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Resignation of United Torah Judaism lawmakers leaves Netanyahu with razor thin 61-seat majority in the 120 seat Knesset.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), has announced it is quitting the country’s fractious right-wing coalition due to a long-running dispute over mandatory military service, threatening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on power.
Six of the remaining seven members of UTJ, which is comprised of the Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael factions, wrote letters of resignation, Israeli media reported late on Monday.
UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf had resigned a month ago. A spokesperson for Goldknopf confirmed that, in all, seven UTJ Knesset members are leaving the government.
Degel HaTorah was quoted by news reports as saying the decision was made “in accordance with the directive” of the group’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Dov Lando.
Degel Hatorah said in a statement that after conferring with its head rabbis, “and following repeated violations by the government of its commitments to ensure the status of holy yeshiva students who diligently engage in their studies … [its MKs] have announced their resignation from the coalition and the government”.
The decision would leave Netanyahu with a razor-thin majority of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament.
It was not clear whether Shas, another ultra-Orthodox party, would follow suit.
Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long threatened to leave the coalition over the conscription bill. They argue that a bill to exempt “yeshiva” or seminary students from conscription was a key promise in their agreement to join Netanyahu’s coalition in late 2022.
In June, on the eve of Israel’s war with Iran, the coalition barely survived after governing lawmakers reached a deal with ultra-Orthodox parties regarding exemptions to the mandatory military service.
The ultra-Orthodox have long been exempt from military service, which applies to most other young Israelis. But last year, the Supreme Court ordered the Ministry of Defense to end that practice and start conscripting seminary students.
Netanyahu had been pushing hard to resolve the deadlock over the new military conscription bill, which has led to the present crisis.
He is under pressure from his own Likud party to draft more ultra-Orthodox men and impose penalties on dodgers, a red line for the Shas party, which demands a law guaranteeing its members’ permanent exemption from military service.
Netanyahu’s coalition, formed in December 2022, is one of the most far-right governments in the country’s history.
A 3,800-year-old citadel of the Caral civilisation – one of the world’s oldest – has reopened for visitors in Peru after eight years of comprehensive restoration and research.
Researchers have identified the Penico archaeological site as a vital trading centre that connected early Pacific coastal communities with those in the Andes and Amazon regions.
Located in the Supe Valley, about 180km (110 miles) north of Lima and only 19km (12 miles) from the Pacific Ocean, Penico was an unremarkable hilly landscape until excavations commenced in 2017.
Archaeologists believe the site could provide crucial information about the enigmatic collapse of the Caral civilisation, which flourished between 3,000 and 1,800 BC.
The opening ceremony featured regional artists playing pututus – traditional shell trumpets – as part of an ancient ritual honouring Pachamama, Mother Earth, with ceremonial offerings of agricultural products, coca leaves, and local beverages.
“Penico was an organised urban centre devoted to agriculture and trade between the coast, the mountains and the forest,” archaeologist Ruth Shady, who leads research at the site, told the AFP news agency. She said the settlement dates to between 1,800 and 1,500 BC.
The site demonstrates sophisticated planning, strategically built on a geological terrace 600 metres (2,000ft) above sea level and parallel to a river to avoid flooding.
Research by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has uncovered 18 distinct structures, including public buildings and residential complexes. Scholars believe Penico was built during the same period as the earliest civilisations in the Middle East and Asia.
According to Shady, researchers hope the site will shed light on the crisis they believe hastened the Caral civilisation’s decline. This crisis, she explained, was linked to climate change that caused droughts and disrupted agricultural activities throughout the region.
“We want to understand how the Caral civilisation formed and developed over time, and how it came to be in crisis as a result of climate change,” she said.
Listen: I’m ‘disappointed but not done’ with Putin, Trump tells BBC
Donald Trump has said that he is disappointed but not done with Vladimir Putin, in an exclusive phone call with the BBC.
The US president was pressed on whether he trusts the Russian leader, and replied: “I trust almost no-one.”
Trump was speaking hours after he announced plans to send weapons to Ukraine and warned of severe tariffs on Russia if there was no ceasefire deal in 50 days.
In an interview from the Oval Office, the president also endorsed Nato, having once described it as obsolete, and affirmed his support for the organisation’s common defence principle.
The president made the phone call, which lasted 20 minutes, to the BBC after conversations about a potential interview to mark one year on since the attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Asked about whether surviving the assassination attempt had changed him, Trump said he liked to think about it as little as possible.
“I don’t like to think about if it did change me,” Trump said. Dwelling on it, he added, “could be life-changing”.
Having just met with Nato chief Mark Rutte at the White House, however, the president spent a significant portion of the interview expanding on his disappointment with the Russian leader.
Trump said that he had thought a deal was on the cards with Russia four different times.
When asked by the BBC if he was done with Putin, the president replied: “I’m disappointed in him, but I’m not done with him. But I’m disappointed in him.”
Pressed on how Trump would get Putin to “stop the bloodshed” the US president said: “We’re working it, Gary.”
“We’ll have a great conversation. I’ll say: ‘That’s good, I’ll think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv.”
Russia has intensified its drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, causing record civilian casualties.
Listen: World leaders have ‘come to respect me’, Trump tells BBC
The conversation moved onto Nato, which Trump has previously criticised as “obsolete”.
Asked if he still thought this was the case, he said: “No. I think Nato is now becoming the opposite of that” because the alliance was “paying their own bills”.
He said he still believed in collective defence, because it meant smaller countries could defend themselves against larger ones.
Trump said that the leaders of countries including Germany, France and Spain, had come to respect him and his decision making, partly because world leaders believed that there was a “lot of talent” in being elected to the presidency twice.
When asked whether world leaders were at times “obvious in their flattery”, Trump replied that he felt they were “just trying to be nice”.
President Trump was also asked about the UK’s future in the world and said he thought it was a “great place – you know I own property there”.
On the issue of Brexit, he said it had been “on the sloppy side but I think it’s getting straightened out”.
The president also said of Sir Keir Starmer, “I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he is a liberal”, and praised the UK-US trade deal.
He spoke about how he was looking forward to an unprecedented second state visit to the UK in September this year.
On what he wanted to achieve during the visit, Trump said: “Have a good time and respect King Charles, because he’s a great gentleman.”
Muhammadu Buhari, who was the country’s democratic leader between 2015 and 2023, died aged 82 in London on Sunday.
Nigeria’s former President Muhammadu Buhari will be buried in his hometown of Daura in the northern state of Katsina, once his body is repatriated from the United Kingdom, the state governor has said.
The remains of the ex-leader, who died aged 82 in London on Sunday following a prolonged illness, will reach Nigeria on Tuesday, with his burial taking place later the same day, according to Dikko Umaru Radda.
Preparations for the burial were under way in Daura on Monday, while the country’s Vice President Kashim Shettima was in London organising the repatriation of Buhari’s body.
Buhari, who first ruled the country as a military leader between 1984 and 1985, served consecutive presidential terms between 2015 and 2023. He was the first opposition politician to be voted into power since the country’s return to civilian rule.
The self-described “converted democrat” is being remembered by many as a central figure in his country’s democratic evolution. However, some critics have also noted his failure to improve Nigeria’s economy or its security during his presidency.
