Finance

The young victims, two of whom remain under the rubble, range in age from seven months to 12 years old.

An Israeli strike has killed nearly the entire family of a Khan Younis doctor while she was at work, Gaza health officials said.

The attack hit the home of Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician at the southern city’s Nasser Hospital, on Friday, setting it ablaze and killing nine of her 10 children, according to the head of the hospital’s paediatrics department, Ahmad al-Farra.

Al-Najjar’s husband is severely wounded, and the couple’s only surviving child, 11-year-old Adam, is in critical condition, Gaza’s Government Media Office said in a statement.

The dead children, two of whom remain under the rubble, range in age from seven months to 12 years old, the media office added.

The attack “encapsulates the ongoing genocide faced by the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said the office. “It is a full-fledged war crime under all international laws and conventions.”

‘New phase of genocide’

The UN’s special rapporteur for the Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, slammed the attack as part of a “sadistic pattern” of a “new phase of genocide” facing Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

Two doctors go to work to assist others.Nine of their kids are killed by an Israeli missile targeting their home. Only surviving child, in critical conditions.

Targeting families in the still-standing buildings: distinguishable sadistic pattern of the new phase of the genocide. https://t.co/6tlylARKK5

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 24, 2025

Hamas said it followed a routine of Israel “deliberately targeting … medical personnel, civilians and their families in an attempt to break their will”.

The Israeli military said it had struck suspected fighters operating from a structure next to its forces in an area where civilians had been evacuated. “The claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review,” the military added.

On Monday, Israel issued forced evacuation orders for Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, warning of an “unprecedented attack”. There has been heavy, deadly bombardment in the area daily.

The al-Najjar children were among dozens killed in Israel’s attacks on Friday and Saturday.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the bodies of 79 people killed in Israeli attacks were brought to hospitals between Friday and midday Saturday. That count does not include facilities in the north of the enclave that are inaccessible, it said.

The ministry puts the overall death toll in Gaza since October 2023 at 53,901, with 122,593 injured.

In Gaza, the sound of drones can be heard everywhere.

An analysis by Al Jazeera’s digital investigations team, Sanad, has revealed that Israel is repurposing commercial drones to use as weapons of war in the Strip.

And as drones become ever more accessible, the line between their civilian use and their military use is becoming increasingly blurred.

Major power outage hits the prominent film festival on its closing day and impacts 160,000 homes in the area.

French police were investigating a possible arson attack as being the main cause for a power outage which hit the Alpes-Maritimes region in southern France, including Cannes which is hosting its world-famous annual film festival.

“We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately,” a spokesperson for the French national gendarmerie said on Saturday, adding that no arrests had been made at this stage.

The local authority for the Alpes-Maritimes region had said earlier on Saturday that the western part of the area, which includes Cannes, was suffering from a major electricity outage and that grid operator RTE France was working on restoring power.

The outage, which affected 160,000 homes, according to RTE and regional officials, started shortly after 10am local time (08:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Police sources said the outage was caused by an overnight fire, probably an arson attack, at a high-voltage substation in the village of Tanneron.

Traffic lights were knocked out and businesses closed on the main shopping street of the Alpes-Maritimes holiday destination.

Separate power outages swept across the Iberian Peninsula and parts of southern France on Monday, disrupting critical infrastructure and airport operations. Officials denied foul play.

While Spain and Portugal suffered blackouts last month, the French Basque Country saw brief power outages with interruptions lasting only a few minutes, according to the French electricity transmission network.

The latest outage came just hours before the 78th Cannes Film Festival is due to close on Saturday evening with an award ceremony at the Palais des Festivals.

Despite the power cut, festival organisers said switching to an alternative electricity power supply enabled them to “maintain the events and screenings planned for today in normal conditions, including the closing ceremony”.

After a politically charged two weeks, a jury led by French actor Juliette Binoche is expected to announce the winners among 22 films competing for the Palme d’Or for best film.

This year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza and United States President Donald Trump were the biggest talking points at the festival. More than 900 actors and filmmakers signed an open letter denouncing the genocide in Gaza, according to the organisers.

Cristiano Ronaldo is in discussions to play at FIFA’s Club World Cup where Lionel Messi currently headlines the event.

Cristiano Ronaldo is in “discussions” to play at FIFA’s inaugural Club World Cup this summer, according to the president of the sport’s global governing body.

Gianni Infantino says the former Manchester United and Real Madrid forward might play in the tournament, which is being staged in the United States in June, because of a unique transfer window.

Ronaldo’s Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr did not qualify for the tournament, but Infantino suggested that the Portugal star could switch to one of the 32 teams participating in the tournament.

“Cristiano Ronaldo might play in the Club World Cup,” Infantino told online streamer IShowSpeed, whose YouTube channel has more than 39 million subscribers. “There are discussions with some clubs, so if any club is watching and is interested in hiring Ronaldo for the Club World Cup, who knows? Still a few weeks’ time, will be fun.”

FIFA confirmed on Wednesday that last-minute transfer signings are open to all teams going to the tournament, which fuelled more speculation that one of them will try to sign the 40-year-old Ronaldo on a short-term deal, potentially a loan.

Such a move would be unprecedented in modern football, though it could appeal to FIFA by boosting the profile and ticket sales of an inaugural tournament being played in 11 US cities.

A transfer for Ronaldo would also reunite him and Lionel Messi in the same competition for the first time since the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Last October, FIFA invited Messi’s Inter Miami to enter the tournament in the slot that was expected to be reserved for the host nation’s champions. Inter Miami were eliminated in the MLS Cup playoffs.

Speculative reports have linked Ronaldo to the one Saudi club that qualified, Al Hilal, the Brazilian club Palmeiras and Wydad of Morocco, even though that club is currently banned by FIFA from registering new signings.

Transfers can be made from June 1-10 and again from June 27 to July 3, according to exceptional rules FIFA approved in October.

“The objective is to encourage clubs and players whose contracts are expiring to find an appropriate solution to facilitate the players’ participation,” FIFA said in Wednesday’s statement.

Fake stories of a coup d’etat in the West African nation of Ivory Coast surfaced this week amid mounting tensions over the upcoming October general elections.

Several accounts on social media sites, including Facebook and X, posted videos of huge crowds on streets with burning buildings, which they claimed were from the country’s commercial capital, Abidjan.

However, no violence was reported by security forces or any other government authorities in the city this week. Abidjan residents also denied the claims on social media.

On Thursday, the country’s National Agency for Information Systems Security of Ivory Coast (ANSSI) denied the rumours.

In a statement published on local media sites, the agency said: “Publications currently circulating on the X network claim that a coup d’etat has taken place in Cote d’Ivoire [Ivory Coast] … This claim is completely unfounded. It is the result of a deliberate and coordinated disinformation campaign.”

The rumours come just weeks after popular opposition politician Tidjane Thiam was barred from running for office after his eligibility was challenged in court over a technicality relating to his citizenship status. Thiam is appealing the ruling and claims the ban is political.

Ivory Coast, Africa’s cocoa powerhouse, has a long history of election violence, with one episode a decade ago spiralling into armed conflict that resulted in thousands of deaths.

Fears that President Alassane Ouattara might run for a fourth term have added to the tensions this time. Although the country has a two-term limit for presidents, a constitutional amendment in 2016 reset the clock on his terms, the president’s supporters argue, allowing him to run for a third five-year term in 2020. That same argument could also see him on the ballot papers this October, despite what experts say is widespread disillusionment with the political establishment in the country.

Here’s what we know about the current political situation in the country:

How did the coup rumours start?

Videos showing hundreds of people demonstrating in the streets and setting fires to shops and malls started appearing on social media sites on Wednesday this week. French is the official language in Ivory Coast, but most of the posts and blogs with images purporting to be from were from Abidjan and claiming that a coup d’etat was in progress were written in English.

Some posts also claimed that the country’s army chief of staff, Lassina Doumbia, had been assassinated and that President Ouattara was missing. These claims were untrue and have been denied by the office of the president. Credible media outlets, including Ivorian state media and private news media, did not report the alleged violence.

