Israel claimed Sunday that it is “seriously considering” a comprehensive ceasefire and hostage swap deal proposed by US President Donald Trump.
“Israel is seriously considering President Trump’s proposal,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster KAN and Channel 12, Trump’s proposal carries “fundamental changes compared to previous proposals.”
The proposal suggests the release of all 48 Israeli hostages, including the deceased, on the first day of the ceasefire, in exchange for thousands of Palestinian detainees, including hundreds with long jail terms, the channel said.
It also requires Israel to stop its offensive to occupy Gaza City and launch immediate negotiations, to be directly led by Trump himself, to end the war.
Trump said on Friday that he is engaged in “very deep” negotiations with the Palestinian group Hamas, which had agreed to the latest proposal of mediators Qatar and Egypt on Aug. 18.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas on the report.
Hamas has repeatedly declared its readiness to conclude a comprehensive deal with Israel to release all Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, end the war on Gaza, and withdraw Israeli forces. However,
Netanyahu has rejected such proposals, insisting instead on partial arrangements that allow him to delay and impose new conditions at each stage of negotiations.
Israel has killed nearly 64,400 Palestinians in a brutal offensive in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced he is stepping down after less than a year in the role, following two major election losses.
The move comes a day before his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was expected to vote on whether to hold an internal leadership vote that could have forced him out.
The LDP has governed Japan for almost seven decades, but under Ishiba it lost its majority in the lower house for the first time in 15 years and then lost its majority in the upper house in July.
Japan, the world’s fourth-largest economy and a key US ally, now faces a period of political uncertainty as tensions rise with China and regional insecurity mounts.
“Now that a conclusion has been reached in the negotiations concerning the US tariff measures, I believe this is precisely the appropriate time,” Ishiba said, referring to a deal signed last week to ease tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on Japanese cars and other exports.
Until Sunday, he had resisted calls to resign, saying it was his responsibility to settle the dispute with Washington before stepping down.
“I have strongly believed that negotiations concerning the US tariff measures, which could be described as a national crisis, must be brought to a conclusion under our administration’s responsibility,” he said.
The 68-year-old said he would continue his responsibilities “to the people” until a new prime minister was selected.
Ishiba, who took office in October 2024 promising to tackle rising prices, struggled to inspire confidence as the country faced economic headwinds, a cost-of-living crisis and fractious politics with the US.
Inflation, particularly the doubling of rice prices in the past year, was politically damaging.
Public support further slid after a series of controversies, including criticism of his decision to appoint only two women to his cabinet and handing out expensive gifts to party members.
A Brazilian judge on Monday placed former president Jair Bolsonaro under house arrest for breaking a social media ban, escalating a dramatic standoff between the court and the politician, who is accused of plotting a coup.
Bolsonaro is on trial at the Supreme Court for allegedly plotting to cling onto power after losing 2022 elections to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
President Donald Trump has sought to punish Brazil, a longtime US ally, for what he sees as a politically motivated “witch hunt” targeting Bolsonaro by imposing eye-watering tariffs on Latin America’s biggest economy.
The 70-year-old Bolsonaro is banned from social media for the duration of the proceedings, and third parties are barred from sharing his public remarks.
But on Sunday, his allies defied the order by sharing footage online of a call between the former army captain and his eldest son Flavio at a solidarity rally in Rio de Janeiro.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes reacted furiously, declaring that the judiciary would not allow a defendant to “treat it like a fool” because of his “political and economic power.”
Criticizing Bolsonaro’s “repeated failure” to comply with the court’s restrictions on him during the trial, he placed him under house arrest at his home in the capital Brasilia.
He also barred the country’s former leader (2019-2022) from receiving visitors, apart from his lawyers, and from using mobile phones, and warned that any new transgression would lead to him being detained.
Several mobile phones were seized at his home on Monday, the police said.
Washington condemned the new restrictions on Monday night, with the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs issuing a statement on X.
“Minister Alexandre de Moraes, already sanctioned by the United States for human rights violations, continues to use Brazilian institutions to silence the opposition and threaten democracy,” the bureau posted. “Let Bolsonaro speak!”
US officials added that they would “hold accountable all those who collaborate with or facilitate sanctioned conduct.”
The US post was re-shared by Bolsonaro’s politician son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who had successfully lobbied Washington to take punitive action against Brazil over the case.
In a separate post, he wrote: “Brazil is no longer a democracy.”
He called Moraes, who is presiding over Bolsonaro’s trial and has styled himself a defender of Brazilian democracy in the face of the far right, an “out-of-control psychopath.”
Last month, Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to wear an ankle bracelet and instituted the social media ban.
Trump responded in unprecedented fashion by banning Moraes from the United States and freezing his assets in US banks.
‘Thank you Trump’
Supporters of Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro rally against the government. AFP
Trump’s pressure campaign has angered many Brazilians but endeared him to Bolsonaro’s conservative base.
At rallies in Rio, Brasilia and Sao Paulo on Sunday, some demonstrators waved US flags or held signs reading “Thank you Trump.”
Bolsonaro himself did not attend the rallies, having been ordered by the Supreme Court to stay home at night and at weekends throughout the trial.
Prosecutors say he and seven co-accused tried to overturn his 2022 election defeat in a plot that only failed because the military did not get on board.
He faces a 40-year sentence if convicted at the trial, which is expected to wrap up in the coming weeks.
Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazil’s congress in January 2023, after Lula was inaugurated, ransacking the chambers and attacking police, in scenes reminiscent of an attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol two years before.
Despite being barred from running, Bolsonaro hopes to mount a Trump-style comeback in Brazil’s 2026 presidential election.
Lula, 79, has said he may seek a fourth term, health permitting.
Last year, he was hospitalized for a brain hemorrhage caused by a bathroom fall.
A British High Court has ordered government officials to reveal the identities of 11 soldiers suspected of fathering children in Kenya before abandoning them, marking a historic victory for families who have sought justice for decades.
Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division, granted the unprecedented application compelling the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions, and HM Revenue & Customs to disclose names and last known addresses of the military personnel within one month.
The case involves children ranging from infants to adults born in the 1990s, all conceived near the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) base in Nanyuki, where approximately 10,000 British soldiers rotate through training exercises annually.
The children, described as “mostly of mixed race,” live in communities where such heritage often leads to ostracization, facing significant social and economic challenges.
Their mothers, all Kenyan women from the region around Nanyuki, testified they were in consensual relationships with British soldiers who returned to the UK without taking responsibility for their children.
Many attempted to contact the fathers through various means but received no response, leaving them to raise mixed-race children alone in one of Kenya’s most impoverished regions.
Generica Namoru pictured with her five-year old daughter Nicole. Namoru says she was in a consensual relationship with a UK soldier but he has abandoned her and their child since leaving Kenya. Festo Lang/CNN
Rob George KC, representing the children, told the court that DNA testing confirmed their fathers were not Kenyan, making it highly probable they were British Army personnel or civilians connected to the base.
One child described feeling completely abandoned, saying “The UK doesn’t even know I exist, let alone give me citizenship”.
James Netto, the children’s solicitor who traveled to Kenya in December with DNA testing kits, described the 11 cases as representing “just the tip of the iceberg.”
His investigation revealed a disturbing pattern spanning generations, with BATUK facing renewed scrutiny amid allegations that British soldiers have fathered children with local women and left many without support.
The legal team’s innovative approach involved using the genealogy website Ancestry to match DNA results from Kenyan children with other tests available online.
When potential matches to British soldiers were identified, Netto contacted them through social media, though many blocked further communication attempts.
Court documents revealed a telling pattern in birth timing, with a disproportionate number of children born in October or November, coinciding with the end of nine-month British military deployments that typically begin in January or February.
One case highlighted the profound identity crisis these children face.
A young woman discovered through DNA testing that 31 percent of her genetic heritage relates to England and northwestern Europe, with her closest living relative residing in England, yet she had never known anything about her paternal family or heritage.
The children are now seeking legal recognition of paternity, which could entitle them to British citizenship, inheritance rights, and child maintenance payments. This aspect of the case will be ruled on at a later date.
This legal victory comes amid mounting pressure on British forces over historical misconduct in Kenya.
The long-standing presence of BATUK has been marred by various incidents, including recent arrests of soldiers, and the unresolved murder case of Agnes Wanjiru, whose body was found stuffed in a septic tank near the British base in 2012.
The timing is particularly significant as Kenya has strengthened its legal framework for addressing such cases.
Under a 2021 defense pact, British soldiers can now be sued in Kenyan courts for wrongdoing, offering new avenues for justice that were previously unavailable.
For the affected families in rural Kenya, this court order represents more than legal victory.
It offers hope for recognition, identity, and basic rights that have been denied to them for years.
As one mother holding her five-year-old daughter explained, she simply wanted child support from the British soldier who abandoned them after discovering the pregnancy.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson maintained that “paternity claims against UK service personnel are a private life issue,” but confirmed the government cooperates with local child support authorities where there are paternity claims, declining further comment while legal proceedings continue.
The case establishes a crucial precedent that could encourage hundreds more similar claims from across Kenya’s British military training areas, where local communities have long struggled with the consequences of relationships between foreign soldiers and local women that ended in abandonment and poverty.
