An Israeli air attack on Tehran’s Evin Prison during this month’s 12-day war has killed at least 71 people, Iran’s judiciary says, days after a ceasefire ended hostilities between the two arch foes.
The strike on Monday, the day before the ceasefire between Israel and Iran took hold, destroyed part of the administrative building at Evin, a large, heavily fortified complex in northern Tehran that rights groups said holds political prisoners and foreign nationals.
“According to official figures, 71 people were killed in the attack on Evin Prison,” judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said on Sunday of an attack that was part of the bombardment campaign Israel launched on June 13.
According to Jahangir, the victims at Evin included administrative staff, guards, prisoners and visiting relatives as well as people living nearby.
The judiciary said Evin’s medical centre and visiting rooms were targeted.
A day after the strike, the judiciary said Iran’s prison authority had transferred inmates out of Evin Prison without specifying their number or identifying them.
The inmates at Evin have included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and several French nationals and other foreigners.
‘I want tougher fighters, I want to be world champion,’ Paul said in his challenge to former and current WBC champions.
Celebrity boxer Jake Paul has defeated former middleweight boxing champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr by unanimous decision in a cruiserweight fight in California, United States.
The 28-year-old YouTube influencer-turned-boxer overcame his opponent with a judges’ score of 99-91, 97-93 and 98-92 in the 10-round fight at Honda Center in Anaheim on Saturday night.
The win marks Paul’s triumphant return to the ring seven months after his blockbuster fight against 58-year-old former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
Chavez Jr, 39, is a former World Boxing Council (WBC) middleweight champion who has not held a major boxing title in 13 years and has fought just once in the last three and a half years. He has also had some well-documented personal problems over the last few years.
Paul, who gained fame as a social media star on YouTube and became a boxer, now has a six-fight winning streak and a 12-1 record with seven knockouts (KOs).
Jake Paul celebrates at the end of the cruiserweight boxing bout against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr [Patrick T Fallon /AFP]
‘I want to be world champion’
Following the win, Paul challenged a number of current and former WBC champions to a fight.
“I want tougher fighters, I want to be world champion,” he told streaming service DAZN in the ring.
He called on Zurdo Ramirez, Badou Jack, Anthony Joshua, Gervonta Davis and Tommy Fury to “stop running”.
However, Chavez Jr said his conqueror was a “good fighter” but was not ready to face the list of champions he had named.
“He is strong, [he is a] good boxer [but] I don’t think he’s ready for champions,” the Mexican said.
Paul, who was set to face Canelo Alvarez until the latter signed a lucrative four-fight deal with Turki Alalshikh’s Riyadh Season, said Alvarez was “ducking” the fight.
In a video posted to his social media account, Paul showed what he said was a contract signed by himself and Alvarez for a fight to be held in Las Vegas on May 3.
“The truth is, you [ Alvarez ] could be bought,” Paul said at the time. “You’re a money-hungry squirrel chasing your next nut. The truth is, these sports-washing, shady characters are paying you hundreds of millions of dollars to stop our fight from happening because they couldn’t fathom the fact that they can’t create a bigger fight than me and you.”
Alvarez, a Mexican boxing superstar, unified boxing’s super-middleweight world titles after a pedestrian but unanimous points win over IBF champion William Scull in Riyadh on May 3 .
Paul celebrates his win [Patrick T Fallon/AFP]
Paul vs Chavez Jr: Contrasting fortunes
The 28-year-old is one of the sport’s top attractions despite not having a traditional fighting pedigree through a boxing association. Paul has made at least $60m since starting his boxing career, according to multiple sources.
His fight last November with Tyson, which Paul won in an eight-round decision, peaked at a staggering 64 million concurrent streams on Netflix.
Meanwhile, Chavez Jr – with a record of (54-7-1, 34 KOs) – last held a major boxing world title in 2012 and has had a difficult time inside and outside the ring in recent years.
In November 2021, his shock defeat by a split decision to 46-year-old former UFC fighter Anderson Silva in a crossover boxing match was undoubtedly the lowest – and most embarrassing – point of his professional boxing career. Coincidentally, Paul beat Silva in a fight last year.
The Mexican’s personal issues have included a lack of motivation, a repeated failure to make weight for fights, alcohol and drug addiction, an arrest for illegal possession of a firearm in his Los Angeles home and a failed drug test. At the launch of the Paul-Chavez fight in May at The Avalon in Hollywood, Paul mocked Chavez’s addiction problems as well as his “lack of mentality”.
Reports say that Paul has a chance of entering the WBC’s rankings with the win.
“The WBC ratings committee has been following Jake Paul’s career,” ESPN reported WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman as saying before the fight.
“If he defeats Chavez, and depending on how the fight plays out, the committee will make the decision. It’s very likely [Paul will be ranked] if he wins convincingly.”
Paul, right, punches Chavez Jr during their cruiserweight boxing match [Etienne Laurent/AP]
At least 66 children have died of malnutrition in Gaza over the course of Israel’s war, authorities in the Palestinian enclave said, condemning a tightened Israeli siege that has prevented the entry of milk, nutritional supplements and other food aid.
The statement from Gaza’s Government Media Office on Saturday comes as Israeli forces intensified their attacks on the territory, killing at least 60 Palestinians, including 20 people in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.
The media office said Israel’s deadly blockade constitutes a “war crime” and reveals its “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon to exterminate civilians”.
The office denounced what it called “this ongoing crime against childhood in the Gaza Strip” as well as “the shameful international silence regarding the suffering of children who are left to fall prey to hunger, disease, and slow death”.
It also said it holds Israel, as well as its allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, responsible for “this catastrophe”, and urged the United Nations to intervene and open the crossings into Gaza immediately.
The statement came days after the UN agency for children (UNICEF) warned that the number of malnourished children in the Gaza Strip was rising at an “alarming rate”. It said that at least 5,119 children, between 6 months and 5 years of age, had been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition in May alone.
UNICEF said the figure represents a nearly 50 percent increase from the 3,444 children admitted in April, and a 150 percent increase from February when a ceasefire was in effect and aid was entering Gaza in significant quantities.
“In just 150 days, from the start of the year until the end of May, 16,736 children – an average of 112 children a day – have been admitted for treatment for malnutrition in the Gaza Strip,” said the agency’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Edouard Beigbeder.
“Every one of these cases is preventable. The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them,” he added. “Man-made decisions that are costing lives. Israel must urgently allow the large-scale delivery of life-saving aid through all border crossings.”
Israel intensifies attacks on north Gaza
The warnings came as Palestinians mourned the 60 people killed in Israeli attacks on Saturday. In Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood, rescuers continued the search for survivors after two consecutive Israeli strikes flattened several residential buildings, killing at least 20 people.
Some nine children were among the victims.
“We were sitting peacefully when we received a call from a private number telling us to evacuate the entire block immediately – a residential area belonging to the al-Nakhalah family. As you can see, the whole block is nearly wiped out,” one resident, Mahmoud al-Nakhala, told Al Jazeera.
“We still don’t know why two three-storey homes were targeted… It’s heartbreaking that people watch what’s happening in Gaza – the suffering, the massacres – and stay silent. At this point, we can’t even comprehend what’s happening here any more,” he said.
The bombings in Tuffah followed another air raid on tents sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.
At least 13 people were killed, including several children.
Other victims included a person who was shot and killed near an aid distribution point run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in southern Rafah.
According to officials in Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 550 people at and near the GHF sites, since the controversial group began operations on May 19.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said that the GHF remains the only source of food in the Strip as Israel continues to place severe restrictions on the entry of supplies by other groups.
“A lot of people here are trying to stay away from the GHF’s centres because of the danger involved in going to them, because of the ongoing and deliberate shootings of aid seekers there,” Mahmoud said. “But again, staying away is not an answer, because if there are no food parcels, it means that children are going to go to bed hungry.”
Aid groups have condemned the GHF’s “militarised” operations, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying on Friday that the US-backed operation in Gaza was “inherently unsafe” and “killing people”.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper has, meanwhile, reported that Israeli troops in Gaza were ordered to shoot at unarmed Palestinians at the GHF sites, with one soldier describing the scenes as a “killing field”.
The Israeli military denied the claim.
Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said the GHF’s aid distribution system in Gaza is an “abomination and utter disgrace”.
“It is an inversion of all the global humanitarian principles about independence, impartiality and neutrality,” he told Al Jazeera.
“As we’ve seen, around about 550 Palestinians have been killed in trying to get food there, to travel by foot, long journeys, and then the families worry whether they’ll ever come back again,” Doyle said.
He went on to describe the situation as another example of how “Israel enjoys complete and utter impunity from any of the norms of war, of international law”.
“This has to be dismantled now, and the proper systems of delivery and distribution of aid set back up,” he added.
Who: Paris Saint-Germain vs Inter Miami What: FIFA Club World Cup round of 16 Where: Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, United States When: Sunday, June 30 at 12pm (16:00 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 9am local (13:00 GMT) in advance of our live text commentary stream.
FIFA’s Club World Cup serves up a treat in the round of 16 as Lionel Messi leads Inter Miami against his former club, Paris Saint-Germain.
The Argentinian international forward joined the French giants, and now first-time European champions, from the club he represented since childhood, Barcelona.
PSG’s coveted European success was not forthcoming, and Messi headed for new pastures with his 2023 move to Major League Soccer.