It is unclear how the rumours that President Ouattara was missing emerged. On Thursday, he chaired a routine cabinet meeting in the capital. He also attended a ceremony commemorating the revered former president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, alongside Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe.

Why are there political tensions in the country?

The upcoming general elections on October 25 are at the root of current political tensions in the country.

Elections have in the past been violent: During the October 2010 general election, former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to hand over power to Ouattara, who was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission.

Tense political negotiations failed, and the situation eventually spiralled into armed civil war, with Ouattara’s forces, backed by French troops, besieging Gbagbo’s national army. France is the former colonial power in Ivory Coast, and Ouattara has close ties to Paris.

Some 3,000 people were killed in the violence. Gbagbo’s capture on April 11, 2011, marked the end of the conflict. He was later tried and acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in 2019.

That painful history has spurred fears that this year’s polls could also turn violent, as several opposition candidates, including Gbagbo, have been barred from running, mainly due to past convictions. In 2018, the former president was sentenced in absentia to a 20-year jail term over the looting of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) during the country’s post-election crisis.

Last December, the governing Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party nominated Ouattara for a fourth term as president. So far, Ouattara has refused to say whether he intends to run, triggering concerns among Ivorians, many of whom feel the president has outstayed his welcome. Analysts see the party’s nomination as setting the stage for his eventual candidature, however.

Analysts also say there is widespread sympathy for the young military leaders who seized power in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, and who have maintained a hostile stance towards France, unlike Ouattara.

What is the popular view of Ouattara?

He has been praised for overseeing rapid economic stability in the last decade and a half, which has made the country the regional economic hub.

Ouattara is also credited with bringing some level of political peace to the country. In 2023, he welcomed back Gbagbo, who had been living in Brussels since his 2021 ICC acquittal. Since then, election campaigns have not been as inflamed as they were in the 2000s when Gbagbo played on ethnic sentiments to incite opposition to Ouattara, whose father was originally from Burkina Faso.

However, Ouattara’s critics accuse him of fighting to hold onto power unconstitutionally. Some also accuse him of coercing state institutions into railroading his political opponents, including in the latest case involving Thiam.

His closeness with France, which is increasingly viewed as arrogant and neo-colonialistic, particularly by younger people across Francophone West Africa, has not won the president any favour from the country’s significant under-35 population.

Who is Tidjane Thiam, and why has he been barred from the elections?

Thiam, 62, is a prominent politician and businessman in Ivorian political circles. He is a nephew of the revered Houphouet-Boigny and was the first Ivorian to pass the entrance exam to France’s prestigious Polytechnique engineering school. He returned from France to serve as a minister of planning and development from 1998 until 1999, when a coup d’etat collapsed the civilian government, and the army took control of the country.

Thiam declined a cabinet position offered by the military government and left the country. He went on to take high-profile positions, first as the chief executive of the UK insurance group, Prudential, and then as head of global investment bank Credit Suisse. A corporate espionage scandal at the bank led to his resignation in 2020 after a colleague accused Thiam of spying on him. Thiam was cleared of any involvement.

After returning to Ivory Coast in 2022, Thiam re-entered politics and rejoined the Democratic Party (PDCI), the former governing party which held power from independence in 1960 until the 1999 coup d’etat, and which is now the major opposition party.

In December 2023, the party’s delegates overwhelmingly voted for Thiam to be the next leader following the death of former head and ex-President Henri Konan Bedie. At the time, PDCI officials said Thiam represented a breath of fresh air for the country’s politics, and many young people appeared ready to back him as the next president.

But his ambitions came to a halt on April 22 when a judge ordered his name be struck off the list of contenders because Thiam had taken French nationality in 1987 and automatically lost Ivorian citizenship according to the country’s laws.

Although the politician renounced his French nationality in February this year, the court ruled he had not done so before registering himself on the electoral roll in 2022, and was thus ineligible to be the party leader, a presidential candidate, or even a voter.

Thiam and his lawyers argued that the law is inconsistent. Ivorian footballers on the country’s national team, Thiam pointed out in one interview with reporters, are mostly also French nationals, but face no restrictions on holding Ivorian nationality. “The bottom line is, I was born Ivorian,” Thiam told the BBC in an interview, accusing the government of trying to block what he said is his party’s likely success in this year’s elections.

Will Thiam be able to stand and who else is standing?

It is unclear if Thiam can legally make his way back onto the candidate list, but he is trying.

In May, he resigned as PDCI president and was almost immediately re-elected with 99 percent of the vote. He has yet to reveal if he will attempt to re-register as a candidate, but has promised to keep up the fight.

Thiam has pledged to attract industrial investment to the country as he once did as minister, and to remove the country from the France-backed CFA currency economy that comprises West and Central African countries formerly colonised by France, and sees their currencies pegged to the euro.

Meanwhile, other strong candidates include Pascal Affi N’Guessan, 67, a former prime minister and close ally of Gbagbo, who will represent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

Simone Gbagbo, the former first lady who is now divorced from Gbagbo, will also run, as the nominee for the Movement of the Capable Generations. She was sentenced to a 20-year term in 2015 on charges of undermining state security, but benefitted from an amnesty law to foster national reconciliation later in 2018.

Sebastia, occupied West Bank – Israel calls it an archaeological project to highlight Jewish heritage and create a new Israeli national park. Palestinians see it as further evidence of Israel’s plans to annex an ancient town and erase Palestinian history in an area that tells the 5,000-year-old shared story of the peoples who have lived in this land.

Far-right, pro-settler Israeli government ministers were in Sebastia on May 12 as part of a delegation to mark the looming seizure of the town’s archaeological park, one of the largest and most important of 6,000 sites in the West Bank.

Ultranationalist Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, himself a resident of an illegal West Bank settlement, hailed the beginning of Israeli excavation at the site and the coming creation of “Samaria National Park”, which will focus on the area’s Jewish history.

Palestinians say that will come along with an attempt to paint over their ties to the land. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities called the excavations “preparation for Sebastia’s annexation and isolation from its surroundings”.

Israeli politicians refer to Sebastia as Samaria, or Shomron in Hebrew, and say it was the capital of the Biblical Kingdom of Israel nearly three millennia ago.

But the archaeological site includes the ruins of a Byzantine basilica, a Roman forum and amphitheatre, and the Crusader-era Church of St John, which was rebuilt into a mosque – and is believed to be the site of the tomb of John the Baptist, known in the Quran as Prophet Yahya.

Sebastia’s archaeological park, once a tourism hotspot and still a pilgrimage site for Christians, is being considered for inclusion on UNESCO’s world heritage list, subject to an application being finalised by Palestinian officials.

‘River of blood’

Sebastia mayor Mohammed Azim and town residents have long been warning of Israel’s intention to “Judaise” Sebastia and turn it into an Israeli-only tourism site.

Alarm intensified after the municipality received a land seizure order to construct an installation for “military purposes” at the summit of an ancient hilltop in the area last July.

Speaking to Al Jazeera in his office overlooking the increasingly deserted old town, Azim said a “river of blood will flow into the village” if construction of the barracks begins.

“The military is aiming to make life unbearable for the residents here, so they eventually surrender to reality and leave – just like those who have been displaced in Jenin and Tulkarem,” Azim said, referring to the more than 40,000 Palestinians displaced by Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank this year.

“Now, soldiers enter the village daily – and with the clear intention of killing,” Azim added. “We will resist construction – peacefully, of course. The landowners will not give up their land.”

The mayor called for condemnation of intensifying military violence in the village and the targeting of children, notably the army’s fatal shooting of 14-year-old Ahmad Jazar in January.

For its part, the Israeli state argues that the village of Sebastia will not be affected by the archaeological work, as it lies outside the boundaries of the proposed national park.

But Sebastia Archaeological Museum curator and lifelong resident, Walaa Ghazzal, says the plans are an escalation in Israel’s plans to eventually expel residents and business owners and prevent Palestinians from accessing the town, its ruins, and the sprawling hills and olive fields around it.

