon official and current director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program. While the direct cash outlay is likely to be a relatively small share of the rotation’s total baseline cost, the broader harm to troop readiness is far more significant: units that spent months training for a specific deployment in Poland may now be reassigned to entirely different missions, eroding their preparedness.

    John Deni, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and former U.S. military planner focused on European force posture, added that military transportation contracts with private vendors almost always include penalty clauses that impose extra fees for last-minute cancellations or changes of plan. “The real question is what additional costs we incur from sending people and gear back prematurely, tearing up existing arrangements and scrapping months of detailed planning,” Deni explained. It remains unclear whether the Pentagon can recoup any of these unexpected expenses, and the department has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the total cost of the plan changes. The White House also declined to comment, referring all questions to the Defense Department.

    Pentagon officials have repeatedly framed planned European troop reductions as part of a long-planned “comprehensive, multilayered process” designed to shift more defense responsibility to European allies. But the last-minute changes also scuttled a separate planned deployment of a long-range rocket and missile battalion to Germany last month.

    When Trump first publicly threatened to withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe, Pentagon planners initially considered pulling the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a permanently stationed unit based in Germany, according to one defense official. That plan was ultimately set aside in favor of canceling the planned Poland rotation — a decision Trump upended weeks later with his new deployment order.

    Costa noted that withdrawing the Germany-based permanent regiment would carry an even far higher price tag, likely costing billions of dollars. The U.S. currently lacks dedicated domestic infrastructure and housing to accommodate the full regiment and their families, so any forced withdrawal would require breaking up the unit, dispersing equipment across multiple bases, and reassigning personnel to unrelated posts — a process that inflicts lasting harm to unit readiness.

    Beyond fiscal costs, the constant uncertainty has also taken a toll on troop and family morale. Service members and their families often begin planning for deployments months or even years in advance, so last-minute cancellations and shifts are deeply disruptive, Deni said. “This is the last thing you want to put military families through,” he noted.

    Multiple long-term options are still on the table, including permanently moving some Germany-based units to Poland, but that type of large-scale infrastructure and force shift would take years to complete and carry additional hundreds of millions in construction and repositioning costs. To date, no final decision has been made, leaving the entire U.S. force posture in Europe in limbo.

    The chaotic deployment changes come at an especially difficult time for the U.S. Army, which is already facing a major budget shortfall estimated between $2 billion and $6 billion, according to an Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The service has already been forced to cut back on routine training courses for troops across the country to conserve funds, a cut first reported by ABC News.

    In a formal statement, an Army spokesperson said the service has issued guidance to all commands to “make tough and sound resource decisions that optimize and prioritize resources toward their most critical requirements, to include major training and readiness events.”

    The budget strain has been exacerbated by multiple unplanned additional missions assigned to the service in recent months, including deployment of National Guard troops to Washington D.C. and a bolstered border security presence along the U.S.-Mexico border, alongside the U.S. role in the Iran conflict. The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to reimburse the Army for border mission costs, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers at a May 15 hearing he expected reimbursement “within a week or two.” As of the reporting date, no reimbursement has been processed.

    U.S. Army Europe has already responded to the budget crunch by scaling back all non-combat training support and focusing exclusively on high-priority core missions to stretch remaining funds, according to the military official.

    (Reporting from London by Burrows)

  • More than half of Latin Americans deported from US to Congo are now back home

    More than half of Latin Americans deported from US to Congo are now back home

    DAKAR, SENEGAL – In a development that lays bare the deep flaws of the former Trump administration’s widely condemned third-country deportation policy, Congolese government officials and legal counsel for displaced migrants confirmed Friday that more than half of the 15 Latin American asylum seekers dumped in the Central African nation in April have already made their way back to their countries of origin.

    All 15 of the migrants had already received formal rulings from U.S. immigration judges confirming they faced a high likelihood of persecution if forced to return to their home countries, placing their forced transfer to Congo directly at odds with U.S. legal protections for asylum seekers. Congo is one of at least eight African nations that struck little-publicized third-country deportation agreements with the U.S. during the Trump administration, part of a broader, often secretive scheme that saw thousands of asylum seekers deported to nearly 24 countries that were not their countries of birth or habitual residence, according to immigrant rights advocates.

    Immigration attorneys have long argued that these third-country deportation deals function as a deliberate legal loophole, designed to circumvent U.S. asylum law and indirectly push vulnerable people seeking protection back into the dangerous situations they fled. Alma David, a U.S.-based attorney representing one of the 15 migrants deported to Congo in April, told reporters that eight of the group have completed their return to Latin America in recent weeks. David confirmed her client, a Colombian woman who previously spoke to the Associated Press about the dire conditions and crippling uncertainty she faced after being stranded in Congo, remains trapped in the Central African country for now.

    Another Colombian migrant, Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, is also still stuck in Congo, despite a federal judge issuing a formal order last month requiring the Trump administration to return her to U.S. territory. Zapata was originally deported to Congo even though Congolese authorities explicitly rejected her entry, citing an inability to meet her pre-existing medical needs.

