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The Indian government has condemned an auction of ancient Indian gems and issued a legal notice to stop the “unethical” sale of the relics, which it said should be treated as the sacred body of the Buddha.

New Delhi’s Ministry of Culture said the auction of the Piprahwa gems in Hong Kong, scheduled for Wednesday, “violates Indian and international laws as well as United Nations conventions” and demanded their repatriation to India “for preservation and religious veneration”.

The legal writ was served to the Sotheby’s auction house and Chris Peppe, one of three heirs of William Claxton Peppe, a British colonial landowner who in 1898 excavated the gems on his northern Indian estate and kept them as family heirlooms.

A letter posted on the Ministry of Culture’s Instagram account said Peppe, a Los Angeles-based TV director, lacked the authority to sell the relics. Sotheby’s, by holding the auction, was “participating in continued colonial exploitation”, it added.

The ministry does not believe the relics should go under the hammer, saying the gems “constitute inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community”.

What are the Piprahwa gems?

The Piprahwa gems date back to the Mauryan Empire, circa 240 to 200 BC. They have been described by Sotheby’s as “one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era” and “of unparalleled religious, archaeological and historical importance”.

The precious stones consist of thousands of pearls, rubies, topazes, sapphires and patterned gold worked into jewels and maintained in their natural forms.

They were originally buried in a dome-shaped funeral monument called a stupa in Piprahwa in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state.

They are believed to be mixed with some of the cremated remains of the Buddha, who died about 480 BC.

The British crown claimed William Peppe’s find under the 1878 Indian Treasure Trove Act, and the bones and ash were given to the Buddhist monarch King Chulalongkorn of Siam in present-day Thailand.

Most of the 1,800 gems went to what is now the Indian Museum in Kolkata. But Peppe was permitted to retain about a fifth of them, some of which were described as “duplicates” by British colonial administrators at the time.

What the controversy is about

The gems are expected to sell for 100 million Hong Kong dollars (US$13m) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on Wednesday. But the sale has raised eyebrows.

Commentators argued that the Piprahwa gems are the heritage of both the Buddha’s descendants and of Buddhists worldwide.

“Are the relics of the Buddha a commodity that can be treated like a work of art to be sold on the market?” Naman Ahuja, a Delhi-based art historian, told the BBC. “And since they aren’t, how is the seller ethically authorised to auction them?

“Since the seller is termed the ‘custodian’, I would like to ask – custodian on whose behalf? Does custodianship permit them now to sell these relics?” he asked.

For its part, India’s government has called on Sotheby’s and Chris Peppe to halt the sale of the gems, issue a public apology to Buddhists worldwide and to provide a full disclosure of the provenance of the relics.

Failure to comply, according to the letter on the Ministry of Culture’s Instagram page, would result in legal proceedings in Indian and Hong Kong courts and through international bodies “for violations of cultural heritage laws”.

The ministry added that it would launch a public campaign highlighting Sotheby’s role “in perpetuating colonial injustice and becoming a party to [the] unethical sale of religious relics”.

It said the sellers “had no right to alienate or misappropriate the asset, … an extraordinary heritage of humanity where custodianship would include not just safe upkeep but also an unflinching sentiment of veneration towards these relics”.

The letter also noted that “the relics of the Buddha cannot be treated as ‘specimens’ but as the sacred body and originally interred offerings to the sacred body of the Buddha” and the proposed auction “offends the sentiments of over 500 million Buddhists worldwide”.

Earlier this year, Chris Peppe told the BBC that his family explored donating the ancient gems. However, he said an auction seemed the “fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists”.

He also wrote a post on Sotheby’s website in February in which he said: “I wanted the power of these gems to reach everyone, Buddhist or not.”

After this week’s private sale, he said, “I hope that many people will be able to see the gems and connect with the Buddhists who gave them over two thousand years ago, with our shared human experience of wonder and awe and with the Buddha and his teachings.”

Have such auctions been controversial in the past?

Museums in the West have rarely been forced by legal rulings to give up artefacts taken from the Global South during colonial rule. However, some have handed stolen objects back to their countries of origin under public pressure

In 2022, for instance, six artefacts looted by British soldiers 125 years ago from Benin City in what is now Nigeria were repatriated from the Horniman Museum in South London to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

That same year, Germany handed over two Benin Bronzes and more than 1,000 other items from its museums to Nigeria. “It was wrong to take the bronzes, and it was wrong to keep them,” said Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister.

But instances of successful repatriations are far outnumbered by private auctions of stolen artefacts. In 2020, for instance, Christie’s went ahead with the sale of Igbo statues that Nigerian museum officials said were stolen during the country’s civil war in the 1960s.

Another high-profile case was the sale of a 3,000-year-old quartzite head of the Egyptian “boy king” Tutankhamun, auctioned off in the United Kingdom despite an outcry in Egypt, which claimed the piece was likely removed from the country illegally.

Countless antiquities are sold off every year by exclusive auction houses, denying many developing countries their historical patronage.

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Friedrich Merz’s failure to clinch a Bundestag majority sent shockwaves through German assets on Tuesday, raising questions about the country’s political stability as economic clouds darken over Europe’s largest economy.