Now, Messi faces a PSG side shorn of many of the Galacticos recruited to seal European glory, but full of youthful exuberance and riding the crest of their Champions League wave.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a closer look at the match.
Why does Messi’s Miami vs PSG carry such weight?
When PSG meet Inter Miami, it will mark a rare reunion of European football greats, all layered with old loyalties, recent regrets and the chance for Lionel Messi to settle a score.
Sunday’s game features a compelling contrast of eras – a PSG side powered by youth and energy fresh off their maiden Champions League title, and an Inter Miami team built around ageing-but-iconic former Barcelona stars.
On the PSG touchline, Luis Enrique comes face to face with four players he once led at Barcelona: Messi, Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets.
They are all now reunited under Miami coach Javier Mascherano, another figure from Luis Enrique’s treble-winning era at Camp Nou.
“Luis Enrique is a phenomenon,” Alba said this week. “I’m excited to see him and will give him a hug, but when the ref blows the opening whistle, we’ll try to beat him.”
Suarez, now 38, reflected on his former manager’s impact: “I already had a competitive DNA, but he injected even more into me,” he said.
Lionel Messi during training before the match against PSG [Hannah Mckay/Reuters]
Do the Barcelona contingent have history with PSG?
In another layer of intrigue, Miami’s contingent of former Barcelona players were all part of 2017’s “Remontada” against PSG.
That was PSG’s darkest night, when Barca thrashed them 6-1 in Spain after losing 4-0 in Paris in their last-16 Champions League tie.
That was when Miami’s veterans were at their peak.
Now, they rely on memory and rhythm, while PSG’s core has been reshaped by a rising generation: Bradley Barcola, Desire Doue and Vitinha have helped inject fresh energy into Luis Enrique’s system, culminating in a Champions League triumph just weeks ago.
How did PSG fare in the group stage?
The Parisian side arrive in Atlanta after a 1–0 loss to Brazil’s Botafogo in the group stage, which raised questions about fatigue following a long European season.
Though PSG remain heavy favourites on paper, that defeat showed cracks in a squad that has played more high-stakes matches than most of their rivals.
PSG took their group with wins in their opening games against Atletico Madrid and Seattle Sounders.
How did Inter Miami fare in the group stage?
Inter Miami finished second in their group behind Palmeiras with one win and two draws to their name.
“It will be an honour for me facing a great coach, one of the greatest I’ve had in my career,” said Mascherano of Luis Enrique.
Now in his first major club coaching role, Mascherano brings an emotional edge and tactical sharpness to a Miami side that, while physically limited by age, can still threaten, especially with Messi in form.
The Argentina great endured a turbulent two-year stint at PSG after leaving Barcelona in 2021. Though he won domestic silverware, Messi never found peace in Paris and, after his World Cup win in 2022, some fans turned on him.
“I didn’t enjoy myself at PSG,” Messi told reporters earlier this year. “It was a tough period.”
Mascherano believes that memory still drives him.
“When something’s stuck in his mind, Messi gives a little extra,” he said this week.
Messi is pictured with PSG teammates including Neymar, Marquinhos, Marco Verratti, Kylian Mbappe, Achraf Hakimi and Sergio Ramos after winning the 2023 Ligue 1 title in France [Benoit Tessier/Reuters]
What went so wrong for Messi at PSG?
PSG had made it to the Champions League final and then semifinals in the two seasons prior to Messi’s arrival, so he looked like the final piece in the jigsaw.
Instead, they went backwards with him in the side, going out of Europe’s elite club competition in the last 16 two years running.
Having to fit in Messi, with his estimated annual salary of 30 million euros ($35.2 million) after tax, as well as Neymar and Mbappe, may have increased the star appeal, but it weakened them as a team.
Towards the end, the Barcelona legend was even being jeered by some sections of the PSG support who felt Messi’s commitment to the cause was not what it should have been.
Messi was a PSG player when he inspired Argentina to World Cup glory in Qatar in late 2022, but there were only flashes of his genius at club level in France.
His statistics stand up to any scrutiny, with 32 goals and 35 assists in 75 appearances, and he did win two Ligue 1 titles while helping increase PSG’s value as a brand.
Miami coach Javier Mascherano, meanwhile, believes the unhappy memory of his time in Paris could spur Messi on.
“It’s clear that for us it’s better if he plays angry, because he’s one of those players who, when he has something on his mind, gives an extra effort,” Mascherano told ESPN.
How did PSG fare last season?
PSG’s stunning 5-0 demolition of Inter Milan in Munich at the end of last month, which allowed them to win the UEFA Champions League for the first time, completed an incredible treble-winning season for the Qatar-backed side under the coaching of Luis Enrique.
How did Inter Miami fare last season?
Miami finished as the club with the most points in Major League Soccer’s (MLS) regular season, handing them a place at the Club World Cup instead of LA Galaxy, who won the MLS Cup, which is regarded as the highest prize in the MLS.
FIFA announced Miami’s addition to the Club World Cup in October after they broke MLS’s regular-season points record with a 6-2 win over New England Revolution to reach 74 points, one better than the previous record set by New England in 2021.
PSG team news
Ousmane Dembele has just resumed training after overcoming a hamstring injury, but may not even be fit enough for the bench.
Goncalo Ramos and Bradley Barcola are vying to start with Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in. Youngster Senny Mayulu was selected for the match against Seattle in Dembele’s role.
Inter Miami team news
Jordi Alba has returned from injury and will challenge youngster Noah Allen for the left-back position.
Drake Callender, Gonzalo Lujan and Yannick Bright are all still sidelined. Veteran goalkeeper Oscar Ustari will continue to deputise for the former.
Pakistan’s climate minister says country facing ‘crisis of injustice’ as more deadly flooding and extreme weather events hit the country.
Pakistan’s climate change minister has slammed the “crisis of injustice” facing the country and a “lopsided allocation” of funding as heavy rains and the latest flash flooding cause more damage, destruction and loss of life.
Officials in Pakistan said at least 32 people have been killed in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces since the start of the monsoon season.
Last month, at least 32 people were also killed in severe storms in a country that has reported extreme weather events in the spring, including strong hailstorms.
The Climate Rate Index report in 2025 put Pakistan top of the list of the most affected countries based on 2022 data. Then, extensive flooding submerged approximately a third of the country, affecting 33 million people – including killing more than 1,700, and caused $14.8bn worth of damages, as well as $15.2bn of economic losses.
Last year, more floods affected thousands, and a heatwave killed almost 600 people.
“I don’t look at this as a crisis of climate. I look at this as a crisis of justice and this lopsided allocation that we are talking about,” Pakistan’s climate change minister, Musadiq Malik, told Al Jazeera. “This lopsided allocation of green funding, I don’t look at it as a funding gap. I look at it as a moral gap.”
Funding shortfall
Earlier this year, a former head of the country’s central bank said Pakistan needed an annual investment of $40 to $50bn until 2050 to meet its looming climate change challenges despite being responsible for about half a percent of global CO2 emissions.
In January 2023, pledges worth about $10bn from multilateral financial institutions and countries were reported. The following year, Pakistan received $2.8bn from international creditors against those pledges.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund said Pakistan will receive $1.3bn under a new climate resilience loan programme, which will span 28 months. But Malik said those pledges and loans were not enough given the situation Pakistan finds itself in.
“Two countries in the world [China and United States of America] produce 45 percent of the carbon emissions. The fact that the top 10 countries of the world account for almost 70 percent of the carbon burden is also something people are aware of. But 85 percent of the world’s green financing is going to the same 10 countries, while the rest of the world – some 180-odd countries – are getting 10 to 15 percent green financing.
“We are paying for it through these erratic climate changes, floods, agriculture devastation.”
According to a study done last year by the climate change ministry and Italian research institute EvK2CNR, Pakistan is home to 13,000-plus glaciers.
However, the gradual rise in temperatures is also forcing the melting of those glaciers, increasing the risk of flooding, damage to infrastructure, loss of life and land, threat to communities and water scarcity.
“In addition to land and life, flooding [due to glacier melt] swept away thousands of years of civilisation [in Sindh province]. The mosques, temples, schools, hospitals, old buildings, monuments, everything got washed away.
“Add to that the loss of education and access to health care, safe drinking water, waterborne diseases, lack of access to hospitals and clinics, and infant mortality,” the report said.
Last month, Amnesty International said in a report that “Pakistan’s healthcare and disaster response systems are failing to meet the needs of children and older people who are most at risk of death and disease amid extreme weather events related to climate change”.
“Children and older people in Pakistan are suffering on the front line of the climate crisis, exposed to extreme heat or floods that lead to disproportionate levels of death and disease,” said Laura Mills, researcher with Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Programme.
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
Describing Israel and Iran fighting each other at his NATO pre-summit news conference in The Hague this week, US President Donald Trump drew an analogy with children fighting in a schoolyard, who eventually had to be separated.
“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” Mark Rutte, NATO secretary-general, chimed in.
Asked about the comment after the summit, Trump said: “No, he likes me. I think he likes me. If he doesn’t I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and hit him hard, OK? He did it very affectionately. Hey Daddy. You’re my Daddy.”
The White House decided Rutte was flattering the US president, and made a reel of Trump’s visit to the Netherlands, set to the music of Usher’s Hey Daddy.
