Global Pulse

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  • Calls for UK PM to resign over ex-envoy’s failed vetting

    Calls for UK PM to resign over ex-envoy’s failed vetting

    Growing political pressure is bearing down on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as opposition leaders ramp up calls for his resignation following confirmation that former US ambassador Peter Mandelson — a close associate of disgraced late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — failed an initial national security background check before taking up the post.

    The controversy has plagued Starmer’s Labour government since Mandelson was fired from the ambassador role last year, just months after his appointment, when newly unearthed documents from a U.S. congressional committee exposed the far deeper extent of his long-standing ties to Epstein, a convicted financier who died in prison in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges. Since his dismissal, questions have continuously swirled around Starmer’s judgment in pushing forward with the high-profile diplomatic appointment.

    Those questions erupted into fresh demands for Starmer to step down this week after The Guardian published an investigation revealing Mandelson failed his initial security vetting, a finding later officially confirmed by the UK government. Opposition leaders across the political spectrum have united in condemnation, with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch taking to social media platform X to accuse Starmer of betraying UK national security and insisting he must leave office. Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, added that if Starmer misled Parliament and the British public about the vetting process, he has no choice but to resign.

    In response to the scandal, Starmer has pushed back by blaming Mandelson, claiming the former ambassador lied about the full scope of his connections to Epstein during the vetting process. A government spokesperson has clarified that senior Foreign Office officials made the final call to approve Mandelson’s appointment over the formal objection of UK Security Vetting, the body responsible for conducting national security background checks. Critically, the spokesperson added that neither Prime Minister Starmer nor Foreign Secretary David Lammy were aware that the initial vetting had failed until earlier this week. The vetting body’s negative recommendation, they noted, is non-binding, leaving final approval authority with ministry officials.

    The timeline of Starmer’s previous statements has added fuel to opposition criticism: back in February, the prime minister told Parliament Mandelson had been fully cleared by security vetting. One month later, his government released 150 pages of documents detailing the vetting process carried out ahead of Mandelson’s 2024 appointment.

    Beyond the political fallout over the botched appointment, Mandelson now faces a formal police investigation into allegations of official misconduct. He was arrested and released on bail in February, with detectives probing claims he leaked sensitive government documents related to the 2008 global financial crisis to Epstein during his time as a UK cabinet minister decades ago.

  • Is Trump meeting the moment for US conservatives?

    Is Trump meeting the moment for US conservatives?

    At the largest annual gathering of conservative activists and leaders in the United States, the BBC set out to answer a pressing question facing the modern American right: Does former President Donald Trump truly meet the defining political and policy challenges of the moment for U.S. conservatives?

    The event, which draws thousands of movement leaders, grassroots organizers, and elected officials from across the country, served as the ideal backdrop to probe how Trump’s core stances align with the priorities of the conservative base. To get on-the-ground insight, BBC correspondents spoke directly to dozens of Trump’s supporters in attendance, asking for their views on three of the most contentious issues shaping U.S. conservative politics today: tensions with Iran, the state of the domestic economy, and immigration policy.

    These three topics have long been fault lines in American conservative politics, and they remain central to debates over the direction of the Republican Party heading into upcoming electoral cycles. For many conservatives, evaluating how Trump addresses these issues is key to determining whether he is the right standard-bearer for the movement moving forward. The on-the-record conversations with attendees at this major conservative convening offered unfiltered insight into how the president’s backers believe he measures up to the challenges that matter most to the right.

  • Lebanon’s Aoun rejects call with Netanyahu as Israel severs last bridge to the south

    Lebanon’s Aoun rejects call with Netanyahu as Israel severs last bridge to the south

    Diplomatic tensions have escalated across the Lebanon-Israel border this week after a senior anonymous Lebanese official confirmed that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has ruled out any near-term phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, quashing earlier reports of a planned historic first call between the two nations’ sitting leaders.

    Beirut has already communicated Aoun’s firm stance to the U.S. government ahead of a scheduled Thursday meeting between the Lebanese president and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the official told Middle East Eye. This development comes just 48 hours after the U.S. hosted a landmark diplomatic meeting between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington, the first formal diplomatic encounter between the two countries since 1993.

