Few figures in contemporary American politics have risen as swiftly or as improbably as US Vice President J. D. Vance, propelled from relative obscurity to the very apex of power. Yet such meteoric ascent carries its own perils: What appears as extraordinary fortune conceals, under the surface, the very conditions of strategic entrapment.

The crucible of power: Vance’s dual test of survival

Entrusted with the fraught assignment of leading negotiations with Iran, a high-stakes diplomatic mission that promises prestige yet cloaks hazard, US Vice President J. D. Vance confronts a classic poisoned chalice.

The role confers visibility and the semblance of influence, yet concentrates the risk of failure upon Vance. At the same time, the treacherous charge provides cover for his principal, US President Donald Trump, who preserves the ability to appropriate any gains as his own. This asymmetric risk burden is only one dimension of the vice-presidential existential predicament.

Beyond the rigged assignment itself lies a more diffuse but equally perilous hazard: the taint of association. Entanglement with the administration’s overall record, regardless of the specific brief in the Iran file, threatens to imprint itself indelibly upon the vice president’s public identity, casting him as the face of outcomes he has never been able to control.

Yet diagnosis is only half the story: The predicament demands not just analysis, but a clear-eyed strategic response. What the vice president needs now is nothing less than a deliberate, finely calibrated, and truly transformative strategy to prevent both traps from sealing his political fate.

The V-Strategy: Resolving the vice-presidential dilemma

To escape the catch-22, J. D. Vance should, as a first recourse, seek to persuade Trump to reverse course across contentious policy fronts. Given Trump’s well-documented intransigence, such an effort is unlikely to prevail.

Should this prelude fail, Vance might attempt to establish a carefully choreographed “good cop–bad cop” arrangement, casting himself as the moderating counterpoint. Yet this, too, is improbable. Trump’s political instinct, though inclined toward provocation, remains fundamentally anchored in the pursuit of personal acclaim, the hallmark of the archetypal Narcissist.

Absent both a substantive policy shift and a coordinated dual-role configuration, the vice president must adopt a two-pronged approach, encapsulated in the “V-Strategy” (the first letter standing for both Vance and Victory). It enables a complicit deputy to remain viable as a presidential contender through a disciplined strategy of differentiation and contestation.

In the first step, Vance must escape the immediate gilded trap of the Iran portfolio; second, beyond Iran, he must mitigate the longer-term risk of being permanently tainted by association with Trump.

Though the moment is already advanced, it is not yet so late that such strategic action would be seen as a precipitous abandonment at the point of collapse, a move often condemned as “jumping ship.” The broader public has yet to grasp the full extent of the unfolding disaster, a picture that may sharpen after midterm elections unfavorable to Republicans.

Vance can always frame his earlier restraint as loyalty and a commitment to unity in crisis, and any later break as an act of civil courage rather than betrayal – after all, no legacy is so rich as honesty.

As a precondition for strategic buffering and leverage, the vice president must become fully power-literate, developing a granular understanding of the political forces at work.

The Poisoned Chalice Equation: Cracking the code of power

The underlying risk of Vance’s hazardous commission can be expressed plainly in what may be termed the “Poisoned Chalice Equation” (PCE):

Poisoned Chalice Risk = (Responsibility – Authority) × Visibility × Uncertainty.

In simple terms, the more you are held accountable for outcomes beyond your control, the greater your public exposure, and the less predictable the outcome, the more likely you are to bear the blame. When the stakes are high, such risk elevation translates directly into a commensurate increase in the expected total cost of your engagement.

In Vance’s case, responsibility is substantial, authority partial, visibility maximal, and uncertainty profound, while the mission itself is inherently world-shaping. This combustible configuration demands careful calibration of each variable to contain blame exposure and mitigate the attendant risk of lasting reputational damage.

Fortuitously, the PCE serves not only to illuminate power dynamics but to actively shape them, enabling the construction of a protective buffer while opening avenues for transformative leverage.

Calibrated action: Turning the Poisoned Chalice to strategic advantage

As regards the Iran file, Vance must not simply accept the chalice unaltered, but expose its origin, transmute its contents, and determine who must drink the refashioned draught. The cumulative effect of these mutually reinforcing actions is paradigm-shifting.

By deliberately recalibrating the equation’s variables – narrowing the responsibility gap, attenuating visibility, and tempering uncertainty – Vance can materially reduce the hazard it describes. More than that, he may transform a liability into an influential platform for projecting strategic acuity, converting exposure into credibility and risk into political capital.

To begin with, the vice president can both redress the disparity between responsibility and actual power and diffuse concentrated visibility by dispersing ownership of process and outcome in equal measure. At the same time, Vance should strengthen his capacity to shape outcomes in his favor by securing greater operational latitude from Trump and broadening his coalition of support.

The poisoned chalice exerts its toxic effect only when accountability can be individualized, with the equation’s variables being concentrated in a single actor. By embedding the negotiations within a multilateral, institutional framework – foregrounding the roles of the president, security agencies, Congress, and allies – Vance can effectively dilute the toxic attribution of responsibility focused on him alone while simultaneously reducing perilously personalized visibility.

What ultimately shapes public perception is not the substantive result of negotiations, but the authority to define their meaning. Vance must therefore establish the criteria of success for which he will be held accountable before they are imposed upon him.

Should he permit the negotiations to be judged merely by the crude binary metric of “deal or no deal,” he incurs responsibility for an optimistic outcome that is at present rendered unlikely by structural impasse.

By cultivating a reputation for sobriety, acknowledging constraints rather than inflating prospects, Vance can invert the legacy of overconfidence associated with Trump, substituting disciplined realism for rhetorical excess. In doing so, he stands to mitigate the risk that an inconclusive result will be construed as failure.

Crucially, Vance must publicly reframe his mandate as one of patiently clarifying systemic conditions and deliberately charting a viable path forward rather than immediately delivering a sweeping, definitive breakthrough. This entails candidly delineating the systemic boundaries imposed by American positions, Iran’s own red lines, and the fragmented diplomatic landscape.

For instance, Vance may publicly underscore that maximalist U.S. demands such as the relinquishment of nuclear rights, Iran’s counter-insistence on unencumbered sovereignty, and the multiplicity of mediators render a swift deal structurally unlikely.

At the same time, he could consistently highlight incremental progress such as confidence-building measures or verifiable concessions that yield partial de-escalation.

Taken together, he thus can recalibrate expectations, diffuse ownership, and recast even the absence of a final agreement as strategic restraint rather than personal failure.

By grounding expectations in reality and shifting evaluation from personal performance to systemic dynamics, while operating within an expanded coalition of support, Vance is bound to transform himself.

Instead of remaining a highly exposed, disposable agent of all-or-nothing outcomes, the vice president stands to evolve into an indispensable interpreter of both structural conditions and continuous progress. In doing so, he shifts the interpretative frame from dichotomous judgment in a zero-sum game to a more differentiated and sustainable win-win dynamic.

Finally, by pivoting from the extreme contingency of a putative, amorphous “grand bargain,” purported to resolve a conflict rooted in the 1979 Revolution in a single stroke, to a more feasible, concrete, near-horizon incremental settlement, Vance is also bound to reduce uncertainty, the last term in the PCE, in his favor.

Cumulatively, the careful calibration of all variables can transmute liability into leverage.

By anchoring expectations in sober realism, Vance draws a sharp contrast with Trump’s habit of overpromising and thus enhances his own standing. By crediting incremental progress to interagency discipline and allied coordination, while explicitly attributing deadlock to maximalist positions at the presidential level, he casts himself as a credible, reality-attuned statesman to whom partners increasingly turn.

Through these measures, the vice president converts exposure into authority, strengthening his position while the burden of failure shifts upward to the president.

Beyond Iran: The battle for political identity

In highly visible, ambiguous settings, responsibility without control is not empowerment but exposure.

Vance’s narrow yet real opportunity lies in inverting this logic by pursuing a strategic course that not only enables him to survive the chalice, but entails exposing it and remaking its contents for others to consume.

Yet even if the vice president masters this trial by fire, deftly navigating the acute Iran crisis and achieving success against the odds, the broader hazard of enduring taint by association persists.

Hence, the ultimate test lies not in diplomacy abroad but in political differentiation at home. The question is whether Vance can, at the decisive juncture, redraw the line between loyalty and independence before proximity congeals into identity. What, pray, is the complementary component of the V-Strategy that can effect such a separation at the kairos?

[Part 2 of a series on vice-presidential strategy. To be continued. Previous column in the series: Part 1, published on 18 April 2026: Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 54: Vance’s VP Dilemma – The poisoned chalice and taint of power]

Washington and Tehran remain deadlocked over Iran’s nuclear program and its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran has insisted that continuing its nuclear program is its sovereign right, while the US maintains that the program must be abandoned for good and the uranium surrendered.

RT looks into the status of Iran’s uranium stockpile, as well as the positions of Tehran and Washington on the issue as the temporary ceasefire nears its end.

How much uranium does Iran have?

Iran has a sizable stockpile of fissile materials, including uranium enriched up to 60%. While the material is not yet weapons-grade, it could potentially be enriched to that level in a matter of days, depending on the equipment used. Tehran has long maintained its nuclear program serves purely civilian goals and rejected assertions it had been seeking to build nuclear weapons.  

According to the latest comprehensive assessment from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), published in May 2025, Tehran possessed more than 400 kg of uranium enriched up to 60%, as well as nearly 300 kg enriched up to 20%. Apart from that, the country was believed to hold some 5.5 tons of uranium enriched up to 5%, as well as some 2.2 tons up to 2%.  

Where exactly is the Iranian stockpile?

The whereabouts and status of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile are debated, and no solid independent assessment of them is available. The IAEA said it had lost “continuity of knowledge” about the stash after Tehran turned off on-site cameras used to monitor its nuclear program in June 2022 in retaliation for what it called a “political” resolution adopted by the organization. In its May 2025 assessment, the organization admitted the knowledge gap was no longer bridgeable.

A recent report by Le Monde suggested that Iran could have transferred possibly all of its highly enriched uranium to the Isfahan underground facility shortly before the June 2025 strikes. The assessment is based on a satellite image taken on June 9, 2025, which shows a large flatbed truck packed with 18 blue containers, which experts believed to be consistent with caskets used to transport highly radioactive materials. The containers could hold up to 540kg of uranium, according to experts cited by the newspaper. After the strikes, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth insisted that no intelligence suggested Iran had moved any of its highly enriched uranium prior to the attacks. 

The polar positions of the US and Iran on the uranium

The issue of the uranium has remained a key obstacles to an agreement between the US and Iran. Washington has demanded that Tehran surrender all of its highly enriched uranium, as well as dismantle its infrastructure and abandon the nuclear program for good.  

Tehran has repeatedly refused to abandon its nuclear program, offering to dilute its highly enriched uranium stockpile instead. During the discussions in Islamabad, it also reportedly offered a five-year moratorium on uranium enrichment. 

Top Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected the idea of surrendering the stockpile to the US or any other third party, insisting that the country’s nuclear achievements and assets were a matter of national pride and non-negotiable. The stance was reiterated by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei during a press conference on Monday. Transferring the country’s enriched uranium abroad “has never been raised as an option for us in negotiations,” Baqaei stated.

Russian offer 

Moscow has on several occasions proposed to host Iran’s enriched uranium as a compromise to defuse the Middle East crisis. According to remarks made by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week, Russia extended its offer “quite a time ago,” and Tehran had been “okay with it” at the time.

Russian officials have signaled that the offer remains on the table. The head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, Aleksey Likhachev, said over the weekend the company was ready to help remove Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.  

“Only Russia has positive experience interacting with Iran. In 2015, at Iran’s request, we already removed enriched uranium… We are ready to assist with this issue today as well,” Likhachev told corporate newspaper Strana Rosatom. 

Iran exported some 11 tons of low-enriched uranium to Russia under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” a 2015 multinational plan to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The scheme crumbled early in Trump’s first term, after the US president accused Tehran of violating the “spirit” of the deal and unilaterally walked away from it.

After eight snap elections in five years, Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev, a 62-year-old reform-minded pragmatist with much political (he’s a former president) and military (he's also a former general) experience has just managed to gain an absolute majority of seats in the national parliament. It is, according to Bloomberg “a landslide” and, for German mainstream flagship Spiegel, an “exorbitant victory.”

With this breakthrough, Radev’s party Progressive Bulgaria has also broken a long trend of inconclusive elections and now has very good chances of establishing a stable, lasting government after years of instability and scandals, climaxing in a full government collapse late last year.

Election participation was higher than usual, which is another signal of genuine popular support for Radev’s message and reinforces his mandate. Bulgaria has been suffering from prolonged gridlock and a massive crisis of public trust. No one can predict the future, but Radev promises a fresh beginning, and this election result at least provides a chance to make one. Moreover, Progressive Bulgaria’s voter appeal, polls show, has not only been deep but also wide: Gen-Z, older citizens, pro-EU voters and those often, in Western mainstream media, disparaged as “pro-Russian,” and, last but not least, Bulgaria’s expat voters – they are all in the mix.

While Progressive Bulgaria will not have the two-thirds majority to make constitutional changes without help from other parties, Radev will have enough seats to rule without a coalition partner. In a country where coalition building has become associated with sleaze and inefficiency that is an advantage. Especially if Radev makes good on one of his key campaign promises to fight corruption and the influence of what Bulgarians call the “oligarchy.”

In sum, Radev’s election victory should be grounds for if not celebration than at least optimism. All the more so since he is also ready to apply constructive pragmatism to Bulgaria’s relationship with the EU as well. In his own words, “what Europe needs right now is critical thinking, pragmatic action and results, especially building a new security architecture and recovering its industrial power and competitiveness […] That will be the main contribution of Bulgaria to its European mission.”

Plenty, it turns out, at least for some Western and especially EU observers struggling with their own biases and, really, phobias. Because, you see, there is a thing that Radev does not have: He does not hate Russia. Indeed, according to Spiegel, always EU-aligned to the point of obsequiousness, there is “disquiet in Brussels,” because Radev has “the reputation of being inclined toward Moscow.” What a delicate way of shouting “Russians under the Bulgarian bed!”

But it’s all the same anyhow: Radev stands accused of one of the worst heresies against Western and, in particular, EU doctrine. Being soft on and even Russia-friendly, as Bloomberg, for instance has put it. The catalogue of his alleged sins is short but impressive: he has objected to delivering ever more weapons to fuel the West’s proxy war against Russia in and via Ukraine; called Crimea Russian, does not believe in sanctions against Russia, and, in general, dares criticize EU foreign policy.

Radev, to be sure, has made no radical statements regarding Bulgaria’s membership in the EU or NATO, and observers generally agree that he is very unlikely to challenge either. It even remains to be seen whether now that he has power, he will repeat his attacks on Bulgaria’s mistake of adopting the euro. Yet all that moderation and pragmatism may not be enough for the true believers now dominating the EU. For them, the mere fact that Radev openly displays his lack of belief in the Ukraine war project and – correctly – hints that Europe’s future depends on inexpensive, that is, Russian, energy may well be enough to initiate a slide into ostracism.

For now, the message seems to be that the EU establishment does not expect Radev to become a second Victor Orban, the long-time leader of Hungary, that the EU has just removed by massive interference in Hungary’s domestic politics. But the essence of that conditional offer to try cooperating is, of course, really a warning or, to be more precise, a threat: Do not be Orban or else!

The irony of this uneasy relationship is palpable but worth restating: The issue is not that Radev is “Russia-friendly.” He is simply reasonable and pragmatic and that sets him at odds with the extremely irrational Russophobia that is maintaining a tight grip on the EU. While Western mainstream commentators are stuck on pondering whether Radev’s purported sympathy for Russia is a big or maybe just a small problem, they are, as so often, caught up in the wrong question. The problem isn’t “Radev and Russia” at all. It is that for so many in the EU, the only good relationship with Russia is a bad one, a very, very bad one, please. 

Lebanon’s political system and differing views on how to deal with Israel make a lasting peace deal difficult to achieve, according to an RT report from Beirut. 

Political power in the country is formally divided along religious lines, with key roles allocated to different communities. It is a structure designed to preserve balance, though it can also make unified decision-making more challenging. 

While the government has signaled openness to negotiations and recently moved to restrict Hezbollah’s military role, positions across the political spectrum remain varied.

Hezbollah, which has been in conflict with Israel since the civil war in the 1980s, rejects disarmament. Its allies in the Amal movement argue the issue is an internal matter and that Lebanon has the right to maintain a “strong military” to defend its land.  

“If half the population is against direct talks with Israel, you can’t force it down their throats,” according to RT correspondent Marina Kosareva. Banning Hezbollah’s armed wing “won’t make them go away or accept foreign peace terms.”  

With ceasefire violations reported daily and internal differences unresolved, prospects for a stable settlement remain uncertain. 

Watch the full report below.

The surge in oil prices in light of the war on Iran has grabbed most of the headlines. For many observers, the severity of the crisis is measurable in the daily changes in the Brent ticker. Some analysts have also begun pointing to emerging stress in fertilizer markets. But beneath these familiar markers, several less visible – and in some cases more systemic – signals are now flashing red.

RT takes a look at the ominous signs that don’t always show up in the news. 

Naphtha 

​Naphtha, a feedstock for petrochemicals, is a classic behind-the-scenes actor. Rarely in the headlines, naphtha is critical to the production of much modern technology, not to mention a whole host of everyday plastics, car parts, medical supplies, packaging – you name it. Naphtha sits at the base of the petrochemical supply chain, where it can wreak havoc if it’s not in supply. 

So what exactly is naphtha? It is a liquid hydrocarbon mixture derived from the distillation of crude oil. It is then “cracked” at extreme temperatures to extract ethylene and propylene, which is upstream from a slew of chemical processes that produce the high-purity chemicals, solvents, and plastics that are used in numerous industries, including as supporting inputs in semiconductor manufacturing. Because naphtha is not a core chip material input itself, its role is often overlooked.