Rutte’s flattery of Trump didn’t stop there. On tackling the Russia-Ukraine war, Rutte told reporters before the NATO summit: “When he came in office, he started the dialogue with President Putin, and I always thought that was crucial. And there’s only one leader who could break the deadlock originally, and it had to be the American president, because he is the most powerful leader in the world.”
But how sincere are world leaders’ statements about Donald Trump? Do they genuinely serve to improve bilateral relations and does flattery work?
Who has handled Trump well and what have the results been?
Neither Rutte, nor any other European leader, engaged in any kind of dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a long time after the summer of 2022, the year of his invasion of Ukraine, believing it pointless.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was severely criticised as “defeatist” for phoning Putin last November, while Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the only European leaders to have visited the Kremlin during the war, have been viewed as openly collaborationist.
Yet when Trump started talks with Putin, many Europeans paid him the same compliment as Rutte when they made their inaugural visits to the White House after he took office in January.
Keir Starmer, UK
“Thank you for changing the conversation to bring about the possibility that now we can have a peace deal, and we will work with you,” said the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, in the Oval Office in February.
Starmer pulled a few rabbits out of hats. Knowing Trump’s fondness for the notion of hereditary power, he drew from his jacket a letter from King Charles III containing an invitation for an unprecedented second state visit to Windsor Castle.
Trump was momentarily speechless. “Your country is a fantastic country, and it will be our honour to be there, thank you,” Trump said when he’d gathered himself.
Starmer and Trump exchanged a few handshakes while speaking and Starmer repeatedly touched Trump’s shoulder in a sign of affection.
But did all this flattery have much effect? Trump announced he was freezing military aid to Ukraine the following month, much to the outrage of the UK, along with Nordic and Baltic countries.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy
Both Starmer and Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, identified Ukraine as a key issue for Trump, who has made it clear he wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize by ending international conflicts. So far, he has claimed credit for ending this month’s “12-Day War” between Israel and Iran, preventing nuclear war following the May 7 air battle between India and Pakistan, and overseeing a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.
Meloni, therefore, tried a similarly flattering approach to Trump. “Together we have been defending the freedom of Ukraine. Together we can build a just and lasting peace. We support your efforts, Donald,” she said during her White House visit in April.
Meloni astutely punched all of Trump’s hot-button issues in her opening remarks, saying Italy had policies to combat Fentanyl, an addictive painkiller that Trump has blamed Canada and Mexico for allowing into the country, to invest $10bn in the US economy and to control undocumented immigration.
She even adapted Trump’s slogan, Make America Great Again, to Europe. “The goal for me is to Make the West Great Again. I think we can do it together,” Meloni said to a beaming Trump.
None of this has translated into a state visit by Trump to Rome, a move which would cement Meloni’s position as a major European leader, however.
Mark Carney, Canada
Meanwhile, newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was both flattering and firm with Trump last month. He complimented Trump on being “a transformational president” who had sided “with the American worker”, but also shut down Trump’s territorial ambition to annex Canada as the 51st US state. “It’s not for sale, won’t be for sale ever,” Mark Carney said.
Relations seemed to have taken a turn for the better following Trump’s friction with Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau. Trump called him “very dishonest and weak” at the 2018 G7 summit in Canada before storming off early.
But Carney may not have had much effect at all. On Friday, Trump ended trade talks with Canada and threatened to impose additional tariffs on exports over Canada’s new digital services tax.
Which meetings have gone less well?
Emmanuel Macron, France
There was little warmth in Trump’s White House meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in February.
Braced for confrontation with a leader who claims to lead Europe in strategic thought, Trump spoke from lengthy, defensive, scripted remarks which attempted to justify his Ukraine policy.
Macron preached that peace in Ukraine must not mean surrender – a sentiment shared by many European leaders, but not expressed to Trump. Trump was cordial with Macron, but not affectionate.
Meanwhile, France is holding out on any sort of capitulation to Trump in European Union trade talks. Other members of the EU want to settle for an “asymmetric” trade deal that might benefit the US more than the EU, just to get it done.
What’s more, following the G7 meeting in Canada two weeks ago, it was clear no love was lost between the two leaders: Trump called Macron “publicity seeking” in a social media post on June 17.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was mauled by Trump and Vice President J D Vance on February 28, when he went to the White House to sign a mineral rights agreement he hoped would bring US military aid.
He and Vance clashed over direct talks with Russia over Ukraine’s head, and Vance lambasted Zelenskyy for failing to show enough “gratitude” to the US.
“You’re playing with millions of people’s lives. You’re gambling with World War Three,” said Trump.
However, Zelenskyy and Trump appeared to have patched things up a little when they held an impromptu meeting while attending the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican in April. A White House spokesperson described the encounter as “very productive”.
Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa
Last month, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House when he played him a video of a South African opposition party rally in favour of evicting white farmers. Trump accused South Africa of carrying out a “genocide” against white farmers.
Ramaphosa was visibly discomfited, but he patiently explained that under a parliamentary system, different viewpoints are expressed, which don’t represent government policy, and that South Africa is a violent country where most victims of violence are Black.
“You are a partner of South Africa and as a partner you are raising concerns which we are willing to talk to you about,” Ramaphosa said, calming Trump a little.
Trump was sidetracked into talking about a Jumbo Jet that Qatar had gifted him during his Middle Eastern tour. “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” said Ramaphosa, as if to make a virtue of his absence of flattery.
Does flattery work with Trump?
Some experts believe that flattery may help to prevent confrontation with Trump. Some observers have argued it helps “to contain the American president’s impulses”.
But flattery does little to change actual US policy. Rutte and other NATO leaders failed to draw the US back into the Contact Group helping Ukraine with weapons.
“A summit dedicated to the sole aim of making Trump feel good is one with very limited aims indeed. All it does is push the difficult decisions forward for another day,” wrote Andrew Gawthorpe, a lecturer in history and international studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in The Conversation, a UK publication.
Those who do have good relations with Trump don’t necessarily come away with the things they want, either. Starmer’s US-UK trade deal keeps tariffs in place for British companies exporting to the US, albeit lower ones than Trump had been threatening. Meloni is still waiting for Trump to bestow her a visit.
Respectful firmness, on the other hand, does seem to work.
Trump has dropped his campaign to redraw US borders by absorbing Canada and Greenland, which is owned by Denmark. Carney’s firmness helped, because it carried a sense of finality. Carney had just won an election and Trump acknowledged “it was probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics. Maybe even greater than mine.”
Denmark has been similarly firm. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said existing agreements with the US already allow it to station military bases there, while Greenlanders don’t want to be colonised by Americans.
Trump’s attempts to embarrass Zelenskyy and Ramaphosa also backfired. Europe has stepped in to make up the shortfall in US military aid to Ukraine, casting the US as a fickle ally. Trump’s “white genocide” video did little to convince Americans that South Africa was committing a genocide against Dutch Boers, and his offer of asylum to a number of them has been roundly criticised in the US.
Southern Europe struggles with soaring heat as temperatures hit 40C, sparking fears of wildfires and health risks.
Europeans are braced for the first heatwave of the Northern Hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes thermometers on the world’s fastest-warming continent further into the red.
With temperatures expected to rise to 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Italian capital, Rome, on Saturday, the Eternal City’s many tourists and Catholic pilgrims to the Vatican alike have been converging around the Italian capital’s 2,500 public fountains for refreshment.
In France, with residents of the southern port city of Marseille expected to have to cope with temperatures flirting with 40C (104F), authorities ordered public swimming pools to be made free of charge to help residents beat the Mediterranean heat.
Two-thirds of Portugal will be on high alert on Sunday for extreme heat and forest fires with 42C (108F) expected in the capital, Lisbon.
Meanwhile, visitors to – and protesters against – Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s Friday wedding in Venice were likewise sweltering under the summer sun.
“I try not to think about it, but I drink a lot of water and never stay still, because that’s when you get sunstroke,” Sriane Mina, an Italian student, told AFP news agency on Friday in Venice.
Meanwhile, Spain, which has in past years seen a series of deadly summer blazes ravaging the Iberian peninsula, is expecting peak temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) across most of the country from Sunday.
Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment, with Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves a result of the long-term warming.
With peaks of 39C (102F) expected in the cities of Naples and Palermo, Sicily has ordered a ban on outdoor work in the hottest hours of the day, as has the Liguria region in northern Italy.
The country’s trade unions are campaigning to extend the measure to other parts of the country.
In Greece, the first heatwave of the summer arrived on Thursday when a fast-moving wildfire engulfed holiday homes and forest land on a section of the Greek coastline just 40km (25 miles) south of the capital, Athens.
More than 100 firefighters, supported by two dozen firefighting aircraft, battled the wildfire that tore across the coastal area of Palaia Fokaia. The flames were whipped up by high winds as temperatures approached 40C (104F).
The heatwave comes hot on the heels of a series of tumbling records for extreme heat, including Europe’s hottest March ever, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitor.
As a result of the planet’s warming, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves like this weekend’s have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.
All-white outfits, lush green courts, strawberries and cream, and glittering champions’ trophies at the end of two weeks.
Players and fans are gearing up for a fortnight of much-awaited tennis action as the Wimbledon Championships 2025 get under way on Monday.
From top players to unique quirks, here’s what you need to know about the tournament:
When is Wimbledon 2025 starting, and when are the finals?