    In explaining the decision to reject the call, the senior official noted that Lebanon had already demonstrated flexibility by participating in the Washington talks, and would not take an additional step that would grant Netanyahu a domestic political and moral victory that he has failed to secure through military operations on Lebanese soil. The official added that a first-ever conversation between the two leaders would carry severe domestic political ramifications for Lebanon, and could even spark widespread internal unrest described as “an explosion in the country”.

    The planned call between Aoun and Netanyahu was first announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, shortly after Israel’s cabinet convened in a late Wednesday session to discuss a potential ceasefire agreement with Lebanese actors. For his part, Aoun has already clarified that any permanent ceasefire must act as a clear precursor to formal direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, a long-standing core position for the Lebanese government.

    According to Israeli outlet Haaretz, senior Israeli military command has received orders to prepare forces currently positioned in southern Lebanon for an impending ceasefire, which local reports indicate could take effect between 7 p.m. and midnight local time.

    Despite the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, Israeli military operations have continued and even intensified in some parts of Lebanon. On Thursday morning, shortly after Israeli media publicized reports of the planned Aoun-Netanyahu call, the Israeli Air Force carried out a strike that completely destroyed the Qasmiyeh bridge – the last remaining surface crossing connecting southern Lebanon to the country’s central and northern regions. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency confirmed that two consecutive airstrikes hit the infrastructure, fully destroying the span connecting the Sour and Saida regions.

    The Qasmiyeh strike is part of a broader Israeli campaign to cut off access to southern Lebanon. Last month, the Israeli military announced it would target all bridges and crossings along the Litani River, a waterway that runs east-west across southern Lebanon, to isolate large swathes of the region from the rest of the country. In recent weeks, the military has carried through on this threat, damaging or destroying at least nine crossings over the river. The Qasmiyeh bridge was first heavily damaged in an Israeli strike in late March, but the Lebanese army completed partial repairs and reopened it to vehicle traffic just last week. Prior to Thursday’s second strike, Lebanese troops stationed near the crossing had already closed access roads in anticipation of an attack, according to local Lebanese outlet L’Orient Today. A Lebanese security source told Reuters Thursday’s strike “shattered” the crossing, leaving it irreparable.

    The ongoing violence has continued to claim civilian lives across Lebanon. At least 11 people, including women and children, were killed in a series of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Thursday alone. A separate airstrike targeting a vehicle on the highway connecting Beirut to the Syrian capital Damascus also killed one additional person.

    Since the start of the current conflict, more than 2,100 Lebanese people have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to official Lebanese government data. The violence has disproportionately impacted healthcare and rescue workers: on Wednesday alone, four Lebanese rescue workers were killed and six wounded in three sequential targeted Israeli strikes on the southern village of Mayfadoun. Lebanese paramedic groups reported that the strikes targeted three successive waves of medics: the first team responded to calls from wounded civilians, the second came to aid injured first responders, and the third arrived to support both teams after the initial attacks. To date, the Lebanese health ministry confirms that 91 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli forces in the six weeks since hostilities resumed.

    Hostilities between the two sides escalated in early March following a joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, after which Lebanese armed group Hezbollah launched a cross-border rocket retaliatory attack on Israel. Israel has not carried out large-scale strikes on central Beirut since an 8 April attack that killed more than 350 people across Lebanon in a 10-minute wave of 100 strikes, but it continues to carry out daily deadly operations in southern Lebanon as its ground invasion progresses.

  • Rescuers to use air cushions in latest effort to save stranded whale

    Rescuers to use air cushions in latest effort to save stranded whale

    For weeks, a young humpback whale that wandered far from its natural ocean habitat has been stranded in the shallow coastal waters off Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, capturing global public attention and sparking a tense debate over wildlife rescue ethics. Now, state authorities have given the green light to a new, low-impact operation to free the animal, nicknamed Timmy by local media, even as many leading wildlife experts warn the mission carries severe risks and stands little chance of success.