Ghazzal told Al Jazeera that “residents are afraid of the future”, especially those near the ruins.

“The situation is very dangerous,” she said. “Soon, they will prevent us from going to the archaeological site.

“In my opinion, we have only months before we are told to leave our homes,” Ghazzal added. “We are seeing the future in Gaza and in the camps [in the West Bank]. They are trying to erase us.”

‘Biblical heritage’

Israeli ministers and settler politicians are using rhetoric about protecting Jewish Biblical heritage to disguise their long-held desire to annex Sebastia, Azim said.

Eliyahu was joined in Sebastia by Minister of Environmental Protection Idit Silman and Yossi Dagan, chairman of the Shomron Regional Council, which controls 35 illegal West Bank settlements.

Silman has hailed the scheme and told Israeli media, “historical justice is being done”, accusing Palestinians of attempting to “erase” Jewish heritage.

The Israeli government has long been clear that Sebastia, which most historians agree was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel for less than 200 years, will be taken over and transformed into the centrepiece of Israeli tourism in the West Bank.

In May 2023, the Israeli government approved a 30 million shekel (more than $8m) scheme to restore the park and establish a tourism centre, new access roads, and an expanded military presence. The four million shekel ($1.2m) regeneration of a disused Hijaz railway station about two miles from Sebastia, last operational in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, has also been announced.

“The archeological excavations are designed to expose the antiquities of the site and make the ancient city accessible throughout all its periods: from the beginning of the settlement in the 8th century BCE during the ancient Kingdom of Israel, through the Hellenistic city, the magnificent Roman city built by King Herod [called “Sebastos” after Emperor Augustus], to the Byzantine period when a church was built at the site,” said the office of Israeli Minister of Heritage Eliyahu.

Erasing Palestinian identity

Ghazzal said Sebastia’s ruins exhibit a “distinct local culture” in a geographic region which has “always been known as Palestine”. She said the remains emphasise the religious and cultural importance of the town to conquering empires, and its multifaith inhabitants’ peaceful coexistence for centuries.

In the Palestinian submission to UNESCO, it is noted that the present town of Sebastia still preserves “the ancient name [and] is located on the eastern part of the Roman city, indicating a strong element of cultural continuity”.

But for those focused on the planned Israeli national park, it’s only Jewish history that matters.

Responding to a query from Al Jazeera, Eliyahu’s office said that Sebastia was “first and foremost a Jewish heritage site, where archaeological remains from the Kingdom of Israel period were found”.

“It is important to emphasise that even if we were to dig at the site to the depth of the Earth’s core, not even a grain of historical evidence of ancient Palestinian settlement would be found at the site,” Eliyahu’s office added.

Yossi Dagan, who lives in neighbouring Shavei Shomron, has long advocated for the takeover of Sebastia and emphasises its prominence in Biblical history. He told Israeli media at the archaeological site: “When you dig here, you touch the Bible with your own hands.”

But Ghazzal said that the Israeli government’s treatment of the Biblical stories in the Old Testament as historical reality is designed to relegate the claims of Palestinians to have lived on the land for thousands of years, and ignores the Palestinian people’s ancient ties to their land.

“You can’t base your claim to the land on religion – civilisations are about the people who develop their identity, their works and monuments – even their language,” Ghazzal said.

“Israel wants to kill the stories from our past and replace them with poison; it is a crime against our history,” Ghazzal added. “When they demolish our monuments, remove families who keep the history alive, who will speak after that – and carry our story for the next generation?”

Ghost town

Ahmad Kayed, a 59-year-old Sebastia villager and leading activist, told Al Jazeera the ruins will not be “taken without a fight”, and demonstrations are being instigated.

He said Israel is “planning something big” in Sebastia and referenced new iron blockades being erected on roads encircling the town.

It is already extremely unsafe for Sebastia residents to visit the archaeological park because of settler attacks and near-daily military invasions, he said. But once a military barracks is established, it will be permanently off limits.

“They are working step by step to get their hands on Sebastia and keep us suffering all the time so people will leave,” Kayed said, referring to the at least 40 families that have left the town since October 7, 2023.

“We are in the second Nakba and Sebastia is under siege,” he added. “But Sebastia is strong, we know how to face them because we have done it before.”

He pointed out that residents rose up to thwart Israel’s plans to take Sebastia in the late 1970s, and they did so again to halt settlers pumping sewage onto agricultural land in 2013. Two years later, residents’ protests and sit-ins blocked the construction of a new access road for settlers, which Eliyahu’s office justified as necessary for the “hundreds of thousands of Israelis who will want to come, learn, and experience the Jewish heritage” of Sebastia.

But Kayed admits times have changed, and violence from the military today is unlike anything he has experienced in his decades of activism.

“When we decide what to do, we will be smart, and we will demonstrate in new ways, and everyone in Sebastia will follow us,” he added.

He was also gravely concerned that if excavations took place, Israelis would desecrate archaeological findings that contradicted their claim to the land, with so much still to be uncovered if Palestinian-led digs were not blocked.

The municipality still hopes UNESCO will provide the village protection and add the ruins to its World Heritage list. The mayor also hopes the archaeological park will join 56 other locations on UNESCO’s register of significant sites considered to be “in danger”.

Businesses near the archaeological site say they have lost more than three-quarters of their custom since October 7.

Samer Sha’er, owner of a coffee shop directly next to the park and Sebastia’s imposing Roman columns, said a military outpost would be devastating for businesses.

“There will be daily confrontations, constant military presence, and no sense of security,” he said. “No one will want to come and sit here while the army is stationed nearby – neither shop owners nor visitors will be able to stay.”

Once holy land coveted by prophets and conquering emperors, Sebastia has been reduced to a ghost town – haunted by the glory of its history, which has also made it a target for annexation by the ultranationalist Israeli government.

Kayed looked visibly moved as he described his youth playing on the hills of the archaeological park, and a lifetime spent trying to save his home.

He was evidently aggrieved that the town had not acted more quickly to unify against the creeping threat of the military barracks or eventual annexation. But it seems all those concerned, including the town’s mayor, are not sure what is coming next – or when.

“This land means everything to me,” Kayed added. “I have spent all my childhood, all my life going to the park.

“They will confiscate my land [to build the barracks]. I planted olive trees there with my mother, it is very painful to lose them, Kayed said. “The village will never give up on the ruins – this is our history, our life. We will fight until the end.”

Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka – On a beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, Krishnan Anjan Jeevarani laid out some of her family’s favourite food items on a banana leaf. She placed a samosa, lollipops and a large bottle of Pepsi next to flowers and incense sticks in front of a framed photo.

Jeevarani was one of thousands of Tamils who gathered on May 18 to mark 16 years since the end of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war in Mullivaikkal, the site of the final battle between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group that fought for a Tamil homeland.

As on previous anniversaries, Tamils this year lit candles in remembrance of their loved ones and held a moment of silence. Dressed in black, people paid their respects before a memorial fire and ate kanji, the gruel consumed by civilians when they were trapped in Mullivaikkal amid acute food shortages.

This year’s commemorations were the first to take place under the new government helmed by leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected president in September and has prompted hopes of possible justice and answers for the Tamil community.

The Tamil community alleges that a genocide of civilians took place during the war’s final stages, estimating that nearly 170,000 people were killed by government forces. UN estimates put the figure at 40,000.

Dissanayake, the leader of the Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which itself led violent uprisings against the Sri Lankan government in the 1970s and 1980s, has emphasised “national unity” and its aim to wipe out racism. He made several promises to Tamil voters before the elections last year, including the withdrawal from military-occupied territory in Tamil heartlands and the release of political prisoners.

But eight months after he was elected, those commitments are now being tested – and while it’s still early days for his administration, many in the Tamil community say what they’ve seen so far is mixed, with some progress, but also disappointments.

No ‘climate of fear’ but no ‘real change’ either

In March 2009, Jeevarani lost several members of her family, including her parents, her sister and three-year-old daughter when Sri Lankan forces shelled the tents in which they were sheltering, near Mullivaikkal.