(REUTERS) – Just after midnight on May 7, the screen in the Pakistan Air Force’s operations room lit up in red with the positions of dozens of active enemy planes across the border in India.
Air Chief Mshl. Zaheer Sidhu had been sleeping on a mattress just off that room for days in anticipation of an Indian assault.
New Delhi had blamed Islamabad for backing militants who carried out an attack the previous month in Indian Kashmir, which killed 26 civilians. Despite Islamabad denying any involvement, India had vowed a response, which came in the early hours of May 7 with air strikes on Pakistan.
An Indian Air Force pilot gets out of a Rafale fighter jet during its induction ceremony at an air force station in Ambala, India, September 10, 2020. REUTERS
Sidhu ordered Pakistan’s prized Chinese-made J-10C jets to scramble. A senior Pakistani Air Force (PAF) official, who was present in the operations room, said Sidhu instructed his staff to target Rafales, a French-made fighter that is the jewel of India’s fleet and had never been downed in battle.
“He wanted Rafales,” said the official.
The hour-long fight, which took place in darkness, involved some 110 aircraft, experts estimate, making it the world’s largest air battle in decades.
The J-10s shot down at least one Rafale, Reuters reported in May, citing U.S. officials. Its downing surprised many in the military community and raised questions about the effectiveness of Western military hardware against untested Chinese alternatives.
Shares of Dassault, which makes the Rafale, dipped after reports the fighter had been shot down. Indonesia, which has outstanding Rafale orders, has said it is now considering purchasing J-10s – a major boost to China’s efforts to sell the aircraft overseas.
But Reuters interviews with two Indian officials and three of their Pakistani counterparts found that the performance of the Rafale wasn’t the key problem: Central to its downing was an Indian intelligence failure concerning the range of the China-made PL-15 missile fired by the J-10 fighter. China and Pakistan are the only countries to operate both J-10s, known as Vigorous Dragons, and PL-15s.
The faulty intelligence gave the Rafale pilots a false sense of confidence they were out of Pakistani firing distance, which they believed was only around 150 km, the Indian officials said, referring to the widely cited range of PL-15’s export variant.
Rafale fighter jet taxis on the tarmac during its induction ceremony at an air force station in Ambala, India, September 10, 2020. REUTERS
“We ambushed them,” the PAF official said, adding that Islamabad conducted an electronic warfare assault on Delhi’s systems in an attempt to confuse Indian pilots. Indian officials dispute the effectiveness of those efforts.
“The Indians were not expecting to be shot at,” said Justin Bronk, air warfare expert at London’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank. “And the PL-15 is clearly very capable at long range.”
The PL-15 that hit the Rafale was fired from around 200km (124.27 mi) away, according to Pakistani officials, and even farther according to Indian officials. That would make it among the longest-range air-to-air strikes recorded.
India’s defense and foreign ministries did not return requests for comment about the intelligence mistakes. Delhi hasn’t acknowledged a Rafale being shot down, but France’s air chief told reporters in June that he had seen evidence of the loss of that fighter and two other aircraft flown by India, including a Russian-made Sukhoi. A top Dassault executive also told French lawmakers that month that India had lost a Rafale in operations, though he didn’t have specific details.
Pakistan’s military referred to past comments by a spokesperson who said that its professional preparedness and resolve was more important than the weaponry it had deployed. China’s defense ministry did not respond to Reuters’ questions. Dassault and UAC, the manufacturer of the Sukhoi, also did not return requests for comment.
“SITUATIONAL AWARENESS”
Reuters spoke to eight Pakistani and two Indian officials to piece together an account of the aerial battle, which marked the start of four days of fighting between the two nuclear-armed neighbors that caused alarm in Washington. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.
Not only did Islamabad have the element of surprise with its missiles’ range, the Pakistani and Indian officials said, but it managed to more efficiently connect its military hardware to surveillance on the ground and in the air, providing it with a clearer picture of the battlefield. Such networks, known as “kill chains,” have become a crucial element of modern warfare.
Four Pakistani officials said they created a “kill chain,” or a multi-domain operation, by linking air, land and space sensors. The network included a Pakistani-developed system, Data Link 17, which connected Chinese military hardware with other equipment, including a Swedish-made surveillance plane, two Pakistani officials said.
The system allowed the J-10s flying closer to India to obtain radar feeds from the surveillance plane cruising further away, meaning the Chinese-made fighters could turn their radars off and fly undetected, according to experts. Pakistan’s military did not respond to requests for comment on this point.
Delhi is trying to set up a similar network, the Indian officials said, adding that their process was more complicated because the country sourced aircraft from a wide range of exporters.
A Pakistan Army soldier stands at the premises of the Bilal Mosque, after it was hit by an Indian strike in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, May 7, 2025. REUTERS
Retired U.K. Air Mshl. Greg Bagwell, now a fellow at RUSI, said the episode didn’t conclusively prove the superiority of either Chinese or Western air assets but it showed the importance of having the right information and using it.
“The winner in this was the side that had the best situational awareness,” said Bagwell.
CHANGE IN TACTICS
After India in the early hours of May 7 struck targets in Pakistan that it called terrorist infrastructure, Sidhu ordered his squadrons to switch from defense to attack.
Five PAF officials said India had deployed some 70 planes, which was more than they had expected and provided Islamabad’s PL-15s with a target-rich environment. India has not said how many planes were used.
The May 7 battle marked the first big air contest of the modern era in which weaponry is used to strike targets beyond visual range, said Bagwell, noting both India and Pakistan’s planes remained well within their airspaces across the duration of the fight.
Five Pakistani officials said an electronic assault on Indian sensors and communications systems reduced the situational awareness of the Rafale’s pilots.
The two Indian officials said the Rafales were not blinded during the skirmishes and that Indian satellites were not jammed. But they acknowledged that Pakistan appeared to have disrupted the Sukhoi, whose systems Delhi is now upgrading.
Other Indian security officials have deflected questions away from the Rafale, a centerpiece of India’s military modernization, to the orders given to the air force.
India’s defense attaché in Jakarta told a university seminar that Delhi had lost some aircraft “only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack (Pakistan’s) military establishments and their air defenses.”
India’s chief of defense staff Gen. Anil Chauhan previously told Reuters that Delhi quickly “rectified tactics” after the initial losses.
After the May 7 air battle, India began targeting Pakistani military infrastructure and asserting its strength in the skies. Its Indian-made BrahMos supersonic cruise missile repeatedly sliced through Pakistan’s air defenses, according to officials on both sides.
On May 10, India said it struck at least nine air bases and radar sites in Pakistan. It also hit a surveillance plane parked in a hangar in southern Pakistan, according to Indian and Pakistani officials. A ceasefire was agreed later that day, after U.S. officials held talks with both sides.
‘LIVE INPUTS’
In the aftermath of the episode, India’s deputy army chief Lt. Gen. Rahul Singh accused Pakistan of receiving “live inputs” from China during the battles, implying radar and satellite feeds. He did not provide evidence and Islamabad denies the allegation.
When asked at a July briefing about Beijing’s military partnership with Pakistan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters the work was “part of the normal cooperation between the two countries and does not target any third party.”
Beijing’s air chief Lt. Gen. Wang Gang visited Pakistan in July to discuss how Islamabad had used Chinese equipment to put together the “kill chain” for the Rafale, two PAF officials said.
China did not respond when asked about that interaction. The Pakistani military said in a statement in July that Wang had expressed “keen interest in learning from PAF’s battle-proven experience in Multi Domain Operations.”
London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday unveiled a £49-billion ($65 billion) expansion plan, including the costs of building a long-awaited third runway, approved by the UK government after years of legal wrangling.
The runway would cost £21 billion, with flights expected to take off within a decade, while the rest of the privately-funded investment will go toward expanding and modernising the airport.
Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport by passenger numbers, said the expansion would provide at least 30 new daily routes, more domestic connections and improved flight times.
The increased capacity would almost double the number of annual passengers from 84 million currently to up to 150 million passengers annually.
“It has never been more important or urgent to expand Heathrow,” said chief executive Thomas Woldbye.
“We are effectively operating at capacity to the detriment of trade and connectivity,” he added.
Despite fierce opposition from environmentalists and local residents, London mayor Sadiq Khan and some Labour MPs, the Labour government backed the new runway in January in a bid to boost UK economic growth.
It would be a rare expansion in Europe, where countries are split between efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the needs of a strategic sector that has seen demand grow.
Heathrow has submitted its proposal for the 3,500 metre runway to the UK government, which has also invited a rival proposal.
– Green trade-offs –
Heathrow’s proposal includes £12 billion to fund a new terminal and £15 billion for modernisation.
“A third runway and supporting infrastructure can be ready within a decade, and the full investment across all terminals would take place over the coming decades,” Heathrow said in a statement.
(FILES) An aerial photograph taken on March 21, 2025 shows planes parked on the tarmac of Heathrow Airport following its closure after a fire broke out at a substation supplying power of the airport, in Hayes, west London. London’s Heathrow Airport on August 1, 2025 announced its £49 billion ($65 billion) expansion plan, which includes the costs of its long-awaited third runway, approved in January after years of legal wrangling. (Photo by AFP)
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is determined to deliver major infrastructure projects to revive the UK economy that has struggled to take off since the party came to power a year ago.