The main round of the championships begins on Monday, June 30 with the men’s and women’s singles first-round matches. Here are the key dates for the men’s and women’s singles matches at the Grand Slam:
First to fourth round: June 30 to July 7
Quarterfinals: July 8 and 9
Women’s singles semifinals: July 10
Men’s singles semifinals: July 11
Women’s singles final: July 12
Men’s singles final: July 13
Where is Wimbledon played, and what’s SW19?
The third and the oldest tennis Grand Slam of the year, and the only one played on grass, attracts thousands of visitors to its famed courts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Club (AELTC) in the southwest of London, the United Kingdom.
The venue is also known as SW19, shortened from its postcode of SW19 5AG.
During the two weeks of the tournament’s main rounds, the town is bathed in the purple and green colours of the event, with shops, cafes and restaurants sporting tennis-themed decorations.
Who are the favourites to win Wimbledon 2025?
Carlos Alcaraz: The two-time champion is favourite to defend his title after winning this year’s French Open, as well as Queen’s Club Championship, a pre-Wimbledon tournament in London considered a dress rehearsal for the Slam.
Jannik Sinner: The world number one has yet to grab the Wimbledon trophy, but his rise through the rankings in the past two years and wins at two of the last three Slams make him Alcaraz’s main contemporary.
Aryna Sabalenka: The world number one may not have played a Wimbledon final yet, but has dominated the women’s rankings since October 2024 and has played in the finals of the last three Grand Slams. She won the Australian and US Open in 2024 and after losing in Roland-Garros, the Belarusian will be looking to add Wimbledon to her list of majors titles.
Marketa Vondrousova: The most in-form grass-court player and 2023 Wimbledon champion has made a swift rise in the women’s rankings over the past few weeks. Vondrusova won the Berlin Open, where she beat the likes of Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur and Madison Keys to the title. While the Czech player’s 2023 Wimbledon triumph may have been a surprise, the 25-year-old will be the one to watch in 2025.
Marketa Vondrousova beat Ons Jabeur to win Wimbledon in 2023 [File: Andrew Couldridge/Reuters]
Who are the top seeds?
Men’s:
Jannik Sinner
Carlos Alcaraz
Alexander Zverev
Jack Draper
Taylor Fritz
Novak Djokovic
Lorenzo Musetti
Holger Rune
Daniil Medvedev
Ben Shelton
Women’s:
Aryna Sabalenka
Coco Gauff
Jessica Pegula
Jasmine Paolini
Qinwen Zheng
Madison Keys
Mirra Andreeva
Iga Swiatek
Paula Badosa
Emma Navarro
Is there a dress code for players and spectators at Wimbledon?
Yes. All players must be dressed in white – not off-white or cream – when they step on the court for their matches. Not only should the clothes and shoes be all white, but any caps, headbands and wristbands by a player can also only be white in colour. Male players’ undergarments must also be entirely white. The organisers are more tolerant of colourful attire on practice courts.
While there is no strict dress code for the spectators, they are encouraged to dress smartly while attending matches on the Centre Court or Court Number One.
For those invited to watch a match from the Royal Box, a smart dress attire is mandatory.
The championship is often considered an unofficial fashion showpiece, especially when celebrities and dignitaries frequent the courts on the last few days.
Catherine, the Princess of Wales, left, is the patron of the All England Lawn Tennis Club and attended the 2024 men’s singles final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, alongside her daughter Princess Charlotte and sister Pippa Matthews, while British actor Benedict Cumberbatch was also seated in the Royal Box [File: Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports via Reuters]
What’s new at Wimbledon 2025?
The tournament has joined the Australian Open and US Open in replacing on-court line judges with a live electronic calling system.
Organisers say its 80 former officials will be employed this year as match assistants, with two on each court offering support to the umpire, while they will also provide backup should the electronic system fail.
What is ‘strawberries and cream’ and why is Wimbledon famous for it?
In stark contrast to the various fast food items consumed at sports stadiums around the world, Wimbledon offers its attendees a unique delicacy: strawberries and cream.
True to its name, the SW19 specialty is nothing more than juicy red British strawberries dipped in fresh cream, but the treat’s distinct combination and mass consumption year after year has made it a Wimbledon novelty.
According to the organisers, at least 7,000 litres (1,850 gallons) of cream and 28,000kg (62,000lb) of strawberries – grown specially for the tournament at a farm in Kent – are consumed during the fortnight of the championship.
Strawberries and cream are a mass-selling item at the Wimbledon tennis championship [File: Julian Finney/Getty Images]
Who has won the most Wimbledon titles?
Czech-American tennis great Martina Navratilova has won the women’s singles title on nine occasions and has an astonishing overall 20 Wimbledon titles to her name, including seven women’s and four mixed doubles from 1976 to 2003.
Switzerland’s Roger Federer, often regarded as the greatest men’s grass-court player, has won eight Wimbledon titles between 2003 and 2017.
Martina Navratilova acknowledges the crowd at Wimbledon in 2019 [File: Susan Mullane/USA Today Sports via Reuters]
How to buy tickets or join the queue for Wimbledon 2025?
The Wimbledon public ballot, held in the closing months of the preceding year, is the fans’ first and easiest means of buying tickets for the following year’s championship.
Failing that, fans have the opportunity to buy tickets on the day for the two weeks of the tournament by joining the famous Wimbledon queue.
Starting from the metal gates of the AELTC grounds, the queue snakes around Church Road and well into the public parks opposite the venue.
Fans begin queuing from late evening for the following day’s entry, which can bring them tickets for one of the main show courts or simply entry to the tournament’s premises. Tents are pitched, snacks and drinks are shared, and the long hours waiting for a chance to enter the venue are spent following the scores online or by snoozing while in queue.
“Tickets are sold on a best available, one per person queuing basis and are non-transferable,” according to the organisers, and once the capacity limit is reached, entry is only possible as people leave.
People relax as they queue in tents at a public park opposite the grounds of Wimbledon ahead of the competition during the 2024 championship [File: Hannah Mckay/Reuters]
How much is the prize money for Wimbledon 2025?
The tournament’s prize money has increased by seven percent to a record pot of $72.6m in a bid to ease off pressure from the players for a bigger share of Grand Slam profits.
The winners of the men’s and women’s singles titles will each receive $4.08m, an increase of more than 11 percent on 2024, while a main draw spot is worth a minimum of $89,683, up 10 percent.
How to follow and live stream Wimbledon 2025?
The tournament will be aired to over 220 territories around the world via satellite, terrestrial and digital broadcasters.
Al Jazeera Sport will cover the men’s and women’s singles finals with its comprehensive live text and photo commentary stream.
As Canada pushes ahead with a new digital services tax on foreign and domestic technology companies, United States President Donald Trump has retaliated by ending all trade talks and threatened to impose additional tariffs on exports from Ottawa.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump called the new Canadian tax structure a “direct and blatant attack on our country”, adding that Canada is “a very difficult country to trade with”.
“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” he wrote. He added that he would announce new tariffs of his own for Canada in a matter of days.
US companies such as Amazon, Meta, Google and Uber face an estimated $2bn in bills under the new tax.
Trump’s decision marks a sharp return to trade tensions between the two countries, abruptly ending a more cooperative phase since Mark Carney’s election as Canada’s prime minister in March.
It also marks a further escalation in the trade-as-pressure tactic under Trump’s second term in Washington.
The US is Canada’s largest trading partner by far, with more than 80 percent of Canadian exports destined for the US. In 2024, total bilateral goods trade exceeded US$762bn, with Canada exporting $412.7bn and importing $349.4bn – leaving the US, which counts Canada as its second-largest trading partner, with a goods deficit of $63.3bn.
A disruption due to tariffs on products like automobiles, minerals, energy or aluminium could have large ripple effects across both economies.
So, what is Canada’s digital tax? Why is Carney facing domestic pushback on the taxes? And how is Washington responding?
What is Canada’s digital services tax?
Canada’s Digital Services Tax Act (DSTA) came into force in June last year. It is a levy on tech revenues generated from Canadian users – even if providers do not have a physical presence in the country.
The DSTA was first proposed during the 2019 federal election under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and received approval in Canada on June 20, 2024. It came into force a week later, on June 28. The first payments of this tax are due on Monday, June 30, 2025.
Large technology firms with global revenues exceeding $820m and Canadian revenues of more than $14.7m must pay a 3 percent levy on certain digital services revenues earned in Canada. Unlike traditional corporate taxes based on profits, this tax targets gross revenue linked to Canadian user engagement.
Digital services the levy will apply to include: Online marketplaces, social media platforms, digital advertising and the sale or licensing of user data.
One of the most contentious parts of the new framework for businesses is its retroactive nature, which demands payments on revenues dating back to January 1, 2022.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney walks with President Donald Trump after a group photo at the G7 Summit, on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Canada [Mark Schiefelbein/AP]
Why is Trump suspending trade talks over the new tax?
On June 11, 21 US Congress members sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to pressure Canada to eliminate or pause its Digital Services Tax. “If Canada decides to move forward with this unprecedented, retroactive tax, it will set a terrible precedent that will have long-lasting impacts on global tax and trade practices,” they wrote.
Then, in a Truth Social post on Friday this week, Trump said Canada had confirmed it would continue with its new digital services tax “on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country”.