Paying tribute to his predecessor on Sunday, President Bola Tinubu called him “a patriot, a soldier, a statesman”.
“He stood firm through the most turbulent times, leading with quiet strength, profound integrity, and an unshakable belief in Nigeria’s potential,” Tinubu wrote in a post on X.
“He championed discipline in public service, confronted corruption head-on and placed the country above personal interest at every turn.”
Tinubu added that all national flags would fly at half-mast for seven days from Sunday, and said Buhari would be accorded full-state honours.
The Nigerian flag flies at half-mast following the death of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria, on July 14, 2025 [Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters]
Radda also paid his respects to the former president, describing him as “the embodiment of the common man’s aspirations”.
Ibrahim Babangida, a former military ruler who ousted Buhari in a coup in 1985, also released a statement after his death was announced.
“We may not have agreed on everything — as brothers often don’t — but I never once doubted his sincerity or his patriotism,” Babangida said.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Alexis Akwagyiram, managing editor at Semafor and a longtime observer of Nigerian politics, noted that Buhari was popular for his “personal brand of integrity and honesty”.
However, Akwagyiram also highlighted Buhari’s shortcomings on the economy and security, saying that insurgencies from groups such as Boko Haram had “proliferated under his tenure”.
Last week, Warner Bros Pictures released a new reboot of the Superman film series. The movie soared to the top of the box office and grossed an estimated $122m in the United States in its opening weekend. Though the industry is celebrating the film’s early box office totals, they are well below the earnings of comparable blockbusters from a decade ago. For example, in its opening weekend in 2016, Warner Bros’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice reaped a healthy $166m ($224m when adjusted for inflation).
Indeed, over the past few years, revenues from such films have steadily fallen, and the new Superman film is not an exception. In the 2010s, superhero movies regularly reaped more than $500m worldwide in box office totals. In recent years, far fewer have reached that high watermark – a fact that is causing unease in the industry. Last year, Hollywood trade magazine Variety warned that the genre was experiencing an “unprecedented box office drought”.
What made superhero movies fall off? According to Hollywood bigwigs, the reason is “superhero fatigue”, as Superman director James Gunn put it. Disney CEO Bob Iger opined that the prolific output of superhero movies “diluted [the audience’s] focus and attention”.
But their narrative — that consumers are simply getting “fatigued” with the genre — is reductive. As with all artistic genres, there are reasons why some rise or fall in popularity. Those reasons are intimately tied to politics.
Superhero boom and decline
Superhero fiction is a uniquely US genre, arguably invented in 1938 with the publication of the first Superman comic book. The first superhero comic adaptation was released in 1941 under the title Adventures of Captain Marvel. The genre was popular among Americans for decades, but it really took off following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Those attacks punctured the relative tranquillity (in the US, at least) of the post-Cold War era and put the US propaganda machine into overdrive. Americans were fed a cartoonish portrait of what a “supervillain” looked like, which fit easily into superhero movie narratives. These supervillains were — like America’s purported enemies — bent on global domination and opposed to liberalism and US hegemony.
The Pentagon played a prominent role in shaping propagandistic narratives in popular culture. As a longtime partner of Hollywood, the Department of Defense has long had the practice of loaning out military equipment to filmmakers in exchange for script approval rights. In the post-9/11 era, it had a say in the scripts of a number of superhero blockbusters, including Iron Man and Captain America. Captain Marvel was even used as a recruitment tool for pilots by the US air force.
As a result, many superhero movies depict the US military and superheroes working hand-in-hand to defeat supervillainy, jointly pushing a vision of Pax Americana: a world where the dominant global power is the US.
The protagonists are often portrayed as defenders of “American ideals” like democracy, inclusivity, and justice. Take someone like Captain America, who originated as a literal embodiment of the US cultural victory over fascism. Other popular superheroes of the past 20 years, like Black Panther, embodied liberal America’s multicultural, pluralistic ideals.
But in recent years, the political reality those heroes are meant to uphold has begun to fracture. A September 2024 poll asked Americans whether they agreed with the statement “my country’s leader should have total, unchecked authority”. An astonishing 57.4 percent of US respondents agreed.
Another poll conducted a year earlier found that 45 percent of Americans “point to people seeing racial discrimination where it really doesn’t exist as the larger issue”.
It increasingly seems that America as a liberal, pluralistic society — the way it is depicted in superhero films — is no longer a universal aspiration for many Americans.
There is also growing scepticism towards America’s moral authority and superpower standing in the world.
A 2024 poll from Fox News found that 62 percent of American voters described the US as “on the decline”. Only 26 percent thought it was rising. A 2023 poll from Pew Research — a year before Donald Trump was re-elected — reported that 58 percent of those polled said that “life in America is worse today than it was 50 years ago”.
Social cohesion collapsing
While public perceptions gradually changed in the post-9/11 period, there were events that accelerated this shift.
The precipitous drop in superhero movie box office totals began in 2020. Why that year? This was when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated already growing societal divisions.
The sense of a cohesive national identity fully shattered with the onset of this unprecedented public health emergency. Widespread mistrust of the government’s ability to manage the crisis — coupled with a deeply individualistic streak in Americans that precluded any understanding of social obligations that would prevent mass death, such as social distancing or lockdown measures — fostered a furious and splintered American body politic.
The singular vision of liberal American righteousness suggested by superhero films could not resonate amid this factional political landscape.
A year later came the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The decision to pull out upset the notion of the US as a “heroic” intervener — a sort of global superman – heavily projected after 9/11. In contrast to Iraq, Afghanistan was long presented as a potential “success story”, or as The New York Times put it in 2005: the “American-led intervention that could wind up actually making people’s lives better”.
Of course, we all know how that turned out: the US entered Afghanistan in 2001 and exited in 2021, having killed more than 100,000 people and spent $2.3 trillion to pause Taliban rule for 20 years.
With its military power failing abroad and tensions rising at home, the US did not seem like a place that anyone — superhero or mortal — believed in any more. Inevitably, the domestic ills ignored by the political elites came to the fore. Real wages had been in decline for 30 years, while income inequality had been increasing, and infrastructure – decaying.
Americans on both left and right began to question the fitness of the US political system, long portrayed as the best in the world.
Many on the left now believe that corporate interests have so thoroughly captured the Democratic Party that they have ceased fighting for real wealth redistribution or social programmes, and conspire against progressive candidates who do believe in these things. Meanwhile, the American right has grown more venal, racist and authoritarian — the result of failing to understand the true reasons behind the country’s socioeconomic crises.
In depicting America as, ultimately, a force for good, the superhero movie genre does not speak to either of these political lines. Hollywood elites do not seem to understand this, however.
Gunn, who directed the new Superman movie, described the feature as a metaphor for American values. “Superman is the story of America,” Gunn said in an interview with The Times of London. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
His words spurred a furious reaction from the American right. “We don’t go to the movie theatre to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us,” Kellyanne Conway, former senior counsellor to President Trump, said on Fox News.
The recent American tendency to hyper-politicise film and slot all movies into either “woke” or “anti-woke” categories does not bode well for these kinds of tentpole blockbusters that, in days of yore, would attract audiences of all political stripes.