The government is expected to also back expansion at Gatwick airport, south of the capital, in October — having recently approved upgrades to London’s Stansted, Luton and City airports.
Britain’s Supreme Court ruled at the end of 2020 that Heathrow could build the third runway, overturning a legal decision to block construction on environmental grounds.
Local residents “will see their lives put on hold for a few more years while more money and time is wasted on a doomed scheme,” said Douglas Parr, policy director for Greenpeace UK.
He added the plans “export more tourism wealth out of the UK in the most polluting way possible.”
Arora Group, one of Heathrow’s largest landowners, on Thursday said it will submit a rival bid to build a shorter third runway, promising lower costs and less disruption to local residents and the environment.
“This is the first time the government has invited a competing proposal for Heathrow expansion,” the UK-based property and hotel firm said in a statement.
British Airways owner IAG’s chief executive Luis Gallego said the rival bid was “credible” as the group announced its net profit jumped 44 percent to 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in the first six months of the year on “strong demand”.
“We always think that competition is good to improve things, and we have seen that in commercial aviation in the past,” he added.
Airport-owner Heathrow’s latest investment proposal comes in addition to plans to invest £10 billion over the next five years in upgrades to boost passenger numbers, which would be largely funded by higher charges on airlines.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced the UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel meets certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted furiously to the announcement, saying the decision rewarded “Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”.
What would it mean if recognition does go ahead, and what difference would it make?
What does recognising a Palestinian state mean?
Palestine is a state that does and does not exist.
It has a large degree of international recognition, diplomatic missions abroad and teams that compete in sporting competitions, including the Olympics.
But due to the Palestinians’ long-running dispute with Israel, it has no internationally agreed boundaries, no capital and no army. Due to Israel’s military occupation, in the West Bank, the Palestinian authority, set up in the wake of peace agreements in the 1990s, is not in full control of its land or people. Gaza, where Israel is also the occupying power, is in the midst of a devastating war.
Given its status as a kind of quasi-state, recognition is inevitably somewhat symbolic. It will represent a strong moral and political statement but change little on the ground.
But the symbolism is strong. As Foreign Secretary David Lammy pointed out during his speech at the UN on Tuesday, “Britain bears a special burden of responsibility to support the two-state solution”.
British troops lower the Union Flag to officially end British rule in Palestine in 1948
He went on to cite the 1917 Balfour Declaration – signed by his predecessor as foreign secretary Arthur Balfour – which first expressed Britain’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
But that declaration, Lammy said, came with a solemn promise “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
Supporters of Israel have often pointed out that Lord Balfour did not refer explicitly to the Palestinians or say anything about their national rights.
But the territory previously known as Palestine, which Britain ruled through a League of Nations mandate from 1922 to 1948, has long been regarded as unfinished international business.
Israel came into being in 1948, but efforts to create a parallel state of Palestine have foundered, for a multitude of reasons.
As Lammy said, politicians “have become accustomed to uttering the words ‘a two-state solution’”.
The phrase refers to the creation of a Palestinian state, alongside Israel, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, broadly along the lines that existed prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
But international efforts to bring about a two-state solution have come to nothing and Israel’s colonisation of large parts of the West Bank, illegal under international law, has turned the concept into a largely empty slogan.
Who recognises Palestine as a state?
The State of Palestine is currently recognised by 147 of the UN’s 193 member states.
At the UN, it has the status of a “permanent observer state”, allowing participation but no voting rights.
With France also promising recognition in the coming weeks and assuming the UK does go ahead with recognition, Palestine will soon enjoy the support of four of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members (the other two being China and Russia).
This will leave the United States, Israel’s strongest ally by far, in a minority of one.
Washington has recognised the Palestinian Authority, currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas, since the mid-1990s but has stopped short of recognising an actual state.
Several US presidents have expressed their support for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. But Donald Trump is not one of them. Under his two administrations, US policy has leaned heavily in favour of Israel.
Without the backing of Israel’s closest and most powerful ally, it is impossible to see a peace process leading to an eventual two-state solution.
Why is the UK doing it now?
Successive British governments have talked about recognising a Palestinian state, but only as part of a peace process, ideally in conjunction with other Western allies and “at the moment of maximum impact”.
To do it simply as a gesture, the governments believed, would be a mistake. It might make people feel virtuous, but it would not actually change anything on the ground.
But events have clearly forced the current government’s hand.
The scenes of creeping starvation in Gaza, mounting anger over Israel’s military campaign and a major shift in British public opinion – all of these have influenced government thinking.
The clamour, among MPs and even the cabinet front bench, has become deafening.
At a Commons debate last week, Lammy was bombarded from all sides by questions asking why the UK was still not recognising a Palestinian state.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting summed up the views of many MPs when he urged the government to recognise Palestine “while there is still a state of Palestine left to recognise”.
The “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in the Gaza Strip, UN-backed global food security experts warn
But the UK has not simply followed the lead set by France’s Emmanuel Macron last week or the governments of Ireland, Spain and Norway last year.
Sir Keir has chosen to make his pledge conditional: Britain will act unless the government of Israel takes decisive steps to end the suffering in Gaza, reach a ceasefire, refrain from annexing territory in the West Bank – a move symbolically threatened by Israel’s parliament the Knesset last week – and commit to a peace process that results in a two-state solution.
Downing Street knows there is virtually no chance of Netanyahu committing himself in the next six weeks to that kind of peace process. He has repeatedly ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state.
So British recognition of Palestine is certainly coming.
For all Netanyahu’s implacable opposition, Sir Keir is hoping this is indeed a “moment of maximum impact”.
But the Britain in 2025 is not the Britain of 1917 when the Balfour Declaration was signed. Its ability to bend others to its will is limited. It is hard to know, right now, what the impact will actually be.
The UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza”, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
The PM said Israel must also meet other conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire, committing to a long-term sustainable peace that delivers a two-state solution, and allowing the United Nations to restart the supply of aid, or the UK would take the step at September’s UN General Assembly.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”.
The UK government has previously said recognition should come at a point when it can have maximum impact, as part of a peace process.
However, the PM has been under growing pressure – including from his own MPs – to act more quickly.
Giving a news conference after holding an emergency cabinet meeting, Sir Keir said he was announcing the plan now because of the “intolerable situation” in Gaza and concern that “the very possibility of a two-state solution is reducing”.
He told reporters that the UK’s goal of “a safe secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state” was “under pressure like never before”.
The PM added that his “primary aim” was to improve the situation on the ground in Gaza, including ensuring that aid gets in.
In outlining the steps UK wanted the Israeli government to take, Sir Keir also said it should make clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank.
The current Israeli government is opposed to progress towards a two-state solution so it is highly unlikely to agree to the conditions.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir said Hamas must immediately release all hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.
In response to the announcement Netanyahu wrote on social media: “A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW.
“Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen.”
Asked if he knew the PM’s statement was coming, Donald Trump said the pair “never discussed it” during their meeting on Monday, when the US president was in Scotland.
He told reporters: “You could make the case… that you are rewarding Hamas if you do that. And I don’t think they should be rewarded.”
The US – along with many European nations – has said it would only recognise a Palestinian state as part of moves towards a long-term resolution to the conflict.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey welcomed the government’s announcement as “a crucial step” but urged the PM to recognise a Palestinian state immediately, and pursue “far greater action to stop the humanitarian disaster in Gaza”.
He added: “Rather than use recognition, which should have taken place many months ago, as a bargaining chip, the prime minister should be applying pressure on Israel by fully ceasing arms sales, and implementing sanctions against the Israeli cabinet.”
Some 255 MPs have signed a letter calling for the government to immediately recognise a Palestinian state – including more than half of Labour MPs.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, who coordinated the letter, said she was “delighted and relieved” at the announcement.
“This will put political pressure on Israel and make clear what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is totally unacceptable,” she said.
“However, I’m troubled our recognition appears conditional on Israel’s actions.
“Israel is the occupier, and recognition is about the self-determination of the Palestinian people. The two should be separate.”
The Conservatives and Reform UK have said now is not the right time to take the step, arguing this would reward Hamas for their attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said recognising a Palestinian state “won’t bring the hostages home, won’t end the war and won’t get aid into Gaza”.
“This is political posturing at its very worst,” she added.
The announcement comes after a call between Sir Keir and the leaders of France and Germany over the weekend, when Downing Street said plans for a sustainable route to a two-state solution were discussed.
However, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his government had no plans to recognise a Palestinian state in the near future, suggesting this may be “one of the last steps on a path to realising a two-state solution”.
Most countries – about 139 in all – formally recognise a Palestinian state.
Spain, Ireland and Norway took the step last year, hoping to exert diplomatic pressure to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.
Palestinian representatives currently have limited rights to participate in UN activity, and the territory is also recognised by various international organisations, including the Arab League.
Sceptics argue recognition is largely be a symbolic gesture unless questions over the leadership and extent of a Palestinian state are addressed first.
As Sir Keir made his announcement, Foreign Secretary David Lammy addressed a UN conference in New York, aimed at advancing a two-state solution to the conflict.
Lammy told reporters the UK had worked with Jordan to air-drop 20 tonnes of aid to Gaza in recent days, as he also called for aid trucks to be allowed to enter by land.