Unsurprisingly, naphtha generally exhibits a strong positive price correlation with Brent crude. It is a refinery product, so crude costs are an important driver of pricing. However, its price can diverge meaningfully because it is primarily used in petrochemicals and not simply as a fuel. Naphtha supply disruptions have already made themselves felt in parts of Asia, even causing shortages of plastic bags in South Korea. Incidentally, South Korea has purchased Russian naphtha for the first time in four years.

Several large petrochemical companies, such as LG Chem and Lotte Chemical, are having to cut production or shut cracking facilities due to feedstock shortages. This has disrupted supplies of plastics and packaging, impacting products from consumer goods to medical supplies. 

For industrial heavyweight Japan, for example, the disruption to the flow of naphtha is arguably the most pressing economic fallout from the crisis in the Middle East. Japan gets around 60% of its naphtha from overseas. The Middle East is responsible for over 70% of those imports, according to the Japan Petrochemical Industry Association.

The 40% of Japan’s naphtha that comes from domestic refineries isn’t exactly immune to problems in the Middle East – 90% of the oil these refineries use comes from the same region. 

Diesel 

Diesel is a middle distillate fuel, meaning that it is heavier than gasoline but lighter than fuel oil. It is called “the fuel of the real economy.” It powers all the heavy stuff: trucks, ships, construction, mining, agriculture. 

Of particular concern is the fact that diesel prices rise faster than gasoline in nearly every energy crisis. Because it is a critical heavy-transport fuel it has low demand elasticity – meaning diesel consumers will keep buying even at higher prices. Also, it is much harder to ramp up diesel refining quickly. Refineries generally operate at high utilization and have inflexible configurations, limiting their ability to respond quickly to demand surges.

Because diesel is the fuel for the “real economy,” price spikes can be broadly inflationary. According to BloombergNEF, diesel at $5 per gallon in the US could increase prices to consumers by 35%.

Diesel cost an average of $5.61 a gallon nationwide as of last Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association. That is just over $2 above the average on the same date last year and 63 cents more than a month earlier.

Diesel prices have also surged across Europe. Analysts are now warning of potential shortages of both jet fuel and diesel this summer. These two fuels are often grouped together as middle distillates and can to some extent be substituted or blended.

Aluminum

The Iran war has triggered a major crisis in the global aluminum market that could reverberate across numerous sectors of the economy. 

Consultancy Wood Mackenzie estimates that the global market is staring at a supply deficit of up to 4 million metric tons this year, which would be the largest in over 25 years. JPMorgan has warned that the global aluminum market has entered a supply “black hole.”

Prices are forecast to exceed $4,000 per tonne. For comparison, the long-term “normal” range is $1,500-$2,500 per tonne. The majority of aluminum ​producers in the Gulf, which account for around 9% of global ​supply, have been unable to make shipments to world markets. Meanwhile, a missile strike last month damaged the Al Taweelah smelter operated by Emirates Global Aluminium. Repairs will reportedly take up to a year. 

As smelters run through stocks of raw materials, production shutdowns could be forthcoming. But shutting down aluminum smelter isn’t the same thing as turning off an appliance and turning it back on with the flip of a switch. Smelters run around-the-clock at extremely high temperatures. If you shut them down, the molten metal solidifies and damages the equipment. Restarting them is extremely costly and technically challenging and sometimes entails a full rebuild. 

It is currently Western manufacturers taking the brunt of the crisis and partly by the doing of their own countries’ policies. China and Russia are both among the world’s main sources of aluminum but both have been cut off from Western markets because of tariffs and sanctions. 

Crack spreads

The gap between what a refiner pays for crude oil and the price at which it sells the finished product is called the crack spread – the word to describe the refining process of “cracking” large hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones (gasoline, diesel, naphtha, etc.)

A normal crack spread is between $10 and $20, although it can vary by product and region. What we are seeing now is crack spreads over $50. This means refined fuels are becoming more valuable relative to crude oil. This will show up in naphtha and diesel (already discussed above) and in gasoline prices at the pump. Crack spreads therefore provide a useful indicator of fuel-related cost pressures faced by consumers.

Meanwhile, what we’re seeing is a windfall for refiners. In crises such as the current one, pricing power shifts to the most capacity-constrained stage in the system, where output cannot be easily expanded. In this case – and often in oil markets – it is the refining stage. 

Helium

Helium, a byproduct of natural ​gas processing, is a small market that punches well above its weight. Helium is essential in the high-tech world. It has important uses in chipmaking for which there is no easy substitute. 

Currently, the global supply of helium is significantly disrupted and reports of rationing are already emerging. The war has thrown a wrench in both the production and transportation of helium. Supply chains for high-tech goods are already feeling the effects. If dislocations continue, this could start to noticeably interfere with production of goods such as electronics, automobiles, and even smartphones.  

Helium production is highly concentrated in certain countries. Qatar, a large natural gas supplier, produces nearly a third ​of global supply, according to the US Geological Survey. However, the Ras Laffan Industrial City, the single largest helium production site in the world, sustained damage from a missile in early March. The Qatari government estimates that it will take up to five years to fully repair the site.

While shippers of some goods have diverted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, a much longer but entirely unencumbered route, this is not as viable for helium, which is transported in specialized cryogenic containers. During long trips, the helium inevitably heats up and “boils off.”

Sulfur

The disruptions in fertilizer markets have garnered a lot of attention but less focus has been on the major feedstock components of fertilizer: sulfur. Called the “king of chemicals,” sulfur is a byproduct of oil and gas refining. It’s another of the vastly underappreciated inputs that keep things running and keep food plentiful across the globe. 

Once converted into sulfuric acid, it is used in fertilizers and metal processing, as well as in many pharmaceuticals. The Gulf accounts for roughly 45% of global supply, which means the disruption is already having knock-on effects in both agriculture and metals. Compounding the problem is the fact that sulfuric acid isn’t easily replaced or immediately substitutable. Another vulnerability is that it is not stockpiled heavily, so when flows stop trouble can creep up quite quickly. This sends consumers scrambling for expensive spot supply – all of which eventually shows up in food price inflation. 

Sulfur prices have moved sharply higher since the war on Iran began, and now countries are taking measures to insulate their own economies. Türkiye has announced a ban on sulfur exports, while India is also reportedly considering export restrictions. 

Looking ahead

The global economy is as fragile as it is complex. As analyst Zoltan Pozsar says, “global supply chains work only in peacetime, but not when the world is at war, be it a hot war or an economic war.” Right now there are both. The confluence of multiple failures at key chokepoints could trigger cascades of crises that would inflict significant and enduring pain across the economy. Nobody thinks much about naphtha or sulfur when the world is humming along. But these and many other inputs, fuels and feedstocks are what keep the whole show running and their absence quickly becomes a crisis.  

More than 3,000 people have reportedly suffered sexual abuse as minors within the Spanish Catholic Church, according to a eight-year investigation by the El Pais newspaper which published its latest findings on Monday.

The outlet began collecting data on sex crimes within the church in 2018, when only 34 cases were officially known. Since then, through public testimonies, judicial records, and church admissions, the number of victims of pedophilia has risen to 3,084 with the earliest incidents dating back to the 1940’s.

The list of accused has reached 1,613, representing 1.46% of the 110,000 priests and laypeople who have served in Spain in the past 80 years.

El Pais’ latest report, the sixth in five years, has added 58 new testimonies from Spain accusing 50 clerics and laypeople, all men except two nuns, and a separate section covering 21 testimonies from eight Latin American countries with 24 individuals accused.

The outlet said that it has shared all its findings with the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), the Vatican, and Spain’s human rights commissioner. However, the newspaper noted that over the past five years, the Church has not responded substantively to the allegations with the CEE prioritizing “opacity and denial” while the Vatican has delegated responsibility to the Spanish bishops.

Previously, a 2023 survey by Spain’s human rights commissioner estimated that 1.13% of the adult population, about 440,000 people, may have suffered sexual abuse in a Catholic environment.

The latest findings mirror similar revelations in the US, where the Diocese of Brooklyn is currently seeking a global settlement for 1,100 child sex abuse cases, having already paid over $100 million to survivors.

Pope Leo XIV, who will visit Spain in June, is said to have received copies of El Pais’s reports but the Vatican has yet to comment on the latest findings.

South Africa will push to put inequality at the center of the global agenda through a UN resolution, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said.

Pretoria plans to submit a draft to the UN General Assembly in 2026 proposing the creation of an International Panel on Inequality.

“This will ensure that inequality is placed as a critical issue on the global agenda that requires the ongoing attention of world leaders and the broader United Nations system,” Ramaphosa said in Barcelona on Saturday.

The proposal has already received backing from the African Union, he added, calling on UN member states and civil society to support the initiative.

The body would be modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and tasked with monitoring global inequality trends, assessing their causes and impacts, and evaluating policy responses.

Inequality, as defined in the G20-backed report, includes disparities in income, wealth and access to opportunities, as well as differences in economic development among countries.

The World Inequality Report 2026, compiled by more than 200 researchers, found that the top 10% of earners receive more income than the remaining 90% combined, while the poorest half of the global population accounts for less than 10% of total income.

“If we are to build democracy, to strengthen democracy across the world, if we are to empower people to take charge of their lives, it is essential that we intensify the struggle for equality and social justice,” Cyril Ramaphosa said.

The initiative comes amid a broader push by African nations to assert their positions more forcefully on the global stage, including calls for historical accountability, the return of cultural artifacts, and greater recognition of past injustices.

In March, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution led by Ghana describing the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations.

Canada’s historical overdependence on the US has put it in a vulnerable position and Ottawa should now adopt a more diversified approach to trade, Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated.

The US is Canada’s largest trading partner, accounting for 72% of its exports in 2025, according to Scotiabank.

However, relations between Ottawa and Washington have noticeably soured since Donald Trump assumed office last January, with the US president slapping hefty tariffs on the neighboring nation and routinely referring to Canada as “the 51st state.”

The Canadian prime minister, in turn, has vowed that his country “will never, ever, in any way, shape, or form, be part of the United States.”

In a video address to Canadians on Sunday, Carney said that “many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses - weaknesses that we must correct.” He argued that the “US has changed,” suggesting that it is unlikely that the “good old days will come back.”

“We can’t rely on one foreign partner,” the Canadian prime minister explained, adding that Ottawa should be “striking new partnerships abroad so we can sell into new markets.”

In January, Carney visited Beijing, where he held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking a thaw in bilateral relations that had been frosty for years. The two leaders signed a preliminary ‘agreement-in-principle’ that lowered tariffs on certain goods and could potentially pave the way for a “new strategic partnership” between the nations.

Commenting on the accord, Carney told reporters at the time that “in terms of the way that our relationship has progressed in recent months with China, it is more predictable” than relations between Canada and the US.

Trump responded by claiming that it was “very dangerous” for Canada to “get into business with China.”

The US president also threatened to impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods if Ottawa followed through on the trade agreement with Beijing. Trump also claimed that China was “completely taking over” Canada, with the latter supposedly staying afloat “because of the United States.”

Nigeria’s broadcast regulator has tightened the rules for radio and TV stations ahead of the West African nation’s 2027 general election, warning presenters against airing personal opinions, “bullying” guests, and broadcasting “divisive” political material.

Breaches will attract sanctions, the National Broadcasting Commission said in a notice on Friday, adding that it has seen a “sustained increase” in violations of the broadcasting code across news, current affairs, and political programs.

“As Nigeria enters a critical electoral period, the airwaves must not amplify tension or propagate misinformation,” the NBC stated.

It said presenters found to have “expressed personal opinion as fact, bullied or intimidated a guest, denied fair hearing to opposing views, or otherwise compromised neutrality” would be deemed to have committed a ‘Class B breach’. These include violations involving hate speech, fake news, and copyright-related offenses, and can attract a written warning, reduced broadcast hours, and financial penalties of up to 4.999 million Nigerian naira ($3,724) for public and commercial broadcasters.

Nigeria already prohibits presenters from expressing personal opinions as fact, denying opposing views a fair hearing, and airing hateful or inflammatory political material under rules introduced in 2019 and amended in 2020, but the NBC has now warned that it will enforce them more strictly ahead of the 2027 election.

In a post on X on Saturday, Atiku called the directive a “troubling attempt to muzzle the media and shrink the space for free expression in Nigeria,” claiming it signals “a government more interested in controlling narratives than permitting a free, fair, and transparent electoral process.”

Amnesty International also denounced the move on Sunday as an “outrageous and desperate” attempt by the NBC to gag journalists and the media.

Nigerian media groups and rights advocates have challenged the NBC’s sanctioning powers, most recently on April 2, 2026, when a court in Abuja dismissed the regulator’s appeal in a case brought by Media Rights Agenda over fines earlier imposed on broadcasters for alleged code breaches.

India and South Korea have set a target to nearly double bilateral trade to $50 billion by 2030.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to boost trade between their countries from about $27 billion now, after a meeting in New Delhi on Monday.

The leaders vowed to strengthen supply chains, improve market access, and encourage greater investment.

”Following President Lee’s visit, we are going to transform our trusted collaboration into a futuristic partnership,” Modi said.

The Indian prime minister said the countries will tap into new opportunities for cooperation “from chips to ships, talent to technology, entertainment to energy.”

Addressing the joint press meet with President Lee Jae Myung of the Republic of Korea.@Jaemyung_Lee https://t.co/NpU97z4dzB

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 20, 2026

Lee said Seoul and New Delhi have agreed to upgrade economic cooperation by focusing on sectors including shipbuilding, defense, and artificial intelligence.

The Asian nations will try to expand industrial collaboration and boost trade and investment in advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, and nuclear energy, the South Korean leader said.

Seoul aims to increase the import of naphtha, a crude-oil derivative, from New Delhi to offset potential disruptions related to the Middle East conflict. India accounted for about 8% of South Korea’s naphtha imports in 2025.

The countries also signed memoranda of understanding in various sectors, including ports, technology, steel supply chain, small and medium-sized enterprises, and maritime heritage.

The billions of euros slated by the EU for the build up of weapons factories and procurement of military hardware are a “magnet for the criminals,” according to a senior anti-fraud official.

The EU’s defense industry has issues with “manipulation with public tenders, blown-up prices, clientelism [and] corruption,” European Anti-Fraud Office’s (OLAF) Director-General Petr Klement said as quoted by The Financial Times on Monday.

Brussels is pushing for a rapid military build up financed through borrowing some €150 billion ($176 billion) in preparation for a hypothetical war with Russia,. Moscow calls the move a diversion from the EU’s plummeting living standards based on false claims of an imminent threat.

“This is not shaming certain countries or segments. This is simply how it’s been working for decades,” Klement noted.

Germany, which Berlin estimates receives nearly 90% of European venture capital in defense technology, is reinventing itself as a weapons factory, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing examples of firms benefiting from the transition.

Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of automotive supplier Schaeffler, rebuked business owners who engage in a “lot of whining,” saying firms must instead “roll up our sleeves.” Originally founded during post-World War II reconstruction, the Bavaria-based company is pivoting to products such as drone engines and onboard systems for armored vehicles, targeting to get at least 10% of their turnover from the weapons sector.

Other firms are making similar moves. Veteran combustion engine manufacturer Deutz has reported 15% revenue growth in 2025 after investing in military startups. Volkswagen is negotiating to produce components for Israel’s Iron Dome system. Legacy arms contractor Rheinmetall is facing tough competition from newcomers Helsing and Stark to supply loitering munitions to rearm the German military.

Israel has destroyed any chance of success in US-Iran talks by pushing Washington to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to former senior foreign policy adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marine Corps veteran James Webb.

In an exclusive interview with Afshin Rattansi’s ‘Going Underground’ on RT, Webb argued that Khamenei’s killing on February 28 – the first day of the US-Israeli campaign – was “indicative of the Israeli planning cycle” and ran counter to how the US government or military has historically operated.

Earlier reporting by the New York Times said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was physically present in the White House Situation Room during a key meeting with US President Donald Trump on February 11.

The assassination was “an Israeli move to effectively bloody the US and draw us deeper into the conflict, because when you do such a thing you don’t just remove the ability to negotiate state to state… you create essentially a blood feud between the two countries,” Webb said.

Webb went on to argue that Trump is not getting the full picture and is being heavily influenced by vested interests.

“Access is very restricted in the White House to the President. He is being walled off by certain interests, who in effect have been creating an echo chamber of their ideas,” he said, adding that this is evident in how the war with Iran has been conducted.

Check out the full episode of Going Underground, which airs exclusively on RT.

US President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian power plants and bridges is “perfectly acceptable,” Washington’s envoy to the UN Mike Waltz has said, dismissing accusations of potential war crimes.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Waltz insisted that “all options are on the table” regarding a possible escalation of the US-Israeli war on Iran. He added that US forces could take out Iranian infrastructure “relatively easily” and claimed that Iranian air defenses have been “absolutely decimated.”

When pressed on whether Trump’s threat to target all power plants and bridges in Iran would be considered a breach of international law, Waltz admitted that it would be “an escalatory ladder.” However, he vehemently dismissed “ridiculous arguments” that it would constitute a “war crime,” calling such criticisms “irresponsible,” and drawing parallels with World War II.

Waltz went on to accuse Tehran of blurring the line between civilian and military assets and of allegedly hiding weapons and military hardware in residential areas, schools, and hospitals.

Trump’s threat came in a Truth Social post on Sunday in which he accused Iran of violating a two-week ceasefire by firing at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, including what he claimed were shots aimed at French and British vessels.

On Sunday, the US military announced that it had seized the Iranian-flagged Touska cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman when it was allegedly attempting to breach a naval blockade and pass the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has condemned the US attack as “armed maritime piracy” and a breach of the truce.

The ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, is set to expire on Wednesday. A first round of talks in Islamabad last weekend failed to produce a breakthrough, with Iran’s nuclear program remaining the main sticking point. Trump is demanding that Tehran dismantle its infrastructure and hand over its enriched uranium – proposals Iran has rejected as “non-starters.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei has also called the US naval blockade of Iranian ports “unlawful and criminal” and a violation of the ceasefire, warning that it amounts to “collective punishment” and could be considered a war crime.

Police in Germany have detained a man suspected of erecting Nazi-themed structures outside the town of Eggenfelden, local media report, citing law enforcement.

Two wooden structures bearing Nazi symbols appeared in the town within a month. In late March, a large replica of the Auschwitz concentration camp gates – complete with the infamous slogan “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free) – was placed outside the local tax office. It featured multiple swastikas, with the ‘B’ in the inscription inverted, mirroring the original. Police launched an investigation after its discovery.

A second installation appeared on April 13: a black chimney-like structure resembling a crematorium oven, labeled “Zyklon B” and marked with SS runes, placed in a disabled parking space outside the same building.

Passauer Neue Presse reported Friday that the suspect is a 33-year-old Polish citizen living in Bavaria. He was apprehended days after the second incident when investigators matched his fingerprints to the structure.

KZ-Nachbauten in Eggenfelden: Ermittler fanden bei Tatverdächtigem weitere Nazi-Gegenstände https://t.co/dPiSyyssQH pic.twitter.com/rZaAZG2wu1

— Passauer Neue Presse (@pnp) April 17, 2026

Additional Nazi symbols reportedly found in his apartment. He faces charges of incitement to hatred and the use of unconstitutional symbols – offenses punishable by lengthy prison terms and fines under German law. The authorities have not disclosed further details on his identity or motive, and it remains unclear why he targeted the tax office.

Recent data shows a sharp rise in right-wing extremist crimes and incidents involving Nazi symbols in Germany – nearly 37,000 in 2025, almost double the annual average between 2015 and 2022. Most are classified as “propaganda offenses,” such as displaying swastikas or banned slogans, though many also involve hate crimes targeting migrants.

Russia has long warned of a resurgence of Nazi ideology in Europe, citing marches honoring Waffen SS veterans and Nazi collaborators. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday called it “unfortunate” and “sad” that such practices are being revived.

“Unfortunately, both the ideology and practice of Nazism are now being revived, including, sadly, in Germany, as well as in those countries that joined Hitler’s hordes in the attack on the Soviet Union,” he said at a CSTO Parliamentary Assembly Council meeting, adding similar trends are visible in Finland and the UK.

The Israeli military has published a map outlining what it described as a “forward defense line” in southern Lebanon, despite calls for a full withdrawal following the announcement of a ceasefire.

The map, published days after a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect, shows a new deployment line several kilometers beyond the Israeli border, encompassing dozens of villages abandoned as the Jewish state's troops invaded its neighbor, destroyed public infrastructure and killing some 3,700 people across the country, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israel and Lebanon agreed on Thursday to a US-brokered ten-day ceasefire to halt more than a month of fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, following the first direct talks between the two sides in decades on April 14.

The deal is aimed at supporting broader US-Iran diplomacy, although Israeli look set to stay in southern Lebanon.

In a statement, the IDF outlined what it described as a “forward defense line” where its forces are operating in southern Lebanon, but did not specify the size of the area.

Israeli forces have destroyed villages in the area, saying the aim is to prevent “direct threats” to northern Israeli communities. It said five divisions and naval forces are currently operating south of the line to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and prevent attacks against northern Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that homes along the border used by Hezbollah would be demolished, adding that “any structure threatening our soldiers and any road suspected of being planted with explosives must be immediately destroyed.” He added that the IDF has been ordered to use “full force” in Lebanon, even during the ceasefire, if it is threatened.

Israel launched airstrikes on Beirut and other cities and expanded what it described as a security zone in southern Lebanon in early March, following rocket fire by Hezbollah in support of Iran. Tehran has since made an end to Israeli operations in Lebanon a condition for a broader agreement with the US and Israel.

Since early March, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed nearly 2,300 people, wounded over 7,500, and displaced more than 1 million, according to Lebanese officials.

A Chinese humanoid robot outpaced thousands of human runners to win the Beijing E-Town half-marathon on Sunday, smashing the current world record. The event featured around 12,000 participants and more than 100 robots.

The bright‑red bipedal android named Lightning, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, dominated the race, crossing the finish line ahead of all the human competitors. It covered the 21.1 km distance in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the world record for a half‑marathon, set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo just last month, by nearly 7 minutes.

Robots also took second and third place, while the fastest human to finish the marathon was 29-year-old Zhao Haijie, who ran the race in 1 hour, 7 minutes and 47 seconds. 

In a similar race last year, machines had failed to make an impression, with the fastest robot, Tiangong, taking 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete the distance, well behind the human athletes.

Despite the androids completely dominating this year’s event, it was not without mishaps. One robot could be seen stumbling at the starting line and then crashing face‑first onto the pavement as staff rushed in with a stretcher.

Another robot veered into a barricade late in the race but recovered to finish, while engineers jogged behind clutching control devices. One android crossed the finish line, then promptly veered off course and fell into a bush.

China has designated humanoid robotics as a strategic national priority and one of six new economic growth drivers for the coming five years, providing significant subsidies to accelerate development. 

At the same time, China’s economic planning commission has warned that the country’s humanoid robotics industry risks facing a bubble as a result of the investment frenzy and has urged to prevent the explosive expansion of the sector from overwhelming the market.

Cairo has reclaimed 13 ancient artifacts, including rare vessels and statues that were illegally brought to the US.  

Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Sherif Fathi Attia said on Saturday the recovery reflects the country’s continued efforts to repatriate “cultural antiquities that were illegally smuggled” abroad. 

The items were handed over during a ceremony at the Egyptian Consulate General in New York. The recovered objects included an alabaster jar for oils and perfumes dating to the 7th century BC, as well as cosmetic containers shaped like animals from the Middle and New Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt.  

The collection also features a statue of the goddess Isis depicted as Aphrodite from the second century AD, highlighting the blend of Egyptian and Greek cultural influences, along with a stone statue of a man named Ankh-en-Nefer from the Late Period. 

Egypt has recently stepped up efforts to recover antiquities from abroad. Last November, Cairo also announced the recovery of 36 artifacts from the US, including a Roman-era mummy mask and a group of rare Coptic and Syriac manuscripts. 

Also last year, Egyptian officials said 13 artifacts had been returned from the UK and Germany. The items include a mummy’s skull and hand, ankh and baboon-shaped amulets, a bronze Osiris crown, and a beaded funerary mask. 

The repatriation comes amid growing calls across Africa for the return of cultural artifacts taken abroad. Speaking in Moscow in July, Mozambican Foreign Minister Maria Manuela Lucas said items removed from the continent should be returned to their countries of origin. 

The West is being swept by a “pandemic of historical revanchism” as it seeks to erase the memory of World War II and rewrite the Soviet victory over Nazi ideology, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

Zakharova made the remarks in an interview with TASS on Sunday on the occasion of Russia’s Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, which is being observed for the first time this year.

The spokeswoman said that while for a time Russia was absolutely certain that WWII was “a sacred topic for the whole world,” many Western countries adopted a different approach. “They think… the Soviet victory in WWII was accidental and inadmissible. They think that now is the time to rectify this accident, or a mistake, as they see it,” Zakharova stated.

Some Western countries, Zakharova said, do not accept the results of WWII and the rulings of the Nuremberg Tribunal. “No, they do not want to give up the idea of taking over the Ukrainian black soil, Russian oil and gas,” she said, adding that Western ambitions extend to seizing the resources of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

She also cited an escalating war against monuments to those who fought Nazism, but said the most dangerous sign of revanchism was that “they want a revenge which would allow them to prevail in remaking the world order and seizing resources around the globe.”

Moscow has for years sounded the alarm about resurgent Nazi ideology in Europe, citing in particular marches in Baltic states honoring Waffen SS veterans. It has also pointed to torchlit marches celebrating the birthday of Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaborated with Nazi Germany and killed tens of thousands of Jews and Poles during WWII.

Moscow has said Ukraine’s denazification is one of the key goals of its military operation against the neighboring state.

The United Arab Emirates has warned the US Treasury that it could be “forced to use Chinese yuan” in oil trade, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

UAE Central Bank Governor Khaled Mohamed Balama delivered what the newspaper described as an “implicit threat” against the dollar’s dominant position during a meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington last week, the outlet said, citing unnamed US officials.

Balama reportedly explained that Abu Dhabi could require a lifeline to prevent a dollar liquidity crunch if the economic fallout from the US war against Iran continues to rise.

Tehran has pursued a strategy of asymmetric pressure aimed at raising costs for Washington and its allies. The UAE bore the brunt of Iranian retaliation against US military bases and other high-value locations, with over 2,800 drones and missiles reportedly fired at the country.

The administration of US President Donald Trump previously floated the idea of Gulf states partially covering the cost of the Iran war. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Linda Bilmes estimated that the US directly spent $2 billion per day in the first 40 days of the conflict.

Arab frustration with US policies has surfaced in public commentary from figures linked to Gulf governments. On Sunday, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a former adviser to UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, called for US military bases in the country to be closed, arguing that they are a burden rather than a strategic asset. He advocated instead for prioritizing the acquisition of advanced US weaponry as an alternative national defense strategy.

New Delhi has expressed its concern to the Iranian envoy over the firing on two India-bound vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met Tehran’s envoy to New Delhi, Mohammad Fathali, on Saturday, and conveyed India’s “deep concern” after the incident in which ships carrying energy cargoes were reportedly prevented from transiting the Strait by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

This is the first time that India-bound energy carriers have been prevented from transiting the Strait during the ceasefire announced on April 8.

On April 17, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi declared that passage for all commercial vessels is completely open. 

“The Foreign Secretary conveyed India’s deep concern at the shooting incident earlier today involving two Indian-flagged ships in the Strait of Hormuz,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Misri said that Iran had earlier facilitated the safe passage of several ships and added that he “urged the ambassador to convey India’s views to the authorities in Iran and resume at the earliest the process of facilitating India-bound ships across the Strait.”

The Foreign Ministry said the Iranian ambassador was “called in” and not “summoned” as some reports indicated.

Misri was India’s representative in an international virtual meeting organized by the United Kingdom and France on April 17, in which 44 countries discussed the need for maintaining open navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

US President Donald Trump had also said that “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. 

Reports said soon after Araghchi’s announcement the IRGC reportedly said the strait had reverted to “strict control” due to the US Navy’s blockade of Iranian ships.

The Strait of Hormuz has emerged as a critical energy chokepoint since tensions escalated after the US-Israel attacks on Iran began on February 28. 

India imports 85% of its oil and nearly half of its natural gas. Around half of its crude oil and LNG shipments are normally routed through the Strait of Hormuz.

On April 18, the reigning Russian national champions – who train at Alina Kabaeva’s Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy – took bronze in the all-around group competition at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup which has now concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan. The team was made up of Alyona Seliverstova, Alina Proshchalykina, Zlata Remchukova, Nelli Reutskaya and Nicole Andronchik.

Their routine with three hoops and two pairs of clubs was performed cleanly and at a high level, without major errors. The group scored 26.350 for the exercise, finishing with a total of 52.900 points.

Israel won gold with 54.300 points, while Spain placed second on 54.050.

The same Russian lineup also claimed silver in the group event with three hoops and two pairs of clubs, earning 26.750 points. Spain took first place in that discipline with 27.950.

The Russian group also leaves Baku with the AGF Trophy for the highest execution score.

The team was personally prepared for the tournament by Olympic champion Alina Kabaeva, who remained in contact with the athletes throughout the competition. The routine was developed with choreographer Irina Zenovka

On April 19, 15-year-old Sofia Ilteryakova added two more medals to the Russian tally, taking silver in the clubs event and bronze in hoop. In clubs, she was beaten only by Olympic champion Darya Varfolomeyeva.

In total, the Russian gymnasts finished the Baku World Cup stage with two silver medals and two bronze medals.

They competed at the tournament under neutral status.

The winner of the Bulgarian parliamentary election, Progressive Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev, has called for dialogue with Russia to be restored. The former president has led the newly formed left-leaning populist party to a landslide victory on a platform of critical dialogue with Brussels and pragmatism towards Moscow.

Speaking to reporters after the first exit polls showed his party well in the lead, the EU-skeptic Radev said Bulgaria would remain “on its European path,” but argued that Sofia and the bloc both need “more critical thinking” in foreign policy.

“Ask [French President Emmanuel] Macron, the prime minister of Belgium, ask other European leaders, including [German] Chancellor [Friedrich] Merz, who said that this dialogue [with Russia] must be restored,” Radev stated, stressing that engagement is necessary to shape Europe’s future security architecture and to halt its deindustrialization. “If we want Europe to have real strategic autonomy… Europe must think very seriously about how it will secure its resources, because without energy resources we cannot talk about competitiveness,” he added.

Bulgaria, 96.4% of protocols processed:

National parliament election

PB-*: 44.7% (+0.2)
GERB-SDS-EPP: 13.4% (+0.1)
PP-DB-RE|EPP: 12.9% (-0.6)
DPS-NN-NI: 6.7% (+0.6)
V-ESN: 4.3% (-0.1)
MECh-*: 3.3%
Velichie-*: 3.1% (-0.1)
BSPOL-S&D: 3.0%
Siyanie-G/EFA: 2.9% (-0.1)
APS-RE: 1.5%… pic.twitter.com/vZ4QRUEgjO

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) April 20, 2026

Radev argued that the bloc has undermined itself by pursuing moral leadership in what he described as a world without rules, and now needs more practical policies.

To form a government, a party or coalition must win at least 121 seats in the 240-seat National Assembly. Preliminary projections suggest Progressive Bulgaria has already cleared that threshold with an estimated 131-134 seats, enough to govern without a coalition.

Radev described the result as a “victory of hope over mistrust,” saying his party had overcome voter apathy, but acknowledged that distrust in politicians remains. He said he will comment on government formation or possible coalition talks after the final results are announced.

A vocal critic of the EU’s Ukraine policy, Radev has opposed Bulgaria’s embargo on Russian energy, blocked a 2022 plan to send armored vehicles to Ukraine, and argued that there is no military solution to the conflict.

Pope Leo has prayed at a historic Catholic shrine in Angola that is linked to the transatlantic slave trade, during the third leg of his first trip to Africa as pontiff.

Speaking at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima on Sunday, the Pope said the Marian site held memories of “sorrow and great suffering” in Angola’s history, while also remaining a place where generations of believers have turned in moments of anguish and hope.

Founded by Portuguese colonizers in the late 16th century, the shrine became entwined with the slave trade, with enslaved Africans baptized there before being taken around 130 km to the capital, Luanda, and shipped across the Atlantic.

The pontiff did not directly address the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery during the colonial period, an issue that has remained a source of controversy despite the Vatican’s broader efforts in recent years to confront parts of its colonial legacy.

The sanctuary became a major pilgrimage site after believers reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary around 1833. The Vatican has described it as a center of devotion during some of the most difficult periods in Angola’s history, including colonial rule and the long civil war.

“It is love that must triumph, not war,” he said in Portuguese.

Highlights of the seventh day of Pope Leo XIV's Apostolic Journey to Africa, during which he celebrated Mass in Kilamba and prayed the Rosary in Muxima on his second day in Angola. pic.twitter.com/WrUVmMZ9Eu

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) April 19, 2026

The Angola stop forms part of the Pope’s 11-day tour of Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea, which began on April 13.

The US voted against the resolution, saying it rejects any suggestion of a legal duty to provide reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time. The UK abstained and has also opposed the demands.

France is weaponizing criminal prosecution in an attempt to suppress free speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said, as he backed X owner Elon Musk in the social media platform’s legal case in the country.

Durov made the remarks on Sunday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice had rejected a French request for assistance in investigating X’s alleged role in distributing sexual deepfakes and unlawful data extraction.

The DOJ letter stated that the French probe sought “to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas” and “to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding.”

Musk has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the probe as a “political attack.”

He also disputed the independence of French prosecutors, saying they “are hired, fired, and promoted by the government.” He added that “the judicial police – who provide often misleading reports to investigative judges – are also controlled by the government.”

”Proud to stand alongside Elon Musk and others targeted by Macron’s campaign against digital rights. In Macron’s France, being investigated is the new Legion d’honneur.”

The French investigation into X was first launched in January 2025, following allegations that the platform’s content algorithm showed bias and could constitute foreign interference. The case has since expanded to include scrutiny of anti-Semitic content, Holocaust denial, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material. Paris prosecutors raided X’s French offices in February 2026, and recently summoned Musk for a “voluntary” interview.

Durov – a citizen of France, Russia, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis – has himself clashed with the French judicial system. He was arrested at a Paris airport in August 2024 and indicted on 12 charges, including alleged complicity in distributing child exploitation material and drug trafficking, after French prosecutors cited Telegram’s near-total failure to respond to legal requests.

Durov’s travel ban was fully lifted in November 2025, though the formal investigation continues. Durov has called the arrest and probe “legally and logically absurd” and said its “only outcome” had been “massive damage to France’s image as a free country.”

Iran has denounced a US attack on one of its vessels as “armed maritime piracy,” warning of retaliation.

On Sunday, a US warship fired at and subsequently seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman. The military said the ship, identified as the Touska, was attempting to breach a naval blockade and head for Bandar Abbas through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement released shortly afterward, Iran’s military command center, Khatam al-Anbiya, condemned the strike on a vessel returning from China, accusing Washington of violating the ceasefire in place since April 8.

“We warn that the armed forces of... Iran will soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy and the US military,” a spokesperson for the command center said, as cited by ISNA news agency.

US President Donald Trump announced the blockade of Iranian ports last week after Pakistani-mediated talks failed to achieve a breakthrough.

“By deliberately inflicting collective punishment on the Iranian population, it amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Baghaei said on social media.