Superhero movies are an optimistic as well as a nationalistic genre — their primary message is that America, and the liberal order in general, are worth defending. But Americans no longer seem optimistic about the future, nor particularly attached to these ideological values. Fewer Americans seem to even believe in liberal pillars like democracy and multiculturalism — the kinds of things that superheroes typically fight for.
If we cannot seem to agree on what American values even are, it is understandable that we cannot agree on what kind of hero would embody the national spirit. Given these dispiriting political conditions, perhaps it is not super-surprising that Americans are not flocking to the superhero genre like they once did.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has renewed urgent calls for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, warning the humanitarian crisis has reached “horrific proportions.” Guterres said the level of death and destruction in Gaza has “no parallel in recent times.”
Leasehold campaigners say they don’t feel represented in the legal challenge
A group of landowners is beginning a judicial review in the High Court to challenge the government’s attempts to reform the freehold and leasehold system of property ownership.
Some of the country’s wealthy landowners and two charities who own the freehold leases of thousands of properties – predominately flats – argue that legislation brought in by the last Conservative government contravenes their human rights.
They say the measures in a law passed in 2024 are contrary to their right to enjoy private property as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
But leaseholders are concerned the hearing will hold up reforms, and complain their voices are not represented in court.
Reuters
The legislation being challenged was brought in by Michael Gove
The hearing is set to start at the High Court from Tuesday and is expected to last until Friday.
When the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act (LAFRA) was fast-tracked through Parliament before the 2024 general election, the prospect of new laws to “strengthen” rights of leasehold flat and house owners were widely welcomed by leasehold campaigners.
Among other things, the act aimed to simplify extending a lease – the owners’ right to live in the dwelling – and buying a freehold. It would also make the process cheaper for leaseholders.
But several freeholders are challenging some aspects of the new laws concerning the price calculations for a lease extension.
In earlier court documents, it was claimed they could lose hundreds of millions of pounds and argue that the changes leave them without adequate compensation.
Some also argue it prevents them from investing in areas where their properties are and could impact the community and their charitable giving.
They also say that changing the way the amounts are calculated between leaseholders and freeholders would transfer the wealth to large landlords who own multiple flats in central London.
But leaseholders fear the legal challenge could hold up reform for years.
There are an estimated 4.5 million owners of leasehold properties in England and Wales. Scotland abolished leasehold in the 1980s, and the leasehold system in Northern Ireland is slightly different.
Phil Jones, 57, bought his two-bedroom leasehold flat in Westcliff-on-Sea 25 years ago. He recently found out that his ground rent doubles every 10 years and is now at £500 per year.
He said his freeholder said the ground rent could be scrapped if Phil paid £60,000, which he couldn’t do.
He says this makes his flat unsellable because mortgage companies will not lend on a property with a doubling ground rent clause in its lease.
“Life is on hold,” he said. “I’m trapped here. The effect it has on us, it’s so unfair.”
He questioned how the freeholders can bring such a case when the legislation has already been given Royal Assent, or become law.
“All parties have decided, it’s all been passed, it was in the King’s Speech, just do it,” he said.
Phil Jones
Phil Jones doesn’t want reforms held up by legal argument
The legislation at the centre of the case was introduced when former Conservative minister Michael Gove was housing secretary. The Labour government has promised to go further but Mr Jones worries this will delay changes that could benefit him.
Labour has promised to abolish leasehold altogether by the end of the Parliament and bring in a commonhold model. It also wants to regulate ground rents.
But it still hasn’t implemented all of the laws in LAFRA and says a new bill will be introduced later this year.
The government has been cautious about setting out hard deadlines while the legal challenge is pending.
Leasehold groups are also angry that their application to speak on behalf of flat owners was not allowed to be part of the case.
Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders, said: “Despite our best efforts to intervene, not a single leaseholder voice will be heard at the High Court. Is this how democracy is supposed to run?
“We urge the government not to cave to this campaign of intimidation by rich vested interests and to press on to end the feudal leasehold system, as they promised in their manifesto.”
There are six claimants representing a number of freeholders in the case, including the Cadogan group, a family owned company which has owned land in London for 300 years; the Grosvenor Group, owned by the Duke of Westminster and the John Lyon’s Charity.
Contributor
Lynne Guyton says that under new laws, millions of pounds would be redirected from a children’s charity to private wealth
The charity uses its revenue from property it owns to give grants to organisations that help under privileged children.
It says changes to the laws will have “unintended consequences” that actually benefit wealthy leaseholder landlords who own flats in its property portfolio in St John’s Wood, while the charity will lose revenue.
The charity says it backs leasehold reform generally but is asking to be exempt from the changes.
CEO Dr Lynne Guyton said: “This reform pulls the rug out from underneath those who need the most support across the capital.
“Without an exemption, we will lose at least 10% of the charity’s income. It will put educational, mental health, art, emotional support and youth programmes all at risk.”
PA
Angela Rayner is responsible for steering housing reform through Parliament
The leasehold system dates back to the Middle Ages but the system as we know it came about in the 1920s.
Both the previous Conservative and the current Labour governments have called it “feudal” and vowed to reform it but campaigners say they’ve waited decades for change.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told MPs on Monday: “This week the High Court will be hearing challenges to some of the [2024] Act enfranchisement reforms, and we’ll be robustly defending those challenges, and we’ll await the court’s judgement.”
The government said it could not comment further on ongoing litigation.
We contacted the other freeholders or their legal representatives for comment but did not get an official response.
Here are the key events on day 1,237 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Tuesday, July 15:
Fighting
Russian forces launched drone attacks on Ukraine’s eastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, killing at least one person and wounding 21 others, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local authorities.
The Ukrainian Red Cross said the attacks also damaged buildings in Sumy, including an educational and medical facility.
The death toll from Russian attacks on Ukraine on Sunday has risen to six, including three people in Sumy, two others in Donetsk and one more in Kherson, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local officials.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed control of two more villages in eastern Ukraine: Malynivka in the Zaporizhia region and Mayak in the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian drone attacks wounded two people in Russia’s Kursk region, and another person in the city of Kamianka-Dniprovska in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, which Moscow partially occupies, according to the Russian state TASS news agency.
Another Ukrainian drone hit a transformer substation in Kreminna, in Russian-occupied Luhansk, setting it on fire, TASS reported.
Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry said its air defence units destroyed 11 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russian territory as well as the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the Black Sea.
Russian officials also said Ukrainian forces had launched a drone attack on a training centre at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday evening, adding that “no critical” damage was recorded. This comes a day after the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said that it had heard hundreds of rounds of small arms fire late on Saturday at the plant.
Weapons
United States President Donald Trump said Washington would be sending “billions” of dollars in military equipment, including Patriot air defence systems and other missiles to Ukraine, in a deal that would be paid for by NATO members.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, speaking alongside Trump at the White House, said Ukraine would get “massive numbers” of weapons under the deal.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his country would play a “decisive role” in funding the supplies, while the country’s defence minister said Berlin and Washington would decide about sending two US-made Patriot air defence systems to Kyiv within days or weeks.