UN agencies have described the situation in Gaza as “man-made mass starvation”, blaming the humanitarian crisis on Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to the territory.
Israel has insisted there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and that there is “no starvation”.
Israel’s military says it will open humanitarian corridors to allow aid convoys into the Gaza Strip, after weeks of mounting international pressure and warnings of starvation.
In a statement on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also announced what it called a “local tactical pause in military activity” for humanitarian purposes in three areas.
It came after Israel said it made an airdrop of aid into Gaza of “seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and canned food”.
There have been growing calls for Israel to let more aid into Gaza following months of limited supply to the territory’s two million people. Israel denied what it called “the false claim of deliberate starvation” in Gaza.
Palestinian officials are yet to comment on the plan for humanitarian corridors, or on the reported airdrop into Gaza.
The IDF said it would open humanitarian corridors for aid convoys in Gaza to allow the UN and other organisations to deliver food and medicine to Palestinians across the strip. The routes would be in place from 06:00 to 23:00 local time (04:00 BST to 21:00 BST).
The pause in military activity would take place in three areas – Al Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City – from 10:00 to 20:00 local time (08:00 BST to 18:00 BST) each day until further notice, the IDF added.
The UN and other aid organisations are yet to comment on the IDF’s statement, but they, alongside some of Israel’s allies, have blamed the country for a growing food crisis in Gaza, and called for the unrestricted entry and delivery of aid.
The Hamas-run health ministry said dozens of people were dying from malnutrition. On Saturday it put the toll from the last few days at 125, including 85 children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described the food crisis in Gaza as “man-made mass starvation”.
The IDF said that responsibility for food distribution to the population in Gaza “lies with the UN and international aid organisations” and added they must “ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas”.
Earlier on Sunday, the IDF said an aid airdrop “was carried out in co-ordination with international organisations and led by Cogat”, referring to the Israeli military body which oversees the entry of aid into Gaza.
The military also posted a video purportedly showing a plane dropping the aid. The footage has not been independently verified.
Late on Saturday, the Israeli military also stated that it had resumed supplying power to a desalination plant in Gaza, which it said would “serve about 900,000 residents”.
Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza from the start of March, and resumed with new restrictions in May.
There have been almost daily reports of Palestinians being killed while seeking aid since the GHF began operations in late May. Witnesses have told the BBC most have been shot by Israeli forces. Israel has said that its troops fire warning shots and has disputed reported death tolls. It accuses Hamas of instigating chaos near the aid points.
Israel’s apparent concessions followed its acceptance of a Jordanian and UAE plan, backed by the UK, to air drop aid into Gaza. Aid agencies however said such moves would do little to mitigate the hunger of Gazans.
The head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, said air drops were “expensive, inefficient, and can even kill starving civilians” if they did not go according to plan.
Lazzarini said his organisation had “the equivalent of 6,000 trucks” in Jordan and Egypt waiting to enter Gaza, and urged Israel “lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need”.
The BBC spoke to several Gazans on Saturday who worried air drops could cause “serious harm”.
One man living in the north of the strip told BBC Arabic’s Middle East Daily that the process was “unsafe” and “caused numerous tragedies” when similar relief efforts were attempted last year.
“When aid is dropped from the air, it risks landing directly on tents, potentially causing serious harm, including injury or even death,” he said.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are battling dehydration along with starvation. One mother told the BBC she was “living with no food or drink, no food, no bread, not even water.”
Israel launched a war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 59,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Bafta-winning actor Micheal Ward, known for roles in shows and films including Top Boy, Small Axe and Blue Story, has been charged with rape.
Mr Ward, 27, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, is charged with two counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police said.
The alleged offences relate to one woman and are reported to have taken place in January 2023, according to the force.
The actor made his name as one of the stars of cult hit Blue Story in 2019, and won the Rising Star prize at the Bafta Film Awards the following year.
He played Jamie in Netflix hit Top Boy from 2019 to 22, and was nominated for best supporting actor at the Bafta TV Awards for Small Axe in 2021.
The Jamaican-born actor also starred in the acclaimed 2022 drama Empire of Light, and will be seen in the forthcoming US pandemic-era Western movie Eddington, which is due to be released in the UK on 22 August.
Mr Ward is due to appear at Thames Magistrates’ Court in London on 28 August.
The Met’s Det Supt Scott Ware said: “Our specialist officers continue to support the woman who has come forward – we know investigations of this nature can have significant impact on those who make reports.”
Catherine Baccas, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London South, said: “Having carefully reviewed a file of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service has authorised the Metropolitan Police to charge Micheal Ward, 27, with two counts of rape, two counts of assault by penetration, and one count of sexual assault against a woman in January 2023.”
She added: “We remind all concerned that proceedings against the suspect are active and he has a right to a fair trial.
“It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in anyway prejudice these proceedings.”
KYIV (Reuters) – During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.
According to three people familiar with the command, Musk told a senior engineer at the California offices of SpaceX, the Musk venture that controls Starlink, to cut coverage in areas including Kherson, a strategic region north of the Black Sea that Ukraine was trying to reclaim.
“We have to do this,” Michael Nicolls, the Starlink engineer, told colleagues upon receiving the order, one of these people said. Staffers complied, the three people told Reuters, deactivating at least a hundred Starlink terminals, their hexagon-shaped cells going dark on an internal map of the company’s coverage. The move also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk province further east.
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Upon Musk’s order, Ukrainian troops suddenly faced a communications blackout, according to a Ukrainian military official, an advisor to the armed forces, and two others who experienced Starlink failure near the front lines. Soldiers panicked, drones surveilling Russian forces went dark, and long-range artillery units, reliant on Starlink to aim their fire, struggled to hit targets.
As a result, the Ukrainian military official and the military advisor said, troops failed to surround a Russian position in the town of Beryslav, east of Kherson, the administrative center of the region of the same name. “The encirclement stalled entirely,” said the military official in an interview. “It failed.”
Ultimately, Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeded in reclaiming Beryslav, the city of Kherson and some additional territory Russia had occupied. But Musk’s order, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the first known instance of the billionaire actively shutting off Starlink coverage over a battlefield during the conflict. The decision shocked some Starlink employees and effectively reshaped the front line of the fighting, enabling Musk to take “the outcome of a war into his own hands,” another one of the three people said.
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The account of the command counters Musk’s narrative of how he has handled Starlink service in Ukraine amid the war. As recently as March, in a post on X, his social media site, Musk wrote: “We would never do such a thing.”
Musk and Nicolls didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment.
A SpaceX spokesperson said by email that the news agency’s reporting is “inaccurate” and referred reporters to an X post earlier this year in which the company said: “Starlink is fully committed to providing service to Ukraine.” The spokesperson didn’t specify any inaccuracies in this report or answer a lengthy list of questions regarding the incident, Starlink’s role in the Ukraine war, or other details regarding its business.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the country’s Ministry of Defence didn’t respond to requests for comment. Starlink still provides service to Ukraine, and the Ukrainian military relies on it for some connectivity. Zelenskiy as recently as this year has publicly expressed gratitude to Musk for Starlink.
Starlink became a crucial communications tool for Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Here, Ukrainian soldiers earlier this year set up a Starlink terminal near front lines. REUTERS
It isn’t clear what prompted Musk’s command, when exactly he gave it, or precisely how long the outage lasted. The three people familiar with the order said they believed it stemmed from concerns Musk expressed later that Ukrainian advances could provoke nuclear retaliation from Russia. One of the people said the shutoff transpired on September 30, 2022. The two others said it was around then, but didn’t recall the exact date. Some senior U.S. officials shared Musk’s concerns that Russia would make good on threats to escalate, one former White House staffer told Reuters.
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Musk’s order was an early glimpse of the power the magnate now wields in geopolitics and global security because of Starlink, a fast-growing satellite internet service that barely existed early this decade and now provides connectivity even in remote areas of the world. Even before his brief role as financial backer and advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, the success of Starlink – and the unrivaled connectivity it offers across the planet – had given Musk increasing influence with political leaders, governments and militaries worldwide.
Musk’s sway in military affairs in Washington and beyond – through Starlink’s dominance in satellite communications and SpaceX’s clout in space launches – has reached a dimension previously limited to sovereign governments, alarming some regulators and lawmakers. “Elon Musk’s current global dominance exemplifies the dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains,” Martha Lane Fox, a member of Britain’s upper house of parliament, said during a debate earlier this year. The parliamentarian is a businesswoman and former board member at Twitter, the social media site that Musk acquired in 2022 and rebranded as X.
“Its control,” Lane Fox said of Starlink, “rests solely with Musk, allowing his whims to dictate access to vital infrastructure.”
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Musk’s political influence, and his massive business with the U.S. federal government, are now being put to the test. Since leaving his role advising Trump, Musk has publicly feuded with the president, announced plans to create a new political party, and criticized a signature spending bill that he said will expand the budget deficit and destroy jobs. Trump, for his part, has threatened to end government contracts and subsidies for Musk’s companies, including lucrative new defense projects.
Whatever the reason for Musk’s decision, the shutoff over Kherson and other regions surprised some involved with the Ukraine war – from troops on the ground to U.S. military and foreign policy officials, who after Russia’s full-scale invasion that February had worked to secure Starlink service for Ukrainian forces. Panicked calls by Ukrainian officials during the outage to seek information from Pentagon counterparts, five people familiar with the incident said, were met with few explanations for what could have caused it.