He added that the US would be “terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately” and that he would be levying new tariffs of his own on Canada within seven days.
“They have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products,” Trump said, adding, “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”
Later, at the Oval Office, Trump doubled down, saying: “We have all the cards. We have every single one.” He noted that the US holds “such power over Canada [economically]”. “We’d rather not use it,” Trump said, adding: “It’s not going to work out well for Canada. They were foolish to do it.
“Most of their business is with us, and when you have that circumstance, you treat people better.”
Trump also said he would order a Section 301 investigation under the Trade Act to assess the DSTA’s effect on US commerce, which could potentially lead to other punitive measures.
On Friday, White House National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett, told the Fox Business Friday programme: “They’re taxing American companies who don’t necessarily even have a presence in Canada.”
Calling the tax “almost criminal”, he said: “They’re going to have to remove it. And I think they know that.”
How has Canada responded?
Relations had seemed friendlier between the two North American neighbours in recent months as they continue with trade talks. Trump and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had clashed previously – with Trump calling Trudeau “very dishonest” and “weak” during the 2018 G7 talks in Canada.
But newly elected Carney enjoyed a cordial visit with Trump in May at the White House, while Trump travelled to Canada for the G7 summit in Alberta on June 16 and 17. Carney said at the summit that the two had set a 30-day deadline for trade talks.
In a brief statement on Friday, Prime Minister Carney’s office said of Trump’s new threats to suspend trade talks over the digital tax: “The Canadian government will continue to engage in these complex negotiations with the United States in the best interests of Canadian workers and businesses.”
Last week, Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters that the digital tax could be negotiated as part of the broader, ongoing US-Canada trade discussions. “Obviously, all of that is something that we’re considering as part of broader discussions that you may have,” he had said.
Those discussions had been expected to result in a trade deal in July. However, they are now in limbo.
What do Canadian business leaders say?
Carney has been facing pressure from domestic businesses as well, which have lobbied the government to pause the digital services tax, underlining that the new framework would increase their costs for providing services and warning against retaliation from the US.
The Business Council of Canada, a nonprofit organisation representing CEOs and leaders of major Canadian companies, said in a statement that, for years, it “has warned that the implementation of a unilateral digital services tax could risk undermining Canada’s economic relationship with its most important trading partner, the United States”.
“That unfortunate development has now come to pass,” the statement noted. “In an effort to get trade negotiations back on track, Canada should put forward an immediate proposal to eliminate the DST in exchange for the elimination of tariffs from the United States.”
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, from left, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz participate in a session of the G7 Summit, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Canada (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) (AP)
Has Trump used tariffs to pressure Canada before?
Yes. Prior to the DSTA, Trump has used tariffs to pressure Canada over what he says is its role in the flow of the addictive drug, fentanyl, and undocumented migration into the US, as well as broader trade and economic issues.
On January 20, in his inaugural address, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods and a 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy resources. Trump claimed that Canada has a “growing footprint” in fentanyl production, and alleged that Mexican cartels operate fentanyl labs in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.
These tariffs were paused for 30 days following assurances from Canada that appropriate action would be taken to curb the flow of fentanyl, and then re-imposed in early March.
Do other countries levy a similar digital tax?
Yes, several countries around the world have introduced digital services taxes (DSTs) similar to Canada’s. France was one of the first to introduce a DST in 2019, eliciting an angry response from Trump who was serving his first term as president. The French tax is a 3 percent levy on revenues from online advertising, digital platforms and sales of user data.
The UK followed with a 2 percent tax on revenues from social media platforms and search engines. Spain, Italy, and Austria have also implemented similar taxes, with rates ranging from 3 to 5 percent. Turkiye has one of the highest DST rates at 7.5 percent, covering a wide range of digital services such as content streaming and advertising.
Outside Europe, India has a 2 percent “equalisation levy” on foreign e-commerce operators which earn revenues from Indian users. Kenya and Indonesia have also created their own digital tax systems, though they’re structured slightly differently – Indonesia, for instance, applies Value Added Tax (VAT) – or sales tax – on foreign digital services, rather than a DST.
The US government has strongly opposed these taxes; some of these disputes have been paused as part of ongoing negotiations led by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organisation made up of 38 member countries, which is working on a global agreement for taxing digital companies fairly.
Canada held off on implementing its DST until 2024 to give time for the OECD talks. But when progress stalled, it went ahead with the 3 percent tax that applies retroactively since January 2022.
Should the EU be worried about this?
The European Union is likely to be watching this situation closely as digital tax is likely to be a key concern during its own trade talks with the US.
Trump has repeatedly warned that similar tax measures from other allies, including EU countries, could face severe retaliation.
Trump’s administration has previously objected to digital taxes introduced by EU member states like France, Italy, and Spain. In 2020, the US Trade Representative investigated these taxes under Section 301 and threatened retaliatory tariffs, though those were paused pending OECD-led global tax negotiations.
The European Commission has confirmed that digital taxation remains on the agenda, especially if a global deal under the OECD fails to materialise. President Ursula von der Leyen said on June 26 that “all options remain on the table” in trade discussions with the US, including enforcement mechanisms against discriminatory US measures.
The high-stakes trade negotiations ongoing between the US and the EU have a deadline for July 9 – the date that Trump’s 90-day pause on global reciprocal tariffs is due to expire. Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs of up to 50 percent on key European exports, including cars and steel, if a deal is not reached.
In response to these threats, the EU has prepared a list of retaliatory tariffs worth up to 95 billion euros ($111.4bn), which would target a broad range of US exports, from agricultural products to Boeing aircraft. EU leaders have signalled that they will defend the bloc’s tax sovereignty, while remaining open to negotiation.
Thousands to march in Hungary’s capital despite government ban, highlighting EU-wide resistance against anti-LGBTQ laws.
A record number of people are expected to attend a Pride march in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, defying a ban that marks an unprecedented regression of LGBTQ rights in the European Union.
The event on Saturday comes after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling coalition earlier this year amended laws and the constitution to ban the annual celebration. Orban’s government has consistently argued that the legislation defends traditional family values and protects children.
While the prime minister has been emboldened by the anti-diversity offensive of President Donald Trump in the United States, his own initiatives have drawn protests at home and condemnation from the EU and rights groups.
The nationalist leader on Friday said that while police would not “break up” the 30th edition of the Pride march, those who took part should be aware of “legal consequences”.
Despite the risk of a fine, more than 35,000 people are expected to gather at 2pm (12:00 GMT) near Budapest’s city hall, an hour before the march begins.
Ministers from several EU countries and dozens of European politicians are expected to attend in defiance of the ban, reminiscent of events in Moscow in 2006 and Istanbul in 2015.
“We’re not just standing up for ourselves … If this law isn’t overturned, Eastern Europe could face a wave of similar measures,” Pride organiser Viktoria Radvanyi said.
Earlier this week, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen called on the Hungarian authorities to reverse the ban.
Thirty-three countries have also spoken up in support of the march.
While parade organisers risk up to a year in prison, attendees can face fines up to 500 euros ($580). The latest legal changes empower the authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who take part.
Freshly installed cameras have appeared on lamp posts along the planned route of the march.
However, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony has insisted that no attendee can face any reprisals as the march – co-organised by the city hall this time – is a municipal event and does not require police approval.
“The police have only one task tomorrow, and it is a serious one: to ensure the safety of Hungarian and European citizens attending the event,” Karacsony said during a briefing with visiting EU equalities commissioner Hadja Lahbib.
Far-right groups have announced multiple counterprotests along the planned route of the procession.
Justice Minister Bence Tuzson this week sent a letter to EU embassies cautioning diplomats and staff against participating because of the police ban.
Several EU countries have informed their citizens of the potential of fines through travel advisories.
Since Orban’s return to power in 2010, the country of 9.6 million people has been steadily rolling back LGBTQ rights.
Legal changes have, in effect, barred same-sex couples from adopting children, prevented transgender people from changing their name or gender in official documents, and a 2021 law forbade the “display and promotion” of homosexuality to under-18s.
In March, politicians passed a bill targeting the annual Pride march, amending the 2021 law to prohibit any gathering violating its provisions.
A month later, parliament also adopted a constitutional change to strengthen the legal foundations for the ban.
“Orban is employing a tried-and-tested recipe ahead of next year’s election by generating a conflict,” political analyst Daniel Mikecz told the news agency AFP. Orban was “polarising society”, he added.
Voter opinion polls suggest Orban’s Fidesz party has been losing ground to the opposition.
The first Pride march was held in 1970 in New York to mark the anniversary of the city’s Stonewall riots in June 1969, which created the gay rights movement.
A state funeral service is under way in Iran for about 60 people, including military commanders, killed in Israeli attacks, with thousands joining the ceremony in the capital, Tehran.
State TV showed footage of people donning black clothes, waving Iranian flags and holding pictures of the slain head of the Revolutionary Guard, other top commanders and nuclear scientists in the ceremony that started at 8am (04:30 GMT) on Saturday.
Images from central Tehran showed coffins draped in Iranian flags and bearing portraits of the deceased commanders in uniform.
The United States had carried out strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites last weekend, joining its ally Israel’s bombardments of Iran in the 12-day war launched on June 13.