Earlier on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticised the US support for Ukraine, saying that while “it seems” supplies to Kyiv will now “be paid for by Europe … the fact remains that the supply of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment from the United States continued and continues to Ukraine”.
Politics and diplomacy
Trump also said that if Moscow failed to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in 50 days, he would impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia, including secondary tariffs of 100 percent.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, welcomed Trump’s tougher stance on Russia, but said a 50-day ultimatum was “a very long time if we see that they are killing innocent civilians every day”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that he had spoken to Trump and “thanked him for his readiness to support Ukraine and to continue working together to stop the killings and establish a lasting and just peace”.
The Ukrainian leader also announced a major cabinet shuffle, asking Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko to become the next prime minister, and the incumbent prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, to be the defence minister.
Svyrydenko said Ukraine was facing a “crucial time” and that her priorities would be “strengthening” its economy, expanding domestic support programmes and scaling up weapons production.
US special envoy Keith Kellogg visited Kyiv and held meetings with Zelenskyy and Ukrainian Minister of Defence Rustem Umerov.
Regional security
Former military officers in Sweden could be recalled to military service in case of need up to the age of 70, a government-appointed review suggested, as the country continues to rethink its security approach due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Denmark will donate European-produced satellite equipment to Ukraine to provide “secure and stable satellite-based communications”, the Danish Ministry of Defence said.
Officials from California, New York, Kentucky and 20 other states allege the US administration acted unconstitutionally.
Two dozen states have sued the administration of United States President Donald Trump after the federal government froze $6.8bn in education funding.
On Monday, a group of 23 attorneys general and two governors filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island arguing that the decision to halt funds approved by the US Congress was “contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, and unconstitutional”.
The freeze extended to funding used to support the education of migrant farm workers and their children, recruitment and training of teachers, English proficiency learning, academic enrichment, and after-school and summer programmes.
The administration also froze funding used to support adult literacy and job-readiness skills.
“This is not about Democrat or Republican – these funds were appropriated by Congress for the education of Kentucky’s children, and it’s my job to ensure we get them,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said in a statement.
“In Kentucky, $96 million in federal education funds are at risk. Our kids and our future depend on a strong education, and these funds are essential to making sure our kids succeed.”
While the government was legally required to release the money to the states by July 1, the federal Department of Education notified states on June 30 that it would not be issuing grant awards under those programmes by that deadline. It cited the change in administration as its reason.
Schools in Republican-led areas are particularly affected by the freeze in federal education grants.
Ninety-one of the 100 school districts that receive the most money per student from four frozen grant programmes are in Republican congressional districts, according to an analysis from New America, a left-leaning think tank. New America’s analysis used funding levels reported in 2022 in 46 states.
Republican officials have been among the educators criticising the grant freeze.
“I deeply believe in fiscal responsibility, which means evaluating the use of funds and seeking out efficiencies, but also means being responsible – releasing funds already approved by Congress and signed by President Trump,” said Georgia schools superintendent Richard Woods, an elected Republican.
“In Georgia, we’re getting ready to start the school year, so I call on federal funds to be released so we can ensure the success of our students.”
The Office of Management and Budget said the pause is part of a review to ensure funds are not used to “subsidize a radical leftwing agenda”.
Donald Trump’s threats of severe tariffs on Russia is leading the front pages of Tuesday’s papers, with the US president pushing for Moscow to accept a deal to end the war within 50 days. The Financial Times says Trump has told Russia to expect 100% “secondary” tariffs if the Ukraine war does not end within the timeframe, with a picture of Nato chief Mark Rutte meeting the US president at the White House.
The Guardian has also headlined with Trump and Putin, writing that the US president has issued a “warning” to the Kremlin after agreeing a deal with Nato to arm Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ben Stokes and Shoaib Bashir are pictured embracing after a win for England in the third test against India.
“Trump threatens China over Russian oil”, reads the headline of the Daily Telegraph, after the US president used the threat of “secondary tariffs” to try to leverage an end to the war in Ukraine. A photo of Constance Marten posing on a beach features on the front page, after the 38-year-old woman was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence following the death of her newborn daughter in 2023.
Marten and her partner Mark Gordon were also splashed across the front page of the Daily Mail, with the paper revealing that the couple’s first four children were all taken into care. Gordon has previously been convicted of rape in the United States, where he served 20 years in prison.
“Arrogance of monster parents,” says the Metro, which also leads on the guilty verdicts of Marten and Gordon. It comes more than two years after the decomposed body of their baby, Victoria, had been discovered in a shopping bag in Brighton.
Marten is pictured again on the front page of the Times, this time holding a young child. The main story is about a government scheme offering £3,750 to people switching to an electric vehicle, with the subsidies tiered to incentivise purchasing the most “environmentally sustainable” models.
A photo of Chelsea hoisting the Club World Cup trophy features on the front page of the Daily Star, with Trump pictured getting caught up in the celebrations.
Gregg Wallace and John Torode are the feature story on the Sun, pictured with the headline “End of Torode?”. Torode has said he is subject to an allegation of using racist language, upheld as part of an inquiry into separate allegations against co-host Gregg Wallace. The paper says the BBC and production company Banijay had asked Torode to leave MasterChef and claim he had mental health issues following the allegation, but he refused. On Monday night, BBC insiders distanced themselves from that claim. Torode wrote on Instagram that the allegation was that he made the remarks in 2018 or 2019 and that he had apologised immediately afterwards. He added that he had “no recollection” of any of it, and that he “did not believe that it happened.”
“Sacked Gregg: I won’t be the last”, declares the Daily Mirror, after the former MasterChef presenter said the BBC had failed to protect him. Wallace said he was “deeply sorry for any distress caused” after the BBC published a report upholding 45 of the 83 claims about his behaviour.
The Daily Express has led on Rachel Reeves’ upcoming budget, warning of higher taxes for middle-class workers.
Hadiza Yahaya, now in her late 70s, folds her shawl over her shoulders as she leans forward on the mat in her compound in Jakara, Kano State, northwestern Nigeria. Her voice is heavy not from age, but from the weight of the past that even time hasn’t been able to lift.
“I was pregnant with Mukhtar,” she recalled, narrating it as if it happened yesterday. “I had just picked up dry pepper and baobab leaves in Rimi Market when the shouting started, and then people were running.” It was the kind of shouting that didn’t come from mouths. It came from something deeper: from the chest, from the soul, and from the feet running helter-skelter.
Hajiya Hadiza, now in her late 70s, recalls the day Maitatsine’s violence erupted in Kano, while sitting in her home. Credit: Aliyu/HumAngle
December 18, 1980.
A date seared into the Kano skin as though with a branding iron. That day, the city turned into a battlefield. It was the day Maitatsine declared war not with a foreign army but with an ideology brewed in the underbelly of forgotten slums.
The then leading newspaper in Northern Nigeria, New Nigerian, reported that four police units had been sent that day to Shahauci playground, an open space where Maitatsine and his fanatics gathered, to arrest some of his followers for preaching without permits. Upon arrival, the police were ambushed suddenly from all directions, by people wielding hatchets, bows and arrows, swords, clubs, daggers and other similar dangerous weapons.