“We had just cooked and eaten and we were happy,” she said. “When the shell fell it was like we had woken up from a dream.”

Jeevarani, now 36, buried all her family members in a bunker and left the area, her movements dictated by shelling until she reached Mullivaikkal. In May 2009, she and the surviving members of her family entered army-controlled territory.

Now, 16 years later, as she and other Sri Lankan Tamils commemorated their lost family members, most said their memorials had gone largely unobstructed, although there were reports of police disrupting one event in the eastern part of the country.

This was a contrast from previous years of state crackdowns on such commemorative events.

“There isn’t that climate of fear which existed during the two Rajapaksa regimes,” said Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, referring to former presidents Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brothers who between them ruled Sri Lanka for 13 out of 17 years between 2005 and 2022.

It was under Mahinda Rajapaksa that the Sri Lankan army carried out the final, bloody assaults that ended the war in 2009, amid allegations of human rights abuses.

“But has anything changed substantively [under Dissanayake]? Not yet,” said Satkunanathan.

Satkunanathan cited the government’s continued use of Sri Lanka’s controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and a gazette issued on March 28 to seize land in Mullivaikkal as problematic examples of manifesto promises being overturned in an evident lack of transparency.

Despite his pre-election promises, Dissnayake’s government earlier this month denounced Tamil claims of genocide as “a false narrative”. On May 19, one day after the Tamil commemorations, Dissanayake also attended a “War Heroes” celebration of the Sri Lankan armed forces as the chief guest, while the Ministry of Defence announced the promotion of a number of military and navy personnel. In his speech, Dissanayake stated that “grief knows no ethnicity”, suggesting a reconciliatory stance, while also paying tribute to the “fallen heroes” of the army who “we forever honour in our hearts.”

‘We walked over dead bodies’

Kathiravelu Sooriyakumari, a 60-year-old retired principal, said casualties in Mullivaikkal in 2009 were so extreme that “we even had to walk over dead bodies.”

She said government forces had used white phosphorus during the civil war, a claim Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly denied. Although not explicitly banned, many legal scholars interpret international law as prohibiting the use of white phosphorus – an incendiary chemical that can burn the skin down to the bone – in densely populated areas.

Sooriyakumari’s husband, Rasenthiram, died during an attack near Mullivaikkal while trying to protect others.

“He was sending everyone to the bunker. When he had sent everyone and was about to come himself, a shell hit a tree and then bounced off and hit him, and he died,” she said. Although his internal organs were coming out, “he raised his head and looked around at all of us, to see we were safe.”

Her son was just seven months old. “He has never seen his father’s face,” she said.

The war left many households like Sooriyakumari’s without breadwinners. They have experienced even more acute food shortage following Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis and the subsequent rise in the cost of living.

“If we starve, will anyone come and check on us?” said 63-year-old Manoharan Kalimuthu, whose son died in Mullivaikkal after leaving a bunker to relieve himself and being hit by a shell. “If they [children who died in the final stages of the war] were here, they would’ve looked after us.”

Kalimuthu said she did not think the new government would deliver justice to Tamils, saying, “We can believe it only when we see it.”

‘No accountability’

Sooriyakumari also said she did not believe anything would change under the new administration.

“There’s been a lot of talk but no action. No foundations have been laid, so how can we believe them?” she told Al Jazeera. “So many Sinhalese people these days have understood our pain and suffering and are supporting us … but the government is against us.”

She also expressed suspicion of Dissanayake’s JVP party and its history of violence, saying she and the wider Tamil community “were scared of the JVP before”. The party had backed Rajapaksa’s government when the army crushed the Tamil separatist movement.

Satkunanathan said the JVP’s track record showed “they supported the Rajapaksas, they were pro-war, they were anti-devolution, anti-international community, were all anti-UN, all of which they viewed as conspiring against Sri Lanka.”

She conceded that the party was seeking to show that it had “evolved to a more progressive position but their action is falling short of rhetoric”.

Although Dissanayake’s government has announced plans to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, it has rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for war crimes, much like previous governments. Before the presidential elections, Dissanayake said he would not seek to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.

“On accountability for wartime violations, they have not moved at all,” Satkunanathan told Al Jazeera, citing the government’s refusal to engage with the UN-initiated Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP), which was set up to collect evidence of potential war crimes. “I would love them to prove me wrong.”

The government has also repeatedly changed its stance on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which promises devolved powers to Tamil-majority areas in the north and east. Before the presidential election, Dissanayake said he supported its implementation in meetings with Tamil parties, but the government has not outlined a clear plan for this, with the JVP’s general secretary dismissing it as unnecessary shortly after the presidential election.

‘We need answers’

“Six months since coming into office, there’s no indication of the new government’s plan or intention to address the most urgent grievances of the Tamils affected by the war,” Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said. “And the truth about the forcibly disappeared features high on the agenda of those in the North and the East.”

Still, some, like 48-year-old Krishnapillai Sothilakshmi, remain hopeful. Sothilakshmi’s husband Senthivel was forcibly disappeared in 2008. She said she believed the new government would give her answers.

A 2017 report by Amnesty International [PDF] estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 people have disappeared in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s. Although Sri Lanka established an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in 2017, there has been no clear progress since.

“We need answers. Are they alive or not? We want to know,” Sothilakshmi said.

But for Jeevarani, weeping on the beach as she looked at a photograph of her three-year-old daughter Nila, it’s too late for any hope. Palm trees are growing over her family’s grave, and she is no longer even able to pinpoint the exact spot where they were buried.

“If someone is sick, this government or that government can say they’ll cure them,” she said. “But no government can bring back the dead, can they?”

Police say four victims face life-threatening injuries, suggest suspect may have have suffered a ‘psychological emergency’.

Authorities in Germany have arrested a woman after at least 17 people were injured in a knife attack at the main train station in the northern city of Hamburg.

At least four of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries in Friday evening’s mass stabbing incident, which took place in the middle of the city’s evening rush hour, emergency services said.

The suspect, a 39-year-old German woman, was arrested at the scene by law enforcement, a Hamburg police spokesperson said.

Officers “approached her, and the woman allowed herself to be arrested without resistance”, spokesman Florian Abbenseth told journalists in comments carried by public broadcaster ARD.

“We have no evidence so far that the woman may have had a political motive,” Abbenseth said.

“Rather, we have information, based on which we now want to investigate, whether she may have been experiencing a psychological emergency.”

The suspect was thought to have “acted alone”, Hamburg police said in a post on X.

Four of the victims have suffered life-threatening injuries, Hamburg’s fire department spokesman said, revising down an earlier figure.

The suspect was thought to have turned “against passengers” at the station, a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told the AFP news agency.

Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.

Four platforms at the station were closed while investigations were ongoing, and railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was “deeply shocked” by the attack. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also expressed his shock in a call with the mayor of Hamburg following the attack.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks that have put security at the top of the agenda.

The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld. The investigation into that attack had been handed over to federal prosecutors following the arrest of the suspect, who is from Syria.

Bangkok, Thailand – Over several years in the mid-1960s, the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple in northeast Thailand were picked clean by local looters.

Possibly hundreds of centuries-old statues that were long buried beneath the soft, verdant grounds around the temple were stolen.

To this day, all the known artefacts from the pillaging spree, collectively known as the Prakhon Chai hoard, sit scattered thousands of miles away in museums and collections across the United States, Europe and Australia.

In a matter of weeks, though, the first of those statues will begin their journey home to Thailand.

The acquisitions committee of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum recommended the release last year of four bronze statues from the hoard, which had been held in its collection since the late 1960s.

San Francisco city’s Asian Art Commission, which manages the museum, then approved the proposal on April 22, officially setting the pieces free.

Some six decades after the late British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford is suspected of spiriting the statues out of the country, they are expected to arrive back in Thailand within a month or two.

“We are the righteous owners,” Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Office of National Museums at Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, told Al Jazeera.

“It is something that our ancestors … have made, and it should be exhibited here to show the civilisation and the belief of the people,” said Disapong, who also serves on Thailand’s Committee for the Repatriation of Stolen Artefacts.