Baghaei’s comments on Sunday followed renewed Iranian threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockade, effectively reclosing the strategic route which handles around 20% of the global oil and liquefied natural gas trade.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency later reported that Iranian forces launched drones toward US naval vessels. The Pentagon has not confirmed whether any ships came under attack.

India and Sri Lanka have held talks on setting up an oil pipeline connecting the two South Asian nations.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the discussions on Sunday between Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan and Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake also touched on bilateral ties, housing projects, and issues concerning the fishing industry of the two countries.

“Some initiatives that are underway from the Indian side and some proposals that have already been discussed between the two countries, notable amongst them, the project related to the energy hub in Trincomalee and the proposal to link India and Sri Lanka through an oil pipeline,” Misri said on Sunday.

Discussions on the oil pipeline project, which also involves the United Arab Emirates, have been ongoing since 2023, Misri added.

Sri Lanka, India, and the UAE signed a pact in April 2025 to set up an oil pipeline connecting the two South Asian neighbors and to establish the Trincomalee oil storage complex. The pact provides for the development of an energy hub by India and the UAE.

Misri pointed out the importance of the discussions at a time when the world “is facing the fallout of an energy crisis.”

Radhakrishnan’s two-day visit is the first ever by an Indian vice president to Sri Lanka.   

Dissanayake highlighted India’s first-responder role during Sri Lanka’s economic crisis in 2022 and, more recently, after Cyclone Ditwah last year.

Radhakrishnan discussed the ongoing implementation of Indian projects in Sri Lanka with an emphasis on the $450 million Cyclone Ditwah aid offered by New Delhi.

During the India-Sri Lanka talks, the digital ID project and the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) were also discussed, Misri said.

Various memoranda of understanding are also slated to be exchanged during Radhakrishnan’s visit, the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Western leaders are figureheads dependent on wealthy donors who “do not care about their people,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said in an interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez.

Speaking at the presidential palace in Minsk, Lukashenko discussed the Western political system, Belarus’ relations with neighboring countries, US President Donald Trump, and a range of other topics.

Leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz “are all just temporary placeholders… They’re here today, gone tomorrow,” Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994 and is Europe’s longest-serving current leader, said.

“They’re just trying to grab something while they can. That’s the foundation of their policies,” he added, while highlighting his own style of governance.

“I appoint the government, supervise its work, and bear responsibility for the outcomes,” Lukashenko said. He argued that in the West, “it’s not clear who appoints who and who’s responsible for what… the people there don’t know who they can hold accountable.”

The Belarusian leader said Western politicians owe their positions to “rich donors who finance them,” and “over time, they begin to prioritize the interests of these donors, not the people of Germany, France, or the UK.”

Watch the full interview here:

The EU will find ways to hand out more money to Ukraine regardless of Hungary’s veto power, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He made the remarks after the opposition Tisza party defeated Hungary’s longtime prime minister, Viktor Orban, in a high-stakes parliamentary election.

Orban previously blocked a $106 billion loan package for Ukraine. Tisza leader Peter Magyar, however, campaigned on repairing relations with the EU and signaled that Budapest will drop its opposition to aid for Kiev.

Ukraine’s European backers, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, openly celebrated Magyar’s victory.

In a news segment aired on Sunday, Russia 1 journalist Pavel Zarubin asked Peskov whether Russia-EU relations could deteriorate further following Orban’s defeat. “No, they can’t get any worse than now,” Peskov replied.

“One way or another, the EU would have found a way to unblock the funds, with or without Orban. We should have no illusions about it,” he added.

A longstanding critic of the EU’s decision-making process, Orban has argued that military aid to Ukraine has pushed the bloc closer to an open war with Russia, while the ban on energy imports from Russia has hurt member states economically.

Von der Leyen has said the “momentum” from the Hungarian election should be used to begin reforms aimed at reducing the veto power of member states on issues such as loans for Ukraine. “Moving to qualified majority voting in foreign policy is an important way to avoid systemic blockages, as we have seen in the past,” she said.

In February, Hungary sued the EU over its decision to phase out energy supplies from Russia. Slovakia has said it will formally join the lawsuit this week. Both countries argue that the EU has no right to override their opposition to sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Pope Leo has sought to downplay his public spat with US President Donald Trump, rejecting claims that he was trying to challenge the president with his criticism of the war in Iran and calls for peace.

Speaking to reporters on a flight to Angola on Saturday, the US-born pontiff insisted that his remarks were not meant to be confrontational, while criticizing the media for inflating the row through excessive commentary and speculation.

“There’s been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects… much of what has been written… has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said,” the Pope said. He stressed that his remarks in Cameroon earlier this week, blasting leaders who spend billions on wars and describing the world as “ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” were not directed at Trump.

“And yet, as it happens, it was looked at as if I was trying to debate the president, which is not my interest at all,” he said.

He added that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” after US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth urged Americans to pray “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Trump has described the pope as “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” adding that he does not want “a pope who criticizes the President of the United States.”

US Vice President J.D. Vance, who also previously criticized the Pope, welcomed Leo’s latest remarks.

“I am grateful to Pope Leo for saying this,” Vance wrote on X on Sunday. “While the media narrative constantly gins up conflict – and yes, real disagreements have happened and will happen – the reality is often much more complicated.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is investigating a soldier who was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus Christ with a hammer.

The image, originally posted by Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi on X, was widely shared online, raising concerns about potential damage to religious sites.

Tirawi said the incident took place in southern Lebanon, with a local community page confirming that the statue is located on the outskirts of the town of Dibil, a Christian municipality in the Bint Jbeil District near the border with Israel. The official Dibil town page shared a photograph of the statue alongside a biblical quote: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In a statement on X on Sunday, the IDF confirmed the authenticity of the image, saying the incident was viewed “with great severity” and describing the soldier’s conduct as “wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops.”

The IDF said it has “no intention of harming civilian infrastructure, including religious buildings or symbols.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar later issued an apology for the incident “to every Christian whose feelings were hurt” and expressed confidence in the IDF’s ability to take appropriate action against the perpetrator.

The image sparked outrage online, with former US Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene sharing the post with the caption: “Our greatest ally that takes billions of our tax dollars and weapons every year.” Former US lawmaker Matt Gaetz described the image as “horrific.”

Israel has struck several Christian sites during its campaign against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 2023, Israeli aircraft bombed a building adjacent to the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, Gaza’s oldest Christian shrine, killing 18 people. In 2025, shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell damaged Gaza’s Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in the Palestinian enclave, killing three people.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) has released a video showing a US warship firing at an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel that was later seized by US Marines.

According to CENTCOM, the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance intercepted the M/V Touska in the Gulf of Oman as it attempted to breach the US naval blockade and reach the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas through the Strait of Hormuz.

“After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch Mk 45 gun into the engine room,” CENTCOM said, adding that a team from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the vessel.

The Touska was traveling from a Chinese chemical-storage port and was laden with cargo, the Washington Post reports, citing tracking data. The port is often used for transporting chemicals, including sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for producing solid rocket fuel, it added, noting that it is unclear what cargo the Touska was carrying.

Later, CENTCOM also released a video of US forces boarding the disabled ship from a helicopter.

U.S. Marines depart amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7) by helicopter and transit over the Arabian Sea to board and seize M/V Touska. The Marines rappelled onto the Iranian-flagged vessel, April 19, after guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance (DDG 111) disabled Touska’s… pic.twitter.com/mFxI5RzYCS

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 20, 2026

Iranian officials denounced the blockade as illegal under international law, saying it violates the terms of a two-week ceasefire set to expire on Wednesday.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency later reported that the Iranian military launched a drone at US ships. The US has not confirmed whether any of its vessels came under attack.

The United States’ greatest weakness in its relations with Europe is a simple one: it’s Washington that needs the continent more than the continent needs Washington.

America arrived in Europe as one of the victors of the Second World War. It established military dominance in the western part, embedded itself in the region’s security architecture, and for decades used Europe as a forward base in its confrontation with the Soviet Union. In doing so, it also shielded Western European elites from the threat of communist movements in the late 1940s. A favor that, paradoxically, was never fully forgiven in Berlin, Paris or London.

That lingering resentment doesn’t mean Western Europe is about to revolt against its transatlantic patron. Its elites are too cautious and too compromised for that. But it does mean that, whenever the US shows weakness, these Europeans will exploit it, opportunistically, and without sentiment.

That moment has now arrived.

Recent decisions by Washington have created an opening that Western Europeans are already beginning to use. The clearest sign came when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unexpectedly ruled out joining a naval blockade of Iran. For those who still believe in the unbreakable unity of the transatlantic alliance, this may have seemed surprising. In reality, it is entirely consistent with the logic of US-Western European relations over the past 80 years.

Western Europe understands something fundamental: without its presence on the continent, the US risks geopolitical isolation. The familiar narrative that NATO exists primarily to defend the locals from external threats is, in large part, a convenient fiction. It obscures a more basic reality, that it’s Washington which derives the greatest strategic benefit from maintaining this “special relationship.”

First, the loss of Europe as a territorial base would fundamentally alter the strategic balance between the US and Russia. The “grey zone,” the space in which confrontation can occur without immediately escalating into direct strikes on national territory, would disappear. Any conflict would become instantly more dangerous.

Second, the US would lose its ability to exert pressure on Russia by positioning military assets, including nuclear capabilities, close to its borders. Russia, notably, has no equivalent opportunity in the Western Hemisphere.

Third, a US withdrawal from Europe would render any meaningful strategic dialogue with Washington increasingly pointless from Moscow’s perspective, accelerating Russia’s pivot toward China.

In other words, America’s military presence in Europe is not an act of charity. It is a critical asset, a diplomatic and strategic lever in its broader competition with other major powers.

Western European leaders understand this perfectly well. And they also understand something else: the American security guarantee is not as absolute as it is often portrayed.

That logic has not disappeared. If anything, it has become more relevant.

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion has extended security guarantees to states of far less strategic importance than Britain, France or Germany. At the same time, recent events have demonstrated the limits of American power. The inability of the US to fully shield even small Gulf states from retaliatory strikes has reinforced doubts about the credibility of its security umbrella.

For decades, the transatlantic relationship functioned on a tacit understanding: Western Europe would pretend it needed protection, and the US would pretend to provide it. This arrangement suited both sides.

But the current US administration has disrupted that balance. Its erratic decision-making and narrow focus have created uncertainty, and, in doing so, given Western European elites an opportunity to strengthen their own position. And they are taking it.

Second, Western European governments still require American power to manage their complex relationship with Russia. Despite the current confrontation, there is a long historical memory of eventual accommodation with Moscow. For now, however, there are few incentives for a rapid rapprochement.

What has changed is the balance within the partnership. These European elites, confident in their ability to manage domestic populations and navigate external pressures, now see greater room for maneuver. They will use it to extract concessions, reshape commitments, and hedge against American unpredictability.

Washington, meanwhile, has placed itself in a difficult position. It is attempting to stabilize relations with Russia, maintain control over Western Europe, and prepare for a strategic confrontation with China, all at the same time. These objectives are not easily compatible.

The result is vulnerability, not primarily to Moscow or Beijing, but within the transatlantic relationship itself. By its own actions, the US has given its European allies a series of advantages. They will exploit them, carefully but decisively.

What remains unclear is how Washington intends to regain the initiative, or whether it yet fully understands what it stands to lose.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

The US has seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman as it attempted to breach the American naval blockade around Iran, President Donald Trump has announced.

“The US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance intercepted the Touska in the Gulf of Oman and issued a warning to stop,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.

“The Iranian crew refused to comply, so our Navy ship stopped them in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room,” the president added.

Trump said that the ship had been sanctioned by the US due to its “prior history of illegal activity.”

pic.twitter.com/Bm2S7RGJWf

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 19, 2026

Trump announced the blockade of Iranian ports last week after Pakistani-mediated talks failed to achieve a breakthrough. Iran said it would close the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade, to “enemy ships” until the blockade is lifted.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei denounced the blockade on Sunday as “unlawful and criminal.”

The UK has effectively lost contact with tens of thousands of reservists who would be called up in a national emergency, George Robertson, a former NATO secretary general and a lead adviser for the Strategic Defense Review (SDR), has said.

Amid the broader Western militarization over a perceived Russian threat – claims repeatedly dismissed by Moscow as “nonsense” – the UK rolled out its new SDR last November, outlining a shift to “warfighting readiness” by 2035. The plan calls for raising defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, and, among other things, revitalizing the strategic reserve.

An armed forces bill is now being prepared to implement the reforms, including raising the recall age from 55 to 65 and expanding call-up criteria to cover “warlike operations,” not just direct attacks or emergencies.

However, speaking at a lecture in Salisbury this week, Robertson said that the government does not have valid contact or health data for most of its roughly 95,000 “high-readiness” reservists.

The British Army is already at its smallest size in more than two centuries, with fewer than 70,000 fully trained personnel ready for frontline deployment, alongside an active reserve of around 32,000. The strategic reserve, meanwhile, consists of former service members, with regular contact typically maintained only for the first six years after they leave, leaving a larger, older cohort off the radar.

Robertson called for mapping reservists’ locations and skills and “mak[ing] a more concerted effort to engage them under a refreshed veterans’ communications strategy.” He also criticized delays in funding and preparedness, accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer of “corrosive complacency” and putting the country “in peril” at a time it was “under attack.”

Russia has dismissed such claims, arguing they are used to justify higher military spending, distract from domestic issues, and stall peace efforts.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has told RT’s Rick Sanchez that he wants his country “to remain a land of opportunity.”

When asked what would follow his eventual resignation, Lukashenko, 71, said that he hopes that Belarus will remain safe and stable.

“I’ve done a lot to make Belarus what it is today… You said it’s a decent country, that people live good lives here. A peaceful, safe country,” he said.

“Naturally, I want to see that preserved. I want it to remain a land of opportunity, where anyone can realize themselves. In that sense, we’ve succeeded.”

Choosing his successor will be up to “the people of Belarus,” Lukashenko told Sanchez when asked whether equal opportunities would be afforded to anyone vying for the position. “However they choose, that’s how it will be.”

Lukashenko was first elected in 1994, during the turbulent period following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

“That was a very different time, there was vote rigging, even violence. And I still got 80.3%. I remember it well. The people stood by me, very strongly,” he said.

“I believe that long before I pass on… there will be a capable new person leading Belarus. We’ve got plenty of smart, talented people.”

Watch the full interview on RT on Monday at 8:30 AM Moscow time (6:30 AM GMT).

Eight children were killed in a mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday, police have said, describing the attack as a domestic dispute that escalated into deadly violence.

According to a statement on social media, officers responded to reports of a domestic disturbance in the 300 block of West 79th Street just after 6:00 AM local time (11:00 GMT). According to spokesperson Christopher Bordelon, the violence spanned multiple locations.

“You have three different scenes,” Bordelon said, adding that the initial shooting occurred on West 79th Street, with a related incident unfolding on Harrison Street, and at least one victim fleeing to a neighboring residence.

Ten people were shot, eight of them fatally. The victims ranged in age from 18 months to 15 years old.

🚨⚡️NOW AND UNUSUAL

America Jungle
At Least 8 Children Killed in Mass Shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana State, USA pic.twitter.com/hqKI1gz2dN

— RussiaNews 🇷🇺 (@mog_russEN) April 19, 2026

The suspect fled the scene, attempting to escape by carjacking a vehicle before being pursued by officers. Police eventually shot and killed the suspect following a chase, Bordelon said.

BREAKING: Suspect shot and killed by police following multiple-victim shooting, reportedly involving children, in Shreveport, Louisiana. pic.twitter.com/EKX3x7Kni1

— Breaking 4 News (@Breaking_4_News) April 19, 2026

The authorities have not yet released the suspect’s identity or provided further details on the motive beyond the domestic dispute.

Breaking News: 8 children killed in mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. Initial reports indicate a “domestic disturbance.” pic.twitter.com/eCVFg3SPDN

— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) April 19, 2026

Police Chief Wayne Smith said the only survivors were two adult women, one of whom remains in life-threatening condition. One of the women is believed to have been in a relationship with the suspect. Some of the children shot were related to the suspect, Smith said, calling it “an extensive scene unlike anything most of us have ever seen.” State police added that no officers were injured during the incident.

“This is a tragic situation – maybe the worst tragic situation we’ve ever had,” Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux said. “It’s a terrible morning.”

Authorities have identified Shamar Elkins as the suspect in the shocking mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, that killed eight children and wounded others; the investigation is ongoing. pic.twitter.com/U5uBJtj8Zb

— General Quacker | الجنرال كواكر (@general_he42676) April 19, 2026

The US negotiating team is heading to Pakistan for the next round of Iran peace talks on Monday, President Donald Trump has announced, while renewing his threat to strike Iran’s infrastructure if no deal is reached.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump accused Tehran of violating the temporary ceasefire – set to expire on Wednesday – with reported attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz amid a renewed blockade of the waterway.

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz – a total violation of our ceasefire agreement! That wasn’t nice, was it?” he wrote, claiming French and British vessels were targeted. Before declaring that his “Representatives are going to Islamabad…for negotiations.”

He warned that there would be “No more MR. Nice Guy,” if Tehran didn’t take his “fair and reasonable deal.” Adding that Washington would “knock out every single power plant, and every single bridge, in Iran.”

The first round of talks in Pakistan failed to make progress, with Iran’s nuclear program remaining the main sticking point. Trump is demanding that Tehran dismantle its infrastructure and hand over its enriched uranium – proposals Iran has rejected as “non-starters.” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday that Trump has no justification to “deprive Iran of its nuclear rights.”

Tehran has not confirmed the next round, with Tasnim reporting it will not return unless Washington drops its “excessive demands.” However, Pakistani security sources told Al Jazeera that talks are likely before Friday, citing the arrival of two US C-17 aircraft near Islamabad, heightened security, and major hotels being cleared of guests.

Finnish racing driver Juha Miettinen was killed and six others injured in a seven-car crash during the early stages of the Nurburgring qualifiers in Germany on Saturday.