The DAX 40 index slumped 1.5% to 22,924 points by late morning in Frankfurt, threatening to snap a nine-day winning streak. Eurozone-wide losses followed, with the Euro Stoxx 50 index down 1.1% at 5,225.

German government bonds also moved sharply. Benchmark 10-year bund yields rose to 2.54%, the highest since mid-April. The euro slipped from $1.1350 to $1.1310.

“His setback adds fresh uncertainty to Germany’s export-driven economy, which is already under pressure from shifting US trade policies,” said Welt’s Holger Zschäpitz.

“The DAX corrects,” said Daniel Lacalle, chief economist at Tressis. “Germany voted for change. Politicians decided to keep everything unchanged. Now, the coalition of industry and economic destruction cannot even agree to vote a chancellor.”

What went wrong in the Bundestag?

Merz, the leader of the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, had secured a post-election coalition agreement with the Social Democrats.

Yet in a stunning reversal, he received just 310 of the 316 votes needed in the Bundestag to officially become chancellor. It is the first time in postwar Germany that a presumptive chancellor has failed to gain parliamentary approval after a successful coalition deal.

The outcome of the vote sent parliamentary groups scrambling.

According to German law, a second vote must take place within two weeks. If no majority emerges again, a third round may proceed with a simple majority. Failing that, the president has the power to dissolve the Bundestag and call fresh elections.

High hopes, now in limbo

Merz had campaigned on a bold, business-friendly agenda to revive Germany’s stagnant economy. His coalition plan included a €500 billion infrastructure investment package, a pledge of unlimited defence spending capacity, and a clear alignment with Ukraine in its war against Russia.

That programme, heavily anticipated by markets, now hangs in the balance.

Merz had been scheduled to travel to Paris and Warsaw on Wednesday to meet with President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, aiming to bolster European defence coordination. That trip has been postponed indefinitely, further fuelling perceptions of disarray.

German industrial stocks fall

Germany’s industrial heavyweights were the first to feel the fallout. Rheinmetall AG, the top-performing DAX stock of 2025 amid soaring defence demand, fell 2%. Siemens, MTU Aero Engines, Porsche AG, BASF, Infineon, and Daimler Truck Holding AG all shed about 2.5%.

Only two DAX members emerged in positive territory: Fresenius Medical Care (+3.8%) and Symrise (+0.2%).

Malakal, South Sudan – One morning in mid-April, Nyandeng Meeth was fetching water from a borehole in Mat town, in South Sudan’s Jonglei State, before heading home to cook for her nine children and open her small street stall.

Suddenly, the sound of gunfire and shelling tore through the familiarity and routine of the 50-year-old mother’s everyday life. She remembers the town being plunged into chaos as people scrambled to save what they could – their families or a few belongings.

Afraid for her children, Meeth rushed home. “I [had] left the children at home when I went to fetch water,” she said. “I ran home, but when I returned, there was no one.” Along with the rest of the community, the nine siblings aged 7 to 15 had fled.

The attacks, reportedly by Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition forces (SPLA-IO), were part of a broader escalation in fighting between government forces – the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) – and opposition troops, including the White Army group aligned with First Vice President Riek Machar.

Since late February, violence has swept across Jonglei and Upper Nile states, displacing more than 130,000 people. Aerial bombardments and fighter raids have since emptied entire towns, disrupted aid and cut off vital trade routes from neighbouring Ethiopia.

The fighting is also prompting the country’s worst cholera outbreak in two decades, aid groups say, as patients fled medical centres where they were receiving treatment when the conflict broke out, spreading the disease in the process.

But for Meeth, recent events have revived the terror she felt nearly a decade ago, during an earlier phase of the conflict, when her husband was killed.

In 2013, just two years after South Sudan became an independent country, a civil war erupted between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those aligned with Machar. The war killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced 2.5 million – more than a fifth of the population.

Meeth’s husband, who was a soldier, was killed in 2015.

Though a peace agreement was signed between the warring factions in 2018, disagreements over fulfilling the deal, including delayed elections, have kept the rivalry brewing.

Unresolved political disputes have driven cycles of violence over the years. But things escalated this year with clashes between government forces and opposition fighter groups, and the arrests of opposition leaders including Machar. The United Nations has warned that the country could be on the brink of a return to a full-scale civil war.

‘My life in Mat was better’

On that mid-April day in Mat town, more explosions rang out around Meeth, who had still not located her children. She ran towards the Sobat River, where panicked residents scrambled to flee across to neighbouring Upper Nile State.

In the crowd, she spotted her youngest daughter, 7, running alone towards the riverbank. She grabbed her hand, climbed into a canoe, and crossed, not knowing whether her eight other children had survived.

They landed in Panam, a town in Panyikang County in Upper Nile, about 2km (1.2 miles) from their home, where thousands of displaced families who have fled bouts of conflict from previous years are gathered, with little access to food, water, or medical care.

Meeth said she spent two anxious nights there, unable to eat or rest. “If your child is lost, you can’t be happy; even when I get food, I didn’t feel like eating it,” she said, sitting beneath a coconut tree that has now become her shelter.