The imminent return of the statues is the latest victory in Thailand’s quest to reclaim its pilfered heritage.

Their homecoming also exemplifies the efforts of countries across the world to retrieve pieces of their own stolen history that still sit in display cases and in the vaults of some of the West’s top museums.

From Thai temples to the Acropolis in Athens

Latchford, a high-profile Asian art dealer who came to settle in Bangkok and lived there until his death in 2020 at 88 years of age, is believed to have earned a fortune from auction houses, private collectors and museums around the world who acquired his smuggled ancient artefacts from Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia.

In 2021, Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak, agreed to return her late father’s private collection of more than 100 artefacts, valued at more than $50m, to Cambodia.

Though never convicted during his lifetime, Latchford was charged with falsifying shipping records, wire fraud and a host of other crimes related to antiquities smuggling by a US federal grand jury in 2019.

He died the following year, before the case against him could go to trial.

In 2023 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return 16 pieces tied to Latchford’s smuggling network to Cambodia and Thailand.

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has also previously returned pieces to Thailand – two intricately carved stone lintels taken from a pair of temples dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries, in 2021.

While Thailand and Cambodia have recently fared relatively well in efforts to reclaim their looted heritage from US museum collections, Greece has not had such luck with the British Museum in London.

Perhaps no case of looted antiquities has grabbed more news headlines than that of the so-called “Elgin Marbles”.

The 2,500-year-old friezes, known also as the Parthenon Marbles, were hacked off the iconic Acropolis in Athens in the early 1800s by agents of Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Greece at that time.

Elgin claimed he took the marbles with the permission of the Ottomans and then sold them in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they remain.

Greece has been demanding the return of the artefacts since the country’s declaration of independence in 1832 and sent an official request to the museum in 1983, according to the nongovernmental Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.

“Despite all these efforts, the British government has not deviated from its positions over the years, legally considering the Parthenon marbles to belong to Britain. They have even passed laws to prevent the return of cultural artefacts,” the institute said.

‘Colonialism is still alive and well’

Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit campaigning against the illicit trade of ancient art and artefacts, said that “colonialism is still alive and well in parts of the art world”.

“There is a mistaken assumption by some institutions that they are better carers, owners, custodians of these cultural objects,” Davis told Al Jazeera.

But Davis, who has worked on Cambodia’s repatriation claims with US museums, says the “custodians” defence has long been debunked.

“These antiquities were cared for by [their] communities for centuries, in some cases for millennia, before there was … a market demand for them, leading to their looting and trafficking, but we still do see resistance,” she said.

Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, has heard museums make all sorts of claims to defend retaining pieces that should be returned to their rightful homelands.

Excuses from museums include claiming that they are not sure where pieces originated from; that contested items were acquired before laws banned their smuggling; that domestic laws block their repatriation, or that the ancient pieces deserve a more global audience than they would receive in their home country.

Still, none of those arguments should keep a stolen piece from coming home, Gordon said.

“If we believe the object is stolen and the country of origin wishes for it to come home, then the artefact should be returned,” he said.

Old attitudes have started breaking down though, and more looted artefacts are starting to find their way back to their origins.

“There’s definitely a growing trend toward doing the right thing in this area, and … I hope that more museums follow the Asian Art Museum’s example. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go,” Davis said.

Much of the progress, Davis believes, is down to growing media coverage of stolen antiquities and public awareness of the problem in the West, which has placed mounting pressure on museums to do the right thing.

In 2022, the popular US comedy show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver dedicated a whole episode to the topic. As Oliver said, if you go to Greece and visit the Acropolis you might notice “some odd details”, such as sections missing from sculptures – which are now in Britain.

“Honestly, if you are ever looking for a missing artefact, nine times out of 10 it’s in the British Museum,” Oliver quips.

Gordon also believes a generational shift in thinking is at play among those who once trafficked in the cultural heritage of other countries.

“For example, the children of many collectors, once they are aware of the facts of how the artefacts were removed from the country of origin, want their parents to return them,” he said.

Proof of the past

The four bronze statues the San Francisco museum will soon be returning to Thailand date back to the 7th and 9th centuries.

Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong said that period places them squarely in the Dvaravati civilisation, which dominated northeast Thailand, before the height of the Khmer empire that would build the towering spires of Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia and come to conquer much of the surrounding region centuries later.

Three of the slender, mottled figures, one nearly a metre tall (3.2 feet), depict Bodhisattva – Buddhist adherents on the path to nirvana – and the other the Buddha himself in a wide, flowing robe.

Tanongsak, who brought the four pieces in the San Francisco collection to the attention of Thailand’s stolen artefacts repatriation committee in 2017, said they and the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when much of the region was still Hindu.

“The fact that we do not have any Prakhon Chai bronzes on display anywhere [in Thailand], in the national museum or local museums whatsoever, it means we do not have any evidence of the Buddhist history of that period at all, and that’s strange,” he said.

The Fine Arts Department first wrote to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum about the statues’ illicit provenance in 2019, but started to make progress on having them returned only when the US Department of Homeland Security got involved on Thailand’s behalf.

Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, said staff could find no evidence that the statues had been trafficked in their own records.

But they were convinced they had been looted and smuggled out of Thailand – and of Latchford’s involvement – once Homeland Security provided proof, with the help of Thai researchers.

“Once that evidence was presented and they heard it, their feeling was the appropriate place for these would be back in Thailand,” Mintz said of the museum’s staff and acquisition committee.

‘Pull back the curtain’

The San Francisco Asian Art Museum went a step further when it finally resolved to return the four statues to Thailand.

It also staged a special exhibit around the pieces to highlight the very questions the experience had raised regarding the theft of antiquities.

The exhibition – Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities – ran in San Francisco from November to March.

“One of our goals was to try to indicate to the visiting public to the museum how important it is to look historically at where works of art have come from,” Mintz said.

“To pull back the curtain a bit, to say, these things do exist within American collections and now is the time to address challenges that emerge from past collecting practice,” he said.

Mintz says Homeland Security has asked the Asian Art Museum to look into the provenance of at least another 10 pieces in its collection that likely came from Thailand.

Tess Davis, of the Antiquities Coalition campaign group, said the exhibition was a very unusual, and welcome, move for a museum in the process of giving up looted artefacts.

In Thailand, Disapong and Tanongsak say the Asian Art Museum’s decision to recognise Thailand’s rightful claim to the statues could also help them start bringing the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard home, including 14 more known pieces in other museums around the US, and at least a half-dozen scattered across Europe and Australia.

“It is indeed a good example, because once we can show the world that the Prakhon Chai bronzes were all exported from Thailand illegally, then probably, hopefully some other museums will see that all the Prakhon Chai bronzes they have must be returned to Thailand as well,” Tanongsak said.

There are several other artefacts besides the Prakhon Chai hoard that Thailand is also looking to repatriate from collections around the world, he said.

Davis said the repatriation of stolen antiquities is still being treated by too many with collections as an obstacle when it should be seen, as the Asian Art Museum has, as an opportunity.

“It’s an opportunity to educate the public,” Davis said.

“It’s an opportunity to build bridges with Southeast Asia,” she added, “and I hope other institutions follow suit.”

Investors interpreted Trump’s comments to mean Nippon Steel had received his approval for its takeover of US Steel.

United States President Donald Trump has expressed support for Nippon Steel’s $14.9bn bid for US Steel, saying their “planned partnership” would create jobs and help the US economy.

Shares of US Steel soared 21 percent on Friday after Trump’s comments as investors interpreted the president’s post on Truth Social to mean Nippon Steel had received his approval for its long-planned takeover, the last major hurdle for the deal.

“This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the US Economy,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Friday.

This week, the Reuters news agency reported that Nippon Steel has said if the merger is approved, it would invest $14bn into US Steel’s operations, including up to $4bn in a new steel mill.

Trump added that the bulk of that investment would occur in the next 14 months and said he would hold a rally at US Steel in Pittsburgh next Friday.