The U.S. Department of Defense declined to comment. Reuters couldn’t determine whether White House or Pentagon officials after the shutdown had any exchanges with Musk over the outage.
The Kherson episode is distinct from an earlier report of an incident that purportedly occurred that same September, involving Crimea just to the south, and raised concerns about Musk’s ability to influence the conflict in Ukraine.
In his 2023 biography of Musk, author Walter Isaacson reported that the tycoon had ordered Starlink to disable coverage in Crimea, which Russia had annexed from Ukraine after a 2014 invasion that the international community condemned as illegal. Musk, Isaacson wrote, believed a planned Ukrainian attack on Russian vessels in the Crimean port of Sevastopol could prompt nuclear retaliation.
Musk’s order to shutoff Starlink over areas of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, people familiar with the episode said, likely reflected his concern that Moscow could retaliate with nuclear weapons. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
After the book was published, Musk denied a shutdown, saying that there had never been coverage in Crimea to begin with. He said he had, rather, rejected a Ukrainian request to provide service ahead of Kyiv’s planned attack. Isaacson later conceded his account was flawed. A spokesperson at Isaacson’s publisher declined to comment or make him available for an interview.
SpaceX also said in 2023 that it had taken unspecified steps to prevent Ukraine from using Starlink for certain activities, including drone attacks. “Our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes,” Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president, said at a conference in Washington in February of that year. “There are things that we can do, and have done” to prevent it, she added, without providing further detail.
Reuters couldn’t determine if the shutdown affecting Kherson was among the steps she was referring to. Shotwell didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.
Following the start of the Kherson shutdown, word of an outage emerged in some media reports. At the time, it wasn’t clear to those who lost connectivity whether a technical problem, sabotage or some other factor was responsible. Early in the war, Russia had orchestrated a large cyberattack that disrupted service of another satellite operator, Western officials have said, creating suspicions around any outage and leaving a void quickly filled by Starlink. Russia has denied it conducts offensive cyberattacks.
As of April 2025, according to Ukrainian government social media posts, Kyiv has received more than 50,000 Starlink terminals. Easily transported and deployed, the pizza-box-sized devices communicate with thousands of SpaceX satellites now circling the globe. An initial batch of terminals was provided to Ukraine by SpaceX itself. Further terminals have arrived from donors including Poland, the United States and Germany.
A social media post by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry during its counteroffensive in September 2022 praised Starlink and thanked Musk for its role in helping the military maintain connectivity. Video via X.
This account of the outage, and the growing dependence on Musk by governments and militaries worldwide, is based on interviews with more than three dozen people with knowledge of SpaceX’s operations and the company’s technology. These people included current and former employees, U.S. and European military officials, and senior politicians and diplomats.
The reporting puts a spotlight on Musk’s control of services now critical to countries including the U.S., which has about $22 billion in contracts with SpaceX. Underscoring the point himself during his recent dispute with Trump, Musk threatened to decommission a SpaceX spacecraft the U.S. now relies upon to transport astronauts and critical cargo.
His threat, later retracted, unnerved attorneys at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, who felt forced to explore whether Musk’s warning could be considered a notice of contract termination, according to two people familiar with the matter. NASA didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
“There needs to be some contractual assurances” that Musk won’t cut off services to the U.S. government, said Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator of the agency. “We will need to consider how comfortable the U.S. will be at putting SpaceX in the critical path on national security.”
As countries increasingly rely on tech companies for everything from cyber defense to data storage, the question of dependence on one or a few dominant service providers will apply to other nations, too. “Governments have to think through what that means,” said Marcus Willett, former deputy head of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters intelligence agency and now a senior adviser to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.
“WE NEED ASSURANCES”
SpaceX is the first company to establish an extensive network of communication satellites in low-Earth orbit, a region of space that is closer to the planet than areas where such satellites historically reside. The proximity of satellites that now make up the company’s constellation allows Starlink to offer space-based wireless connectivity that is faster than any previously available.
Starlink on Thursday suffered a rare global outage of several hours, the company said, because of an internal software problem. A Ukrainian military commander in a social media post said “Starlink is down across the entire front,” updating the post two and a half hours later to say connectivity had returned.
With more than 7,900 satellites now in orbit, SpaceX has become the world’s largest satellite operator. Its devices, which relay signals among each other to create a network that communicates with the ground, account for about two-thirds of all active satellites in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian.
Starlink began rolling out service in 2020 and now has more than six million customers in over 140 countries, territories and markets, according to a June Starlink social media post. Novaspace, a consulting firm near Paris, estimates that Starlink in 2025 will generate about $9.8 billion in revenue for SpaceX, or about 60% of the company’s income. SpaceX is privately held and doesn’t disclose financial information, but Musk recently said he expects the rocket company to post revenues of about $15.5 billion this year.
Starlink is now believed to generate more than half the revenues for SpaceX, Musk’s satellite and rocket company. This June SpaceX launch in Florida sent 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. Video via SpaceX website
The sheer number of Starlink satellites, and their proximity to Earth, provides fast and reliable internet connectivity even in remote locations. Here, a SpaceX rocket in February carries Starlink satellites into space from Cape Canaveral. REUTERS/Sam Wolfe
Rivals are scrambling to get in on the market.
OneWeb, a European service owned by Eutelsat, a French company, is the furthest along, boasting about 650 satellites in low-Earth orbit. Amazon this year launched its first satellites for Project Kuiper, a $10 billion effort to compete. China is developing multiple networks, including a state-backed venture known as SpaceSail.
Still, Starlink has made much of its first-mover advantage. Its terminals, priced as low as a few hundred dollars for standard models, are known for being affordable and easy to use. “There is no existing system right now to replace Starlink,” said Grace Khanuja, an analyst at Novaspace, the consultancy near Paris.
Compared to the geostationary satellites historically used for communications, the sheer number of SpaceX satellites helps make Starlink less vulnerable to jamming and attacks. Its far reach makes it valuable in remote and hostile terrain – from battlefields to airspace to high seas. In Ukraine, it has facilitated activities including communications, intelligence and drone piloting.
The Ukrainian military has used Starlink terminals on drones, a signature tool of the ongoing war. A video posted on social media by Ukraine’s security agency in March features a sea drone equipped with what appears to be one of the terminals. Video via Telegram
Some Western militaries not engaged in conflict are also using the service. Britain’s armed forces, for instance, three years ago began using Starlink for “welfare purposes,” including personal communications for troops, the Ministry of Defence said in response to a freedom of information request. The ministry said it has fewer than 1,000 Starlink terminals and doesn’t employ them for sensitive military communications. Spain’s navy is also using Starlink, but only for recreation and leisure of troops, a spokesperson said.
“That will change,” said Chris Moore, a retired air vice-marshal in the British military, speaking about high-speed space-based connectivity. Moore also worked as a OneWeb executive and is now a defense industry consultant. Satellites in low-Earth orbit, he said, offer too many advantages for militaries to ignore, especially for modern developments such as drone warfare, a signature element of the Ukraine conflict.
Some leaders are leery.
In Taiwan, ever wary of conflict with China, officials have expressed concern about Musk’s extensive business interests on the mainland, including a major factory for Tesla, the electric vehicle company he controls. Eager for communications backups in the event of war, Taiwan is developing its own low-Earth orbit satellite network. Taiwanese officials have said the government could partner with Amazon’s Kuiper, too.
Spokespersons for the Taiwanese government said it welcomes international satellite providers but that Starlink hasn’t applied for a license in Taiwan. They didn’t respond to questions about Taipei’s relationship with Musk.
In Italy, the government is evaluating whether to employ Starlink for secure communications among the government, defense and other officials. But some officials, including President Sergio Mattarella, remain unconvinced by SpaceX’s assurances that its service would be secure and free from meddling by Musk. “More than Musk’s word, we need assurances that we can’t be shut down, and especially that he can’t access the data,” said a person familiar with the views of the president, who is an influential figure with the armed forces.
Poland, a major donor to Ukraine, has provided about half the Starlink terminals now being used in the country. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, left, welcomed Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to a 2023 meeting in Kyiv. Photo via Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
Poland, a major donor to Ukraine, told Reuters it employs Starlink as well as other military and commercial satellite systems. A mix of providers, Polish officials have said, offers the most security, even if at high cost.
“In peacetime, you want the best product at the best price,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in response to a question from Reuters at a press conference in April. “In wartime, you want redundancy. You want security. You want duplicated systems, so that if one fails, you can still use the other.”
“THERE WAS NOT A CONNECTION”
Even before the conflict began, documents reviewed by Reuters show, SpaceX had already been in discussions with the U.S. government about providing Starlink in Ukraine. Rollout began after Russian troops crossed the border on February 24, 2022.
Two days later, Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister in Ukraine, requested Musk’s help. “We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations,” he wrote on Twitter.
Musk responded in 10 hours. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “More terminals en route.”
Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister of Ukraine, asked Musk to provide Starlink service soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion. He and other government officials have since spoken of its importance to Ukraine’s defense. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Poland was also instrumental in the early days of the war, shipping thousands of terminals to Ukraine shortly after the invasion. Warsaw this year said it has purchased about 25,000 Starlink terminals for the effort – roughly half the total now in Ukraine – and that it is paying the subscription costs to keep them connected. So far, it has spent about $89 million on Starlink for Ukraine.