Gaskiya Ta Fi Kobo, a local Hausa newspaper, documented that on the first day of the violence on Thursday evening, “[N]ine police vehicles were burnt and four officers were killed. Traffic in Kano on Friday and Saturday was at a standstill as people feared being caught up in the chaos. Even health workers were not able to go to the hospital, and everywhere in the Kano city and Sabon Gari area were deserted.”
Front page of the “New Nigerian” newspaper from December 22, 1980, reporting on the Maitatsine violence in Kano with a rising death toll.
The first wave of the violence lasted with about a hundred casualties, most of them civilians, and the second one came after the police invaded Maitatsine’s home in Yan Awaki within the Kano Municipal. The violence lasted 11 days, with a conservative number of 4,000 people killed, including Maitatsine himself and excluding the military and the police. At the end of the violence, Maitatsine was fatally wounded, and his followers took him from the Koki through Jakara-Goron Dutse and then settled at Rijiyar Zaki, where they buried his corpse before it was dug by the authorities to confirm his identity.
Maitatsine was a fiery Cameroonian-born Islamic preacher who settled in Kano and rose to infamy for his extremist sermons that denounced modernity and mainstream Islamic scholars. Preaching a puritanical and violent form of Islam, he attracted thousands of disaffected youths, mostly almajirai, whom he radicalised into a cult-like movement. In December 1980, his ideology culminated in one of the deadliest urban uprisings in Nigerian history, leaving over 4,000 people dead in an 11-day conflict that devastated Kano city.
More than four decades after his death, the ghost of Maitatsine still haunts Northern Nigeria, not through his body, but through the unresolved crises that birthed him. The 1980 uprising in Kano was not an isolated explosion of religious fanaticism; it was the violent manifestation of deeper structural failures. Today, the same volatile conditions persist, allowing Maitatsine’s ideology to live on in new, more dangerous forms. His fire may have died, but the kindling remains all around.
“When they were passing through Jakara to their final destination, we could all hear them shouting that Mallam, meaning Maitatsine, had ordered that no one should turn back. They were chanting ‘ban da waiwaye’ (don’t turn back) until they passed carrying him,” Hadiza recalled.
The old woman said that the 11 days of Maitatsine violence were the most horrific conflict she had ever witnessed. “Not even Boko Haram is at this scale,” she said. “Imagine thousands of people being killed within that short period, not with bombs or guns, but with arrows, swords and even sticks.”
The whisper before the fire
His name was Muhammad Marwa, but people no longer remember him by that name. Instead, they used the terrifying title: “Maitatsine”—which in the Hausa language means “He who curses”, because Maitatsine cursed a lot. He cursed watches. He cursed bicycles. He cursed radios and televisions. He cursed all innovations brought by modernity and considered them satanic and ungodly.
“Allah ta tsine (God has cursed),” he would say in his poor Hausa, corrupted by his Fulfulde accent. He was said to be slim, tall, and dark in complexion. He was one-eyed and the other had a squint. He memorised the Qur’an by heart, and he felt it was his duty to fight the then predominant Yan Darika – The Sufis.
And so, the man who once came from Cameroon to Kano in 1955 and settled in Gwammaja before moving to Yan Awaki as a seeker of knowledge transformed into the leader of a bloody rebellion in a city that welcomed him, gave him home, and family; a preacher turned executioner who washed his hands not in water—but in blood.
The Kano Central Mosque, a symbol of religious authority and tradition, stood silent during the 1980 Maitatsine uprising. Credit: Aliyu/HumAngle
In 1962, his provocative preaching, which centred around condemning modern inventions like radios, wristwatches, and medicine as satanic, and rejecting all scholarly interpretations of the Qur’an, and declaring anyone who owned such items or disagreed with him as unbelievers, was reported to the authorities and that led to his arrest, imprisonment and subsequent deportation back to Cameroon, but he somehow sneaked in and came back just a year later after the then emir, Muhammad Sanusi I, who sentenced him was dethroned under Abubakar Rimi, the then governor of Kano State.
However, between 1966 and 1975, Maitatsine, along with other preachers, were accused and found to be dangerous preachers, and again sent to prison in Makurdi, Benue State, under the then military governor of Kano state, Audu Bako. Maitatsine was detained for “showering abuses and making slanderous and irresponsible speeches capable of inciting violence against the Governor, the Emir, and other important personalities in Kano State,” according to the police report seen by HumAngle.
His return was more prepared and strategic. His hostile dealings with his neighbours in Yan Awaki, and the subsequent killing of his son Tijjani, also known as Kan’ana, allegedly by his friends at a beer parlour, led Maitatsine to become more violent and paranoid.
His followers started carrying arms to the preaching ground in Shahuci, and their speeches turned more violent in 1979. People living around his house in Yan Awaki reported many cases of assaults and encroachment of private and public properties, including stalls and two public schools.
Within those years, people accused Maitatsine of abducting and brainwashing their children, who were mostly youths and boys in their early teens and some even 11 years old.
“Children would be found missing and after thorough investigation, they would be found at Maitatsine’s residence, and if asked to come back home, they would refuse,” said Mallam Sani from Dambazau, 65, born just a few meters from Yan Awaki.
Towards the end of November 1980, barely two months before the full carnage, Maitatsine and his fanatics resisted military and police arrests with crude weapons and apocalyptic beliefs. And when the full violence erupted in December, the carnage was Biblical: bodies littered the streets and smoke blackened the sky.
When the Nigerian military finally entered, Maitatsine was fatally wounded and finally lay dead; his corpse was consumed in the violence he started.
But a preacher does not die with his body. He dies only when his memory is disarmed.
Maitatsine’s movement, though crushed in Kano, metastasised like cancer. In 1982, violence erupted in Maiduguri. In 1984, Jimeta. In 1985, Gombe. His ghost wandered from slum to slum, whispering to other angry souls. It was in Borno that his ideology found its most dangerous inheritor.
Muhammad Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau, decades later, would echo Maitatsine’s rejection of modernity. Boko Haram, a phrase meaning “Western education is forbidden,” was not new. It was a reincarnation of Maitatsine’s sermons—only this time, with guns and suicides.
The corpse of Maitatsine after it was dug and displayed at the headquarters of Police, Kano Command in 1981.
A problem that never ends
But perhaps this is not merely the story of a man. It is the story of a city that simmered too long in the fires of poverty and abandonment until it exploded, and no lesson was ever learnt.
“Most [Maitatsine] converts were illiterates and semi-literates drawn from the neighbouring West African States of Niger and Mali as well as from Chad and Cameroons,” wrote Nasir B. Zahraddeen in 1983 after investigating the violence then as a reporter with Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and BBC Africa Service.
His followers were not just from Kano or Nigerian states. The report of the post-violence tribunal counted the non-Nigerian fanatical followers of Maitatsine as captured by the police as 162 Nigeriens, 16 Chadians, 4 Camerounians, and one from Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta. The tribunal then explained that among the major causes of the disturbance was Maitatsine’s ability to gather a “build-up of contingent of armed students styled as almajirai” who were willing to submit themselves for a spiritual exchange.
Forty-five years later, in 2025, the bomb is still ticking.