Nippon Steel said it applauded Trump’s decision to approve the “partnership”. The White House did not immediately reply to questions about the announcement.

US Steel share price kept rising after hours and reached $54, just shy of Nippon Steel’s $55-per-share offer price made in late 2023. While no details were released, investors expressed confidence that terms will be similar to those agreed in 2023. Investors said that eventually US Steel will no longer be publicly traded and they will receive a cash payout for their shares.

Politically controversial

The deal has been one of the most highly anticipated on Wall Street after it morphed into the political arena with fears that foreign ownership would mean job losses in Pennsylvania, where US Steel is based. It factored into last year’s election that saw Trump return to the White House.

Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, who also called the deal a “partnership”, on Friday said it was a “huge victory for America and the US Steel Corporation”, that will protect more than 11,000 Pennsylvania jobs and support the creation of at least 14,000 more.

The last pieces of the deal came together surprisingly fast. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), which reviews deals for national security risks, told the White House this week that the security risks can be addressed, Reuters reported, moving the final decision to Trump’s desk.

Following an earlier CFIUS-led review, former President Joe Biden blocked the deal in January on national security grounds.

The companies sued, arguing they did not receive a fair review process. The Biden White House rejected that view.

The companies argued Biden opposed the deal when he was running for re-election to win support from the United Steelworkers union in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The Biden administration had defended the review as essential to protecting security, infrastructure and supply chains.

Trump also initially opposed the deal, arguing the company must be owned and operated in the US.

The United Steelworkers were against the deal as recently as Thursday when they urged Trump to block the deal despite the $14bn investment pledge from Trump.

For investors, including prominent hedge funds, the news spells relief after more than a year of waiting for a resolution. “There were huge high-fives all around today,” one recent investor said, adding, “We understood Donald Trump’s psyche and we played it to our advantage here.”

Investors said Trump appears to have won ground after the pledge for new investments was increased.

“This deal ensures that steelmaking will live on in Pittsburgh for generations,” another investor said.

Kabila, accused of ‘treason’ and ‘war crimes’, denies government accusations of links to M23 rebel group.

Joseph Kabila, former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has attacked the country’s justice system after the Senate voted to lift his immunity, paving the way for him to be prosecuted for alleged treason and war crimes.

Kabila gave a livestreamed speech from an undisclosed location on Friday, a day after losing his immunity over alleged links to the M23 rebel group, saying that the justice system was “an instrument of oppression for a dictatorship desperately trying to survive”.

The 53-year-old, who denies supporting the Rwanda-backed rebels who have seized two major cities in the country’s conflict-battered east, has been in self-imposed exile since 2023.

The former president, who has repeatedly said he was returning from exile to help find a solution to the crisis, accused Kinshasa of taking “arbitrary decisions with disconcerting levity”.

Congo’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to grant the government’s request to lift the lifetime immunity Kabila – leader of the country from 2001 to 2019 – had enjoyed because of his honorific title as “senator for life”.

Justice Minister Constant Mutamba said Kabila’s alleged crimes included “treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity and participation in an insurrectional movement” in the country’s east.

On Friday, Kabila said the DRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were non-negotiable. “As a soldier, I swore to defend my country to the supreme sacrifice … I remain more faithful than ever to this oath,” he said.

Kabila’s return to the DRC could complicate the bid to end the rebellion in the east, which contains vast supplies of critical minerals that United States President Donald Trump’s administration is eager to access.

Washington is pushing for a peace agreement to be signed between the DRC and Rwanda this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, according to Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, cited by news agency Reuters.

Napoli beat Cagliari 2-0 to seal the Serie A title as Champions League hopefuls Inter’s victory at Como is in vain.

Napoli secured the Serie A title in style with a 2-0 home win over Cagliari thanks to goals from Scott McTominay and Romelu Lukaku.

The title race had come down to the wire on Friday, with Napoli holding a one-point advantage over Inter Milan going into the final round of games.

McTominay opened the scoring three minutes before the break with a stunning bicycle kick from Matteo Politano’s cross, sending the home crowd into a frenzy.

Lukaku doubled the lead six minutes after the restart by latching on to a long ball, shrugging off a defender and calmly finishing past Cagliari keeper Alen Sherri.

The rest of the match turned into a celebration at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium as flares and smoke filled the pitch before the final whistle blew and fireworks lit up the Naples sky.

McTominay and Lukaku were the two players Napoli coach Antonio Conte wanted more than any others to help the Naples club reclaim the title they lost to Inter last season.

The former Italian international has now become the first coach to win the Italian championship with three teams, following his victories with Juventus and Inter Milan.

“It happened again, and it’s something wonderful. When we got to the stadium, it was honestly difficult to get in, as I don’t know how many people were there. I had a slight thought, if we let these people down, it’d be something we carried with us for a long time,” he told reporters.

Conte was absent from the touchline for the final match due to suspension, but Napoli completed their task.

“All the credit goes to the boys. Winning in Naples is difficult, these boys are doing it for the second time in two years,” he said. “They are serious boys, you don’t leave in a team that always plays to win.”

Napoli needed only to do the same or better than defending champions Inter in the final round of matches, so Inter’s 2-0 win at 10-man Como was not enough for the Nerazzurri.

Stefan de Vrij and Joaquin Correa netted the goals for Simone Inzaghi’s Inter, who are now left to focus on their Champions League final with Paris Saint-Germain next Saturday.

The results meant Napoli finished Serie A one point ahead of Inter. Had the teams finished level on points, then a playoff would have been required to decide the title.

Lahore Qalanders beat Islamabad United by 95 runs to reach Sunday’s Pakistan Super League final.

Lahore Qalandars qualified for their third Pakistan Super League final in four years after an emphatic 95-run win against defending champion Islamabad United.

Captain Shaheen Shah Afridi grabbed two wickets for three runs in his three overs as Islamabad was routed for 107 in 15.1 overs in reply to Lahore’s imposing 202-8 on Friday.

Islamabad struggled to get going in the chase in the absence of star opener Alex Hales, who missed the crucial eliminator to attend a friend’s wedding in Spain.

Afridi got a wicket with his third ball when he uprooted the middle stump of Mohammad Shahzad for a duck.

Lahore pace bowler Salman Mirza (3-16) took all of his wickets inside the powerplay as Islamabad never recovered after crumbling to 33-4. Mirza bowled league-leading run-getter Sahibzada Farhan for 3.

Pakistan Twenty20 captain Salman Ali Agha top-scored with 33 off 26 balls, and Islamabad skipper Shadab Khan made 26 off 14 balls. Nobody else reached double figures.

Bangladesh leg-spinner Rishad Hossain picked up 3-34 and Afridi bagged the last two wickets to seal the win.

Earlier, Lahore’s faith in rookie opener Mohammad Naeem paid off in the crunch game when he smashed 50 off 25 balls with seven fours and two sixes.

Sri Lankan left-hander Kusal Perera added 61 off 35, and countryman Bhanuka Rajapaksa made a valuable 22. Asif Ali smashed two late sixes to ensure Lahore breached 200.

Lahore won the league in 2022 and 2023 and will meet 2019 winner Quetta Gladiators in the final on Sunday at Lahore.

Known for sweeping black-and-white photography that captured the natural world and marginalised communities, Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado has passed away at age 81.

His death was confirmed on Friday by the nonprofit he and his wife Lelia Deluiz Wanick Salgado founded, the Instituto Terra.

“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of Sebastiao Salgado, our founder, mentor and eternal source of inspiration,” the institute wrote in a statement.

“Sebastiao was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time. Alongside his life partner, Lelia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation and brought to life the belief that environmental restoration is also a profound act of love for humanity.

“His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action.”

Salgado’s upbringing would prove to be the inspiration for some of his work. Born in 1944 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, he saw one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems, the Atlantic Forest, recede from the land he grew up on, as the result of development.

He and his wife spent part of the last decades of their life working to restore the forest and protect it from further threats.

But Salgado was best known for his epic photography, which captured the exploitation of both the environment and people. His pictures were marked by their depth and texture, each black-and-white frame a multilayered world of tension and struggle.