The equipment has made a critical difference for Ukraine.
Day-to-day bureaucracy has also benefited. Early in the conflict, Ukraine stored state data in the cloud and relied on Starlink to access it, helping keep some government operations running. “We wouldn’t be anywhere without Starlink,” said Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain until 2023. “The whole state was preserved.”
On the battlefield, Ukraine quickly deployed Starlink to enable front-line troops to communicate with commanders. The service also allowed drone operators to transmit surveillance video streams and locate and attack Russian targets. Reuters couldn’t establish just when such attacks may have become a concern for Musk or SpaceX.
Maryna Tsirkun, a drone specialist who works closely with Ukraine’s military, said Starlink signals failed as Ukrainian troops in the fall of 2022 pushed into terrain seized by Russia. Photo via Aerorozvidka.
By September 2022, a major Ukrainian counteroffensive was underway. Kyiv’s forces were pushing back into territories, including Kherson, that Russia had captured. The drive threatened Russian supply lines, prompting Moscow to threaten the West, including oblique references to Starlink.
That month, in a statement to the United Nations, Russia noted the use of “elements of civilian, including commercial, infrastructure in outer space for military purposes.” It warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
It isn’t clear whether Russia has tried to attack any Starlink facilities. Musk has said, however, that Moscow has repeatedly sought to block its connectivity. “SpaceX is spending significant resources combating Russian jamming efforts,” Musk wrote on X last year. “This is a tough problem.”
The Kremlin declined to comment on whether it has sought to interfere with Starlink. The Ministry of Defence didn’t respond to a request for comment. Starlink isn’t licensed for either civilian or military use in Russia.
As Ukraine’s counterattack intensified, Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21, 2022, ordered a partial mobilization of reservists, Russia’s first since World War II. He also threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russia’s own “territorial integrity” were at risk.
Around this time, Musk engaged in weeks of backchannel conversations with senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden, according to three former U.S. government officials and one of the people familiar with Musk’s order to stop service. During those conversations, the former White House staffer told Reuters, U.S. intelligence and security officials expressed concern that Putin could follow through on his threats. Musk, this person added, worried too, and asked U.S. officials if they knew where and how Ukraine used Starlink on the battlefield.
Soon after, he ordered the shutdown.
Reuters couldn’t ascertain the full geographic extent of the outage, but the three people familiar with the stoppage said that it covered regions that had recently been taken by Russia. Starlink coverage prior to the order, they said, had been active up to what had been Ukraine’s border with Russia before the full-scale invasion.
Taras Tymochko, a Ukrainian military signals specialist stationed in the Kherson region at the time, said an outage disrupted communications for troops, including colleagues on the front, for several hours. “If you were using Starlink to provide surveillance of the front line, you pretty much would be blind,” said Tymochko, who is now a consultant to Come Back Alive, a non-governmental organization that procures military equipment for Ukraine’s armed forces.
Starlink has helped ensure connectivity for Ukrainian troops on the front line. These soldiers in the Kherson region fired artillery toward Russian positions in the fall of 2022. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Maryna Tsirkun, a drone expert at Aerorozvidka, an aerial reconnaissance organization that works closely with the Ukrainian military, was also in southern Ukraine at the time. Starlink signals failed as Ukrainian troops began to push toward terrain seized by Russia, she told Reuters. “When we started to proceed there was not a connection,” she said. The outage she and colleagues experienced lasted several days.
On October 3, Musk angered Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials by tweeting a suggestion that locals in regions annexed by Russia vote on whether they should remain a part of Ukraine. A day later, Musk tweeted his concern about the conflict spiraling. “I still very much support Ukraine,” he tweeted, “but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world.”
Three days later, following one media report about a Starlink outage, Musk tweeted that “what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.” He added that SpaceX by the end of 2022 was on track to spend $100 million on Ukraine. Although the Polish and U.S. governments by then had begun donations of their own, the billionaire complained about the cost of the equipment and services SpaceX was providing.
SpaceX “cannot fund the existing system indefinitely,” Musk wrote in a mid-October post. The next day, in another tweet, he reversed course. “To hell with it,” he wrote, “we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
After the outage, Kyiv worked to charm Musk.
In November 2022, Fedorov, the government minister, publicly expressed trust in the service. Months later – just after Shotwell, the SpaceX president, said the company had taken steps to prevent Ukraine from using Starlink for drone attacks – Fedorov in an interview with a Ukrainian news site recognized Starlink’s ability to “geofence” coverage, selectively limiting signals in some areas.
By February 2023, however, Starlink was fully functional in Ukraine, he said. “All the Starlink terminals in Ukraine work properly,” Fedorov told Ukrainska Pravda, the news site. Fedorov, who recently assumed the title of first deputy prime minister, didn’t respond to a request for comment about Ukraine’s use of Starlink in the war.
In mid-2023, the U.S. Department of Defense signed an agreement with SpaceX to pay for Starlink coverage in Ukraine. Terms of the contract weren’t disclosed, but Quilty Space, a Florida-based research firm, said the Pentagon has an ongoing $537 million agreement with SpaceX to provide satellite communications to Ukraine. It’s not clear whether SpaceX is still footing the bill for any equipment or connectivity.
As the war has evolved, so has Ukraine’s use of Musk’s technology.
Ukrainian drone specialists and Prystaiko, the former ambassador to Britain, said some attack devices, including maritime and bomber drones, now have Starlink antennas fitted to them. The antennas, in the case of sea drones, help operators guide the devices and view video feeds to classify targets, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense think tank.
It’s uncertain whether such use contravenes SpaceX’s desire that Starlink not be employed for offense.
Ukraine continues to explore alternatives that could complement or back up Starlink if the service became unavailable, a senior government official told Reuters. Ukraine’s government has expressed interest in European satellite projects, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Reuters. That includes GOVSATCOM, an EU project to pool satellite resources from member states and industry to provide services to governments, he said.
Privately, though, some Ukrainian officials say the existing alternatives to Starlink have limitations. “It takes time, it takes money,” the senior government official told Reuters. With Starlink, he added, “we have a working system.”
Musk himself has boasted of Starlink’s importance to Kyiv. “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army,” he wrote on X in March. “Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.”
Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington, Cassell Bryan-Low in London and Tom Balmforth in Kyiv. Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington, Giselda Vagnoni and Angelo Amante in Rome, Barbara Erling in Warsaw, and Aislinn Laing in Madrid. Photo editing by Simon Newman. Art direction and illustration by Catherine Tai. Editing by Joe Brock and Paulo Prada.
The United States Embassy has implemented a strict new requirement that could significantly impact millions of visa applicants worldwide, including Kenyans seeking to travel to America.
All US visa applicants must now provide comprehensive details of every social media account they have used over the past five years, with failure to comply potentially resulting in visa denial and permanent ineligibility for future applications.
This mandatory disclosure applies to the DS-160 visa application form, where applicants must list usernames and handles from every social media platform they have accessed during the specified period. The requirement covers major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as regional platforms like Douban, VKontakte, and Youku.
“Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles for every platform they have used in the past five years,” the US Embassy stated in its recent announcement. The embassy emphasized that applicants must certify the accuracy of all information before submitting their applications, warning that “omitting social media information on your application could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future US visas.”
The enhanced vetting measures represent a significant escalation of social media screening policies that have been in place since 2019, but have become considerably more stringent under the current administration’s immigration policies. What makes this requirement particularly impactful is its retroactive nature, requiring applicants to recall and disclose social media activity spanning half a decade.
For international students seeking F, M, and J visas, the requirements have become even more demanding. Recent policy updates now require these applicants to make their social media accounts public, allowing consular officers to review posts, comments, shared media, tags, reactions, and account interactions as part of the vetting process. This level of scrutiny reflects the administration’s focus on filtering applicants based on their online expressions, particularly regarding political opinions, global issues, and content deemed potentially problematic.
The policy change comes amid heightened efforts to combat visa fraud and strengthen immigration controls. The US Embassy has simultaneously warned that individuals found engaging in fraudulent activities to obtain visas will face lifetime bans from entering the United States. “Those who commit visa fraud will be banned from the United States for life,” the embassy stated, adding that criminal charges may be pursued against offenders.
For travelers, this development signals a new era of digital transparency in visa applications. The requirement effectively means that casual social media users must maintain detailed records of their online presence, including platforms they may have briefly used or forgotten about. The policy recognizes that social media activity has become an integral part of personal identity verification and national security screening.
Privacy advocates have raised concerns about the extensive nature of this digital surveillance, particularly given that applicants must provide access to five years of personal online activity. However, the US government maintains that applicants are not required to provide passwords to their accounts, and consular officers cannot modify applicant profiles.
The practical implications for visa applicants are substantial. Travelers must now conduct thorough audits of their social media history, ensuring they can account for every platform used over the past five years. This includes not just major platforms but also professional networks, dating apps, gaming platforms, and regional social media sites that maintain user profiles.
Travel industry experts suggest that prospective applicants should begin documenting their social media usage immediately, creating comprehensive lists of all platforms and associated usernames. They also recommend reviewing past posts and online activity to ensure consistency with visa application information.