Volunteers from the Panam community searched along the riverbanks and through the surrounding bushes for missing people. After two days, Meeth’s eight other children were found.

“Some of them hid in the river, while others stayed under the shades of trees,” Meeth said, explaining that her children could still hear gunfire from where they were, so they hid out of fear.

The ordeal had taken a toll on them. Their skin, she said, had gone pale from hunger and exposure, and their bodies were covered in mosquito bites.

Now, she and her children sleep under the coconut trees along the river, surviving on the roots of yellow water lilies and other wild plants, as fighting is still preventing aid access.

Before the latest wave of violence, Meeth supported her family in Mat by selling tea, sugar, and other household essentials from an informal stall. Sometimes, relatives returning from fishing would share their catch, helping feed the family when drought or floods ruined their harvest.

But the fighting has taken what little she had. “My life in Mat was better because I had shelter, I had a mosquito net and shoes, and access to a hospital,” she said. “I had two goats but had to leave them,” she added, saying relatives who fled Mat after she did told her the rebels had stolen her livestock.

‘Life is very difficult’

Even before the latest wave of fighting, daily life in South Sudan was marked by hardship.

The country ranks among the world’s poorest, and a recent World Bank report estimates that 92 percent of the population lives in poverty and nearly 7.7 million are facing crisis, emergency or catastrophic levels of hunger.

Not far from the Meeth family in Panam, 70-year-old Nyankhor Ayuel sat under the shade of another coconut tree with her seven children.

They fled from Khorfulus in Jonglei’s Pigi County in April.

“We were sitting at home with the children. We had already prepared food, and as we started eating, the shelling started,” she said. “We ran without any luggage or food.”

Though they escaped the immediate violence, Ayuel said hunger and illness now pose a different kind of threat. Pregnant and nursing mothers, she said, are suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting due to lack of access to clean water and food.

“Life is very difficult,” she told Al Jazeera. “There’s no food or medical facilities where we are staying.”

For families like Zechariah Monywut Chuol’s, who also fled Khorfulus, hardship has only deepened.

The 57-year-old father of 12 had just started building a permanent home for his family when the shelling began. “I was at home digging the foundation when it started. We ran to the riverbank and got into canoes,” he said.

Now, like so many others in Panam, Chuol and his family live under the trees, surviving on coconut water and whatever fruits they can find along the Sobat River.

“If hunger could kill like sickness, many people would have already died,” he said.

A fragile future

Across South Sudan, more than 9.3 million people – three-quarters of the population – require humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. Nearly half of them are children.

The conflicts in Upper Nile and Jonglei have brought all aid efforts to a ground halt. Aerial bombardment and danger forced aid agencies to withdraw staff, shut down cholera treatment centres, and stop aid deliveries.

This weekend, the “deliberate bombing of [a Doctors Without Borders] hospital in Old Fangak” in Jonglei killed several people, the medical charity known by its French initials, MSF, said.

Last month, the World Food Programme (WFP) paused operations in several areas due to access constraints.

Mary-Ellen McGroarty, South Sudan country director for WFP, said physical access can be challenging at the best of times. “But with active conflict, WFP cannot go up, we cannot go down the river. And these are areas where there are no roads, no cars, no trucks,” she told a UN press briefing at the time.

According to Peter Matai, director of the government-run Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, which works with international organisations to support the internally displaced, more than 30,000 people who fled violence in Pigi County are now sheltering in displacement sites such as Panam, where aid has yet to arrive.

“We’ve reported the situation to both the state government and international organisations,” said Matai. But several weeks into the fighting, “aid agencies are still waiting for clearance from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to access displacement sites and deliver aid.”

With the violence ongoing and humanitarian access limited, thousands of displaced families remain in limbo, caught between conflict, disease and hunger – uncertain when, or if, it will be safe to return home.

For Meeth, who also serves as a deacon in the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, all she can do now is pray for her children’s safety, and hope that others will step in to help.

“We are suffering,” she said. “We need our people living abroad to hear that we are in a bad situation. They should help us provide for our needs.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Drones believed to have been launched by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are said to have struck fuel depot causing huge fire: Reports

Multiple explosions have been heard and a huge fire seen in Port Sudan, though the exact locations and causes were unclear, as Sudan’s civil war rocks the previously quiet city for the third day.

Dark plumes of smoke could be seen emerging from the vicinity of the country’s main maritime port in the city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, said residents in the port city reported that attack drones launched by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit a fuel depot and other targets.

“According to the residents, they believe that it was drone strikes by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – once again. They targeted a fuel depot in the city but also around the port and the air base,” Morgan said.

The conflict between Sudan’s army and the RSF has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, one likely to be worsened by these latest attacks on Port Sudan, where the United Nations and aid agencies, as well as army-aligned government ministries, have set up headquarters.

Attacks on the Red Sea coastal city, which began on Sunday, represent a sharp escalation in fighting, as Port Sudan had remained untouched by ground or air attacks until this week.

On Sunday, a military base in the city, near the country’s only functioning international airport, was struck by drones, which was followed by the targeting on Monday of fuel depots in the city. In both cases, military sources blamed the RSF.

The attacks came after a military source said the army had destroyed an aircraft and weapons depots in the RSF-controlled Nyala airport. The RSF did not claim responsibility for the attacks.