“Despite the immediate arrival of emergency services, the emergency medics were unable to save the driver involved, Juha Miettinen, after he had been extracted from the vehicle,” the event organizers said in a statement on X. The 66-year-old Finn “died at the Medical Centre after all attempts at resuscitation proved unsuccessful.”

Six other drivers were injured and taken for treatment and are in non-life-threatening condition, they added.

The crash may have been caused by a spill on the track, according to Russian-born Dutch driver Mikhail Charoudin, who took part in the qualifiers.

“Whether it’s gasoline, oil, coolant, you name it… One of the cars that had the livestream on, you actually couldn’t see it… A lot of cars in front of him lost control,” he said, as cited by The Express.

Por ahora este es el único video del grave accidente ocurrido hace unos minutos en #Nurburgring. pic.twitter.com/hvnLYC4vzm

— Revista Autoextra (@Autoextragti) April 18, 2026

Four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen, who is set to appear at the race, said he was shocked by the accident.

A minute’s silence was held for Miettinen on Sunday ahead of the day’s qualifiers.

The qualifiers are part of the buildup to the 24-hour Nurburgring race in May. The event takes place on the Nordschleife circuit, a roughly 25-km (15.5-mile) track with more than 150 corners that runs through wooded hills and is known as a grueling endurance challenge, with weather and visibility often changing during the race.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations has lashed out at his French, Chinese, and Pakistani counterparts, accusing their countries of effectively backing Iran by allegedly striking deals to secure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

The rebuke appears to stem from media reports which recently indicated that commercial vessels from all three countries were able to transit the Strait of Hormuz during the blockade, in some cases with Iranian authorization, despite broader restrictions on shipping imposed by Tehran.

“I asked the French ambassador: How much money did you pay Iran to move ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz?” Danny Danon said in a post on X shortly after speaking at the UN General Assembly session on the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

“Surprisingly, he had no answer,” he wrote, adding: “The ambassadors of China and Pakistan also had no answer.”

Navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route handling around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows, has been disrupted since Tehran effectively blocked the waterway in response to the US-Israeli bombing campaign that began on February 28.

In March, Iran said that vessels of India, China, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka would be allowed to pass through the crucial waterway. Beijing is ranked as the biggest buyer of Iranian oil and most of its supplies pass through the chokepoint. At the same time, Malaysian authorities thanked Tehran for allowing the passage of the country’s ships.

In April, the Financial Times reported, citing the tracking data, that a container ship owned by a French shipping company had sailed through the Strait of Hormuz along with several other ships.

At the UN, France previously voted in favor of resolutions condemning Iran’s blockade of the strait, China either vetoed the measures or voted against critical wording, while Pakistan abstained.

Latin America could explode in a “rebellion” against the US if it doesn’t rethink its approach to the region, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has warned, citing the raid on Caracas and kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

In an interview with El Pais published on Saturday, Petro lashed out at the US sanctions against him, portraying them as a tool of political extortion, comparing Washington’s approach to colonialism.

The US Treasury blacklisted Petro, his wife, son, and interior minister in October 2025, citing their alleged involvement in the global drug trade. The US levied similar accusations against Maduro before he was kidnapped in a US raid on Caracas in early January. Both Petro and Maduro have vehemently denied the allegations.

The Colombian president noted the global shock caused by the kidnapping of Maduro. “They persecute you and threaten to take you to the United States, like they did to Maduro,” Petro said, adding that Caracas became “the first Latin American city to be bombed in its history.”

“This has created a wound that the current rulers fearfully accept... and they kneel before it,” he added.

In a separate interview with El Pais, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also criticized the Trump administration’s approach to global politics, though he was more focused on the Iran war.

Trump, he said, is “playing a very dangerous game,” operating on the premise that American power dictates the rules of the game. “But that can’t be the case, because ultimately, it ends up creating problems for the US,” he warned.

Lula added that the US president “has no right to wake up in the morning and threaten a country.”

The Brazilian president has been one of the most vocal critics of Maduro’s abduction, saying it crossed “an unacceptable line” and “recalls the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America.”

Iran will not yield to US pressure, parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said. He stressed that progress has been made in the negotiations, though fundamental issues are still unresolved.

The first round of US-Iran talks in Islamabad took place last weekend in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Following the negotiations, US President Donald Trump announced a blockade of Iranian ports and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around 25% of the global crude oil trade.

On Friday, Iran opened the waterway for all commercial vessels, framing the move as part of ceasefire arrangements linked to the Israel-Lebanon truce and broader regional de-escalation efforts. The strait was, however, closed again the following day after Trump said the US blockade of Iranian ports would remain in full force until a peace deal is reached.

“We will stand to the end,” Ghalibaf said, speaking in a televised address aired early Sunday.

“We are still far from a final agreement,” Ghalibaf said, urging the US to earn the trust of the Iranian people. “Overall, I can say that there has been progress in the negotiations, but the gaps remain significant and some fundamental issues are still unresolved.”

Ghalibaf also said the US is planning to infiltrate Iran through waves of unrest from its western and eastern borders, adding that attempts at regime change and the “Venezuelization” of Iran – aimed at selling the country’s oil – have failed.

“It is clear that the enemy was defeated, but this is different from saying that we destroyed its army,” he said.

On Saturday, Trump told reporters that “very good conversations” are taking place, but stressed that he won’t let Iran “blackmail” the US over the Strait of Hormuz.

Lithuania and Latvia have announced that they will refuse Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico use of their airspace to travel to Moscow for Victory Day on May 9. Fico vowed to reach the Russian capital nonetheless, saying that the Baltic states would not prevent him from paying tribute to those who liberated Slovakia from Nazi occupation.

Fico revealed the refusal in an address on Saturday. “Lithuania and Latvia have already informed us that they will not allow us to fly over their territory on the route to Moscow. So be it,” he said, indicating that it is abnormal for EU member states to deny a flyover right to the prime minister of another EU member state.

“I will certainly find another route, as I did last year when Estonia torpedoed us,” Fico added. “The attitude of the Baltic states toward WWII cannot stop me in my intention to give thanks for the liberation of Slovakia.”

Last year’s parade in Moscow drew nearly 30 world leaders, among them China’s Xi Jinping, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Fico was the only EU leader to attend the celebrations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would be pleased to welcome representatives from friendly countries this year, but that the guest list had not yet been finalized.

Last year, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned leaders against attending Moscow’s May 9 events, saying such visits would “not be taken lightly on the European side,” and urged them to visit Kiev instead.

Fico at the time dismissed her comments as disrespectful, questioning whether they amounted to “a form of blackmail.”

Former Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has defeated former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov by 30 points in Bulgaria’s general election, according to preliminary exit polls.

With some 96% of votes counted, Radev's Progressive Bulgaria coalition has won 44.7% of the vote, followed by Borissov’s GERB-SDS at 13.4% and caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov’s PP-DB at 12.9%.

The strongly EU-skeptical party Varazhdane (V-ESN) has won 4.3$ of the vote.

These results are closely in line with exit polls, with Alpha Research predicting that Radev would take 44.2%, and Borissov's party would come in second place at 13.4%.

The election was the country’s eighth in five years, and another flashpoint in the battle between staunchly pro-EU and sovereignist political forces in Europe. In a final pre-election message to his supporters, Borissov reassured voters on that his party would provide “full support to Ukraine.”

Radev has vowed to balance relations between East and West, promising to build a “modern European Bulgaria,” while developing “practical relations with Russia based on mutual respect.”

Radev, who opposes EU aid to Ukraine, has also vowed to break the stranglehold of the “oligarchic mafia” on Bulgaria. 

A former fighter pilot who served as Bulgaria’s president between 2017 and 2026, he clashed with Borissov during their overlapping stint in power, backing the 2020 anti-corruption protests that led to Borissov’s downfall.

Just as it did in Hungary last weekend, and in France, Germany, Moldova, and Romania beforehand, the EU activated its ‘Rapid Response System’ in Bulgaria. This suite of online censorship tools gives the European Commission the power to remove so-called “disinformation” from social media platforms during the election.

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The Second Open Dialogue ‘The Future of the World. A New Platform for Global Growth’ is set to take place at the National Centre RUSSIA in Moscow from April 27 to 29. Participants can expect lectures by international experts, pitch sessions, idea presentations, networking, and discussions with representatives from more than 40 countries.

The program is built around four tracks: investment in people (education, demography), in technology (artificial intelligence, cybersecurity), in the environment (ecology, circular economy), and in connectivity (trade, digital currencies, logistics).

A total of 1,638 essays were submitted to the competition from various countries. More than 300 made the longlist. The most popular topic among authors was investment in people, which accounted for 40% of submissions. This was followed by technology (24%), connectivity (20%), and the environment (16%). Among foreign participants, the greatest interest was in the use of technology in agriculture.

An AI assistant, ODI, was used to assess the texts: it checked the essays for plagiarism and evaluated the extent to which generative models had been used. Only original works written with minimal involvement of artificial intelligence reached the final. This year, the quality of submissions rose noticeably – 75 authors hold academic degrees.

The competition’s geography has also expanded: participants from 18 new countries joined the project, including Nepal, Armenia, Nicaragua, and Uruguay.

A distinctive feature of the dialogue is its principle of continuity: essayists from previous years will serve as experts and jury members. In this way, an intellectual community is being formed in which participants gradually become carriers of ideas themselves.

The event is being held at the Russia National Centre in partnership with the Third Rome Center for Cross-Sector Expertise, with support from the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. President Vladimir Putin approved the initiative, noting its importance for shaping a new global agenda.

Registration for the Open Dialogue is ongoing. Applications can be submitted on the event’s website.

The US has renewed a sanctions exemption allowing Russian crude and petroleum products already loaded onto tankers to be delivered and sold freely, the US Treasury Department has announced. The move came despite a pledge by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made two days prior that the waiver would not be extended.

On Friday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general license covering Russian oil loaded onto vessels as of April 17 and authorizing transactions through May 16. The waiver replaces an earlier 30-day order – which took effect on March 19 – and extends to services including safe docking, crew safety, emergency repairs, and insurance, even for previously sanctioned vessels.

The goal of the initial waiver was to contain the spike in oil prices caused by the Iran war and the de-facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

In late March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the notion of the waiver as meaningless. “The US graciously allowed the Russian Federation to sell its oil that was already at sea,” he said. “Tankers that are already at sea and heading to their destinations continue moving exactly as they did before.”

Sanctions “do not exist for us, as well as for our conscientious, respectable partners,” Lavrov added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called for a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict, but acknowledged that Russia has seen a sharp rise in demand for oil. According to the spokesman, Russia “has been and remains a reliable supplier of both oil and gas.”

Russia has emerged as a beneficiary of the Iran war due to soaring oil prices, reaping an estimated $150 million in additional daily revenue.

EU officials have criticized the decision to waive sanctions on Russian oil. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it is “not the time to relax sanctions against Russia.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky said the exemption “could provide Russia with about $10 billion for the war.”

The mayor of a Brussels suburb has denounced what he described as “terrorism” and called for reinforcements after a series of explosions linked to gang violence struck the EU capital this week.

At least five blasts have been reported in recent days in Saint-Gilles, a vibrant Brussels district that is also home to many EU officials.

The latest incident occurred shortly after midnight on Saturday outside a shisha bar on Rue Theodore Verhaegen near Barriere de Saint-Gilles. The explosion damaged the venue and nearby homes, and shattered windows at a school across the street. No injuries were reported.

Saint-Gilles Mayor Jean Spinette described the incidents as a “war between rival drug families,” calling on Interior Minister Bernard Quintin to provide immediate reinforcements to the Brussels prosecutor’s office and the federal judicial police to ensure residents’ safety at night.

“Spreading fear to gain territory – that’s called terrorism,” he added.

Brussels has been described as one of Europe’s most affected capitals for gun-related violence, with 96 firearms incidents recorded in 2025. In the first three months of 2026, at least 22 shootings were reported, resulting in multiple injuries and one death.

Public prosecutor Julien Moinil previously warned that “every Brussels resident and every citizen can be hit by a stray bullet,” calling for a coordinated crackdown on criminal networks. The federal authorities have proposed additional measures, including increased patrols and expanded surveillance in areas linked to drug activity.

Brussels hosts many EU institutions, including the headquarters of the European Commission, and is widely regarded as the bloc’s de facto political capital. NATO headquarters is also located in the city.

US officials have urged Cuba to transition from socialism to a market-based economy and compensate American citizens and corporations whose assets were seized in the 1960s, US news outlets reported on Friday and Saturday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

A delegation from the US State Department outlined the demands late last week during the first trip of the kind to Havana since 2016, as Cuba grapples with severe fuel shortages and blackouts following restrictions on oil shipments imposed by US President Donald Trump.

The US reportedly called on Cuba to implement economic reforms, expand the private sector, attract foreign investment, and release political prisoners. According to The New York Times, US officials also proposed bringing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service to Cuba and allowing unrestricted connectivity.

Senior State Department official Michael Kozak confirmed on Thursday that the US is pushing for “drastic reforms” in Cuba. Trump, who previously threatened the island with invasion, has recently softened his stance, suggesting that Washington could help Cuba address its economic hardships.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told RT on Saturday that the country is not afraid of a war with the US. He stressed that Havana is open to dialogue, but only on equal footing and without coercion.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has called on the EU to resume imports of Russian oil and gas, arguing that the bloc should prioritize energy security.

The war in the Middle East has exacerbated Europe’s energy crisis, as disruptions to navigation through the Strait of Hormuz – a key route handling around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas – have pushed oil prices up by as much as 70% since February.

Speaking at a ‘Patriots for Europe’ rally in Milan on Saturday, Salvini, the leader of Italy’s Lega party, argued that the EU Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and the “ideological monster called the Green Deal” are holding back the economy. He called for the bloc’s ban on Russian energy imports to be reversed.

“To tackle the energy crisis, the rules of the Stability Pact must be suspended and Italians’ money must be used to help Italians in difficulty,” he told supporters, urging Brussels to follow the US and lift the sanctions, which are “blocking the trade and purchase of Russian oil.”

“If the US is doing it, then Brussels should do the same: rather than shutting down factories, schools and hospitals, we should return to buying gas and oil from all over the world, including Russia. We are not at war with Russia,” Salvini said.

In January, the EU formally approved a plan to phase out Russian pipeline gas by 2027, overriding objections from Slovakia and Hungary. Hungary challenged the move in the EU’s top court in February, and Slovakia has said it will follow suit. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico argued that the ban constitutes “a clear violation of all the principles on which the EU treaties are based.”

The suspect in a mass shooting in which six people were shot and killed and more than a dozen others were injured in Kiev on Saturday reportedly ranted on social media about eradicating Jews.

The man, identified as Dmitry Vasilchenkov, allegedly fired at bystanders at random before barricading himself inside a grocery store, where he was later killed by police.

Vasilchenkov was born in Moscow in 1968, but was a Ukrainian national and served in the Ukrainian army until the early 2000s. He reportedly lived in Russia from 2015 to 2017 before returning to Kiev.

Ukrainian news outlet Toronto Television said the suspect made erratic posts riddled with anti-Semitic slurs on an old Facebook page active from 2016 to 2019. In the posts, he allegedly called for Jews to be “wiped out,” making references to pogroms and the Holocaust.

In a post from October 2017 titled ‘On Jews and Jewry’, Vasilchenkov reportedly wrote that the Inquisition, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin “killed and killed, but did not kill enough.”

“On what to do – study Pope Borgia (15th century), Kotovsky, Petlyura, Hitler, Bandera, Brezhnev,” he wrote.

Stepan Bandera was one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II, and whose followers were involved in massacres of Jews and Poles. Bandera and other WWII-era nationalist figures are celebrated in modern Ukraine as heroes and freedom fighters.

Ukrainian media also reported that Vasilchenkov sued the government in 2023 and 2024, demanding an increase in his military pension, and had prior run-ins with the law. TSN released a video allegedly showing him attacking a shopper inside a grocery store in 2023.

US Vice President J.D. Vance faces a classic bind: Loyalty to President Donald Trump ties him to a presidency that is bound to fail, yet distancing himself invites charges of disloyalty. Either course imperils his prospects of becoming the next president. His latest assignment as chief negotiator with Iran has only compounded this predicament.

Trump’s Machiavellian stratagem

When a vice president is dispatched to negotiate with a long-standing adversary like Iran, the assignment appears to be a mark of trust and distinction. It signals proximity to power, confidence from the top, and a serious, purposeful mandate to deliver results.

Yet these assignments may conceal a harsher reality. What looks like a substantive advancement can in fact constitute a carefully constructed liability.

In essence, Trump has handed Vance a classic poisoned chalice: The ancient stratagem of delegating a notoriously intractable, high-stakes problem to a subordinate so that success can be claimed from above while failure is absorbed below. In this metaphor, the chalice signifies honor and elevation, while the poison represents the hidden risk of failure and blame embedded within the role.

The tactic is exemplified in Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice that a prince should reserve gratifying tasks for himself, while assigning odious measures to his ministers so that blame falls on them while he retains favor.

The maneuver recalls Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, in deploying and later discarding subordinate figures such as Nikolay Yezhov, grimly nicknamed the ‘Poison Dwarf’.

The head of the Soviet secret police (NKVD) was entrusted with carrying out the Great Purge before being purged himself – the executor of the system rendered its sacrificial victim, literally retouched out of official history.

The pattern is readily discernible: Execution of perilous, invidious tasks is delegated downward while responsibility is ultimately disowned above and reserved for those who discharge them.

In like manner, Colin Powell’s UN case for war in Iraq, grounded in subsequently discredited claims of weapons of mass destruction, illustrates how flawed, high-stakes missions can become inextricably bound to those tasked with executing them. If one bears the problem alone, one risks becoming its embodiment.

The image of the US secretary of state holding up a small model vial to illustrate the alleged massive threat – suggesting that even a tiny amount of anthrax could kill thousands – has become indelibly etched in the public memory.