    Timmy was first spotted in the low-salinity waters of the Baltic Sea at the start of March, hundreds of kilometers away from the humpback’s native range in the North Atlantic Ocean. After the whale became stuck on a sandbank off the coast of Poel Island in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, rescuers launched an earlier intervention: they dug a channel with heavy excavators to help the animal swim free, but the plan fell apart when the disoriented whale turned back into shallow water instead of following the plotted route toward the North Sea.

    Wildlife biologists who have examined the animal say Timmy has sustained extensive life-threatening injuries. Visible damage includes large patches of detached skin, caused in part by the Baltic’s much lower salt concentration that triggered a debilitating skin condition. Experts also assume significant internal organ damage, brought on by weeks of the whale’s own body weight pressing down on its frame in shallow waters. Trauma consistent with contact with a ship propeller and entanglement in commercial fishing netting has also been documented, confirming the animal has been struggling with multiple harm for an extended period. After the first rescue attempt failed, many specialists concluded the whale’s chance of long-term survival was extremely low, and authorities initially agreed that the kindest option would be to let the animal pass peacefully.

    But a recent reassessment of possible intervention methods has led state environment minister Till Backhaus to reverse that decision, approving a new plan led by a private rescue initiative. The operation relies on a simple, minimally invasive tool: large air cushions, similar in concept to inflatable arm bands, that will be positioned around the whale’s flippers to gently lift it off the seabed and onto a reinforced tarp connected to a tugboat. Once the whale is secured, the tug will transport it around Denmark’s Jutland peninsula into the North Sea, with the potential to release it further into the Atlantic Ocean, where humpback whales normally live.

    Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania officials confirmed as of this week that the injured whale is still showing clear signs of life, though it remains severely weakened. “The prognosis remains critical. But a chance of survival cannot be completely ruled out,” Backhaus said in a statement announcing the new attempt. “Against this background, it is justifiable to allow this attempt, and I thank the initiative for it.”

    Not all groups involved in earlier rescue work back the new operation, however. Greenpeace Germany, which assisted in the first attempt to free Timmy, has publicly announced it will not participate in or support the latest effort, citing the whale’s critical condition and the high risk of increasing its suffering. Independent experts from the German Oceanographic Museum and the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research have echoed that concern, stressing that any transportation or physical manipulation of the already severely weakened animal carries substantial risk of exacerbating its injuries and hastening its death.

    Timmy’s prolonged struggle has drawn international media coverage, but it has also created problems for authorities managing the site. The state government has issued formal warnings about rampant misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories spreading across social media about the whale’s condition and the rescue process, and a 500-meter exclusion zone has been established around the stranded animal to protect both the whale and rescue teams. Even with that restriction in place, a 67-year-old woman made headlines over the weekend when she jumped off a private boat in an attempt to swim closer to Timmy, before being stopped by on-site enforcement officers.

    Backhaus acknowledged the deep public empathy that has driven the global interest in Timmy’s fate. “The outpouring of sympathy shows how deeply the animal’s fate moves people,” he said. “At the same time, I ask that you respect the work of the emergency services and adhere to the existing protective measures.”

    To this day, researchers remain uncertain how the humpback whale ended up so far outside its normal range in the Baltic Sea. Experts say the unusual stranding highlights the growing risks large marine mammals face from human maritime activities, including shipping traffic and commercial fishing, even in well-monitored European coastal waters.

  • Tibetan coffee wins praise at Paris Coffee Festival

    Tibetan coffee wins praise at Paris Coffee Festival

    Between April 11 and 13, 2026, one of China’s most promising emerging specialty coffee brands — Nindo Coffee, rooted in the Xizang Autonomous Region — marked its second showcasing at a major European industry event, taking center stage at the Paris Coffee Festival. The homegrown regional brand brought a one-of-a-kind experience to global attendees, pairing high-quality specialty coffee with a vivid display of the dynamic blend of time-honored tradition and cutting-edge modern energy that defines contemporary Xizang, quickly earning widespread international recognition for its unique offerings.