The attacks this week drew condemnation from neighbours Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as expressions of concern from the UN.

The war between the army and RSF began in April 2023, triggered by a dispute over a transition to civilian government.

The conflict has displaced more than 12 million people in Sudan and pushed half the population into acute hunger, according to the UN.

Pentagon chief says cuts will maximise ‘strategic’ and ‘operational readiness’.

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has announced steep cuts in the number of top-ranked officers in his latest move to streamline the world’s most powerful military.

In a memo on Monday, Hegseth ordered a 20 percent reduction in the number of four-star generals and admirals – currently the highest-ranked personnel in the US military – as well as a 10 percent reduction in the number of general and flag officers.

Hegseth’s memo also ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of general officers in the National Guard.

The US military had 38 four-star generals or admirals as of March 31, 2025, according to US Department of Defense data.

In a video explaining the “Less Generals More GIs Policy”, Hegseth said the US military currently has one general for every 1,400 troops, compared with one for every 6,000 during World War II.

“More generals and admirals does not equal more success,” Hegseth said in the video posted on X.

“Now this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This has been a deliberated process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with one goal: maximising strategic readiness and operational readiness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks.”

Hegseth did not specify which positions would be cut.

The nearly 40 active four-star generals in the US military include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the army, the chief of naval operations, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, as well as the heads of US Africa Command, US European Command and US Forces Korea.

The cuts come as part of a broader drive by President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce the size of the federal government and purge perceived political enemies.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump or his underlings have fired several top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q Brown and Navy chief Admiral Lisa Franchetti.

The poet gets the prestigious award for New Yorker essays ‘on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza’ amid war.

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who has been targeted by pro-Israel groups in the United States for deportation, has won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Abu Toha received the prestigious award on Monday for essays published in The New Yorker “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience” of the war.

“I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary,” Abu Toha wrote on social media. “Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.”

The comment appears to be a tribute to his fellow Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza in December 2023. Alareer’s final poem was titled, “If I must die, let it be a tale”.

Abu Toha was detained by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2023 before being released to Egypt and subsequently moving to the US.

“In the past year, I have lost many of the tangible parts of my memories – the people and places and things that helped me remember,” Abu Toha wrote in one of his New Yorker essays.

“I have struggled to create good memories. In Gaza, every destroyed house becomes a kind of album, filled not with photos but with real people, the dead pressed between its pages.”

In recent months, right-wing groups in the US have called for deporting Abu Toha amid a campaign by President Donald Trump cracking down non-citizens critical of Israel. The author cancelled events at universities in recent months, citing fears for his safety.

I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

Let it bring hope
Let it be a tale pic.twitter.com/VP6RsPY6vz

— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) May 5, 2025

The Palestinian poet told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast in December that the feeling of inability to help people in Gaza has been “devastating”.

“Imagine that you are with your parents, with your siblings and their children in a school shelter in Gaza,” Abu Toha said. “You are unable to protect anyone. You are unable to provide them with any food, with any water, with any medicine. But now you are in the United States, the country that is funding the genocide. So, it is heartbreaking.”

In other Pulitzer categories, New York Times won prizes for explanatory reporting, local reporting, international coverage and breaking news photography on Monday.

With the four awards, the New York-based newspaper received the most prizes from Pulitzer’s 14 journalism contests this year.

Winners of the award, named after the Hungarian-American newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, are selected by a board of journalists and academics and announced at Columbia University annually.

The New York Times received the international reporting prize for its coverage of the conflict in Sudan, edging out The Washington Post, which was a finalist in the category for its “documented Israeli atrocities” in Gaza, including investigations into the killings of Palestinian medics and journalists.

The Post won the breaking news prize for its coverage of the Trump assassination attempt during a campaign rally last year. The Reuters news agency took the investigative reporting award for a “boldly reported expose of lax regulation in the US and abroad that makes fentanyl”.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has dropped charges against seven student protesters from the University of Michigan, citing legal delays and controversies surrounding the US case, which she said has become a “lightning rod of contention”.

The decision on Monday puts an end to the case that started in May 2024 when the students, who pleaded not guilty, were charged with trespassing and resisting a police officer while attending a pro-Palestinian campus protest. 

“We feel vindicated that the case was dismissed,” said Jamil Khuja, a member of the defence team for the students. “These individuals committed no crime whatsoever. They were exercising their right to protest and engage in political speech on public property.”

Despite dropping the charges and growing criticism of the case, Nessel on Monday defended her decision to pursue felony charges against the students, saying “a reasonable jury would find the defendants guilty of the crimes alleged”.

However, Nessel added in a statement that she dropped the charges nearly a year later because she did not believe “these cases to be a prudent use of my department’s resources”.

While hundreds of students were arrested during the wave of pro-Palestine campus encampments that swept the United States last year amid Israel’s war on Gaza, most were immediately released.

The case in Michigan gained national attention and became symbolic of the nationwide crackdown on pro-Palestine demonstrations, with Palestinian rights advocates arguing that the Nessel case was an attack on freedom of speech and assembly.