The vial was a symbol designed to lend certainty to uncertain intelligence, powerful precisely because it rendered an abstract threat both immediate and real. In the public mind, the vivid prop substituted for proof, only to return and define Powell himself – a striking case of vividness backfiring by turning against its proponent. Vance risks being cast as the public face of another disaster.

In April 2026, the vice president was dispatched to lead negotiations with Iran – thrown into a piranha pool, as it were – despite deep structural deadlock, maximal demands on both sides, and limited leverage. After 21 hours of talks, no deal emerged, corroborating that he was operating in a space where outcomes are largely beyond his control.

Vance’s poisoned chalice

The danger for Vance in taking on the role of chief negotiator with Iran is not merely diplomatic failure. It is something more subtle and more perilous: Reputational entrapment.

The vice president risks becoming not only the highly visible public face of a situation in which success is structurally constrained – and thus unlikely from the outset – but also the focal point for subsequent blame.

This embodies precisely the logic of the poisoned chalice: Responsibility delegated downward, failure personalized, and credit – if any – retained upward. The challenge for Vance, then, is not simply to negotiate with Tehran, but to navigate the political architecture in Washington that defines how success and failure are assigned.

The Iran file is uniquely resistant to resolution precisely because the core demands of each side are not readily reconciled. Washington seeks limits on its interlocutor’s nuclear capabilities and regional influence, while Tehran lays claim to sovereignty, strategic autonomy, and sanctions relief. These are not marginal bargaining positions, but foundational interests.

Decades of diplomacy, including the rise and collapse of prior agreements, have demonstrated that even partial convergence is fragile. Against this backdrop, assigning a single political figure to deliver a breakthrough is less a matter of policy design than of political buffering. The negotiator becomes a vessel into which risk is poured.

What makes the situation especially perilous for Vance is the asymmetry of narrative control. In modern politics, outcomes are not judged solely by what happens, but by how what happens is interpreted.

Power often operates most effectively when it acts indirectly, as exemplified by the logic of the poisoned chalice. These artifices are typically deployed obliquely, their logic masked by institutional routine. What is unusual in this particular instance, however, is the lack of concealment by the Machiavellian prince in the White House.

Trump, driven by his narcissistic need to claim credit, has plainly exposed the mechanism: Success will redound to him, failure will adhere to Vance. The president explicitly proclaimed: “If [an Iran deal] doesn’t happen, I’m blaming J.D. Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.” In making the asymmetry manifest, Trump undermined the very subtlety on which the contrivance depends.

Vance’s taint of power

No matter how the Iran negotiations unfold, Vance faces a more insidious, intertwined political hazard: Contamination by proximity.

Failure exerts a pernicious gravitational pull. Stand too close, and you are no longer merely adjacent to it; you are absorbed into its explanation. Even the blameless witness risks being drafted into its narrative. It is an old dilemma in politics: Proximity does not just invite scrutiny; it assigns meaning.

In the previous election, Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to present herself as a candidate of change while tied to President Joe Biden’s record, with many voters assuming continuity rather than renewal. The same logic now applies to Vance.

Vance is widely regarded as the most powerful occupant of the vice presidency in years, owing to the trust placed in him by Trump; yet this very position renders him acutely vulnerable to the administration’s success or failure.

Acting as a combative surrogate, he has earned Trump’s praise for his willingness to enter hostile terrain, appearing on networks often critical of the administration. This loyalty binds him closely to its choices, especially on high-stakes issues like Iran. Yet any future attempt to run as a corrective alternative will almost inevitably collide with his own visible role in shaping those very policies.

For Vance, the challenge at hand is dual: The politically exposed vice president must forthwith grapple with one of the world’s most complex military and diplomatic crises while simultaneously managing the intricate structural political framework that will ultimately define how his performance, on Iran and in other theaters, will be judged. Unless he acts fast, association risks becoming destiny.

If the captive vice president, in the present instance, acquiesces in both the role and the narrative that accompanies it, he risks becoming the embodiment of a perennially intractable problem. Yet if he reshapes that narrative, he stands a chance of turning a liability into a demonstration of strategic clarity.

In modern politics, proximity virtually predestines identity: Once you help make the record, it becomes exceedingly difficult to run against it. What escape route remains open to the prima facie inextricably ensnared vice president?

[To be continued]

The US military is preparing to track, intercept, and board Iran-linked oil tankers and seize commercial ships tied to Tehran in international waters worldwide, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The move is part of a broader strategy dubbed “Operation Economic Fury,” aimed at cutting off Iran’s key revenue and supply channels, with the US Navy expected to begin implementation “in the coming days.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine already warned earlier this week that the US could expand operations against Iran’s maritime network beyond the region.

“The joint force… will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran. This includes dark fleet vessels carrying Iranian oil,” he said, signaling the campaign would not be limited to the Persian Gulf.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the outlet that President Donald Trump believes the blockade and new maritime measures will help secure a deal with Tehran. Trump earlier vowed to maintain the blockade until an agreement is reached, threatening to resume strikes if talks fail to deliver results by Wednesday.

Tehran has condemned the blockade as “an act of piracy” and responded by re-closing the Strait of Hormuz earlier on Saturday, with reports of Iranian forces firing on commercial vessels. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran would not allow transit if its own cargo is blocked, slamming the US blockade as “foolish.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh on Saturday insisted Tehran is not ready to renew talks with Washington due to its “maximalist” demands over enriched uranium, which he called “a non-starter.”

Russia’s patience is not unlimited and could eventually “run out,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned, accusing the West of pushing Ukraine into a wider conflict and repeatedly crossing Moscow’s red lines.

Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Türkiye on Saturday, Lavrov rejected what he called a growing Western perception that Russia is unable or unwilling to respond to provocations. He cited reports of Ukraine using the airspace of several NATO states for drone strikes on Russian territory as another breach of Moscow’s “red lines,” warning against dismissing Russia as a “paper tiger” amid its restraint.

“There is a chorus of voices saying that Russia should not be feared… some may even call us a paper tiger... But I would warn against such parallels,” Lavrov said. “We have, in our national character, such a quality as patience. We say: ‘God endured, and told us to endure as well.’ But at some point, patience runs out.”

“I think it is even good that no one understands where that red line is,” he said, emphasizing that Russia is capable of acting if needed. “The president has said more than once: we have something to respond with,” he added without elaborating.

Speaking amid continued Western military support for Kiev, Lavrov said the crisis fits a broader historical pattern, casting European NATO members as its main driver. He accused the West of trying to turn Ukraine into “a trigger for a global threat” and described the conflict as “a war against Russia that the West has been preparing for years.” He argued that, as part of the drive for NATO expansion, Kiev was turned into a hostile state well before the open hostilities began.

Russia has long accused the West of waging a proxy war against it through Ukraine, citing NATO expansion as a key root cause of the conflict. Moscow insists that any lasting settlement must address NATO’s eastward expansion, Ukraine’s military alignment with the West, and recognition of Russia’s new borders.

Russia and Ukraine have held several rounds of direct talks, along with trilateral meetings involving the US over the past year, but the peace process has stalled amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Russia stands ready to help remove Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, Aleksey Likhachev, CEO of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, has said.

Tehran’s nuclear program remains a key sticking point in talks with Washington. US President Donald Trump has demanded that Iran dismantle its nuclear infrastructure and hand over its uranium, a proposal Tehran has rejected. Moscow has repeatedly offered to host the material. While Iran has signaled openness to such an idea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that the US had rejected it.

In an interview with corporate newspaper Strana Rosatom released on Saturday, Likhachev said the company remains ready to assist, stressing that beyond the technical complexity of removing the stockpile, trust is central to any deal – and that Russia can provide both.

“Only Russia has positive experience interacting with Iran. In 2015, at Iran’s request, we already removed enriched uranium… We are ready to assist with this issue today as well,” he said, calling it one of the most sensitive aspects of the talks.

Iran is estimated to hold over 400kg of uranium enriched to 60%, just below weapons-grade levels, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Washington has demanded to “take home” Iran’s uranium, impose a 20-year enrichment ban, and dismantle key sites such as Natanz and Fordow.

Tehran has rejected the proposals as excessive, offering instead to downblend its uranium under IAEA oversight and accept only a limited freeze lasting around five years. It also opposed dismantling facilities and has demanded sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, and guarantees the US will not exit any deal again, while linking a potential agreement to a broader regional ceasefire.

“I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to the US,” Khatibzadeh told AP on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Türkiye. “This is a non-starter, and I can assure you that while we are ready to address any concerns that we do have, we’re not going to accept things that are non-starters.”

A Democratic-led effort to limit US President Donald Trump’s authority to keep waging war on Iran has been rejected in the House of Representatives, a day after a similar measure was blocked in the Senate.

On Thursday, a war powers resolution was defeated in the Republican-majority House by a single vote, 214 to 213, with voting largely split along party lines. Every Republican except Thomas Massie of Kentucky opposed the measure, while Warren Davidson of Ohio voted present. One Democrat, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, also voted against it.

Earlier this week, the Senate blocked a similar war powers resolution in a related procedural vote by a tally of 52–47. It marked the fourth attempt by the chamber to limit presidential authority since the US-Israeli bombing campaign began in late February.

Thursday’s House vote dealt was what is called a concurrent resolution, which would also have needed approval from the Senate had it passed the lower chamber.

“Service members have been killed, gas prices are soaring, and the US [is] in a worse position than before,” Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat, said in a post on X. “Congress cannot abdicate its power as a co-equal branch of government and let this rogue President continue to unilaterally wage war.”

An armed man has opened fire and seized a supermarket in Kiev, leaving at least six people dead and several wounded, the Ukrainian authorities have confirmed.

The incident unfolded on Saturday evening in the southwestern Goloseyevsky district, where the attacker reportedly began shooting at random before barricading himself inside a Velmart supermarket, taking several people hostage.

Police said special forces units were deployed and a cordon established around the area in an operation to detain the suspect. 

Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko initially said at least five people were killed and 15 others wounded. He confirmed that a child was among the wounded and has been taken to the hospital; several victims were receiving treatment at the scene. He later said another victim died in the hospital from injuries, bringing the death toll to six.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has expressed condolences following the attack. He said the circumstances of the shooting “are being clarified” and that he instructed the interior minister and the head of the National Police to provide information to the public as soon as it becomes available.

According to local reports, the gunman was armed with an automatic weapon. 

Ukrainian media reported that the shooter set fire to his apartment before the attack, a claim later confirmed by Klitschko. Videos circulating online appear to show a large blaze coming from the windows of the suspected residence. Klitschko said a four-month-old child in a neighboring apartment was treated for carbon monoxide poisoning. Police have not yet confirmed any connection between the shooter and the burning apartment.

Police later said the shooter was killed when officers stormed the store where he was hiding. The motive remains unclear, and the authorities have not released details about the suspect.

Footage shared by Ukrainian media purports to show the suspected gunman running through a residential neighborhood carrying what looks like an automatic rifle. Another video apparently shows him shooting a pedestrian who tried to stop him.

Recent videos shared by the media show hostages being evacuated from the building. Some reports suggest that the gunman may have been forcibly conscripted days earlier and fled his unit before carrying out the attack.

Ukrainian police said both officers have been suspended pending an investigation.

Ukrainskaya Pravda claims that the shooter was identified as Dmitry Vasilchenkov, 57, who was born in Moscow and holds Ukrainian citizenship. Strana.ua, which also identified the shooter as Dmitry Vasilchenkov, claims he previously faced charges for causing minor bodily harm after assaulting a man during a dispute in 2023. The case was dropped in 2024 after the parties reached a settlement. The outlet also claimed he sued the Pension Fund and secured an additional payment of around 2,000 hryvnia ($45 dollars), with court records suggesting that he was a former serviceman receiving a military pension.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, later said the attacker was a 58-year-old “native of Moscow,” but did not confirm his identity.

Following the incident, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told the media that the shooter legally owned a registered weapon and renewed his permit in December last year after submitting a medical certificate. He added that the attacker made no demands to the authorities during the brief siege of the supermarket, and that the operation to detain him began after he killed one of the hostages.

US President Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel has threatened to sue The Atlantic for publishing a report claiming that he fears for his job due to his “excessive drinking” and “unexplained absences.”

Patel said in an X post on Saturday: “See you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court.” He also accused the magazine of “fake news” and called the lawsuit a “legal lay up.”

A few hours earlier, Patel’s legal team announced that they had warned The Atlantic against releasing the article before publication.

“They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway. See you in court,” Jesse R. Binnall of the Binnall Law Group wrote on X.

The lawyer also published a letter he said was sent to The Atlantic, in which he demanded that the news outlet preserve all communications relating to Patel, including information relating to the anonymous sources cited in the article, which waspublished on Friday.

The intelligence chief has allegedly drunk to the point that his security detail has had trouble waking him up on multiple occasions, had missed briefings, and has sometimes been “unreachable behind closed doors,” according to the article.

The piece also reported that Patel feared for his job following the recent firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a staunch Trump loyalist who was fired earlier this month amid bipartisan accusations of mishandling the release of the Epstein files.

Cuba is a peaceful nation, but it will use all means to defend itself in case of US aggression, the Caribbean country’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has told RT.

US President Donald Trump imposed an oil blockade on Cuba in February, while also repeatedly hinting at a possible regime change operation against the socialist island, located 93 miles (150 km) from Florida’s coast. Trump said earlier this week that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking to RT in Havana on Saturday, Diaz-Canel stressed that the country’s government has made national defense a “top priority” since the escalation of the US president’s threats.

Cuba is “not a country that is calling for war or promotes it, but we are also not afraid of war if we must wage it to defend our homeland,” he warned.

Iran said the renewed restrictions on maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz are justified under international law and necessary to counter hostile actions, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei has said in an interview with Iranian media.

Iranian military officials said on Saturday that Tehran had reasserted “strict control” over the strategic route, which carries about 20% of global oil, citing the continued US blockade of its ports, just a day after declaring it open. The Revolutionary Guard Navy Command later said the strait would remain under Iranian military control as long as US restrictions stay in place.

“There was no safe and secure passage in this waterway,” Baqaei said on Saturday, adding that as a coastal state Iran has the right under international law to take measures against what it sees as hostile actions.

“We cannot allow enemy vessels, especially military ones or those linked to countries involved in aggression, to pass through the strait normally, as they pose a direct threat,” the spokesman stated.

The US-Israeli bombing campaign prompted Iran to restrict passage through the strait for “enemy ships,” triggering a breakdown in supply chains and sending global crude oil prices soaring.

On Friday, Iranian authorities said the waterway was fully open to commercial vessels for the remainder of the ten-day Israel–Lebanon ceasefire, lowering crude oil prices on de-escalation hopes. Tehran later reversed the decision after Trump said the US blockade of Iranian ports would remain in full force until a peace deal is reached.

The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has triggered broad global economic ripple effects, with Europe facing higher fuel and energy costs due to reduced oil flows. The International Energy Agency has warned of rising market volatility and possible jet fuel shortages within six weeks if disruptions continue. Humanitarian organizations have also flagged growing risks to global food security as fertilizer and agricultural supply chains are affected.

UNICEF has said two truck drivers it had contracted to deliver clean water to families in Gaza have been killed by Israeli fire. The agency reported it had suspended activities at the site and called on West Jerusalem to investigate the incident.

The attack occurred during routine water transport on Friday morning at the Mansoura water filling point in northern Gaza, which supplies Gaza City, the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund said in a statement later in the day. Two other people were injured in the attack, it added.

“UNICEF is outraged by the killing of two drivers of trucks contracted to provide clean water to families in the Gaza Strip,” the agency said, stressing that the water filling point attacked is the only operational site on the Mekorot water supply line, which serves hundreds of thousands of people, including children, in Gaza City.

Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.

The accusation comes amid an ongoing truce between Israel and Hamas, clinched last October to halt two years of full-scale war. The ceasefire left Israeli troops in control of a largely depopulated zone comprising well over half of Gaza, while Hamas remains in power in the remaining narrow coastal strip. Israel and Hamas have repeatedly traded blame for ceasefire violations.

Gazan authorities reported multiple killings of civilians within the span of a week. On Thursday, a local civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed four people, including one child, across different locations in the Palestinian territory. Health authorities reported that eleven 11 civilians, including a 14-year-old child, were killed earlier this week.

UN agencies and humanitarian monitors have reported continued fatalities among aid workers and volunteers in Gaza despite the truce. Earlier this month, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called the number of journalists and humanitarian personnel killed in Gaza “unprecedented.”

Israel’s war with Hamas and the Gaza siege have faced growing international criticism, including sanction threats. Israel has also seen declining Western support amid rising deaths and a worsening humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

US President Donald Trump made seven claims in one hour after Tehran announced the temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and all of them are untrue, Iranian parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said.

On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared the waterway, which handles around 25% of the global crude oil trade, “completely open” for commercial vessels for the remainder of the ten-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. The announcement sent oil prices down by about 10%.

On Saturday, however, Tehran reversed the decision, saying the Strait of Hormuz has “returned to its previous state” and is once again under the “strict management and control” of its military.

Iranian officials said the renewed closure was driven by Washington’s refusal to lift the blockade of Iran’s ports, which the US imposed on Monday after the first round of talks with Tehran in Pakistan failed over the weekend. They accused the US of “piracy and maritime theft.”

He added that Iran “has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again,” that the opening of the waterway “is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon,” and that most of the points of a final peace agreement have already been negotiated between the sides.

Ghalibaf responded to Trump in a post on X later on Friday, saying the US president “made seven claims in one hour, all seven of which were false.”

The Americans “did not win the war with these lies, and they will certainly not get anywhere in negotiations either,” he said.

According to the parliament speaker, control of the Strait of Hormuz “will be determined on the ground field, not on social media.”

“Media warfare and engineering public opinion are an important part of war, and the Iranian nation is not affected by these tricks,” Ghalibaf said.