Both Israel and Iran claimed victory in the war that ended with a ceasefire on Tuesday, with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei downplaying the US strikes, claiming Trump had “exaggerated events in unusual ways”, and rejecting US claims that Iran’s nuclear programme had been set back by decades.
The coffins of the Guard’s chief General Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard’s ballistic missile programme, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and others were driven on trucks along the capital’s Azadi Street as people in the crowds chanted: “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Salami and Hajizadeh were both killed on the first day of the war, which Israel said was meant to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme.
Mohammad Bagheri, a major-general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as top nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi were also killed in Israeli attacks.
Saturday’s ceremonies were the first public funerals for top commanders since the ceasefire, and Iranian state television reported that they were for 60 people in total, including four women and four children.
Authorities closed government offices to allow public servants to attend the ceremonies.
War of words
The state funeral comes a day after US President Donald Trump launched a tirade on his Truth Social platform, blasting Khamenei for claiming in a video address that Iran had won the war.
Trump also claimed to have known “EXACTLY where he (Khamenei) was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the US Armed Forces… terminate his life”.
He claimed he had been working in recent days on the possible removal of sanctions against Iran, but he dropped it after Khamenei’s remarks.
Hitting back at Trump on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on X: “If President Trump is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful and unacceptable tone towards Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said Araghchi’s remarks were “a most expected reaction” to Trump’s social media posts.
“Many Iranian people regard him [Khamenei] as chiefly a religious leader, but according to the constitution, he’s not only that – he’s the political leader, he’s the military leader – he’s simply the head of state in Iran,” he said.
Serdar also said Khamenei’s position is not just the top of a hierarchy, but a divine role in Shia political theology.
“Not only in Iran, but across the world, we know there are a significant number of Shia who look for his guidance,” Serdar said. “Anyone who knows that would be meticulously careful not to publicly criticise him, and particularly not to accuse him of lying.”
No nuclear talks planned
There was no immediate sign of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the state broadcast of the funeral.
Khamenei, who has not made a public appearance since before the outbreak of the war, has in past funerals held prayers for fallen commanders over their coffins before the open ceremonies, later aired on state television.
During the 12 days before the ceasefire, Israel claimed it killed about 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites.
Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted, but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people, according to Israeli figures.
The Israeli attacks on Iran killed at least 627 civilians, Tehran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education said.
After the US strikes, Trump said negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme for a new deal were set to restart next week, but Tehran denied there were plans for a resumption.
PTSD, anxiety and depression higher in refugee children
Sameer tells Al Jazeera,“Scenes of those things which I witnessed had a very bad effect on me and still when I remember, it [makes] me upset.”
Research with refugee children finds the prevalence of emotional disorders to be generally higher than in non-refugee children.
According to one study, the overall prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was 23 percent (one in four) in refugee children, that of anxiety disorders was 16 percent (one in six) and that of depression was 14 percent (one in seven).
“One of the things about trauma is it keeps you on this very high state of alert,” says Trickey. “And I think those without refugee status, they’re living this constant fear of being returned to the place they fled.”
But not all children experience trauma the same way, Trickey adds.
“A more important risk factor, a predictor of PTSD, is not how big the event was, but it’s what you make of it. Were you afraid? Did you think someone was gonna die?
“And different children will find different things frightening. There’ll be some people that actually experience the most awful things and seem pretty unaffected, and they do OK. There’ll be some people that seem to be doing OK, and then they have, we can sometimes call it, latent vulnerability. And later on in life, that’s when they develop difficulties.”
Ventevogel tells Al Jazeera that often, in younger children, there may be more issues with withdrawal, because they cannot verbalise how they feel, for example where “a child withdraws, stops playing with other children, or a child shows in play, in the way the child enacts issues, that there is something not OK.
“It’s not diagnostic, but this can be an indication that there is something deeper,” Ventevogel says.
Trickey explains that during a trauma-focused therapy session, a boy he was working with described what he was going through by comparing his brain to a wastepaper bin stuffed with “scrunched-up pieces of paper” that represent “all the bad things” he had been through.
“And as I walk to school, they fall in front of my eyes. And when I lie down and go to sleep, they fall into my dreams,” the boy told him. “But when I come and see you, we take them out of the bin, and we unscrunch them. Then we read them through carefully, then we fold them up neatly, and then we put them back in the bin. But because they’re folded up neatly, it means they don’t fall out the top, and I’ve got more room in my head to think about other things.”
For Sameer, his ability to cope came down to his mindset. “With the passage of time, I became used to the situation and I feel confident and fine now. And I hope, whatever problems or difficulties I face in the future, I will overcome and hopefully things will get normal.”
Investigators described finding decaying bodies stacked atop each other throughout a dilapidated, bug-infested building.
A judge in the US state of Colorado has handed a funeral home owner, who stashed 191 dead bodies on his premises, a 20-year prison sentence for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government.
Federal prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence for Jon Hallford, the owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado, where he and his wife, Carie Hallford, stored bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sent families fake ashes.
At Friday’s hearing, US District Judge Nina Wang said the circumstances and scale of John Hallford’s crimes, as well as the emotional damage to families he inflicted, warranted a longer sentence.
“This is not an ordinary fraud case,” Judge Wang said.
Investigators were called to the dilapidated, insect-infested building in the small town of Penrose, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Denver, in 2023 after reports of an “abhorrent smell” coming from the property.
At trial, investigators described finding the bodies stacked on top of each other and being unable to move into some rooms because they were piled so high with human remains.
FBI agents also had to put boards down so they could walk around the crime scene and above the bodily fluid that had pooled on the ground.
The morbid discovery by investigators in 2023 revealed for the first time to many families that the ashes they had received from Return to Nature were fake. Court documents showed Hallford had sent families urns filled with dry concrete mix, and in two cases, the wrong body had been buried.
In separate charges, Jon Hallford has pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse in state court. He is scheduled to be sentenced for those charges in August.
Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September. That same month, she will attend her next hearing in the state case, in which she’s also charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse.
A hearse and van sit outside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, on October 6, 2023 [David Zalubowski/AP Photo]
COVID-19 fraud
At Friday’s hearing, Jon Hallford was also jailed for defrauding the US federal government out of nearly $900,000 in emergency financial assistance provided to Americans dealing with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a news statement, the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Colorado said the Hallfords had “defrauded the Small Business Administration through fraudulent COVID-19 loan applications”.
Federal prosecutors said the Hallfords syphoned the money and spent it, along with customers’ payments, on SUVs worth more than $120,000, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, and luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
In addition to his jail sentence, Jon Hallford was also “ordered to pay $1,070,413.74 in restitution for a conspiracy to commit wire fraud”, according to the District of Colorado.
The District of Colorado statement said the Hallfords had “collected more than $130,000 from grieving families for funeral services that were never provided”.
“Instead of ensuring proper disposition of the remains, Hallford allowed bodies to accumulate in various states of decay and decomposition inside the funeral home’s facility,” it said.
According to an order suspending the home’s registration as a funeral establishment, Jon Hallford had claimed when the bodies were discovered “that he practises taxidermy” at the property.
In court before the sentencing, Jon Hallford told the judge that he opened Return to Nature to make a positive impact on people’s lives, but “then everything got completely out of control”.
“I am so deeply sorry for my actions,” he said. “I still hate myself for what I’ve done.”
US president’s claim greeted with surprise as deaths spiral in Gaza and Israeli forces accused of more ‘war crimes’ for shooting starving people seeking food aid.
United States President Donald Trump said he believes a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas could be reached within a week.
Trump came out with the surprise comment while speaking to reporters on Friday, saying he was hopeful after speaking to some of the people involved in trying to get a truce.
“I think it’s close. I just spoke to some of the people involved,” Trump said.
“We think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire,” the president said, without revealing who he had been in contact with.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said Trump’s comment will be “welcome news” to the starved and bombed population of Gaza, but she also cautioned that there are “no negotiations at this moment happening anywhere in the region”.
“What we do know is that talk of a ceasefire increased exponentially after the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Israel does not want to talk about ending the war. In fact, the Israeli prime minister would be risking a lot if he did,” Odeh said.
But, she added, there is an understanding, according to many reports, that Netanyahu would have to agree to some sort of ceasefire in exchange for normalisation deals with Arab states, which the Trump administration has promoted.
Hamas, on the other hand, requires that Israel stop its war on Gaza and for the Israeli military to withdraw from areas it seized in Gaza after breaking the last ceasefire in March.
“Hamas also wants US guarantees that negotiations would continue and that Israel wouldn’t break the ceasefire again if more time was needed for negotiations,” Odeh added.
Trump’s ceasefire prediction comes at a time of mounting killings by Israeli forces in Gaza and growing international condemnation of Israel’s war amid the latest revelation that soldiers said they were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking humanitarian aid in the territory.
Authorities in Gaza said the report by the Haaretz media outlet that Israeli commanders ordered the deliberate shooting of starving Palestinians was further proof of Israel’s “war crimes” in the war-torn territory.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have rejected the report of commanders targeting civilians, Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that almost 550 Palestinians have been killed near US- and Israel-backed aid distribution points in Gaza since late May.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. “The search for food must never be a death sentence,” he said.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French acronym MSF) branded the situation in Gaza as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”.
A spokesperson for the office of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said they had no information to share about a possible ceasefire breakthrough in Gaza.