Defence lawyers for the accused had filed motions for Nessel to recuse herself from the case, citing accusations of bias – assertions that the attorney general dismissed as “baseless and absurd”.

“These distractions and ongoing delays have created a circus-like atmosphere to these proceedings,” the attorney general said in her statement.

Khuja, the defence lawyer, said the team was “absolutely confident” of winning the case, either by judicial dismissal or not-guilty jury verdict, and criticised Nessel’s characterisation of the pretrial proceedings as “circus-like” as untrue.

He said requesting Nessel’s removal from the case was warranted, adding that the charges should have been brought by the county and not the state’s attorney general, according to Michigan’s prosecution procedures.

Free speech ‘under attack’

To underscore the alleged bias, the defence lawyer also noted that weeks before filing the charges last year, Nessel had clashed with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, “the only Palestinian in Congress”, for defending the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which has been used by student protesters.

Soon after Nessel charged the students, Tlaib accused the attorney general of “possible biases” within her agency, underscoring that other protest movements did not face a similar legal crackdown.

The attorney general responded by accusing Tlaib of anti-Semitism, although the congresswoman made no mention of the attorney general’s religion or Jewish identity.

“Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic and wrong,” Nessel wrote in a social media post in September.

The controversy stretched for weeks, with CNN and pro-Israel outlets echoing Nessel’s anti-Semitism allegations against Tlaib without evidence.

Khuja said the attorney general ultimately wanted to “make an example out of those protesting for Palestine”.

He added that the case was larger than the students and politicians involved.

“The First Amendment applies to all speech, but it’s been under attack in order to shield Israel from criticism lately,” Khuja told Al Jazeera.

“And this case proved that those who believe in Palestinian rights, their views are just as legitimate as anybody else’s, and the First Amendment protects those views and your right to express them.”

Air strikes come a day after the Iran-aligned Houthis fired a missile that struck near Israel’s main airport.

The Israeli military says it has carried out air strikes on targets at Yemen’s Hodeidah port, claiming the sites were used to support Houthi operations against Israel.

According to the Israeli army, fighter jets struck infrastructure on Monday linked to the Houthis, including a concrete factory east of Hodeidah that it described as “an important economic resource” used in building tunnels and military infrastructure.

“The Hodeidah seaport serves as a hub for the transfer of Iranian weapons and equipment for military needs,” the Israeli army said in a statement. The claim could not be independently verified.

Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported that six Israeli strikes hit Hodeidah’s port and blamed both Israel and the United States.

Axios journalist Barak Ravid quoted a senior US official who said the air raids were coordinated between Israel and the US.

A US defence source told Al Jazeera that “US forces did not participate in the Israeli strikes on Yemen today” but did not deny nonlethal support may have been provided.

The attack was carried out after a ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Sunday struck close to Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pledged retaliation for the Houthi attack, the first known missile to avoid interception since the Yemeni group began targeting Israel in November 2023.

‘New phase’ in Israeli attacks on Yemen

Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem reported that about 30 Israeli warplanes took part in Monday’s operation, which was overseen by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz from a command centre in Tel Aviv.

Hashem said the strikes mark a “new phase” in Israeli attacks on Yemen.

Since US President Donald Trump returned to power in January, the US has embarked on a more aggressive assault on Yemen “which is related directly to Israeli interests”, Hashem added.

This is not the first time Israel has bombed targets in Yemen. In December, air raids struck the Ras Isa oil terminal and other sites in Hodeidah province, killing at least nine people.

While most Houthi-launched projectiles have been intercepted, Sunday’s attack was the “most significant strike”, Hashem said, since the group launched its campaign in November 2023, which it said is in response to Israel’s war on Gaza and to show solidarity with Palestinians. A drone had previously hit a building in Tel Aviv last year.

Since November 2023, the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, have launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks targeting vessels they said are linked to Israel in the Red Sea.

Although the Houthis paused attacks during a ceasefire in Gaza this year, they resumed their operations in March after Israel cut off humanitarian aid to Gaza and resumed its offensive.

Washington, DC – A bill in the United States Congress that aims to penalise the boycotting of countries friendly to the US is facing opposition from allies of President Donald Trump over free speech concerns, putting its passage in jeopardy.

According to Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vote in the House of Representatives on the proposal, previously scheduled for Monday, has been cancelled.

Although Trump’s Republican Party has been leading legislative efforts to crack down on boycotts of Israel, over the past days, several conservatives close to the US president voiced opposition to the bill, dubbed the International Governmental Organization (IGO) Anti-Boycott Act.

“It is my job to defend American’s rights to buy or boycott whomever they choose without the government harshly fining them or imprisoning them,” Greene said in a social media post on Monday.

“But what I don’t understand is why we are voting on a bill on behalf of other countries and not the President’s executive orders that are FOR OUR COUNTRY???”

Charlie Kirk, a prominent right-wing activist and commentator, also said that the bill should not pass.

“In America you are allowed to hold differing views. You are allowed to disagree and protest,” Kirk wrote on X on Sunday. “We’ve allowed far too many people who hate America move here from abroad, but the right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.”

Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and influential right-wing media personality, backed the comments of Kirk and Greene, writing on the social media platform Gettr, “Fact check: True” and “Agreed” in response to their statements, respectively.