Imagine you know about a brutal gang of serial killers openly committing one sadistic crime after the other. Imagine you recognize your obvious moral obligation to do something to stop or at least impede these crimes as best you can, but your country’s morally perverse and politically corrupt authorities are in cahoots with the murderers, so you cannot simply call the police.

Indeed, if you try to resist the killers and their accomplices, the police and state prosecutors will relentlessly go after you instead of them, and in effect, protect the criminals. Imagine, finally, that while you cannot strike the killers directly, you can make committing their heinous crimes harder for them by disrupting their business activities and alerting the public to their scandalously uninhibited activities and shocking power in your society.

That is the situation in which the activists of the British direct-action group Palestine Action find themselves. Except it is even worse than the schematic thought experiment sketched above, because, in reality, we are not speaking about a gang of serial killers but a whole state. Small but extremely aggressive and far too well armed – including with entirely ‘rogue’ nuclear weapons – that state is committed to a relentless agenda of proudly announced (Amalek and all that) genocide and gleeful ethnic cleansing, systematic torture and sexual violence on a mass scale, ceaseless territorial aggression (attacking more countries last year than any other country on the planet), ethnic (in this case Jewish) supremacist racism and apartheid as anchored in its laws, and the conquest of ‘lebensraum’ (a term let slip in that state’s own mainstream media).

It is certain that in the not-so-distant future, Palestine Action’s activists and their supporters, currently braving persecution as well as government and mainstream media smears, will be remembered as heroes. In the same manner we now rightly celebrate those who openly stood up against the Nazis where they held power and committed their crimes, including a genocide of Jews. In the UK today, it is Palestine Action that has made it its declared mission to end British complicity in Israel’s crimes.

For now, however, they face prosecution, harassment, and worse, by the same British state and judicial system that we all remember well for its years of obstinately torturing the most important political prisoner in the world at the time, Julian Assange. Indeed, on an individual scale, the hounding of Assange displayed the same cynicism, cruelty, and contempt of the law – domestic and international – that the West has also shown with regard to Israel’s crimes against large numbers of victims, particularly in Gaza.

The persecution of Palestine Action has taken many shapes. After the group targeted the Royal Air Force’s collaboration with Israel, the British government, in particular Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, tried to proscribe it as a terrorist organization. This mislabeling was so absurd that even a British court ended up canceling it. That has not stopped the British authorities’ consistent misuse of the police to mass-arrest protesters who dare do oh-so-terrible – and perfectly legal – things, such as peacefully holding up signs that they oppose genocide and support Palestine Action. Amnesty International UK is not alone in denouncing these arrests. Police officers with a conscience should refuse orders to make them.

Palestine Action’s activists themselves have been harassed even more violently. Especially a group commonly known as the Filton 24 and, within that group, a smaller circle often called the Filton or Palestine Action Six: Samuel Corner, Jordan Devlin, Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, and Zoe Rogers. What they have in common is that they took part in a raid on a branch of Israeli weapons maker Elbit systems in Filton, which is in effect a suburb of Bristol.

The activists stormed the Elbit facility on August 6, 2024, smashing their way in with the help of a truck and then destroying or damaging as much of the Elbit equipment as they could before the police arrived. Clearly, their targets were things, not people. Yet one of them is also accused of striking a police officer and harming her spine. The circumstances of that specific incident are still unclear, with the alleged attacker, according to recent statements by police officers, possibly suffering “confusion and disorientation” from being sprayed with PAVA spray by the police.

For this, official Britain has subjected the Palestine Action activists to harsh pretrial detention of unusual length, provoking international protests, hunger strikes, and a suicide attempt. With by now thousands of arrests over the mere act of showing solidarity with them – and the harrowing of other individual resisters such as Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan – it is no exaggeration to say that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s UK is turning into a police state to protect the criminal regime of another country, Israel.

And this policy is persistent. After the Filton Six were acquitted in a trial by jury, the prosecution is now subjecting them to a second trial. It is clearly designed to be, in Blumenthal’s words, a “stitch-up.” Indeed, the defendants are being framed and deprived of elementary rights so obviously that the UK authorities are also using massive preventive censorship to hide their own manipulations from the public. The defendants are not allowed to explain their motivations; they must not mention Israel and the genocide it is committing. The jury is being systematically deceived: While it is deliberately left in the belief that it is only finding on ordinary criminal charges, the judge has the right to misuse its findings to sentence for terrorism. Since this is obviously unfair, the British press has been given orders not to report on it, which it is following.

It has fallen to alternative media outside the UK and one courageous member of the UK’s House of Commons to speak about the above. Fortunately, in practical terms, the evolving Starmer police and censorship state is unlikely to have the real capacity to fully insulate its subjects. But this makes no difference to the fact that we are witnessing a brazen attempt to impose a massive erosion of human rights, civil liberties, and last but not least, the rule of law.

And all of it in the service of Israel. Worst of all, Britain is not alone, but typical. In the West, protecting Israel has led to similar effects in many countries, including Germany, Australia, and of course, the US. The struggle for justice and freedom for Palestine is truly a struggle for all of us in a very concrete way. The only way for Israel to get away with its crimes forever is to subject all of us to ever more oppression.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has announced that no vessels, regardless of their flag, are allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz while the US maintains its blockade of Iranian ports. Any attempting to approach the waterway will be targeted, it said.

On Friday, Tehran initially declared the waterway completely open for commercial vessels for the remaining period of the ten-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, prompting a drop in oil prices on hopes of de-escalation. However, while US President Donald Trump praised the news, he said that the US blockade of Iranian ports “will remain in full force” until a peace deal is reached.

This violated the ceasefire conditions, prompting Tehran to reimpose restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, according to the IRGC.

According to multiple media reports, the US has presented several demands to Iran, including the handing over of its enriched uranium stockpile. While Trump claimed that Tehran had “agreed to everything,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei reiterated that the Islamic Republic would not give up the stockpile, which he described as “as sacred as Iranian soil.”

Key developments: 

• Trump has suggested that he would not extend the ceasefire with Iran and could resume attacks if the peace talks do not produce the desired result by Wednesday.

• One French peacekeeper has been killed, and three others injured in southern Lebanon, President Emmanuel Macron has said, adding that Hezbollah was the most likely culprit. Hezbollah has denied involvement.

• At least three commercial ships have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, with at least one sustaining some damage, according to Axios.

• India has summoned the Iranian ambassador in New Delhi to raise concerns about attacks on two Indian-flagged vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and to urge Tehran to let friendly ships through.

• Hezbollah said it is “not concerned” with Lebanon’s talks with the US, suggesting that Beirut is set to cave in to Washington’s demands. Israel insists the current truce does not apply to “immediate threats from terrorists.”

Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates. You can also read our previous updates here.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has told RT’s Rick Sanchez that he knows the West wants him out of power, but still negotiates with the US because it’s in his country’s economic interests.

Minsk and Washington have held several rounds of talks this year, discussing what US President Donald Trump has called “a big deal” aimed at normalizing relations between the two nations. They focus on the release of prisoners, lifting sanctions, and other economic issues. In March, Lukashenko pardoned 123 people convicted over “espionage, terrorist and extremist activities” as part of the process.

In an interview set to be aired on Monday, the Belarusian leader stressed that “the real politics of the West has been known to us for a long time. No matter what negotiations the West conducts with me, I understand perfectly well that I’m not their favorite son.”

Belarus produces “more than half of our material resources and services and sell them in foreign markets. We have an open economy, so we must recognize our interests in the West, in Russia, in China and in Africa,” Lukashenko explained.

He added that he is “conducting dialogue with the Americans, not against Russia or China.”

Lukashenko said he told the US representatives from the start: “Guys, Russia and China are not just long-term partners. They are our friends. When you impose sanctions on us, the Americans and Europeans, China and Russia opened their doors to us. We were basically saved because of that.”

Watch the full interview on RT on Monday at 8:30 AM Moscow time.

European nations have around four years to build up their defenses enough to deter a Russian attack without US backing, Frederic Vansina, Belgium’s Chief of the General Staff, has said. Moscow has dismissed speculation that it plans to attack NATO as nonsense.

In an interview with Le Soir published on Friday, Vansina acknowledged that Russia does not pose an immediate threat to the West.

“I don’t want to scare the population. The Russians are not going to attack us imminently, anytime soon,” he said – adding, however, that the world is “going through the most unstable period since the end of the Cold War… with everyone arming themselves to the teeth.”

Vansina underscored the necessity of European militarization within a few years, stressing that the Ukrainians are “buying time for us,” and “that’s why we support them so strongly.”

Vansina went on to suggest that full European “strategic autonomy” is achievable by 2035, but only if defense budgets keep rising past the current 2% of GDP mark.

The general’s remarks come amid a growing rift between the US and other NATO members. US President Donald Trump has demanded that his European counterparts significantly ramp up military spending, arguing that they should take primary responsibility for their own defense. The rift has continued to grow due to the continent’s refusal to support the US in its war against Iran.

Russia has dismissed speculation that it plans to attack NATO, calling it a pretense for increased defense spending, while stressing that the West’s “reckless militarization” jeopardizes global security.

For decades, the United States has wielded outsized influence over government institutions and civil society in Africa, including through its development assistance. Under the banner of Official Development Assistance, US funding penetrated key sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, governance, and agriculture, often shaping policy choices in ways that reflect donor interests more than local needs.

Established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy through the Foreign Assistance Act, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was the US government’s primary agency for administering foreign aid, focusing on development programs in more than 130 countries. In February 2025, USAID announced that it was sending most of its employees on administrative leave. The following month, the US State Department announced the termination of USAID’s 6,300 global initiatives.

One year later, despite the clear challenges facing aid-dependent nations, there is a growing conviction that African states can find opportunities in this shift – though it requires a fundamental rethink of policy approaches.

“The changing geopolitical priorities and foreign policy shifts were definitely going to affect USAID’s activities in one way or another. The collapse of USAID only brought to the fore the recalibration of US engagement in the Global South,” said Dr. Sabala. He adds that historically, the agency’s work in health, food security, and governance had subtly advanced US strategic interests.

‘The continent does not need support that comes with threats’

Michael Owuor, a development and transnational organized crimes researcher at the Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS), says that with the reshaping of geopolitics and the inward shift of aid flows and donor priorities, Sub-Saharan African countries must rechart their development future in a post-USAID era.

“The collapse of USAID funding provides Africa and its leadership an opportunity to take a fundamental rethink of its over-reliance on Western foreign assistance and donor aid,” Owuor notes. The US-supported donor financing strategy has served as “a powerful geopolitical tool that has increasingly been wielded to advance donor interests.”

Owuor argues that the time is ripe for the Global South to move away from the Global North’s aid, which he says is becoming “more conditional, transactional, and politically aligned.”

“The increasing politicization and weaponization of US aid is not good for Africa. The continent does not need support that comes with threats of freezes and budgetary cuts,” he said. The expert cites examples of countries such as South Africa, Uganda, and Ghana that have previously faced threats of funding freezes from Western powers over legislation that prioritizes domestic concerns.

'The goal is to rebalance the relationship'

Owuor notes that the shifting aid landscape reflects broader global tensions, with escalating rivalry among the West, China, and Russia, thereby transforming development assistance into an instrument of foreign policy realignment.

“We have been witnessing a situation where the Western donor agendas increasingly override Africa’s development priorities. Donor aid and funding from the Western powers is increasingly becoming fluid,” Owuor told RT.

At the same time, Owuor warns that ‘America First’ and protectionist trade and foreign policies by US President Donald Trump will continue even after his exit, something he says Africa must prepare a counter strategy for. “For nations long accustomed to steady streams of donor financing, this transformation presents an existential challenge,” he said.

The researcher cautions against overdependence on any single donor or bloc. “What happened to USAID is a clear indication of the pitfalls of overreliance on only one or a few countries, no matter how benevolent their support is,” he warns.

“The goal is not to reject aid outright but to rebalance the relationship. The goal is for Africa to seek aid that complements rather than dictates. The region must pursue equitable and sovereign development,” Owuor notes.

‘By pooling resources, Africa can present a united front’

Dennis Muniu, a foreign policy, security, and defense researcher at GLOCEPS, says what Africa needs are comprehensive strategies that strengthen internal resource mobilization and generation, as well as efficient public spending.

“Africa needs to strengthen domestic tax collection and expenditure systems, without harming local business ecosystems, to generate additional revenue. This can provide a stable financial base for public spending,” Muniu told RT.

Additionally, Muniu says improved tax systems, better public financial management, and targeted investments in high-impact sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure could help Africa cushion the shock of shrinking external support.

“Rather than scrambling to fill sudden funding gaps when donors withdraw, governments would have stronger fiscal buffers,” he said.

Beyond public finance reforms, Muniu calls for a deeper partnership with the private sector. He says public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the creation of conducive business environments could help Africa unlock new streams of investment.

“Public services that can be provided affordably, equitably, and efficiently through private sector actors should be left exclusively to the private sector. This will free tax resources to public sector programs that will be catered for by governments,” Muniu argues.

He advocates for regional cooperation among African nations, saying that pooling resources and coordinating development efforts can enhance their collective bargaining power and present a united front when negotiating with investors and alternative funding partners.

“By pooling resources and coordinating development efforts and programs, the region can present a united front when negotiating with prospective investors,” Muniu said.

He adds that such integration could help attract financing from emerging economies and multilateral institutions beyond traditional Western donors, reducing exposure to geopolitical swings.

Technology and innovation, Owuor suggests, offer additional pathways to resilience.

“Leveraging technology and innovation can also improve service delivery and efficiency across various sectors,” he notes. “Partnerships with local technical firms, universities, and research institutions could foster homegrown solutions and reduce dependence on imported systems,’’ he said.

According to Owuor, in a region where youthful populations are increasingly tech-savvy, digital transformation may be both an economic strategy and a political statement, a declaration that development priorities will be locally defined.

Owuor explains that the post-USAID era is not merely a crisis but a catalyst for reform. “The volatility of global aid flows underscores the need for Africa to anchor its development agenda in sovereignty, innovation, and collaboration,” he said.

Muniu adds that Africa’s long-term stability cannot rest solely on the goodwill of distant capitals. “Instead, it must be built on resilient systems, diversified partnerships, and an unwavering commitment to self-determination.”

“In the emerging post-USAID Africa’s greatest asset may not be external funding but its capacity to redefine the rules of development on its own terms,” the expert concludes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were caught off guard and “stunned” when US President Donald Trump said he would not allow Israel to conduct further strikes in Lebanon, Axios reports, citing two people familiar with the matter.

On Friday, Trump said the US had “prohibited” strikes in Lebanon as the ten-day ceasefire brokered by his administration between Israel and the Lebanese government took effect. According to Axios, Netanyahu was alarmed by the statement, after which Israeli officials sought clarification from Washington.

Under the agreement, Israel will halt offensive operations but reserve the right to “take all necessary measures in self-defense at any time against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.”

Israel began conducting airstrikes on Beirut and other cities and expanded its ‘security zone’ in southern Lebanon in early March, after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in support of Iran. Tehran has since listed an end to Israeli operations in Lebanon as one of the conditions for its own peace deal with the US and Israel.

Nearly 2,200 people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced in Lebanon since early March, according to Lebanese officials.

Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit has released footage showing the interception of Ukrainian UAVs used to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.

The video shows Russian FPV drones trailing and striking Ukrainian UAVs, including FP-2 and E-300 Enterprise heavy kamikaze drones.

The unit also shared footage of surveillance drones identifying ground targets for Russian airstrikes.

Earlier this week, the Russian Defense Ministry published what it said was a list of addresses of European companies producing military drones for Ukraine, warning of “an acute escalation.”

Russian officials have said that US-mediated peace talks with Ukraine have effectively been put on hold due to the war in the Middle East.

French lawmakers linked to President Emmanuel Macron have withdrawn a controversial bill aimed at expanding anti-Semitism laws in the country, which had been set for debate in parliament on Thursday.

The “law to combat renewed forms of anti-Semitism” was drafted in 2024 by a group of MPs led by Caroline Yadan, a lawmaker affiliated with Macron’s Renaissance Party. Despite the withdrawal, lawmakers have reportedly indicated they may reintroduce a similar proposal by June.

The draft aimed to broaden the definition of ‘apology for terrorism’ to include ‘indirect’ speech deemed pro-terrorist. It also sought to make it illegal to call for the destruction of any country recognized by France.

Critics also said the proposed law could restrict legitimate free speech and potentially fuel the anti-Jewish sentiment it was intended to combat, according to France24.

According to France’s Jewish protection organization, the SPCJ, at least 1,320 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the country last year, maintaining the sharp rise seen after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict in 2023. The Israeli military operation in Gaza has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian authorities, and has drawn mounting international criticism.

France, where Muslims make up an estimated one-tenth of the population, formally recognized Palestinian statehood last year, joining a wave of Western nations advocating a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

Slovakia will file a lawsuit with the EU’s Court of Justice challenging the bloc’s decision to ban imports of Russian gas, Prime Minister Robert Fico has said.

In January, the EU formally approved a plan to phase out Russian pipeline gas by 2027, overriding vetoes from Slovakia and Hungary.

“We object that where it was not possible to use a qualified majority, it was used, and that the right of a sovereign EU member state to veto something was circumvented,” Fico said at a press conference on Friday, as quoted by TASR.

Justice Minister Boris Susko said the lawsuit will be filed next week. Fico stated that Slovakia would seek an injunction suspending the regulation.

Hungary, whose outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orban, argued that the EU “shot itself in the lungs” by imposing sanctions on Russia in response to the Ukraine conflict, filed a similar lawsuit in February. Fico has also strongly criticized what he described as “suicidal” sanctions and urged the bloc to engage diplomatically with Moscow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the bloc should use “the momentum” from Orban’s election loss last week to further restrict member states’ veto powers, preventing them from blocking loans to Ukraine.