In fact, little has changed in substance, even if the language has evolved. Where the 1980 Commission of Inquiry cited “uncontrolled influx of almajirai and itinerant preachers” as enabling Maitatsine’s rise, today’s government statements often use phrases like “out-of-school children” or “street begging”. The language has shifted, but the boys are still there.
The numbers tell their own story. In 1980, estimates of almajiri children in Kano hovered around a few hundred thousand, a demographic largely ignored by official schooling statistics. By 2025, despite billions in federal interventions, presidential declarations, and donor-funded pilot programs, UNICEF estimates suggest that over 1.2 million almajiri children still exist across Northern Nigeria, with Kano State contributing the largest share.
Back in 1980, Maitatsine found in the almajirai a ready-made army: poor, disenfranchised, and already indoctrinated into a harsh, rigid version of Islam that mistrusted Western institutions. Today, extremist groups from Boko Haram to ISWAP continue to target similar children for recruitment. The methods may be more sophisticated, the messaging encrypted in apps and videos rather than shouted in slums—but the vulnerability remains the same.
What is perhaps more damning is that the almajiri system has survived not because it is effective, but because it is politically untouchable. Every administration since the Maitatsine crisis has promised to reform it. The Obasanjo-era UBE policy, Jonathan’s 2012 “Almajiri Education Programme” (which built over 100 almajiri model schools, most now defunct or converted into conventional schools), and even Buhari’s rhetoric on integrating almajiri into formal education have all fallen short.
In Kano, the 2020 lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic briefly forced some almajiri children off the streets, but no sustainable reintegration followed. As of 2025, the streets of Kofar Wambai, Sabon Gari, and Rijiyar Lemo still echo with the chants of barefoot children asking for money and leftover food in the name of survival and vulnerable to another Maitatsine recruiting them.
What makes this persistence even more tragic is that the Maitatsine violence was not merely a religious uprising; it was a cry from the margins. A desperate reaction from a class of people who felt abandoned by both their leaders and their society. Yet today, the same conditions remain: urban poverty, unregulated religious authority, a failing educational alternative, and a generation of children condemned to life on the fringes.
The unhealed wound
The 1980 Maitatsine uprising brought to light a deep-seated and dangerous sectarian divide within Kano’s Islamic community, as meticulously documented by the official tribunal report. It observed that “followers of some of the movements were not accommodating enough to respect the religious views held by others outside their groups.” This wasn’t merely an academic theological disagreement; it represented an ingrained culture of mutual suspicion, open verbal attacks, and theological exclusivity.
This hostile environment created incredibly fertile ground for the eruption of violence. The emergence of various fringe sects, such as the Yan Izala (Salafists), Qadiriyya, Tijaniyya, and later, the radical followers of Maitatsine himself, was characterised by their explicit refusal to coexist peacefully with other interpretations of Islam. The core of their dispute was not about the nuanced interpretation of sacred texts, but rather a fierce contention over legitimacy: who truly spoke for God, and who, by extension, did not.
“We have failed to build a culture of religious pluralism, even within Islam,” said Mallam Muhammad Mustapha, an Islamic scholar in Kano. “When every group believes it alone holds the truth, conflict is not just probable, it is inevitable.”
Now, in 2025, while the specific ideological fault lines may have subtly shifted, the underlying spirit of intolerance stubbornly persists. Kano remains a vibrant yet precarious mosaic of competing Islamic ideologies. Major groups like the Izala (Salafiyya), various Sufi orders (Qadiriyya, Tijaniyya), and the growing Shi’a community, alongside newer reformist groups, all coexist in a state of uneasy tension that often leads to accusations of blasphemy and verbal attacks.
In January 2006, a fiery sermon by a preacher in the Dorayi area sparked clashes between Izala adherents and Tijaniyya youths. The preacher had called the Sufi practice of invoking saints “shirk” (polytheism), prompting retaliation. Police made several arrests, but the underlying tension remained.
The advent of social media has dramatically amplified these divisions. Preachers now leverage platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook to publicly denounce one another, often employing highly inflammatory rhetoric that further polarises their followers. Disturbingly, in some Friday sermons, the “other” is no longer just deemed incorrect; they are explicitly labelled a “kafir” (infidel), “zindiq” (heretic), or “mushrik” (polytheist), designations that can have severe real-world consequences and incite violence.
In a viral video from late 2024, a social media extremist preacher named Muhammad Muhammad condemned other preachers as “unbelievers for practising or participating in democratic activities.” This has created counterattacks, especially on social media, leading to banning him from preaching and closing his mosque, but he later continued with an even more volatile narrative.
Just as in 1980, this pervasive theological balkanization continues to render any form of constructive, peaceful dialogue nearly impossible. This fragmented religious landscape makes the youth particularly susceptible to extremist interpretations, especially when those interpretations offer tempting promises of spiritual superiority, divine favour, or even political revenge against perceived enemies.
“We are seeing young people radicalised not in the bush, but in their bedrooms with a smartphone,” said Babagana Abubakar, a counter-extremism specialist. “The new battlefield is digital, and the consequences are real and bloody.”
Urban migration and youth unemployment
The tribunal report astutely highlighted the “lack of job opportunities in rural areas” as a significant driver, forcing countless young men to flood into bustling urban centres like Kano. However, upon arrival, many of these migrants found themselves unemployed, idle, and consequently, highly vulnerable.
Today, the urban-rural imbalance has grown even starker and more pronounced, with an over 75 per cent poverty rate in 2025. Northern Nigeria continues to grapple with one of the highest youth unemployment rates on the entire continent. The situation is exacerbated by escalating terrorism and insecurity in rural areas, which have rendered traditional farmlands unsafe and unproductive, further accelerating the desperate exodus of young men from villages to cities already groaning under immense population pressure.
In March 2024, a mass displacement from Katsina’s rural areas, triggered by repeated attacks by armed groups, led to many youths arriving in Kano. The state’s emergency response was overwhelmed. By May, reports surfaced of rising petty theft such as phone snatching and gang formation around the Rijiyar Lemo axis.
The dreams that initially brought these youths to Kano, often fueled by hopes of economic betterment, frequently die quickly in the face of harsh urban realities. In this profound vacuum of opportunity and hope, charismatic preachers, criminal gangs, and extremist recruiters readily step in, offering a sense of purpose, belonging, and often, a means of survival, albeit through illicit or violent avenues.
What Maitatsine so effectively exploited in 1980, a vast pool of idle, frustrated, and disaffected youth, is even more available and primed for recruitment today, compounded by the profound disillusionment of an entire generation that feels increasingly cut off from the promises of both the state and established religious institutions.
“Hopelessness is a currency in which insurgents and extremist ideologues trade,” observed Abubakar. “And in cities like Kano, the market is flooded.”
Decline of traditional authority
Finally, the tribunal explicitly cited the “emasculation of the authority of traditional rulers” as a core contributing factor to the crisis. In the pre-colonial era, and even during the early colonial period, emirs and district heads held not only considerable political sway but also significant traditional authority. They possessed the power to approve or restrict preachers, mediate and settle theological disputes, and enforce religious norms within their domains. This system provided a crucial layer of regulation and oversight for religious activities.