IGO Anti-Boycott Act

The proposed legislation was introduced by pro-Israel hawks in the US Congress, Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Josh Gottheimer, in January, and it has been co-sponsored by 22 other lawmakers from both major parties.

The bill would expand a 2018 law that bans coercive boycotts imposed by foreign governments to include international governmental organisations (IGOs).

The original legislation prohibits boycotting a country friendly to the US based on an “agreement with, a requirement of, or a request from or on behalf” of another nation. It imposes penalties of up to $1m and 20 years in prison for violations.

Expanding the legislation to include IGOs risks penalising individuals and companies in the US that boycott firms listed by the United Nations as doing business in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

While the bill itself does not explicitly mention Israel, its drafters have said that it targets the UN and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, which calls for economic pressure on the Israeli government to end its abuses against Palestinians.

“This change targets harmful and inherently anti-Semitic BDS efforts at IGOs, such as the UN, by extending protections already in place for boycotts instigated by foreign countries,” Lawler’s office said in January.

States and the federal government have been passing anti-BDS laws for years, raising the alarm about the violation of free speech rights, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Numerous legal cases have challenged these laws, and some judges have ruled that they are unconstitutional, while others have upheld them.

Rights groups and Palestinian rights advocates have argued that anti-boycott laws aim to shut down the debate about Israel and criminalise peaceful resistance against its violations of international law.

Anti-BDS crackdown

Over the years, leading UN agencies and rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including imposing apartheid on Palestinians.

But supporters of anti-BDS laws say the measures are designed to combat discrimination against Israel and regulate trade, not speech.

Such laws have mainly faced opposition from progressive Democrats, but the IGO Anti-Boycott Act has generated anger from right-wing politicians, too.

“Americans have the right to boycott, and penalizing this risks free speech. I reject and vehemently condemn antisemitism but I cannot violate the first amendment,” Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, wrote on X.

I agree with @RepMTG .
I’ll be voting No on this bill as well. https://t.co/YOPga59Xyc

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 4, 2025

The right-wing rejection of the Lawler-Gottheimer bill comes as the Trump administration continues with its push to target criticism of and protests against Israel, especially on college campuses.

Since Trump took office, the US government has revoked the visas of hundreds of students for activism against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Several students, including legal permanent residents, have been jailed over allegations of anti-Semitism and “spreading Hamas propaganda”.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, has been detained since March, and the only known allegation against her is co-authoring an op-ed calling on her college to honour the student senate’s call for divesting from Israeli companies.

Trump has also frozen and threatened to freeze federal funding for several universities, including Harvard, over pro-Palestine protests.

The administration of US President Donald Trump says it is going to pay $1,000 to undocumented immigrants in the United States who return to their home countries voluntarily as it pushes forward with its plans for mass deportations.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a news release on Monday that it’s also paying for travel assistance and people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government they plan to return home will be “deprioritized” for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest. DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

The stipend and airfare for people who voluntarily depart would cost less than an actual deportation, the agency said. The average cost of arresting, detaining and deporting someone without legal status is currently about $17,000, according to the DHS.

Trump took office in January pledging to deport millions of people but so far has trailed deportations under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. Biden’s administration faced high levels of undocumented immigration and quickly returned many people caught crossing the border.

The Trump administration has deported 152,000 people since it took office on January 20, according to the DHS, lower than the 195,000 deported from February to April last year under Biden.

Trump’s administration has tried to encourage migrants and asylum seekers to leave voluntarily by threatening steep fines, trying to strip away legal status, and deporting people to prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and El Salvador.

Trump previewed the stipend plan in April, saying the US would consider allowing migrants and asylum seekers to return.

“If they’re good, if we want them back in, we’re going to work with them to get them back in as quickly as we can,” he said.

In the announcement on Monday, the DHS said people who choose to leave “may help preserve” the ability to return legally but did not cite any specific pathway or programme.

Top UN court says it does not have authority to rule on case accusing UAE of arming rebel Rapid Support Forces paramilitary.

The top United Nations court has dismissed a case brought by Sudan accusing the United Arab Emirates of breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s deadly civil war.

The International Court of Justice said on Monday that it “manifestly lacked” the authority to continue the proceedings and threw out the case.

While both Sudan and the UAE are signatories to the 1948 genocide convention, the UAE has a carveout to the part of the treaty that gives The Hague-based court jurisdiction.

In March, Sudan asked the ICJ for several orders, known as provisional measures, including telling the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and other crimes targeting the Masalit people in Darfur.

The UAE called the filing a publicity stunt and, in a hearing last month, argued the court had no jurisdiction.

“The case is baseless both legally and factually. The UAE is not involved in the war, and this case is yet another attempt by the Sudanese Armed Forces, one of the warring parties, to distract from its own responsibility,” Reem Ketait, a senior official at the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement ahead of the decision.

Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between its military and rival paramilitary forces broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions.

Both the Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s military have been accused of abuses.

The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and a US ally, has been repeatedly accused of arming the RSF, something it has strenuously denied despite evidence to the contrary.

More to follow.

The origins of heavy elements such as gold have been one of the biggest mysteries of astrophysics. A study has now provided a clue about the precious metal’s cosmic origins.