    Tsomo, founder and lead visionary behind Nindo Coffee, shared that the brand’s core mission extends far beyond selling specialty coffee. For her team, coffee acts as a accessible, approachable cultural medium to weave authentic Tibetan heritage into global cultural conversations, all to showcase a fresh, nuanced image of Xizang as a region where ancient traditions coexist and thrive alongside modern innovation. While the Tibetan specialty coffee sector remains in its early developmental stages, Tsomo and her team have prioritized three core goals: continuous product refinement, cultivation of distinct, terroir-driven flavor profiles unique to Xizang’s high-altitude growing conditions, and sharing the authentic essence of Tibetan culture alongside the forward-thinking worldview of today’s young Tibetan generation.

    By the end of the three-day industry gathering, Nindo Coffee’s Xizang-inspired specialty coffee creations had garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback from hundreds of general attendees. Industry veterans and coffee professionals also offered high praise for the brand’s consistent product quality and complex, memorable flavor profiles, marking a key milestone for Tibetan specialty coffee as it gains a foothold in global markets.

  • 2 candidates with starkly different visions for Peru vie for a runoff spot

    2 candidates with starkly different visions for Peru vie for a runoff spot

    LIMA, Peru – Peru’s 2025 presidential first-round vote has plunged into prolonged uncertainty, with election officials facing weeks of vote counting and legal challenges to determine which two candidates will advance to the June 7 runoff election. As of Thursday’s updated results, the race for the second and third qualifying spots remains so tight that a final outcome could take more than a month to formalize, echoing but far outstripping the delays seen in the country’s 2021 presidential contest.

    Early tallies have all but confirmed that former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, the conservative standard-bearer and daughter of disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori, will claim first place in the 35-candidate field held in Sunday’s vote. With 93% of all ballots processed, Fujimori holds a steady lead with 17.06% of the vote – a comfortable advantage over her rivals, but far short of the 50%+1 threshold required to win the presidency outright and skip a runoff.

    Trailing Fujimori are two politically opposite contenders locked in a historic close race for the second runoff slot. In the most recent count, nationalist congressman Roberto Sánchez – a former cabinet minister under imprisoned ex-president Pedro Castillo – holds 11.97% of the vote, putting him just 0.06 percentage points, or fewer than 8,000 votes, ahead of third-place Rafael López Aliaga, the ultraconservative former mayor of Peru’s capital city Lima.

    The two candidates could not differ more sharply in their policy platforms. Sánchez, who is rarely seen without his signature wide-brimmed peasant hat, has campaigned on a platform of sweeping left-wing economic overhaul, including a massive expansion of public sector spending, a complete restructuring of Peru’s national tax system, and partial nationalization of the country’s lucrative natural resource sector. López Aliaga, by contrast, has built his campaign on a hardline right-wing security agenda: he has proposed constructing new maximum-security prisons in Peru’s remote Amazon region, granting anonymous identity protection to sitting judges, and mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants residing in the country. He has also drawn international attention for his promise to reinstate the death penalty in Peru.

    The razor-thin margin between the two contenders is further complicated by thousands of unprocessed and disputed ballots. Roughly 1,600 uncounted tally sheets remain to be processed from remote rural villages and polling stations for Peruvians living abroad. In addition, more than 5,000 completed tally sheets have been formally challenged by political campaigns over alleged irregularities or mathematical errors, triggering a mandatory appeals process overseen by Peru’s specialized electoral courts.

    Álvaro Henzler, president of Transparencia, Peru’s leading independent democracy watchdog that deployed 4,000 election observers across the country to monitor the vote, explained that the appeals process is standard, but its outcome is far more consequential this cycle than in past elections. “In Peru, a share of tally sheets are always challenged due to potential counting errors, and when that happens, they are sent to 60 special electoral boards for review,” Henzler noted.

    A comparison to the 2021 election illustrates how unusual this level of suspense is. Three years ago, Peru’s electoral tribunal took 37 days to formalize first-round results after the April vote, even though the gap between the second and third place candidates started at more than 238,000 votes, eliminating any real doubt about the final ranking. “In this case, since the race is so tight, the contested tally sheets could end up altering the final standings; that is why it is taking so much longer,” Henzler added.