Witkoff helped former US President Joe Biden’s aides broker a ceasefire and captive release agreement in Gaza shortly before Trump took office in January. But the truce was broken by Israel in March when it launched a wave of surprise bombing attacks across the territory.
Israeli officials said that only military action would result in the return of captives held in Gaza, and imposed a blockade on food, water, medicine and fuel entering the territory that led to widespread starvation among the 2.1 million population.
Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer is scheduled to visit Washington next week for talks with Trump administration officials on Gaza, Iran and a possible White House visit by Netanyahu, according to a source familiar with the matter.
A truck collided with a minibus carrying day labourers, two of whom were 14-year-old girls, to their workplace.
A truck has collided with a minibus carrying workers on a road in Egypt, killing 19 people, most of them teenage girls, according to local officials.
The collision occurred as the workers were heading to work in the early hours of Friday morning on a regional road in the city of Ashmoun in the Nile Delta province of Menoufia, north of the capital Cairo.
The truck collided with the minibus as it carried the labourers to their workplace from their home village of Kafr al-Sanabsa, according to the state-owned newspaper, Akhbar al-Youm.
Most of the workers were teenagers – two of them just 14 – according to a list of the names and ages published by the state-owned daily, Al-Ahram. Egyptian media has dubbed the crash victims “martyrs for their daily bread”.
Some 1.3 million minors are engaged in some form of child labour in Egypt, according to government figures, and accidents often involve underage labourers travelling to work in overcrowded minibuses in rural areas.
Only three people survived the crash on Friday, according to a statement from Egypt’s Ministry of Labour, and they were transferred to the General Ashmoun Hospital.
Egypt’s Labour Minister Mohamed Gebran has ordered authorities to compensate the families of the deceased with up to 200,000 Egyptian pounds (about $4,000) each. Each injured person will also receive 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($400).
Menoufia provincial governor, Ibrahim Abu Leimon, said the cause of the crash would be investigated. Preliminary reports suggest excessive speeding may have been a key factor.
Abu Leimon also called on the country’s Ministry of Transportation to reassess safety measures on the regional road. In April, five members of a single family died in a two-car collision on the same road.
Deadly traffic accidents claim thousands of lives every year across Egypt.
In October 2023, 35 people were killed, at least 18 of whom burned to death, in a “horrific collision” involving a bus and several cars on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road, according to Al-Ahram.
The United States Supreme Court has ended its latest term with a host of blockbuster decisions, touching on everything from healthcare coverage to school reading lists.
On Friday, the court issued the final decisions of the 2024 term before it takes several months of recess. The nine justices on its bench will reconvene in October.
But before their departure, the justices made headlines. In a major victory for the administration of President Donald Trump, the six-person conservative majority decided to limit the ability of courts to issue universal injunctions that would block executive actions nationwide.
Trump has long denounced court injunctions as an attack on his executive authority.
In two other rulings, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority again banded together. One decision allowed parents to opt out of school materials that include LGBTQ themes, while the other gave the go-ahead to Texas to place barriers to prevent youth from viewing online pornography.
But a decision on healthcare access saw some conservative justices align with their three left-wing colleagues. Here is an overview of their final rulings of the 2024 term.
Three conservative justices – Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts – joined with the court’s liberal branch, represented by Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, for a six-to-three ruling.
At stake was the ability of a government task force to determine what kinds of preventive healthcare the country’s insurance providers had to cover.
It was the latest case to challenge the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation passed under former President Barack Obama to expand healthcare access.
This case focused on a section of the act that allowed a panel of health experts – under the Department of Health and Human Services – to determine what preventive services should be covered at no cost.
A group of individuals and Christian-owned businesses had challenged the legality of that task force, though.
They argued that the expert panel was a violation of the Appointments Clause, a section of the Constitution that requires certain political appointees to be chosen by the president and approved by the Senate.
The group had previously secured an injunction against the task force’s decision that HIV prevention medications be covered as preventive care.
That specific injunction was not weighed in the Supreme Court’s decision. But writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh affirmed that the task force was constitutional, because it was made up of “inferior officers” who did not need Senate approval.
Court gives nod to Texas’s age restrictions on porn
Several states, including Texas, require users to verify their age before accessing pornographic websites, with the aim of shielding minors from inappropriate material.
The Free Speech Coalition is a nonprofit that represents workers in the adult entertainment industry. They sued Texas’s attorney general, Paxton, arguing that the age-verification law would dampen First Amendment rights, which protect the right to free expression, free association and privacy.
The plaintiffs noted the risks posed by sharing personally identifying information online, including the possibility that identifying information like birthdates and sensitive data could be leaked. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, warned that Texas’s law “robs people of anonymity”.
Writing for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged that “submitting to age verification is a burden on the exercise” of First Amendment rights.
But, he added, “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification” altogether. The majority upheld Texas’s law.
Court affirms children can withdraw from LGBTQ school material
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority also continued its streak of religious freedom victories, with a decision in Mahmoud v Taylor.
That case centred on the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland, where books portraying LGBTQ themes had been approved for use in primary school curricula.
One text, for example, was a picture book called Love, Violet, which told the story of a young girl mustering the courage to give a Valentine to a female classmate. Another book, titled Pride Puppy, follows a child searching for her lost dog during an annual parade to celebrate LGBTQ pride.
Parents of children in the school district objected to the material on religious grounds, and some books, like Pride Puppy, were eventually withdrawn.
But the board eventually announced it would refuse to allow parents to opt out of the approved material, on the basis that it would create disruptions in the learning environment.
Some education officials also argued that allowing kids to opt out of LGBTQ material would confer a stigma on the people who identify as part of that community – and that LGBTQ people were simply a fact of life.
In the majority’s decision, Justice Samuel Alito asserted that the education board’s policy “conveys that parents’ religious views are not welcome in the ‘fully inclusive environment’ that the Board purports to foster”.
“The curriculum itself also betrays an attempt to impose ideological conformity with specific views on sexuality and gender,” Alito wrote.
In the case Trump v CASA, the Trump administration had appealed the use of nationwide injunctions all the way up to the highest court in the land.
At stake was an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office for his second term. That order sought to whittle down the concept of birthright citizenship, a right conferred under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Previously, birthright citizenship had applied to nearly everyone born on US soil: Regardless of their parents’ nationality, the child would receive US citizenship.
But Trump has denounced that application of birthright citizenship as too broad. In his executive order, he put restrictions on birthright citizenship depending on whether the parents were undocumented immigrants.
Legal challenges erupted as soon as the executive order was published, citing Supreme Court precedent that upheld birthright citizenship regardless of the nationality of the parent. Federal courts in states like Maryland and Washington quickly issued nationwide injunctions to prevent the executive order from taking effect.
The Supreme Court on Friday did not weigh the merits of Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. But it did evaluate a Trump administration petition arguing that the nationwide injunctions were instances of judicial overreach.
The conservative supermajority sided with Trump, saying that injunctions should generally not be universal but instead should focus on relief for the specific plaintiffs at hand. One possible exception, however, would be for class action lawsuits.
Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s latest addition and a Trump appointee, penned the majority’s decision.
“No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law,” she wrote. “But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation – in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.”
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – The sound of children at play echoes through the verdant lanes of one of the dozens of refugee camps on the outskirts of Cox’s Bazar, a densely populated coastal town in southeast Bangladesh.
Just for a moment, the sounds manage to soften the harsh living conditions faced by the more than one million people who live here in the world’s largest refugee camp.
Described as the most persecuted people on the planet, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh may now be one of the most forgotten populations in the world, eight years after being ethnically cleansed from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar by a predominantely Buddhist military regime.
“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the sprawling camps in May.
The UN chief’s visit followed United States President Donald Trump’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has stalled several key projects in the camps, and the United Kingdom announcing cuts to foreign aid in order to increase defence spending.
Seated outside his makeshift bamboo hut, Jahid Alam told Al Jazeera how, before being forced to become a refugee, he had worked as a farmer and also fished for a living in the Napura region of his native Myanmar. It was back then, in 2016, that he first noticed his leg swell up for no apparent reason.
“I was farming and suddenly felt this intense urge to itch my left leg,” Alam said. “My leg soon turned red and began swelling up. I rushed home and tried to put some ice on it. But it didn’t help.”
A local doctor prescribed an ointment, but the itch continued, and so did the swelling.
He soon found it difficult to stand or walk and could no longer work, becoming dependent on his family members.
A year later, when Myanmar’s military began burning Rohingya homes in his village and torturing the women, he decided to send his family to Bangladesh.
Alam stayed behind to look after the cows on his land. But the military soon threatened him into leaving too and joining his family in neighbouring Bangladesh.
The 53-year-old has been treated by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, in the Kutupalong region of Cox’s Bazar since arriving, but amputation of his leg seems likely. While some doctors have said he has Elephantiasis – an infection that causes enlargement and swelling of limbs – a final diagnosis is yet to be made.
Along with the disease, Alam has to also deal with stigma due to his disability.
“They call me ‘langhra’(lame) when they see I can’t walk properly,” he said.
But, he adds: “If God has given me this disease and disability, he also gave me the opportunity to come to this camp and try to recover. In the near future I know I can start a new and better life.”