The new requirements underscore the evolving landscape of international travel, where digital footprints have become as important as traditional documentation. For the millions of people who rely on US visas for business, education, tourism, and family visits, this policy represents a fundamental shift in how personal information is evaluated in the visa process.
As global mobility increasingly intersects with digital identity, travelers must now navigate not just physical borders but also the complex terrain of their online presence, making social media literacy and digital responsibility essential skills for international travel in the modern era.
France will officially recognise a Palestinian state in September, President Emmanuel Macron has said.
In a post on X, Macron said the formal announcement would be made at a session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
“The urgent need today is for the war in Gaza to end and for the civilian population to be rescued. Peace is possible. We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” he wrote.
Palestinian officials welcomed Macron’s decision, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move “rewards terror” following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack in Israel.
In his Thursday’s post on X, Macron wrote: “True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine.
“We must also guarantee the demilitarisation of Hamas, and secure and rebuild Gaza.
“Finally, we must build the State of Palestine, ensure its viability, and ensure that by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, it contributes to the security of all in the Middle East. There is no alternative.”
Macron also attached a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirming his decision.
Reacting to Macron’s announcement, Abbas’ deputy Hussein al-Sheikh said “this position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and the establishment of our independent state”, according to the AFP news agency.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu wrote in a post on X: “We strongly condemn President Macron’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of the 7 October massacre.
“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel – not to live in peace beside it. Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel,” Netanyahu added.
Currently, the State of Palestine is recognised by more than 140 of the 193 member states of the UN.
A few European Union countries, including Spain, are among them.
But Israel’s main supporter, the US, and its allies including the UK have not recognised a Palestinian state.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 59,106 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble since then.
Earlier on Thursday, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) said that one in five children in Gaza City was now malnourished and cases were increasing every day.
More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have also warned of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip – pressing for governments to take action.
Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies into the Palestinian territory, has repeatedly said that there is no siege, blaming Hamas for any cases of malnutrition.
In a statement, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the “unspeakable and indefensible” humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
He said the situation had been “grave for some time” but it has “reached new depths”.
“We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe,” Sir Keir added.
Hulk Hogan, the iconic face of professional wrestling in the 1980s who parlayed his prowess in the ring into an acting career, has died at the age of 71, US media reported Thursday.
Hogan — a Hall of Fame talent known for his towering 6’7″ (two-meter) physique, bandana and distinctive blond handlebar mustache — died at his home in Florida, NBC News reported, citing his manager Chris Volo.
TMZ also reported the news, citing unnamed sources and an emergency personnel dispatch call about a “cardiac arrest” at his home.
Hogan’s magnetic personality — his ring character was a heroic all-American — and wrestling skills transformed the sport into mainstream family entertainment, attracting millions of viewers and turning the league into a revenue juggernaut.
Hogan — real name Terry Bollea — first competed in 1979 in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE) but became a mainstay and fan favorite in the mid-1980s alongside others like Andre the Giant and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
His brand of “Hulkamania” transferred to the small and big screen, with roles in films such as “Rocky III,” “No Holds Barred” and TV’s “Baywatch.”
He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.
“WWE is saddened to learn WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan has passed away. One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s,” World Wrestling Entertainment said on social media.
“WWE extends its condolences to Hogan’s family, friends, and fans.”
The wrestler was embroiled in controversy more than a decade ago after an intimate video of him leaked, and then again a few years later for his use of racist language, including a slur referring to Black Americans.
The latter caused him to be fired from WWE in 2015. He later apologized for his actions and was reinstated to the WWE Hall of Fame.
In recent years, Hogan became an avid supporter of US President Donald Trump.
He memorably appeared at the 2024 Republican National Convention that would seal Trump’s nomination — tearing his shirt off to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top.
“With our leader up there, my hero, that gladiator, we’re gonna bring America back together,” Hogan said on stage in July 2024.
Hogan suffered numerous health problems in later years, stemming from the years of abuse his body took in the ring.
He was married three times, and had two children with his first wife Linda.
Russian officials say 48 people were killed when an Angara Airlines plane went down in a dense forest in the far-eastern Amur region.
The Antonov An-24 plane, carrying 42 passengers and six crew, had left Blagoveshchensk close to the Chinese border and vanished from radar screens as it approached Tynda airport, officials said.
A Russian civil aviation helicopter then spotted burning fuselage from the plane on a remote hillside about 16km (10 miles) from Tynda.
Amur’s regional governor Vasily Orlov said five children were among those on board and declared three days of mourning.
The remote, swampy nature of the area meant that rescuers took about an hour to reach the scene.
Preliminary inquiries are looking at either pilot error in poor weather conditions or technical malfunction, according to emergency officials.
The An-24 plane had been on the final leg of a route from Khabarovsk in the far south-east of Russia.
There was low cloud at the time of the crash, and the plane had already made a failed attempt to land at the airport, emergency services said. Radar contact was lost while the crew was preparing for a second approach, they added.
Angara Airlines is based in the Irkutsk region of Siberia and the crew all came from the Irkutsk region. A number of the passengers were working for Russian Railways in the far east.
The Antonov 24 plane was almost 50 years old and originally designed in Kyiv during the Soviet era, although this model has not been used in Ukraine for several years.
Officials said the plane had passed a recent technical inspection, but the civil aviation authority told news agencies it had been involved in four incidents since 2018.
Seven years ago its left wing had been damaged when the plane overran a runway and hit a lightning mast, Tass news agency said.
Other An-24 planes have been involved in fatal crashes, too.
An An-24RV veered off the runway as it landed at Nizhneangarsk Airport in July 2019. Two members of the flight crew were killed.
In 2011, another Angara An-24 crashed into the Ob river in Siberia, killing seven passengers.
After the 2011 crash, then-president Dmitry Medvedev said An-24 planes that were still in service in Russia should be grounded.
Church leaders in Jerusalem say they have returned from a trip to Gaza with “broken hearts”, describing starving people and children not “batting an eyelid” at the sound of bombing.
“We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of simple meal,” the Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told journalists.
“This is humiliation that is hard to bear when you see it with you own eyes. It is morally unacceptable and unjustifiable.”
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Theophilos III, said his Church would “stand in solidarity” with “the whole people of Gaza”.
The two men made a rare visit to the war-torn strip after Israeli fire hit the Catholic Holy Family Church in Gaza City last week, killing two women and a man.
US President Donald Trump is said to have made an angry call to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the deadly strike, which came days after an alleged attack by extremist Israeli settlers next to the ruins of an ancient church in the Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu’s office expressed deep regret for what was described as “a stray ammunition” hitting the Gaza church.
However, local Christians have questioned whether the place of worship was deliberately targeted. About 400 people have been sheltering in the compound, which is in part of Gaza City now under Israeli evacuation orders.
At the news conference, Pizzaballa noted that Christians were suffering in the same ways as other Palestinians.
“Three people died in our community, but thousands already died in Gaza,” he said.
He added that recent settler violence in Taybeh, was part of “broader phenomenon” in the West Bank which was “becoming a no-law land”.
Although Italy’s foreign ministry announced that the patriarchs had entered Gaza with 500 tonnes of aid, Pizzaballa said “not a gram” had yet been able to enter due to logistical issues.
He described the disappointment of those who came to the church hoping for handouts.
Amid some of the most severe food shortages in 21 months of war, Pizzaballa and Theophilos III said they met people “totally starved” and gave an account of the widespread destruction.
“We walked through the dust of ruins, past collapsed buildings and tents everywhere: in courtyards, alleyways, on the streets and on the beach,” Pizzaballa said at the end of his four-day visit. “Tents that have become homes for those who have lost everything.”
Last week, the two Church leaders led a delegation of foreign diplomats to Taybeh, north of Ramallah, where residents and local priests described several attacks by settlers.
The most serious was the fire stared next to the ruins of the Byzantine Church of St George.
An Israeli police statement said on Tuesday that a special investigative unit had found that “contrary to misleading reports, no damage was caused” to the church. It said the fire was limited to an adjacent open area and that arson was not yet confirmed.
However, one witness told the BBC that he saw settlers starting the blaze and others accused Israeli security forces of failing to respond to their complaints.
Villagers say extremists have seized their plots on the edge of Taybeh and regularly harass them, bringing cattle to eat their olive trees.
“What’s going on is really ridiculous and it’s driving people out as Israelis put their hands on our land,” a former mayor and co-founder of the Taybeh brewery, Daoud Khoury, told the BBC.
He said he worried that extremist settlers and an economic downturn since the start of the Gaza war would force more Christians to emigrate.
In an unusual move, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also visited Taybeh on Saturday.
In a statement, he then denounced the attack near the church as “an act of terror” and demanded “harsh consequences” for those responsible.
Huckabee, who is also an evangelical pastor known for his past strong statements supporting Jewish settlements, which are seen as illegal under international law, wrote on X. “Desecrating a church, mosque or synagogue is a crime against humanity and God.”
In response to the Israeli police statement, he wrote that he had not attributed the fire to any group, that “regardless, it was crime and deserves consequences”.
At the Jerusalem press conference, Theophilos III said that the tiny Christian community must be supported to remain in Gaza, close to their holy places “full of history”.