    Peru’s turbulent recent political history sets high stakes for the final outcome. The winner of the June runoff will become the country’s ninth president in just 10 years, taking office from interim president José María Balcázar, who was appointed in February following the ousting of the previous interim leader over corruption allegations just four months into his term.

    For Fujimori, this election marks her fourth attempt to win the presidency, and she has centered her campaign on promises to crack down on Peru’s rising violent crime rates. Still, her platform has faced scrutiny from legal experts, who point to laws supported by Fujimori’s political bloc in recent years that have made it far harder to prosecute organized crime: the laws eliminated the option of preliminary detention for certain offenses and raised the legal threshold for law enforcement to seize assets connected to criminal activity.

    AP’s full coverage of Latin American and Caribbean politics can be found at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

  • Activist Kemi Seba arrested in South Africa, faces extradition to Benin

    Activist Kemi Seba arrested in South Africa, faces extradition to Benin

    PRETORIA, South Africa — Law enforcement authorities in South Africa announced Thursday the arrest of high-profile Beninese dissident Kemi Seba, who is facing extradition to his home country on charges tied to last year’s unsuccessful coup attempt against Benin’s sitting government.

    Seba, 45, whose legal birth name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, was taken into custody during a coordinated police sting operation in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. He was arrested alongside his son, with both men facing two counts: conspiracy to commit a crime and violations of South African immigration law. The charges stem from allegations the pair plotted an irregular migration journey to Europe via neighboring Zimbabwe, authorities confirmed. A third individual accused of facilitating the plot by paying roughly 250,000 South African rand, equal to $15,000, to enable unauthorized cross-border movement is also in police custody.

    South African police confirmed the operation was carried out with direct support from Interpol, which had flagged Seba as an international fugitive wanted by Benin for crimes against the state. All three suspects made their first court appearance at Brooklyn Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, where the judge scheduled the next hearing for April 20. Seba remains in pre-trial detention as South African authorities move forward with formal extradition proceedings.

    The legal pursuit of Seba traces back to December 2023, when Benin issued an international arrest warrant for the activist on charges of “incitement to rebellion.” The charge followed a viral social media video in which Seba publicly expressed support for the failed coup attempt against President Patrice Talon. In the clip, Seba incorrectly announced the coup had succeeded, hailed the attempt as “the day of liberation,” and labeled the soldiers who launched the putsch as “patriots.”

    Beyond his connection to last year’s coup attempt in Benin, Seba has built a regional profile as a vocal critic of French influence across West Africa, openly supporting a string of successful military coups in neighboring countries that brought pro-Russian military leaders to power. His long-standing anti-French rhetoric and advocacy for Russian-aligned governance in the region led to France revoking his French citizenship earlier this year in 2024.

  • Lawmakers clash with RFK Jr as he shifts focus away from vaccines

    Lawmakers clash with RFK Jr as he shifts focus away from vaccines

    A three-hour congressional budget hearing on Thursday devolved into sharp partisan and policy clashes Thursday, as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to pivot conversation away from his controversial vaccine stances to a focus on chronic disease prevention, while lawmakers from both parties grilled him on his response to the worst measles outbreak in decades, his proposed agency budget cuts, and questionable public health claims.

    The hearing marked Kennedy’s first appearance before the U.S. Congress in months, and centered on the Trump administration’s proposal to slash HHS’ fiscal year budget by roughly $16 billion, a 12.5% reduction from the previous year’s funding level.

    Kennedy, a longstanding public skeptic of conventional vaccine safety guidelines, has spent his tenure leading the agency pursuing sweeping overhaul to long-standing U.S. immunization policy. His changes included cutting the number of recommended childhood vaccine doses and reorganizing the agency’s top vaccine advisory panel to seat several prominent vaccine critics. However, a federal judge tossed out the majority of these changes back in March, ruling the new advisory panel appointees had not been properly seated in accordance with federal protocol. While HHS initially announced it would appeal the ruling, the agency has yet to file an appeal, and Kennedy has increasingly avoided public discussion of vaccine policy in subsequent months.