In one recent photography collection, entitled Exodus, he portrayed populations across the world taking on migrations big and small. One shot showed a crowded boat packed with migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Another showed refugees in Zaire balancing buckets and jugs above their heads, as they trekked to retrieve water for their camp.

Salgado himself was no stranger to fleeing hardship. A trained economist, he and his wife left Brazil in 1969, near the start of a nearly two-decade-long military dictatorship.

By 1973, he had begun to dedicate himself to photography full time. After working several years with France-based photography agencies, he joined the cooperative Magnum Photos, where he would become one of its most celebrated artists.

His work would draw him back to Brazil in the late 1980s, where he would embark on one of his most famous projects: photographing the backbreaking conditions at the Serra Pelada gold mine, near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Through his lens, global audiences saw thousands of men climbing rickety wooden ladders out of the crater they were carving. Sweat made their clothes cling to their skin. Heavy bundles were slung over their backs. And the mountainside around them was jagged with the ridges they had chipped away at.

“He had shot the story in his own time, spending his own money,” his agent Neil Burgess wrote in the British Journal of Photography.

Burgess explained that Salgado “spent around four weeks living and working alongside the mass of humanity that had flooded in, hoping to strike it rich” at the gold mine.

“Salgado had used a complex palette of techniques and approaches: landscape, portraiture, still life, decisive moments and general views,” Burgess said in his essay.

“He had captured images in the midst of violence and danger, and others at sensitive moments of quiet and reflection. It was a romantic, narrative work that engaged with its immediacy, but had not a drop of sentimentality. It was astonishing, an epic poem in photographic form.”

When photos from the series were published in The Sunday Times Magazine, Burgess said the reaction was so great that his phone would not stop ringing.

Critics, however, accused Salgado during his career of glamourising poverty, with some calling his style an “aesthetic of misery”.

But Salgado pushed back on that assessment in a 2024 interview with The Guardian. “Why should the poor world be uglier than the rich world? The light here is the same as there. The dignity here is the same as there.”

In 2014, one of his sons, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, partnered with the German filmmaker Wim Wenders to film a documentary about Salgado’s life, called The Salt of the Earth.

One of his last major photography collections was Amazonia, which captured the Amazon rainforest and its people. While some viewers criticised his depiction of Indigenous peoples in the series, Salgado defended his work as a vision of the region’s vitality.

“To show this pristine place, I photograph Amazonia alive, not the dead Amazonia,” he told The Guardian in 2021, after the collection’s release.

As news of Salgado’s death spread on Friday, artists and public figures offered their remembrances of the photographer and his work. Among the mourners was Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, who offered a tribute on social media.

“His discontent with the fact that the world is so unequal and his obstinate talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed always served as a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity,” Lula wrote.

“Salgado did not only use his eyes and his camera to portray people: He also used the fullness of his soul and his heart. For this very reason, his work will continue to be a cry for solidarity. And a reminder that we are all equal in our diversity.”

It was the second time in one day that the FTC pulled out of litigation begun during the Biden administration.

The Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission is abandoning a Biden-era effort to block Microsoft’s purchase of Call of Duty video game maker Activision Blizzard.

In an order issued Thursday, the FTC said it had determined that “the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case.”

It was the second time in one day that the FTC pulled out of litigation begun during the administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Earlier Thursday, the FTC said it was dismissing a lawsuit against PepsiCo that was filed by the Democratic-controlled FTC in January.

Microsoft announced a $69bn acquisition of Activision in January 2022. It was one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history and was designed to boost sales of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, which has lagged in sales behind Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo.

In December 2022, the FTC – then led by Democratic Chairwoman Lina Khan – sued to temporarily block the acquisition, saying it would let Microsoft suppress competitors who want access to Xbox and its subscription content.

In July 2023, the United States District Court in Northern California denied the FTC’s request to pause the acquisition, but the FTC appealed. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court also denied the FTC’s request.

In the meantime, Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision in October 2023 after it won approval from the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog, which had also considered blocking the merger.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, said Thursday in a statement on X that the decision is a victory for video game players and for “common sense in Washington DC”.

“We are grateful to the FTC for today’s announcement,” Smith said.

Political actions

Khan stepped down from the FTC when President Donald Trump took office in January, and Trump fired Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the Trump administration, saying their removal was illegal.

Right now, the FTC is made up of three Republican commissioners, and it’s unclear when the two Democrats on the commission will be replaced. A message seeking comment was left with the FTC.

In the PepsiCo case, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said the Biden-era FTC rushed to authorise a case just three days before Trump’s inauguration. He said on Thursday that the case, which alleged that PepsiCo was violating the law by giving unfair price advantages to Walmart, was a “dubious political stunt”.

But the FTC hasn’t stood in the way of some Biden-era policies. Earlier this month, a rule the FTC announced in December requiring ticket sellers, hotels, vacation rental platforms and others to disclose their fees upfront went into effect.

UN chief Antonio Guterres says Gazans are enduring “the cruelest phase” of the war. He denounced Israel’s blockade, calling the 400 trucks cleared to enter Gaza so far “a teaspoon of aid” when “a flood of assistance is required.”

US President Donald Trump has threatened a 50-percent tariff on all imports from the European Union and 25-percent on Apple products unless iPhones are made in the United States.

The president announced his intentions over social media on Friday.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States.”

The Republican president’s proposal would see higher import taxes on goods from the EU, a longstanding US ally, than from China, a geopolitical rival that had its tariffs cut to 30 percent this month so Washington and Beijing could hold negotiations.

Trump has been upset by the lack of progress in trade talks with the EU, which has proposed mutually cutting tariffs to zero even as the president has publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10-percent tax on most imports.

Trump aides have said the goal of his tariffs was to isolate China and strike new agreements with allies, but the president’s tariff threats undermine the logic of those claims. Not only could the EU face higher tariffs than China, but the bloc of member states might have been better off by establishing a broad front with China and other countries against Trump’s trade policy, said German economist Marcel Fratscher.

“The strategy of the EU Commission and Germany in the trade conflict with Trump is a total failure,” Fratscher, the head of the German Institute for Economic Research, said on X. “This was a failure you could see coming — Trump sees Europe’s wavering, hesitation and concessions as the weaknesses that they are.”

Apple’s ultimatum

Trump’s post had been preceded by a threat of import taxes against Apple for its plans to continue making its iPhone in Asia. Apple now joins Amazon, Walmart and other major US  companies in the White House’s crosshairs as they try to respond to the uncertainty and inflationary pressures unleashed by his tariffs.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the US.”

The statement by Trump is critical in that he suggests the company itself would bear the price of tariffs, contradicting his earlier claims as he rolled out a series of aggressive tariffs over the past several months that foreign countries would shoulder the cost of the import taxes. In general, importers pay the tariffs and the costs are often passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In response to Trump’s tariffs on China, Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that most iPhones sold in the US during the current fiscal quarter would come from India, with iPads and other devices being imported from Vietnam. After Trump rolled out tariffs in April, analysts estimated that the cost for a $1,200 iPhone, if made in America, could jump anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500.

“The pressure from Trump administration on Apple to build iPhone production in the US … would result in an iPhone price point that is a non-starter for Cupertino and translate into iPhone prices of ~$3,500 which is not realistic as this would take 5-10 years to shift production to the US. We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note.

Trump had previously created an exemption on electronics imported from China to help companies such as Apple, something he could now remove. He also threatened separate 25-percent import taxes on computer chips and could have the tariffs schedule rewritten in ways that could expose Apple products to the taxes.

Until recently, the US president repeatedly bragged about the $500bn that Apple in February pledged to invest domestically as part of its development of artificial intelligence technologies. But he publicly turned against the company last week while speaking in Qatar.

“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump told the audience. “I said to him, ‘My friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500bn, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

A global response

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the EU’s executive commission has his country’s full support in working to “preserve our access to the American market”.