However, by 1980, this traditional authority had been severely stripped or heavily politicised, largely due to colonial restructuring and subsequent military governance. Maitatsine shrewdly thrived in this resultant regulatory vacuum, establishing his base in Yan Awaki with little to no meaningful interference until his movement had grown dangerously large and violent. In 2025, the situation has, if anything, worsened considerably. Traditional rulers largely remain ceremonial figures, frequently sidelined in critical political and religious decision-making processes.
In 2017, the Emir of Kano’s attempt to find solutions to the family crises through women’s empowerment was largely resisted from the pulpits. Another incident of how an ISWAP operative found a home in Kano and bought properties in 2021, bypassing the local traditional leaders, has further exposed how traditional institutions have become largely toothless in reigning in any excesses.
Preachers now gain influence and a following primarily through digital platforms like TikTok rather than through the approval or vetting of traditional authorities symbolised by the turban. There is a marked absence of any centralised, legitimate authority capable of effectively vetting emerging ideologies or reining in dangerous fringe movements. When an individual begins to gather a cult-like following in a remote corner of the city or through online channels, there is often no coherent or effective system in place to monitor their activities or intervene before a threat materialises.
“The Emir once had the power to license a sermon. Now, the algorithm does,” said Faruku Muhammad, Wakilin Arewa, a traditional leader. “And the algorithm does not ask who you might hurt.”
This pronounced decentralisation of religious authority is inherently dangerous, not because centralisation is flawless, but because the absence of effective checks and balances allows dangerous, divisive, and extremist ideas to proliferate and spread largely unchallenged, mirroring the very conditions that allowed Maitatsine to flourish in 1980.
Gone – not with the matchbox
Hajiya Hadiza’s son, Mukhtar, now 44 and works as a tailor, was born in the same week Maitatsine died. “Sometimes,” he says, “it feels like my mother gave birth to me in violence, and I’ve always been remembered with Maitatsine’s violence.”
Maitatsine’s carefully reserved ash, after his corpse was burnt, now sits at the police laboratory in Kano. He is gone, but left behind some bitter memories.
If Maitatsine was merely the manifest symptom of a deeper malaise, then the insidious disease itself—characterised by profound social alienation, relentless doctrinal conflict, and pervasive state neglect—has, regrettably, never been truly cured.
The preacher of fire may be gone. But the matchboxes remain.
Displaced Palestinians and several Israeli politicians alike slam the Israeli government’s plans for what it calls a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Critics say forcing Palestinians into the zone would amount to a “concentration camp.”
England’s magnificent win came six years to the day since Eoin Morgan’s white-ball side memorably lifted the World Cup at the same venue, with Jofra Archer bowling the hosts to victory against New Zealand in the super over.
Stokes said he felt Archer – in his first Test match since 2021 – would produce another special performance on day five against India.
“He cracked the game open with those two wickets,” said Stokes of Archer’s dismissals of Rishabh Pant and Washington Sundar in the morning session.
“I just had this gut feeling something was going to happen, with it being Jofra’s first time back.
“It’s been awesome to have him back out there, every time he gets announced you hear the whole ground erupt. When he turns it on, the speeds come up on the screen, and the feeling in the game just changes.”
With two Tests remaining, the on-field tensions during the Lord’s encounter have added a little extra heat to the series, which will motivate both sets of players.
India seamer Mohammed Siraj was fined 15% of his match fee and given one demerit point by the match referee for his celebration after dismissing Ben Duckett on day four, which followed an altercation between Zak Crawley and Shubman Gill the preceding evening.
On the final day, there was a collision between Ravindra Jadeja and Brydon Carse in the middle of the pitch as the batter set off for a run, with Stokes eventually separating the pair.
“It’s a massive series, emotions are going,” added Stokes. “All 22 players are playing for their country and I don’t think anyone in the either dressing room is going to be complaining about what was said.
“A bit of niggle out in the middle gets over-egged from people watching.
“I’m all for it. I don’t think it went over the line whatsoever. It adds to the theatre.”
Uprooted by the ongoing violent conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), locals in the Bahunde chiefdom of North Kivu are lamenting the dire humanitarian conditions they have faced since their return. The Congolese, mainly from the Bishange and Luzirantaka areas, previously fled their homes when they were caught between the DRC army and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.
In a letter to the global humanitarian community, the returnee crisis committee highlighted how food insecurity affects thousands of households across the Bishange and Bitonga zones. They report that since returning to their homes, residents have received no assistance, despite losing everything during violent clashes in their communities.
“The food and non-feeding needs are enormous because we lost everything during the armed violence in our zone,” the returnees stated in the letter. “We call on humanitarian organisations to take this question seriously because we are already recording cases of serious malnutrition due to a lack of food. We call on international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to save lives.”
The locals returned to their villages after the area was occupied by M23 rebels, following intense clashes with government forces.
The fighting devastating the DRC has lingered for decades, with M23 rebels, among others, waging a war against the government. The conflict is deeply rooted in long-standing ethnic, political, and economic tensions in the country’s eastern region. After defecting from the Congolese army, a Tutsi-dominated rebel group founded the M23 in 2012. The group accused the DRC government of refusing to adhere to the 2009 peace agreement, particularly regarding protecting Tutsi communities and political inclusion. They were defeated in 2013 after capturing Goma, a bustling city in the country, forcing them to flee to Rwanda and Uganda.
The group re-emerged in 2021 and launched a new offensive in 2022, rapidly gaining territory in North and South Kivu provinces. By early 2025, M23 had seized major cities like Goma and Bukavu, displacing millions and triggering a humanitarian crisis. The DRC government, the United Nations, and several Western powers accused Rwanda of providing direct military support to M23, including troops, weapons, and logistical aid. A 2025 UN report, for instance, concluded that Rwanda exercised “command and control” over M23 operations, with thousands of Rwandan troops active in eastern Congo.
Rwanda, however, denied these allegations, claiming its actions are defensive and aimed at neutralising the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel group in the DRC linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Analysts argue that Rwanda’s motivations go beyond security concerns, pointing to its interest in controlling mineral-rich territories in eastern Congo. The resurgence of M23 is widely seen as a proxy strategy by Kigali to assert regional influence and secure access to valuable resources like gold, coltan, and cobalt. The conflict remains unresolved despite international pressure and sanctions, with peace efforts complicated by deep mistrust and competing regional interests.
Amidst the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, residents of the Bahunde chiefdom in North Kivu face dire humanitarian conditions after returning to their homes.
The returnee crisis committee reports severe food insecurity, with no aid provided despite extensive losses during the clashes between the DRC army and M23 rebels.
The M23, a Tutsi-dominated rebel group founded in 2012, accused the DRC government of neglecting a peace agreement, leading to prolonged conflict. After a temporary defeat in 2013, the group re-emerged in 2021, seizing major cities by 2025 and causing massive displacement. Accusations of Rwandan support for M23 have been met with denials, though analysts suggest Rwanda seeks to control mineral-rich territories in eastern Congo.
The complex situation remains unresolved with ongoing international efforts hindered by regional rivalries and mistrust.
President Zelenskyy taps economy minister to lead government in most significant reshuffle since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has recommended Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko to become prime minister in a significant political shake-up for the war-scarred country.