Jahid Alam at the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, Bangladesh [Valeria Mongelli/Al Jazeera]
‘The word “Amma” gives me hope’
Seated in a dimly lit room in a small hut about a 10-minute walk from Alam’s shelter, Jahena Begum hopes aid organisations will continue supporting the camps and particularly people with disabilities.
Her daughter Sumaiya Akter, 23, and sons, Harez, 19, and Ayas, 21, are blind and have a cognitive disability that prevents them from speaking clearly. They are largely unaware of their surroundings.
“Their vision slowly began fading as they became teenagers,” Begum says.
“It was very difficult to watch, and healthcare facilities in Myanmar could not help,” said the 50-year-old mother as she patted her daughter’s leg.
The young girl giggled, unaware of what was going on around her.
Begum’s family arrived in Cox’s Bazar about nine months ago after the military in Myanmar burned their house down.
“We made it to the camps with the help of relatives. But life has been very hard for me,” said Begum, telling how she had single-handedly brought up her children since her husband’s death eight years ago.
Doctors from MSF have given her children spectacles and have begun running scans to understand the root cause of their disability.
“Right now, they express everything by making sounds. But the one word they speak, which is ‘Amma’, meaning mother, shows me that they at least recognise me,” Begum said.
“The word ‘Amma’ gives me hope and strength to continue trying to treat them. I want a better future for my children.”
Jahena Begum, first left, with her three children, Sumaiya Akter, second from left, Ayas, third from left, and Harez, right, during an interview in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, earlier this month [Valeria Mongelli/Al Jazeera]
‘The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional’
Clad in a blue and pink striped collared shirt and a striped brown longyi – the cloth woven around the waist and worn by men and women in Myanmar – Anowar Shah told of fleeing Myanmar to save his life, on top of losing a limb to a mine blast.
Shah said he was collecting firewood in his hometown Labada Prian Chey in Myanmar when his leg was blown off by the landmine last year.
Myanmar is among the world’s deadliest countries for landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties, according to a 2024 UN report, with more than 1,000 victims recorded in 2023 alone – a number that surpassed all other nations.
“Those were the longest, most painful days of my life,” said the 25-year-old Shah, who now needs crutches to get around.
“Losing my leg shattered everything. I went from being someone who provided and protected, to someone who depends on others just to get through the day. I can’t move freely, can’t work, can’t even perform simple tasks alone,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve become a burden to the people I love. The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional, it’s deep. I keep asking myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”
Anowar Shah is a victim of a landmine explosion in Myanmar and lives in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh [Courtesy of Anowar Shah]
More than 30 refugees in the camps in Bangladesh have lost limbs in landmine explosions, leaving them disabled and dependent on others.
All parties to the armed conflict in Myanmar have used landmines in some capacity, said John Quinley, director of rights organisation Fortify Rights, in Myanmar.
“We know the Myanmar junta has used landmines over many years to bolster their bases. They also lay them in civilian areas around villages and towns that they have occupied and fled,” he told Al Jazeera.
Abdul Hashim, 25, who resides in Camp 21 in Cox’s Bazar, described how stepping on a landmine in February 2024 “drastically altered his life”.
“I have become dependent on others for even the simplest daily tasks. Once an active contributor to my family, I now feel like a burden,” he said.
Since arriving in the camp, Hashim has been in a rehabilitation programme at the Turkish Field Hospital where he receives medication and physical rehabilitation that involves balance exercises, stump care, and hygiene education.
He has also been assessed for a prosthetic limb which currently costs about 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka ($412). The cost for such limbs is borne by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“Despite the trauma and hardship, I hold onto some hope. I dream of receiving a prosthetic leg soon, which would allow me to regain some independence and find work to support my family,” Hashim said.
So far, a total of 14 prosthetic limbs have been distributed and fitted for camp inhabitants by the aid group Humanity & Inclusion, who have expertise in producing the limbs in orthotic workshops outside the refugee camps.
Both Hashim and Shah are a part of the organisation’s rehabilitation programme, which has been providing gait training to help them adapt to the future, regular use of prosthetic limbs.
Tough decisions for aid workers
Seeking to ensure refugees in the camps are well supported and can live better lives after fleeing persecution, aid workers are currently having to make tough decisions due to foreign aid cuts.
“We are having to decide between feeding people and providing education and healthcare due to aid cuts,” a Bangladeshi healthcare worker who requested anonymity, for fear his comment could jeopardise future aid from the US, told Al Jazeera.
Quinley of Fortify Rights pointed out that while there are huge funding gaps because of the aid cuts, the Rohingya refugee response should not fall on any one government and should be a collective regional responsibility.
“There needs to be a regional response, particularly for countries in Southeast Asia, to give funding,” he said.
“Countries connected to the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) in the Middle East could also give a lot more meaningful support,” he said.
He also recommended working with local humanitarian partners, “whether it’s Bangladeshi nationals or whether it’s Rohingya refugee groups themselves” since they know how to help their communities the best.
“Their ability to access people that need support is at the forefront, and they should be supported from governments worldwide,” he said.
For the estimated one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, urgent support is needed at this time, when funds grow ever scarce.
According to a Joint Response Plan drawn up for the Rohingya, in 2024, just 30 percent of funding was received of a total $852.4m that was needed by the refugees.
As of May 2025, against an overall appeal for $934.5m for the refugees, just 15 percent received funding.
Cutting the aid budgets for the camps is a “short-sighted policy”, said Blandine Bouniol, deputy director of advocacy at Humanity & Inclusion humanitarian group.
It will, Bouniol said, “have a devastating impact on people”.
People walk past a wall topped with barbed wire at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh [Valeria Mongelli/Al Jazeera]
The president of the University of Virginia has resigned his position under pressure from the United States Department of Justice, which pushed for his departure amid scrutiny of the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
In an email sent to the university community on Friday and circulated on social media, university president James Ryan said he was resigning to protect the institution from facing the ire of the government.
“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” he wrote.
“To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.”
Ryan’s resignation has been accepted by the board, two sources told The New York Times, which first broke the story. It remains unclear exactly when he will leave his post.
His departure is the latest indication of ongoing tensions between the administration of President Donald Trump and the academic community.
During his second term, President Trump has increasingly sought to reshape higher education by attacking diversity initiatives, pushing for crackdowns on pro-Palestinian student protesters, and seeking reviews of hiring and enrollment practices.
Ryan’s departure marks a new frontier in a campaign that has almost exclusively targeted Ivy League schools. Critics also say it shows a shift in the government’s rationale, away from allegations of rampant anti-Semitism on campus and towards more aggressive policing of diversity initiatives.
Just a day prior, the Justice Department announced it would investigate another public school, the University of California, for its use of diversity standards.
Ryan, who has led the University of Virginia since 2018, faced criticism that he failed to heed federal orders to eliminate DEI policies.
An anonymous source told The Associated Press news agency that his removal was pushed by the Justice Department as a way to help resolve an inquiry targeting the school.
Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, called Ryan’s ouster an example of the Trump administration using “thuggery instead of rational discourse”.
“This is a dark day for the University of Virginia, a dark day for higher education, and it promises more of the same,” Mitchell said. “It’s clear the administration is not done and will use every tool that it can make or invent to exert its will over higher education.”
James Ryan had served as president of the University of Virginia since 2018 [Peter Morgan/AP Photo]
Virginia’s Democratic senators react
In a joint statement, Virginia’s senators, both Democrats, said it was outrageous that the Trump administration would demand Ryan’s resignation over “‘culture war’ traps”.
“This is a mistake that hurts Virginia’s future,” Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said.
After campaigning on a promise to end “wokeness” in education, Trump signed an executive order in January calling for an end to federal funding that would support educational institutions with DEI programming.
He accused schools of indoctrinating “children in radical, anti-American ideologies” without the permission of their parents.
The Department of Education has since opened investigations into dozens of colleges, arguing that diversity initiatives discriminate against white and Asian American students.
The response from schools has been scattered. Some have closed DEI offices, ended diversity scholarships and no longer require diversity statements as part of the hiring process. Still, others have held firm on diversity policies.
The University of Virginia became a flashpoint after conservative critics accused it of simply renaming its DEI initiatives. The school’s governing body voted to shutter the DEI office in March and end diversity policies in admissions, hiring, financial aid and other areas.
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin celebrated the action, declaring that “DEI is done at the University of Virginia”.
But America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, said that DEI had simply taken another form at the school. In a May letter to the Justice Department, the group said the university chose to “rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms”.
The group directly took aim at Ryan, noting that he joined hundreds of other college presidents in signing a public statement condemning the “overreach and political interference” of the Trump administration.
On Friday, the group said it will continue to use every available tool to root out what it has called discriminatory systems.
“This week’s developments make clear: public universities that accept federal funds do not have a license to violate the Constitution,” Megan Redshaw, a lawyer with the group, said in a statement. “They do not get to impose ideological loyalty tests, enforce race and sex-based preferences, or defy lawful executive authority.”
Until now, the White House had directed most of its attention at Harvard University and other elite institutions that Trump sees as bastions of liberalism.
Harvard has lost more than $2.6bn in federal research grants amid its battle with the government, which also attempted to block the school from hosting foreign students and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.
Harvard and its $53bn endowment are uniquely positioned to weather the government’s financial pressure.
Public universities, however, are far more dependent on taxpayer money and could be more vulnerable. The University of Virginia’s $10bn endowment is among the largest for public universities, while the vast majority have far less.