    David explained that four Peruvian migrants and three Colombians completed their return home earlier this week, with logistical and financial support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations-affiliated body. Their returns were processed through the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return program, which covers travel costs and coordination for migrants who agree to return to their home countries as an alternative to ongoing displacement or forced deportation. One additional Colombian man arranged his own independent return to his home country in recent days, David added.

    Legal observers have pointed out that the migrants’ decision to return home, even after U.S. courts ruled they faced life-threatening danger there, reveals the impossible position the third-country policy placed them in. “The fact that they chose to return there anyway raises serious concerns that they likely felt backed into a corner because no viable alternative was presented to them,” David said. The IOM has defended its program, stating that assisted voluntary returns are “strictly voluntary and based on free, prior and informed consent.”

    In an official statement released Friday, the Congolese government framed the departures as consistent with the original terms of its agreement with the U.S., saying “These developments confirm the strictly transitional, temporary, and time-limited nature of this mechanism, as announced from its launch. Further departures will take place shortly as part of the implementation of the arrangement.”

    Friday’s announcement coincided with a separate legal action by international rights lawyers, who filed a complaint against Equatorial Guinea before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights – Africa’s top regional human rights body. The complaint accuses Equatorial Guinea of forcing U.S.-deported migrants back to their home countries in direct violation of international human rights law. Associated Press correspondent Saleh Mwanamilongo, reporting from Bonn, Germany, contributed reporting to this article.

  • Father of 6 imprisoned for rape following one of UK’s worst miscarriages of justice

    Father of 6 imprisoned for rape following one of UK’s worst miscarriages of justice

    LONDON – More than two decades after a brutal rape in Greater Manchester upended two innocent lives, the perpetrator has finally faced justice, while long-simmering questions about one of Britain’s worst modern miscarriages of justice have sparked a major reckoning over systemic failures in the country’s legal and law enforcement systems.

    On Friday, 52-year-old Paul Quinn, a father of six with a record of sexual offenses dating back to age 12, received a 21-year prison sentence for the 2003 attack that wrongfully put Andrew Malkinson behind bars for 17 years. Quinn, who was 29 at the time of the crime, was found guilty on four charges in April following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court: two counts of rape, one count of choking with intent to harm, and one count of grievous bodily harm. His sentence includes 21 years of custody and an additional three years of supervised release on license, with eligibility for parole after serving 14 years.

    During the sentencing hearing, Justice Robert Bright delivered a scathing rebuke of Quinn, noting that the perpetrator had spent decades freely while an innocent man paid for his crime. “You sat back and enjoyed your liberty at the expense of an innocent man,” the judge told Quinn.

    The case of wrongful conviction that preceded Quinn’s sentencing has shaken public trust in Britain’s justice system. Malkinson, now 60, was working as a security guard at a local shopping center when he was identified by the victim in a police lineup. He was convicted in 2004 and handed a life sentence with a minimum seven-year term. Refusing to accept a false guilty plea to secure early release, Malkinson always insisted on his innocence, and ended up serving 10 extra years beyond the judge’s minimum tariff before being paroled in 2020. Even after release, he remained listed on the U.K.’s national sex offenders registry, a stain that lingered until his conviction was officially overturned. It was only in July 2023 that the Court of Appeal quashed Malkinson’s conviction, after advances in genetic forensics allowed his legal team and the anti-wrongful-conviction charity Appeal to match DNA evidence from the victim’s clothing fragments to Quinn.

    Malkinson, who has spent years fighting to clear his name, has expressed anger that Quinn did not receive a life sentence. In a statement released through Appeal, he said, “I hope that this man does not get parole and that he serves longer than me. Anything less is not justice.”

    Quinn’s sentencing closes one chapter of Malkinson’s decades-long ordeal, but the fallout from the case is far from over. Malkinson is currently seeking financial compensation from the British government for the 17 years he wrongfully spent in prison, and he has raised questions about whether police improperly pressured the victim during the initial lineup identification. His legal representative Toby Wilton of the law firm Hickman & Rose explained, “While Andy is relieved this chapter of his ordeal is now closed, it is not the end of this matter as far as he is concerned.”

    A 2024 independent review already confirmed that multiple institutional failures delayed Malkinson’s exoneration by as much as 10 years, prompting the launch of a full public inquiry into the case. Currently, five retired Greater Manchester Police officers and one active-duty officer are under criminal investigation over the mishandling of the case, and two senior leaders at the U.K.’s official wrongful conviction review body have already stepped down amid the scandal.

    Greater Manchester Police has issued a formal apology to Malkinson. Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, the lead senior investigating officer on the reopened case, acknowledged that justice came 20 years too late for all those impacted. “However, we will not allow time to be a barrier to justice for anyone who has further information about Paul Quinn and any further potential sexual offending,” McKendrick said.