During his trip, Pizzaballa told an Italian newspaper that a Catholic presence would stay in the territory “whatever happens”.
The two leaders reiterated calls by Pope Leo and a growing number of international leaders for a Gaza ceasefire and the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas.
“We are not against Israel,” said Pizzaballa, who is known as a supporter of interfaith dialogue. “But we need to say with frankness and clarity, that this policy of the Israeli government in Gaza is unacceptable and morally we cannot justify it.”
Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against a right-wing US podcaster who claimed the spouse of the French president used to be a man.
The 218-page complaint against Candace Owens, who has millions of followers on X and YouTube, was filed by the Macrons in Delaware Superior Court and seeks a jury trial and unspecified punitive damages.
In a statement released by their lawyer, the Macrons said they filed the lawsuit after Owens repeatedly ignored requests to retract false and defamatory statements made on an eight-part YouTube and podcast series called “Becoming Brigitte.”
“Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” they said.
“We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused.
“It is our earnest hope that this lawsuit will set the record straight and end this campaign of defamation once and for all.”
Right-Wing influencer Candace Owens.
The suit accuses Owens of using her popular podcast to spread “verifiably false and devastating lies” about the Macrons including that Brigitte Macron was born a man, that they are blood relatives and that Macron was chosen to be France’s president as part of a CIA-operated mind control program.
“If ever there was a clear-cut case of defamation, this is it,” Tom Clare, a lawyer for the Macrons, said in a statement.
“Owens both promoted and expanded on those falsehoods and invented new ones, all designed to cause maximum harm to the Macrons and maximize attention and financial gain for herself.”
Brigitte Macron, 72, has also taken to the courts in France to combat claims she was born a man.
Two women were convicted in September of last year of spreading false claims after they posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging that Brigitte Macron had once been a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux — who is actually her brother.
The ruling was overturned by a Paris appeals court and Macron appealed to the highest appeals court, the Court de Cassation, earlier this month.
The government has revealed details of its plans to cut foreign aid, with support for children’s education and women’s health in Africa facing the biggest reductions.
The government said in February it would slash foreign aid spending by 40% – from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% – to increase defence spending to 2.5% after pressure from the US.
A Foreign Office report and impact assessment show the biggest cuts this year will come in Africa, with less spent on women’s health and water sanitation with increased risks, it says, of disease and death.
Aid charities have criticised the move, saying the cuts would impact the world’s most vulnerable people.
But the government said spending on multilateral aid bodies – money given to international organisations like the World Bank – would be protected, including the Gavi vaccine alliance, and it said the UK would also continue to play a key humanitarian role in hotspots such as Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.
Baroness Chapman, minister for development, said: “Every pound must work harder for UK taxpayers and the people we help around the world and these figures show how we are starting to do just that through having a clear focus and priorities.”
The government said the cuts follow “a line-by-line strategic review of aid” by the minister, which focused on “prioritisation, efficiency, protecting planned humanitarian support and live contracts while ensuring responsible exit from programming where necessary”.
The Foreign Office said bilateral support – aid going directly to the recipient country – for some countries would decrease and multilateral organisations deemed to be underperforming would face future funding cuts. It has not yet announced which countries will be affected.
The move has been criticised by International Development Committee chair Sarah Champion, who said it appears the cuts “will come at the expense of some of the world’s most vulnerable people”.
Bond, a UK network for international development organisations, said it was clear the government was “deprioritising” funding “for education, gender and countries experiencing humanitarian crises such as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, and surprisingly the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan, which the government said would be protected”.
“It is concerning that bilateral funding for Africa, gender, education and health programmes will drop,” Bond policy director Gideon Rabinowitz said.
“The world’s most marginalised communities, particularly those experiencing conflict and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices.
“At a time when the US has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back.”
Unicef, a UN agency providing aid to children, said the cuts “will have a devastating and unequal impact on children and women” and called the move “deeply short-sighted”.
Philip Goodwin, Unicef UK chief executive, said: “We urge the government to adopt a new strategic approach that places vulnerable children at the heart of its aid programmes and policies…
“At least 25% of aid should be directed to child-focused initiatives, ensuring that children’s health, nutrition, education, and protection are prioritised.”
British-founded charity Street Child told the BBC that work to help children get access to education in Sierra Leone, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where British aid has been a main backer – will come to an end because of the cuts.
CEO Tom Dannatt said education was the greatest long-term builder of hope, and he described reducing the support as “sad and short-sighted”.
“So children who used to go to school will not go to school, and so, more children will be found roaming the streets and ploughing fields and not developing their critical faculties,” he said.
“Whereas they should be in school learning and having a chance to build a brighter future for themselves and for their societies, but because of these cuts by British aid for the poorest children, especially in the poorest countries, that’s not the reality anymore.”
One organisation that escaped the cuts was the World Bank. The Foreign Office confirmed that the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the world’s lowest income countries, would receive £1.98bn in funding from the UK over the next three years, helping the organisation benefit 1.9 billion people.
The Labour governments under Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown committed to increasing the overseas aid budget to 0.7% of national income.
The target was reached in 2013 under David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, before being enshrined in law in 2015.
However, aid spending was cut to 0.5% of national income in 2021 under the Conservatives, blaming the economic pressures of Covid.
Prince Al-Waleed bin Khaled bin Talal Al Saud, widely referred to as Saudi Arabia’s “Sleeping Prince,” has passed away at the age of 36, nearly 20 years after slipping into a coma due to a car crash in London.
As reported by TheSunUK, the royal suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2005 while attending a military college in the United Kingdom. His death was confirmed on Saturday by his father, Prince Khaled bin Talal bin Abdulaziz.
“With hearts believing in Allah’s will and decree, and with deep sorrow and sadness, we mourn our beloved son: Prince Al-Waleed bin Khaled bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, may Allah have mercy on him, who passed away today,” the bereaved father shared on X.
After the accident, Prince Al-Waleed was moved to King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh, where he remained in a coma for two decades under constant medical supervision and life support.
Despite consultations with numerous international medical experts and occasional signs of minimal physical response that sparked hope, he never regained consciousness.
Throughout the years, Prince Khaled remained steadfast in caring for his son and continually declined recommendations to discontinue life support.
Prince Al-Waleed’s extended condition captured widespread attention within Saudi Arabia and internationally, with many following his rare movements and responses with enduring hope.
Brazilian police on Friday raided far-right ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro’s home, his son said, after a judge curtailed his freedom while he stands trial on coup charges that have vexed US President Donald Trump.
Son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman who recently moved to the United States to lobby for his father, wrote on X that federal police carried out a “raid on my father’s home this morning.”
And he lashed out at Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, a Bolsonaro adversary who on Friday ordered the ex-president to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and not leave his home at night.
Moraes, one of the judges in Bolsonaro’s trial for allegedly seeking to nullify leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 2022 election victory, said the measures were necessary given the accused and his son’s “hostile acts” against Brazil.
This came after Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on the South American powerhouse for what he said was a “witch hunt” against his ally Bolsonaro.
Moraes, said Eduardo Bolsonaro, “has long abandoned any semblance of impartiality and now operates as a political gangster in robes, using the Supreme Court as his personal weapon.”
The judge was “trying to criminalize President Trump and the US government. Powerless against them, he chose to take my father hostage,” he added in a letter he signed as a “Brazilian congressman in exile.”
– ‘Supreme humiliation’ –
Bolsonaro described Morae’s order Friday as a “supreme humiliation.”
It also prohibited him from approaching foreign embassies or leaving his home between 7:00 pm and 6:00 am, on weekends or public holidays.
“I never thought about leaving Brazil, I never thought about going to an embassy, Bolsonaro insisted on emerging from the justice secretariat offices in Brasilia.
The former army captain denies he was involved in an attempt to wrest power back from Lula as part of an alleged coup plot that prosecutors say failed only for a lack of military backing.
After the plot fizzled, rioting supporters known as “Bolsonaristas” raided government buildings in 2023 as they urged the military to oust Lula. Bolsonaro was abroad at the time.
The case against Bolsonaro carries echoes of Trump’s failed prosecution over the January 6, 2021 attacks by his supporters on the US Capitol to try and reverse his election loss.
Both men have claimed to be victims of political persecution, and Trump has stepped in in defense of his ally, to the anger of Lula who has labeled the tariff threat “unacceptable blackmail.”
Washington also announced an investigation into “unfair trading practices” by Brazil, a move that could provide a legal basis for imposing tariffs on South America’s largest economy.
On Tuesday, prosecutors asked the trial judges of the Supreme Court to find Bolsonaro guilty of “armed criminal association” and planning to “violently overthrow the democratic order.”
The defense must still present its closing arguments, after which a five-member panel of judges including Moraes will decide the ex-president’s fate.
Bolsonaro and seven co-accused risk up to 40 years in prison.
He has repeatedly stated his desire to be a candidate in presidential elections next year, but has been ruled ineligible to hold office by a court that found him guilty of spreading misinformation about Brazil’s electoral system.
Moraes has repeatedly clashed with Bolsonaro and other rightwing figures he has accused of spreading fake news.
Last year, Moraes shut tech titan Elon Musk’s X network in Brazil for 40 days for failing to tackle the spread of disinformation shared mainly by Bolsonaro backers.