    During the hearing, Democratic members of the House Ways & Means Committee repeatedly pressed Kennedy on his mixed messaging around the MMR vaccine amid an ongoing measles outbreak that has recorded nearly 4,000 confirmed cases across the U.S. between 2025 and 2026, including two childhood deaths in Texas last year. Rep. Mike Thompson of California confronted Kennedy with a chart documenting the rising case count, arguing “Your dangerous conspiracy theories are undermining safe and effective vaccines.”

    Rep. Linda Sanchez of California asked Kennedy directly whether one of the two Texas child deaths could have been prevented through timely measles vaccination, to which Kennedy responded, “It’s possible, certainly.”

    Instead of engaging on questions of vaccine policy, Kennedy attempted to reframe the hearing around his stated priority of ending federal public health policies that he claims have contributed to the nation’s growing chronic disease crisis. “President Trump and I are challenging the status quo and the institutions that defend it as we work to make America healthy again in just 15 months,” he told the committee, adding that the $16 billion budget cut was an unavoidable response to the nation’s $39 trillion national deficit. “Nobody wants to make the cuts,” he said, pushing back on Democratic criticism that cuts to maternal and child nutrition aid and other public health programs would harm population health.

    Tensions flared at multiple points throughout the hearing, with Kennedy pushing back against what he framed as Democratic efforts to shut down debate. “They’ve all shut me up and they’ve talked about science, but science is about debate,” he said.

    Partisan divides on Kennedy’s leadership were on clear display: multiple Republican lawmakers praised Kennedy’s agenda, with House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington calling Kennedy “a breath of fresh air” for challenging longstanding institutional norms. However, he drew criticism from at least one Republican lawmaker over his widely debunked claims linking prenatal Tylenol use to autism. Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, who has a neurodivergent son, told Kennedy that the claim had needlessly harmed parents. “My wife was hurt, and she felt for a split-second until we came to our senses and we talked about this, that there was any way she was responsible,” Moore said. “We don’t even know if she took Tylenol during her pregnancy, but that was a hurtful moment for her.” Moore added he was “underwhelmed” by the administration’s autism research efforts to date, a policy area Kennedy has framed as a central mission of his tenure.

  • Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service

    Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service

    In a decision that has drawn international condemnation and reignited debates about systemic human rights violations against Palestinian detainees, the Israeli military has authorized the return to reserve duty of five soldiers linked to the severe torture and sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility in 2024.

    According to a Thursday report from Israeli outlet Haaretz, Israel’s army chief Eyal Zamir greenlit the return of the service members from Unit 100, the specialized unit tasked with guarding detainees in Israeli custody. The move comes just one month after all criminal charges against the soldiers were unexpectedly dropped, with no internal military probe ever launched into the brutal incident.

    The full scope of the abuse was first exposed when surveillance footage of the attack was leaked to Israeli media in August 2024, one month after a far-right Israeli mob rioted to protest military police questioning of the implicated soldiers. The leaked footage shows multiple Palestinian detainees bound and blindfolded on the facility floor, before a group of reservists pulls one detainee aside and uses riot shields to block the camera view of their assault.

    Following the attack, the detainee was rushed to hospital with life-altering injuries: broken ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured bowel, and severe anal trauma. Initially filed in February, the original indictment detailed 15 minutes of unrelenting violence: the accused repeatedly kicked the detainee, stomped on his body, struck him with clubs, dragged him across the ground, and deployed a taser on multiple areas including his head. One soldier also stabbed the detainee in the buttocks, causing a full tear in the rectal wall. Two of the suspects failed polygraph tests when asked about inserting an object into the detainee’s anus and covering for the perpetrator, with examiners confirming their denials were deceptive.

    Professor Yoel Donchin, a former medical officer at Sde Teiman, told Haaretz he was stunned by the brutality of the attack. “He arrived, and we saw he had a stab wound in the anus,” Donchin said. “I saw how the soldiers behaved there, how they brought in detainees and forced them to sing songs. I saw a wounded man who had been abused and beaten severely.”