The announcement on Monday could herald a wider reshuffle in the government, three and a half years into the Russian invasion.
“I have proposed that Yuliia Svyrydenko lead the government of Ukraine and significantly renew its work,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “I look forward to the presentation of the new government’s action plan in the near future.”
The recommendation is part of what he called “a transformation of the executive branch” of government in Ukraine.
The two discussed “concrete measures to boost Ukraine’s economic potential, expand support programs for Ukrainians and scale up our domestic weapons production”, Zelenskyy said.
Svyrydenko, 39, gained prominence this year during fraught negotiations around a rare minerals deal with the United States that nearly derailed ties between Kyiv and its most important military ally.
If the change is approved, she would replace Denys Shmyhal, who became prime minister in 2020.
“The government needs a change because people are exhausted,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economy minister who worked with Svyrydenko.
Mylovanov, who now heads the Kyiv School of Economics, said the changes would likely bring “a sort of freshness” after more than three years of war.
Zelenskyy is also considering naming Defence Minister Rustem Umerov as Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, he said at a news conference last week.
Zelenskyy met Umerov over the weekend, after which he said, “Ukraine needs more positive dynamics in relations with the United States and at the same time new steps in managing the defence sector of our state.”
Svyrydenko, who is also a deputy prime minister, was appointed to manage Ukraine’s struggling economy months before the Kremlin launched its full-scale assault in February 2022.
Her appointment will require approval by parliament, which has largely united around Zelenskyy since the invasion and is unlikely to vote against the president.
India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for decades, and Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control, a de facto border that cuts Kashmir into two, are caught in the middle of it all.
Why do India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir? And what do Kashmiris want? #AJStartHere with Sandra Gathmann explains.
This episode features:
Sumantra Bose – Professor of international and comparative politics, Krea University
Hafsa Kanjwal – Associate professor of South Asian studies, Lafayette College
Amitabh Mattoo – Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Special thanks to Alia Chughtai, senior producer at AJLabs, for helping and advising the Start Here team with this episode.
A BBC documentary about Gaza breached editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose the narrator was the son of a Hamas official, the corporation’s review has found.
BBC director general Tim Davie commissioned the review into Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, after it was pulled from iPlayer in February when the boy’s family connections emerged.
The review found that the independent production company, Hoyo Films, bears most of the responsibility for the failure. But it also said the BBC bore some responsibility and should have done more in its oversight.
The BBC said the programme should not have been signed off, and it was taking appropriate action on accountability.
The review found three members of the independent production company knew of the father’s position as deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza, but no-one within the BBC knew this prior to broadcast
However, the report criticised the BBC team for not being “sufficiently proactive” with initial editorial checks, and for a “lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions” ahead of broadcast.
The review also said it had seen no evidence “to support the suggestion that the narrator’s father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way”.
It added the narrator’s scripted contribution to the programme did not constitute a breach of due impartiality.
However, the report concluded that the use of the child narrator for this programme was “not appropriate” in the circumstances.
Speaking after its publication, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness told Radio 4’s The World at One: “We are owning where we have made mistakes, finding out what went wrong, acting on the findings, and we’ve said we’re sorry.”
She said the BBC figures overseeing the documentary should have known about the boy’s position before transmission, “because their questions should have been answered by the independent production company”.
The BBC said it was taking a number of steps to prevent a similar breach being repeated:
The corporation will create a new leadership role in news documentaries and current affairs. The new director role on the BBC News board, which will be advertised in the next week, will have strategic leadership of its long form output across the news division
New editorial guidance will be issued that careful consideration must be given to the use of narrators in the area of contested current affairs programmes, and that the narrator will be subject to a higher level of scrutiny
A new “first gate” process will be introduced, meaning “no high-risk long form programmes can be formally commissioned until all potential compliance considerations are considered and listed”
The review found the production company did not intentionally mislead the BBC, adding: “They made a mistake, and should have informed the BBC about it. The BBC does also bear some responsibility for this failure.”
Hoyo Films said it took the reviews findings “extremely seriously” and said it “apologises for the mistake that resulted in a breach of the editorial guidelines”.
The company said it was pleased the report had found there was “no evidence of inappropriate influence on the content of the documentary from any third party”.
It said it welcomed the report’s recommendations and “hope they will improve processes and prevent similar problems in the future”.
Hoyo Films said it would work closely with the BBC to explore the possibility of using some material for re-edited and re-versioned shorter films for archive on iPlayer.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie apologised, saying the report “identifies a significant failing in relation to accuracy”.
“We will now take action on two fronts,” he continued. “Fair, clear and appropriate actions to ensure proper accountability and the immediate implementation of steps to prevent such errors being repeated.”
The corporation did not name any individuals facing disciplinary action.
Watch: ‘No problem with leadership’ at BBC says news chief Deborah Turness
A financial examination as part of the review found that a fee of £795 was was paid for the narrator, paid to his adult sister, an amount which was not “outside the range of what might be reasonable in the context”.
The boy also received a second-hand mobile phone and gift card for a computer game. Together with the fee, that amounted to a total value of £1,817.
The review also found there was “significant resource strain within both the production company and the BBC” ahead of the programme’s broadcast.
Following the review’s publication, when asked if she still had confidence in Davie, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “It’s not for the government to say who should and shouldn’t work at the BBC.
“My job is to make sure that we uphold the highest standards and that the public and parliament can have confidence in the BBC.
“I think, given the recent events, that has been called into question, but the BBC in recent weeks has made big strides to try to reset that relationship with the public, and show that they have grip on the very very serious issues.”
Nandy said she had met Davie and BBC chair Samir Shah last week. She added: “It is important that the BBC has acknowledged that there have been a series of catastrophic failures over recent weeks.”
Watch: ‘Why has no one resigned?’ – Lisa Nandy on BBC “failures”
The review was conducted by Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews.
The team who worked on the review identified and considered 5,000 documents from a 10-month production period, as well as 150 hours of material filmed during production, to inform Mr Johnson’s conclusions, the BBC said.
The BBC Board said: “Nothing is more important than trust and transparency in our journalism. We welcome the actions the Executive are taking to avoid this failing being repeated in the future.”
But the campaign Against Antisemitism launched a scathing attack on the BBC after the report was published, saying its recommendations were “frankly insulting”.
“The report says nothing we didn’t already know: paying licence fee money to a Hamas family was bad,” the CAA said. “The report yields no new insight, and almost reads like it’s trying to exonerate the BBC.”
More than 40 Jewish television executives, including former BBC content chief Danny Cohen and JK Rowling’s agent Neil Blair, previously wrote to the BBC with questions about editorial failings surrounding the film.
Separately, 500 media figures including Gary Lineker, Anita Rani, Riz Ahmed and Miriam Margolyes signed an open letter in February in support of the film.
Dame Melanie Dawes, CEO of broadcast regulator Ofcom, said the BBC had been slow to get a grip on recent scandals such as the Gaza documentary as well as the broadcast of Bob Vylan’s controversial set at Glastonbury.
Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said there was a “real risk” recent events could lead to “loss of confidence” in the broadcaster, adding: “It’s very frustrating that the BBC has had some own goals in this area.”