Scientists have found that explosions in highly magnetised neutron stars, called magnetars, could have created gold in the universe.

Here is more about the study:

What is the latest discovery about the origins of gold?

Analysis of archival data from space missions shows that a large amount of heavy metals, including gold, come from giant flares from magnetars, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on April 29.

Anirudh Patel, a doctoral student at the Department of Physics at Columbia University in New York, led the study, which used 20-year-old archival telescope data from NASA and European Space Agency telescopes to investigate how heavy elements such as iron and gold were created and distributed throughout the universe.

“It’s a pretty fundamental question in terms of the origin of complex matter in the universe,” Patel was quoted as saying in an article on the NASA website. “It’s a fun puzzle that hasn’t actually been solved.”

The authors estimated that magnetar giant flares could contribute up to 10 percent of the overall abundance of elements in the galaxy that are heavier than iron.

Co-authors of the study are affiliated with Columbia University, Charles University in the Czech Republic, Louisiana State University, the Flatiron Institute in New York and Ohio State University.

What is a magnetar, and how could gold be formed on it?

A magnetar is a type of neutron star that is highly magnetised, which means its magnetic field is extremely powerful. When a massive star explodes, it leaves a very dense, collapsed core behind, which is called a neutron star.

Astronomers theorise that the first magnetars were formed after the first stars about 13.6 billion years ago, according to study coauthor Eric Burns, assistant professor and astrophysicist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The Big Bang created the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

On rare occasions, magnetars can release high-energy radiation by undergoing a “starquake”. Like an earthquake, a starquake can fracture the magnetar’s crust. Sometimes, magnetar starquakes bring with them a magnetar giant flare, a rare explosive event that releases gamma rays.

The researchers found that magnetars release material during giant flares. However, they do not yet have a physical explanation for this.

The researchers speculated about whether magnetar giant flares formed gold through the rapid process of neutrons forging lighter atomic nuclei into heavier ones. An element’s identity is defined by the number of protons it has. However, if an atom acquires an extra neutron, it can undergo nuclear decay, which can turn a neutron into a proton.

A changed number of protons can change the element’s identity. Neutron stars have an extremely high density of neutrons. If a neutron star is disrupted, singular atoms can quickly capture a number of neutrons and undergo multiple decays. This leads to the formation of much heavier elements like uranium.

Before this study, the creation of gold was attributed only to neutron star collisions, or kilonovas. When astronomers observed a neutron star collision in 2017 through telescopes, they found the collision could create heavy elements such as gold, platinum and lead. However, these collisions are believed to have happened relatively later in the history of the universe, in the past several billion years.

However, the archival telescopic data, which was previously indecipherable, showed that magnetar giant flares formed much earlier. Hence, the study indicates that the first gold could have been made from magnetar giant flares.

What’s next?

NASA has an upcoming mission that can follow up on these results. The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a gamma-ray telescope that is expected to launch in 2027.

COSI will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, such as magnetar giant flares. According to the NASA website, COSI could identify individual elements created in the giant flares, helping to form a better understanding of the origin of the elements.

Before the war, my life was simple. Like many young women in Gaza, I carried within me a mixture of ambition and anxiety. My dream was to graduate from the Islamic University with honours and become a writer. My fear was that the constant attacks and instability in Gaza would somehow impede my pursuit of education and a writing career.

However, I never imagined that everything I knew – my home, my university, my friends, my daily routine and my health – could vanish, leaving me struggling to keep going.

When the war began, we thought it was just another short round of fighting – one of the many escalations we had grown used to in Gaza. But something about this time felt different. The explosions were closer, louder, and lasting longer. We soon realised that this nightmare was not going to end; it was only going to get worse.

On December 27, 2023, we received our first “evacuation order”. There was no time to think. We had just begun gathering a few belongings when the sound of bombing grew louder. The upper floors of the building we lived in were being targeted.

We fled the building in a hurry, carrying only a small bag. My father was pushing my grandmother in her wheelchair, while I held my younger brother’s hand and ran into the street, not knowing where we were going.

The neighbourhood looked like a scene from the horrors of the Day of Judgement: people were running, screaming, crying, and carrying what remained of their lives.

Night fell, and we found temporary shelter at a relative’s house. Sixteen of us slept in one room, without privacy or comfort.

In the morning, we made the difficult decision to take refuge in one of the displacement camps declared a “humanitarian zone”. We owned almost nothing. The weather was bitterly cold, water was scarce, and we had only a few blankets. We washed, cleaned, and cooked using primitive methods. We lit fires and prepared food as if we had gone back to the Stone Age.

Amid all of this, we received the news: our home had been bombed.

I refused to believe what I had heard. I sat and cried, unable to comprehend the tragedy. My father’s goldsmith workshop was on the ground floor of the building, so when it was destroyed, we did not just lose walls and a roof – we lost everything.

The days passed slowly and heavily, wrapped in longing and misery. I lost contact with most of my friends, and I no longer heard the voices that used to fill my days with warmth. I would check in on my closest friend, Rama, whenever I had a brief chance to connect to the internet. She lived in northern Gaza.