    Despite the overwhelming evidence captured on camera and detailed in the original indictment, Military Advocate General Itai Ofir ordered all charges withdrawn last month. Ofir justified the decision citing a “defense of justice” argument tied to what he called improper conduct by senior military prosecution and IDF law enforcement officials, as well as “complexities regarding the existing evidentiary basis.” He also noted that after the detainee was released back to the Gaza Strip, additional legal barriers emerged for the case.

    This decision is far from an isolated incident. Human rights investigators and UN experts have documented that the Israeli military almost never holds service members accountable for accusations of abusing Palestinian detainees, and reports of abuse, torture, and sexual violence have spiked dramatically since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.

    Last month, a group of UN experts warned that torture has become “state doctrine” in Israel, enabled by decades of systemic impunity and political protection for perpetrators. “Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. A UN inquiry has confirmed that “Sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilise, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.”

    Earlier this month, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a groundbreaking report compiling hundreds of testimonies from former detainees, concluding that the sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza constitutes an “organised state policy.” The report details widespread abuses including rape with foreign objects, the use of trained dogs to assault detainees, and repeated sexual assault. One 42-year-old female former detainee from northern Gaza, who was held at Sde Teiman, gave harrowing testimony of being bound naked to a metal table and raped repeatedly by two masked soldiers over two days. She was left shackled naked and bleeding overnight before the assault resumed, and the entire ordeal was filmed. During interrogation, while she was suspended by her wrists, soldiers threatened to release the footage publicly if she refused to cooperate. She described her experience as “another genocide behind walls” and said she repeatedly wished for death to end her suffering.

    Multiple independent investigations by rights groups and media outlets, including Middle East Eye, have corroborated these claims, documenting widespread, systemic sexual violence against Palestinian detainees across Israel’s prison system.

  • US lawmakers reject measure to block Trump from striking Iran

    US lawmakers reject measure to block Trump from striking Iran

    A second attempt by congressional Democrats to limit President Donald Trump’s authority to launch expanded military action against Iran has collapsed in the U.S. House of Representatives, falling by just a single vote one day after an identical measure was blocked in the Senate.

    The War Powers Resolution, which sought to reassert congressional oversight over U.S. military engagement connected to the ongoing Iran-related conflict, failed in a razor-thin 213-214 vote Thursday. Long viewed as largely symbolic by legislative observers, the measure faced steep procedural barriers even if it had cleared the House: passage in both chambers would still have been almost certain to be defeated by a presidential veto from Trump.

    Party lines largely held on the vote, echoing the pattern seen one day earlier in the Senate. Only one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, broke ranks to join Democrats in supporting the measure. On the opposite side, Representative Jared Golden of Maine was the sole Democrat to vote against the resolution. Ohio Representative Warren Davidson, who backed a similar Democratic-led effort back in March, chose to vote “present”, a procedural move that counts as an official abstention.

    Following the unsuccessful vote, New York Representative Gregory Meeks, the sponsor of the resolution, told reporters he planned to begin outreach to Golden and other on-the-fence lawmakers to build more support for future attempts. Meeks confirmed he would introduce a new War Powers Resolution in the coming weeks, as Democrats continue their long-running push to reclaim Congress’s constitutionally granted authority over decisions to enter armed conflict.

    This latest failure comes just one month after a near-identical measure fell by a narrow margin in the House. In that first vote, two Republicans supported the resolution while four Democrats opposed it. Even if Thursday’s vote had flipped to a majority in favor, the measure was already facing long odds in the Senate, where a matching resolution was voted down Wednesday in a 47-52 vote that broke almost entirely along party lines.

    Republican opposition to the resolution is not necessarily set in stone, however. Multiple GOP lawmakers have signaled that they are open to reconsidering their positions if the ongoing U.S.-Israel military campaign, which launched on February 28, expands geographically or drags on past the end of this month. Trump has offered inconsistent timelines for how long the engagement will last, most recently claiming the conflict was “close to over”.

    The push for the resolution comes directly out of requirements laid out in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the landmark federal law passed to limit executive authority during the Vietnam War, when then-President Richard Nixon continued U.S. military involvement without full congressional approval. The 1973 law mandates that Congress must grant explicit approval for any military action that extends longer than 60 days. With the current campaign having launched on February 28, that 60-day window is rapidly approaching.