“I think such tariffs help no one, but would just lead to economic development in both markets suffering,” Wadephul said in Berlin. “So we are still counting on negotiations, and support the European Commission in defending Europe and the European market while at the same time working on persuasion in America.”

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he expected a calm and robust response from the EU to the announcement of possible new US trade tariffs.

In response to the news, Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson said the tariffs would result in higher prices for consumers. In an interview with the Reuters news agency, he said the tariff would limit the ability of Volvo Cars to sell its Belgium-made EX30 electric vehicle in the US.

Investors are shaken on the move. As of 10:30am in New York (14:30 GMT), the Dow was down 0.6 percent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1 percent and the S&P 500 was down 0.8 percent. Apple is down 2.3 percent from the market close yesterday.

SAP, Europe’s most valuable company’s stock, is down 1.8 percent from yesterday’s close. Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant and the maker of the blockbuster drug Ozempic, which is Europe’s second-highest valued company, has seen its stock down 1 percent on the news.

Shares in LVMH and Hermes, France’s largest listed companies by market capitalisation, fell by about 3 and 4 percent, respectively.

Mining company Sibanye-Stillwater says all workers are safe and have been provided with food as they await rescue.

Rescue efforts were under way in South Africa on Friday as more than 200 miners were trapped at a gold mine for a second day.

Mining company Sibanye-Stillwater said on Thursday that the miners were trapped after what it referred to as a “shaft incident” at the Kloof gold mine, one of the company’s deepest.

It said that all the workers were safe and gathered at an assembly point where they had been provided with food as efforts were being made to get them out.

“It was decided that employees should remain at the sub-shaft station until it is safe to proceed to the surface,” the company said.

The total number of workers trapped was not immediately clear. News agencies reported that 260 people were trapped, while a company spokesperson said 289 miners were in the shaft.

The National Union of Mineworkers, representing the workers at the Kloof mine, said they had been trapped for more than 24 hours as Sibanye-Stillwater continued pushing back its estimated time to retrieve the workers.

“We are very concerned because the mine did not even make this incident public until we reported it to the media,” said NUM spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu.

The mine, located 60km (37 miles) west of Johannesburg, is among a few collecting from some of the world’s deepest gold deposits.

The resurgence of conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has drawn renewed international attention following M23’s swift capture of Goma and Bukavu in late January 2025. In response, global actors have called for an immediate ceasefire and direct negotiations. Notably, Qatar and the United States have stepped forward as emerging mediators. This new momentum offers a rare opportunity to revisit the shortcomings of past mediation efforts – particularly failures in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), wealth-sharing, and regional consensus. Any new diplomatic initiative must prioritise these elements to forge a durable settlement and lasting regional stability.

To achieve a sustainable and enduring peace in eastern DRC, it is essential to address the root causes of the conflict. The region’s vast deposits of natural resources – especially rare earth minerals – have attracted international, regional and local actors competing for control, fuelling instability. Compounding this is the Congolese central government’s limited capacity to govern the eastern provinces, enabling the proliferation of armed groups with diverse allegiances. Ethnic tensions further exacerbate the crisis, particularly since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, after which the arrival of Hutu refugees and the formation of hostile militias heightened insecurity and cross-border conflict.

While regional dynamics, including Rwandan involvement, are undeniably significant, attributing the conflict solely to Rwanda risks oversimplification. Such narratives obscure the DRC’s longstanding structural inequalities, particularly the marginalisation of Congolese Tutsi communities. A durable peace must engage with these internal dynamics by ensuring the meaningful inclusion of Congolese Tutsi in the national political framework and addressing their grievances through equitable and just mechanisms.

Despite repeated international engagement, past mediation efforts in eastern DRC – from the Pretoria Agreement to the 2009 peace accords – have consistently failed to deliver lasting peace. These initiatives were undermined by structural weaknesses that eroded both their credibility and effectiveness.

A central flaw has been the absence of credible enforcement mechanisms. Most agreements relied on voluntary compliance and lacked robust, impartial monitoring frameworks capable of verifying implementation or deterring violations. Where monitoring mechanisms existed, they were often under-resourced, poorly coordinated, or perceived as biased. The international community’s inconsistent attention and limited political will to exert sustained pressure further undermined these efforts. In the absence of meaningful accountability, armed groups and political elites repeatedly violated agreements without consequence, fuelling a cycle of impunity and renewed violence.

Equally problematic has been the exclusionary nature of the peace processes. Negotiations were often dominated by political and military elites, sidelining civil society, grassroots communities, and particularly women – actors essential for building sustainable peace. Without broad-based participation, the accords failed to reflect the realities on the ground or earn the trust of local populations.

Moreover, these efforts largely ignored the root causes of the conflict, such as land disputes, ethnic marginalisation, governance failures and competition over natural resources. By prioritising short-term ceasefires and elite power-sharing arrangements, mediators overlooked the deeper structural issues that drive instability.

DDR programs – vital to breaking the conflict cycle – have also been inadequately designed and poorly executed. Many former combatants were left without viable livelihoods, creating fertile ground for re-recruitment into armed groups and further violence.

Crucially, these flaws were compounded by a lack of political will within the Congolese government. Successive administrations have, at times, instrumentalised peace talks to consolidate power rather than to advance genuine reform, undermining implementation and eroding public confidence.

More recent efforts, such as the Luanda and Nairobi processes, aimed to revive political dialogue and de-escalate tensions. However, they too have struggled to gain legitimacy. Critics argue that both initiatives were top-down, narrowly political and failed to include the voices of those most affected by the conflict. Civil society actors and marginalised communities perceived these dialogues as superficial and disconnected from local realities.

These processes also fell short in addressing the underlying drivers of violence – displacement, land ownership disputes, poor governance and the reintegration of ex-combatants. Without credible mechanisms for local participation or structural reform, the Luanda and Nairobi processes came to be seen more as diplomatic performances than genuine pathways to peace.

Taken together, these recurring shortcomings explain why international mediation efforts in DRC have largely failed. For any new initiative – including those led by Qatar and the United States – to succeed, it must move beyond these limitations and embrace a more inclusive, accountable and locally rooted approach.

The latest round of international facilitation – led by the United States and Qatar, alongside African-led efforts by the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) under Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe – offers renewed potential for meaningful progress. However, success will depend on whether these efforts can overcome the systemic failures that have plagued previous mediation attempts.

To chart a more effective and durable path to peace, Qatari and American engagement should be guided by three core principles drawn from past experience:

First, prioritise inclusive participation. Previous peace processes were largely elite-driven, involving governments and armed groups while excluding civil society, women and affected communities. This lack of inclusivity weakened legitimacy and failed to address the grievances of those most impacted by violence. A credible mediation process must include these actors to build a broad-based coalition for peace and ensure that negotiated outcomes reflect the lived realities of eastern DRC communities.

Second, address the root causes of the conflict – not just its symptoms. Earlier efforts focused narrowly on ceasefires and power-sharing, without tackling the structural drivers of instability. Effective mediation must engage with unresolved land disputes, ethnic marginalization, governance failures and the socioeconomic reintegration of former combatants. Without addressing these underlying issues, any agreement will be fragile and short-lived.

Third, establish credible enforcement and accountability mechanisms. One of the most persistent weaknesses of past agreements has been the absence of strong implementation tools. Agreements often lacked independent monitoring bodies, clear benchmarks and consequences for violations. The international community, including Qatar and the United States, must commit to sustained diplomatic pressure and support mechanisms that can ensure compliance and respond decisively to breaches. Without this, the risk of relapse into violence remains high.

By adopting these principles, current mediation efforts stand a greater chance of breaking the cycle of failed peace initiatives and laying the groundwork for a more just and lasting resolution in eastern DRC.

The crisis has once again reached a critical juncture. The involvement of new actors such as Qatar and the United States, working alongside African regional mechanisms, presents a rare opportunity to reset the approach to peacebuilding. By learning from past failures and committing to an inclusive, root cause oriented, and enforceable mediation framework, these efforts can move beyond temporary fixes and lay the foundation for a durable peace – one that finally addresses the aspirations and grievances of the Congolese people.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.