On January 15, 2024, my friend Rawan sent me a message. It did not reach me immediately. It took days because of the communications blackout.

The words were simple, they shattered me from the inside: “Rama was martyred.”

Rama Waleed Sham’ah, my closest friend at university. I could not believe it. I read the message over and over again, searching for a different ending, a denial. But the truth was silent, harsh, and merciless.

I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t hear her last words, I didn’t hold her hand, or tell her “I love you” one last time. I felt as though I was breathing without a soul.

While I was still processing that grief, I received even more devastating news: on February 16, 2024, my father’s entire extended family – all his cousins, their wives, and their children – were killed. I saw my father break in a way I had never seen before. His grief was so deep that words could not describe it.

Then, death knocked on our door.

On June 8, 2024, we had just moved from our tent to a rented apartment, trying to start our lives over, when the Israeli army surrounded the area. I was the first to see the tank slowly moving up the street. I panicked and ran towards my father, shouting. But I didn’t reach him. In that moment, a missile struck the building we were in. All I saw was thick smoke and dust filling the air.

I didn’t know if I was alive or not. I tried to say the shahada, and by the grace of God, I managed to do so. Then I started screaming, calling for my father. I heard his voice faintly from a distance, telling me not to go out because the drone was still bombing.

I took a few steps, then lost consciousness. All I remember is that they carried me down the building and covered me with a blanket. I was bleeding. I would regain consciousness for a few seconds, then lose it again.

The ambulance could not reach our street because the tank was at the entrance. My mother, my sister, and I bled for two hours until some young men from the area managed to find a way to get us out. They carried me in a blanket to the ambulance. The paramedics started bandaging my wounds right there in the middle of the street, in front of everyone.

All the way, I heard their whispers, saying that I was between life and death. I heard them, but I could not speak.

When I reached the hospital, they told me that I had sustained injuries to my head, hands, legs, and back. The pain was unbearable, and my mother’s absence added to my fear. I was rushed in for an emergency surgery.

I survived.

After leaving the hospital, I had to go back for dressing changes. Each visit was a painful experience. I would choke every time I saw the blood. My father, who accompanied me every time, would try to ease these visits, telling me, “You will be rewarded, my dear, and we will get through all of this.”

I fell into a deep depression, suffering from both physical and emotional pain. I felt as though I was drowning in an endless spiral of sorrow, fear, and exhaustion. I no longer knew how to breathe, how to continue, or even why.

We had no roof to shelter under. Finding food was a struggle. The painful memories of loved ones who had passed haunted me. The fear that my family and I could lose our lives at any moment made me feel utterly helpless. I felt everything was screaming that I could not go on.

Yet, in the darkness of despair, I continued to live, day after day. I was in pain, but I lived.

I went back to reading – whatever books I could find. Then, when my university announced it would resume lectures online, I signed up.

My hand was still broken, wrapped in a cast, and I could barely use it. My mother helped me, holding the pen at times and writing down what I dictated. My professors understood my situation and supported me as much as they could, but the challenges were many. I struggled to access electricity and the internet to charge my phone and download lectures. Sometimes, I would lose exams due to power outages or poor network, and I would have to postpone them.

Still, I kept going. My physical condition gradually started to improve.

Today, we are still living in a tent. We struggle to secure the most basic needs, such as clean water and food. We are experiencing famine, just like everyone else in Gaza.

When I look at the scars of war etched into my body and memory, I realise that I am no longer the same person. I have found within myself a strength I never knew existed.

I have found a path through the rubble, meaning in the pain, and a reason to write, to witness, and to resist despite the loss. I have made the decision to stay alive, to love, to dream, to speak.

Because, quite simply, I deserve to live, just like every human being on earth.

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

Here is where things stand on Monday, May 5:

Fighting

• Russian forces repelled four drones flying towards Moscow, the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said in a post on Telegram. There were no initial reports of damage or casualties, Sobyanin said, adding that emergency services were working at the scene.
• Ukrainian forces attacked a factory in Russia’s Bryansk region, destroying much of the plant, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram. There were no casualties, Bogomaz said.
• Russian forces destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russia’s Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions, Moscow’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday.
• A Russian drone attack injured at least 11 people, including two children, in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi and Sviatoshynskyi districts, Timur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said on social media.
• Russian drones attacked Cherkasy in central Ukraine, where emergency services reported that one person was injured and residential buildings and civil infrastructure suffered damage.
• Ukrainian forces downed 69 of 165 drones launched overnight by Russia, the country’s Air Force said on Sunday.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he does not believe Russia will follow a three-day truce it declared to coincide with Moscow’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9. “This is not the first challenge, nor are these the first promises made by Russia to cease fire,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference with Czech President Petr Pavel.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary released on Sunday that there had so far been no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and expressed “hope” that they would not be necessary.
• United States President Donald Trump said he and his advisers have had “very good discussions” about Russia and Ukraine in recent days, without elaborating.
• Moscow said that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Russia from May 7 to May 10, joining Putin at commemorations of the Allied victory against Nazi Germany.
• Romania’s far-right presidential candidate, George Simion, who opposes military aid to Ukraine, decisively won the first round of the country’s rerun vote, setting up a contest with the centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, on May 18.