Bulgarians are about to vote in the country’s eighth election in five years. Unpopular caretaker governments have come and gone, and now victory looks almost certain for former president, Ukraine skeptic and left-winger Rumen Radev.

This election has the potential to reshape Bulgaria’s relationships with the EU and Ukraine, and Brussels is following the vote closely. RT has already explored some of what’s at stake, but if you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know:

When is the Bulgarian election?

The election is scheduled for Sunday, April 19. All 240 seats in Bulgaria’s National Assembly are up for grabs, with 121 seats needed for a majority. Votes must be counted no later than four days after election day, but results will likely be clear within hours of the polls closing on Sunday night.

There are just over 6.6 million registered voters in Bulgaria, and election turnout generally hovers at around 45%. However, repeated snap elections since 2021 have drained voter enthusiasm: just 33% and 38% of eligible Bulgarians voted in the country’s two general elections in 2024.

Who’s running for office in Bulgaria?

Ten parties are competing in the election, but two are clear frontrunners: Boyko Borissov’s GERB-SDS coalition, and Rumen Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria.

Borissov is a stalwart in Bulgarian politics. A former communist official, he founded the center-right GERB in 2006, and the party has been in power for 15 of the 20 years since. GERB is an acronym for ‘Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria’, which sums up the party’s ideology: economic liberalism, further integration with the EU, and alignment with Brussels on matters of foreign policy.

Allegations of corruption have followed Borissov for the length of his political career. The GERB leader has been accused of ties to organized crime, intimidation of journalists, and embezzlement of EU funds. As protests against Borissov intensified in 2020, Politico declared that he had successfully created “the EU’s mafia state.”

Radev has made tackling this corruption the central pillar of his campaign, vowing to dismantle the “mafia-oligarchic” power structure that he says has run Bulgaria since the fall of communism and throughout its EU membership. While his Progressive Bulgaria coalition was founded less than two months ago, Radev is an established figure in Bulgarian politics, having served as president from 2017 until his resignation in February. During his presidency, Radev clashed with Borissov over corruption, and withdrew confidence from the then-PM’s government in 2020.

Radev is a vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine policy. He opposes Bulgaria’s self-imposed embargo on Russian energy, vetoed an agreement to provide Ukraine with armored vehicles in 2022, blamed Ukraine for starting the conflict with Russia, and told Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to his face in 2023 that there was “no military solution” to the conflict, and that “more and more weapons will not solve it.”

What do the polls say?

Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria is leading Borissov’s GERB-SDS by 31% to 21%, according to an aggregate of opinion polls compiled by Politico. Progressive Bulgaria’s lead varies between five and 20 points in individual polls, but not one pollster shows GERB-SDS in the lead.

According to Politico, caretaker PM Andrey Gyurov’s pro-EU ‘We Continue the Change’ is polling in third place at 12%, followed by the liberal ‘Movement for Rights and Freedoms’ and right-wing ‘Revival’ at 10% and 7%, respectively.

Even if Progressive Bulgaria comes out on top, Radev will have to find coalition partners to form a government. Borissov has built coalitions with centrists and right-wingers before, and Gyurov’s party is one possible partner. However, even with the support of ‘We Continue the Change’, GERB-SDS would still fall short of a majority.

What is the media saying?

With a showdown between a Brussels-friendly centrist and a Euroskeptic populist on the cards, the Western media has drawn comparisons between this weekend’s election and last weekend’s vote in Hungary.

Politico has described Radev as the EU’s next potential “disruptor-in-chief,” following the landslide defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Seizing on Radev’s opposition to Ukraine aid, Reuters, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post have all described him as “Bulgaria's pro-Russian former president.” 

The NATO-funded Atlantic Council has gone further, suggesting that Bulgaria could “replace Hungary as Putin’s proxy inside the EU.”

The framing is misleading. Orban was a well-entrenched incumbent and a conservative, who ruled with a parliamentary supermajority for much of his 16 consecutive years in office.

Radev has run a left-wing populist campaign, going up against a party that has dominated post-communist politics in Bulgaria. Orban was the Hungarian establishment; Radev is seeking to break the Bulgarian establishment and expose its relationships with Brussels to a populace that held mass demonstrations against corruption through the winter.

What both figures have in common is their opposition to the EU’s continued bankrolling of the Ukraine conflict and the bloc’s federalist overreach.

Like Orban, Radev backs pragmatic and neutral relations with Russia. This is not an unpopular position in Bulgaria: according to a 2025 poll, 31% of Bulgarians view Russia positively, while less than a quarter hold a positive view of Ukraine.

Is the EU interfering in the Bulgarian election?

As was the case in Hungary, the European Commission’s decision to activate the RRS was justified by reports that Bulgaria “faces sustained Russian information manipulation pressure.” The commission did not mention that these reports were created by an EU-funded think tank in Sofia, as RT covered in-depth in the first installment of our ‘Battle for Bulgaria’ series.

Gyurov’s government has also set up a temporary unit within the Foreign Ministry to “counter disinformation and combat hybrid threats,” which will be “advised” by former Bellingcat investigator and anti-Kremlin operative Christo Grozev. According to the ministry, this unit will pass reports of supposed “malign influences” straight to the European Commission.

Is Ukraine interfering in the election?

Ukraine was accused of extensive meddling in the Hungarian election, with Zelensky using a key oil pipeline as a bargaining chip against Orban, and Ukrainian-trained spies allegedly aiding the Hungarian opposition. While there have been no reports of Ukrainian interference in Bulgaria, the caretaker government in Sofia has rushed to fulfil a wish list of Kiev’s demands in the runup to the vote.

Where can I keep track of the election?

RT will cover the election live through Sunday afternoon and evening, bringing you up to date results, reactions and commentary.

US President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into the mysterious deaths and disappearances of nearly a dozen American scientists with access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded nuclear and space secrets. The cases have fueled online speculation ranging from foreign espionage to a government cover-up of classified UFO research.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump stated that he “just came out of a meeting on this,” noting that “It’s pretty serious stuff.”

“I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half. Some of them were very important people, and we’re going to look at it over the next short period,” the president said.

Since 2023, at least ten individuals with ties to advanced research have died or vanished under puzzling circumstances. Among them:

• Steven Garcia, 48, a government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus, which produces over 80% of non-nuclear components for US nuclear weapons, vanished from his Albuquerque home in August 2025, leaving behind his phone, wallet, and keys and taking only a handgun.
  
  
• Retired Major General William McCasland, 68, former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, disappeared from his New Mexico home in February 2026. His wife told a 911 operator he had “planned not to be found.”
  
  
• Anthony Chavez, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee, and Melissa Casias, an administrative assistant at the same nuclear weapons lab, both disappeared in 2025, leaving their homes on foot and abandoning their belongings.
  
  
• Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, a director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, vanished while hiking in California in June 2025.
  
  
• Two other scientists at the Lab have reportedly died since 2023: Frank Maiwald and Michael Hicks. No foul play has been alleged in the latter two cases, and no cause of death has been made public, according to the Daily Mail.
  
  
• Nuno Loureiro, 47, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was shot dead at his home in December 2025.
  
  
• Carl Grillmair, 67, a Caltech astrophysicist, was gunned down on his porch in February 2026.
  
  
• The body of missing cancer research scientist Jason Thomas was reportedly discovered in a Massachusetts lake last month.

A possible 11th case also emerged on Thursday as the Daily Mail reported that Amy Eskridge, a 34-year-old scientist allegedly researching anti-gravity technology, was found dead in Alabama in 2022 from a self-inflicted gunshot. However, the outlet found that neither the police nor medical examiners had released a public investigative report on the incident. Before her death, Eskridge stated on a podcast that her life was in danger.

Former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker previously told the Daily Mail the cases warrant scrutiny, noting that “they are all suspicious, and these are scientists who have worked in critical technology.”

The authorities have so far not established any confirmed link among the cases.

Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has published its list of top ten “anti-Semite and anti-Zionist” influencers for 2025.

Six of the ten “influencers” are based in the US, including American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, far-right activist Nick Fuentes, and commentator Candace Owens. Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who became a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause in recent years, earned the number two spot, while US influencer Dan Bilzarian took the top spot.

In a report on Tuesday, the ministry defined the ten individuals as people without formal political or governmental positions, but who have a significant following. Positions in the list were decided by the level of influence and “risk,” based on frequency of statements which the Israeli ministry considered to be anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli.

The US perception of Israel, which has been slipping for years on the backdrop of the Gaza conflict, has worsened since the launch of the war on Iran in late February, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. Some 60% of American adults now have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% last year, the survey said.

Atwan, who is the editor-in-chief of the UK-based Arabic language newspaper Rai Al-Youm, argued that he could not be an anti-Semite, as a Semite himself who preaches coexistence with Jews.

“We are anti-Israeli wars against Lebanon, against Iran, against Yemen, against Gaza,” he said. “Israel is not above criticism. So to accuse anybody who is criticizing Israel of anti-Semitism is actually very, very frightening.”

The latest wave of discussion about a possible Turkish-Israeli confrontation was triggered by media reports claiming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade Israel.

Soon afterward, however, that interpretation was challenged in Türkiye. The specific quote turned out to be old and taken out of context, and Turkish voices insisted that Erdogan had made no direct statement about being prepared to launch a war against Israel. Still, he has undeniably been escalating his harsh rhetoric towards Israel, including calling it a terrorist state and comparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler.

Yet even setting aside the dispute over the precise wording, the intensity of the reaction to the ‘invasion threat’ reports is revealing in itself. It shows that relations between Ankara and West Jerusalem have already reached a stage at which even an ambiguous phrase is instantly treated as a political signal, and any sharp comment can become part of the wider picture of a major regional confrontation. The ground for such a perception has long been prepared by the very trajectory of Turkish-Israeli relations.

A slide towards conflict

At first glance, this may appear to be no more than another burst of emotional rhetoric of the kind that has long been common in the Middle East, where dramatic threats and demonstrative statements have become part of the political language. But that explanation is too shallow and therefore misses the real point. What we are witnessing in fact reflects a much deeper and more dangerous process. Türkiye and Israel are gradually ceasing to see one another merely as occasional opponents divided by particular disputes, and are increasingly beginning to view each other as strategic rivals in a long game. That is what makes the current exchange of statements especially alarming. Once states enter a phase of systemic rivalry, rhetoric itself starts shaping how elites, societies, and security institutions imagine a future conflict as something almost natural.

In one sense, there is nothing surprising about this. The Middle East is structured in such a way that several ambitious centers of power can rarely coexist without an escalating competition between them. When multiple states claim exceptional status, the role of regional guarantor, or the right to speak for the region or at least for a large part of it, their interests will sooner or later collide. Türkiye and Israel are now moving ever more clearly toward precisely that point. Both states lay claim to a special mission. Both want to be indispensable to outside powers. Both believe that yielding to a rival today may become a historic defeat tomorrow. And both build their strategies not only around the defense of national interests but also around the idea of regional primacy. In such a context, even temporary tactical cooperation does not alter the deeper reality. Competition over space, influence, routes, alliances, and symbolic leadership continues to accumulate at a systemic level.

It is particularly important to understand that Türkiye and Israel were by no means destined for hostility. On the contrary, for decades their relations developed along a very different trajectory. Ankara became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel in the middle of the twentieth century. During the Cold War, the two maintained working ties grounded in pragmatism, shared links to the Western world, and an understanding that in an unstable regional environment it was better to have additional channels of interaction than to turn ideological differences into a permanent source of conflict. But the true flourishing of Turkish-Israeli cooperation came in the 1990s. That was when both sides began to see in the other an important element of their own security strategy.

In those years, Turkish-Israeli relations did indeed approach a near-strategic level. Military and intelligence cooperation was particularly close. For Türkiye, this meant access to technology, modernization, coordination on security matters, and the strengthening of its armed forces. For Israel, an alliance with a large Muslim country occupying a position of immense geographic importance carried both symbolic and practical value. It demonstrated that the Jewish state was capable of building durable ties in the region and moving beyond the usual boundaries of diplomatic isolation. Joint exercises, military contacts, defense agreements, technical modernization, intelligence exchanges, and political coordination all created the impression that a long-term axis was taking shape between the two states.

It is to that period that the story of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan belongs, a story that still carries symbolic weight for understanding how Turkish-Israeli closeness was perceived both in Türkiye and across the region. What remains a confirmed fact is that Ocalan was captured by Turkish intelligence in Kenya in 1999. Yet almost immediately, a broader narrative took hold suggesting that Israeli intelligence may have assisted Türkiye in the operation. That theme became part of the half-shadowed political memory of the region. For some, it was evidence of the depth of the Turkish-Israeli partnership. For others, it became part of a wider myth that Israel, at critical moments, stood with the Turkish state in its struggle against the Kurdish movement. Even if one leaves aside the question of how accurate those perceptions were, the more important point remains. Such narratives could only take root because, in the 1990s, Turkish-Israeli cooperation appeared so close that many found it entirely plausible that Israel might have had a hand in some of Türkiye’s most sensitive operations.

And this is where one of the most striking ironies of modern Middle Eastern history lies. What once seemed like a durable strategic partnership gradually turned into a field of irritation, mutual suspicion, and then near-open rivalry. Erdogan’s rise to power did not produce an immediate rupture, but it steadily altered the ideological framework of the relationship. The new Turkish leadership viewed the region differently. It sought not merely to preserve ties to the Western security architecture, but to construct its own autonomous axis of influence, drawing upon the Islamic factor, a more active policy across former Ottoman spaces, and the projection of moral leadership on issues tied to the Muslim world. Within that model, Israel could no longer remain for Ankara simply a pragmatic partner. It increasingly became a convenient point of ideological contrast and at the same time an important target of foreign policy pressure.

Much more than just Palestine

The turning point in public perception came with the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, when Israeli forces raided a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza, which Türkiye had helped to organize. During the attack, nine people were killed aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, most of them Turkish nationals. After that, relations deteriorated sharply, and mutual distrust moved far beyond the walls of diplomatic offices. It became part of mass political consciousness. For Turkish society, Israel increasingly appeared as a state acting from a position of force and disregarding moral restraints. For much of the Israeli establishment, Türkiye came to look like a former ally moving rapidly toward radicalization, using the Palestinian issue for its own rise, and shifting toward a more confrontational model of behavior. Later, both sides made efforts to normalize relations. There were apologies, negotiations, a return to formal diplomatic channels, and eventually the restoration of full relations. But that warming proved to be more of a pause than a lasting reversal. The war in Gaza shattered the relationship once again, and it became obvious that the old level of trust no longer existed.

The current tension cannot be reduced to the Palestinian issue alone, even though that remains the most powerful emotional accelerator of the conflict. In reality, Türkiye and Israel now diverge along several strategic lines at once. The first is linked to Syria. For Türkiye, the Syrian arena is directly connected to questions of national security, the Kurdish issue, refugees, border control, and its own capacity for projecting force. For Israel, Syria forms part of a much broader equation involving Iran, Hezbollah, weapons routes, and the danger of hostile military infrastructure taking shape near its borders. For the moment these interests overlap only in part, but the sheer density of the two states’ presence in the same theater is gradually increasing the risk not only of political friction but of operational military clashes as well.

The third line concerns the struggle for symbolic leadership. This is an especially important factor, although it is often underestimated. Israel proceeds from the assumption that it must preserve military and technological superiority, as well as political initiative in questions concerning regional security. Under Erdogan, Türkiye has become ever more insistent in claiming the role of a state that speaks for a broad Muslim audience, especially where Palestinians, Jerusalem, and resistance to Israeli policy are concerned. For Erdogan, this is part of a long-term project in which Türkiye is meant to appear not as a peripheral member of the Western world, but as an autonomous center of power combining military capability, historical memory, and civilizational ambition. From that perspective, confrontation with Israel brings Ankara not only risks but political dividends.

Yet for Israel as well, the current escalation is not devoid of internal logic. In a climate of chronic crisis, military tension, and deep social fractures, the image of an external enemy once again becomes an instrument of consolidation. For a government accustomed to thinking like a besieged fortress, an outside threat is a useful tool of political survival. After the conflict in Gaza, after tensions on the northern front, and against the background of constant confrontation with Iran, Türkiye may begin to be seen by part of the Israeli establishment as the next major systemic challenge. And it’s a challenge unlike any Israel has faced before: not an ideological enemy on the margins and not an ostracized rogue state, but a strong regional power with ambitions, an army, industry, demography, and a desire to reshape the regional balance in its own favor.

In that sense, the danger of Turkish-Israeli confrontation does not lie in the idea that the two countries stand today on the threshold of immediate war. What matters far more is that they are increasingly placing one another on their long-term maps of threat perception. Once that happens, political rhetoric begins to perform a preparatory function, accustoming society to the idea that a future clash is inevitable. It generates expert justifications for greater harshness. It legitimizes force buildups, new alliances, more aggressive moves in adjacent arenas, and a lower threshold of sensitivity to risk. At such moments, conflict may remain below the threshold of open war for a long time, but the underlying developments already start working in favor of its arrival.

The Kurdish question plays a particularly important role in this structure. For Türkiye, it carries an almost existential meaning. Any external contact with forces that Ankara associates with the PKK or regards as ideologically close to it is perceived not as a potential threat to the territorial and political stability of the state. That is why even rumors or suspicions of possible Israeli interest in the Kurdish factor are capable of provoking an intensely painful reaction in Türkiye. It is here that one can see especially clearly how historical memory, intelligence suspicions, regional competition, and symbolic politics are woven into a single dangerous knot. In such an atmosphere, even indirect actions may be interpreted as hostile signals.

Permanent state of near-war

The greatest danger lies in the fact that conflicts of this kind rarely begin as an openly declared major war. Far more often they grow out of a chain of mutual suspicions, peripheral crises, failed signals, shows of force, and miscalculations. First the sides simply become accustomed to thinking of one another as future enemies. Then they begin to act on the basis of that assumption. After that, any local flare-up in Syria, in the Eastern Mediterranean, around the Kurdish issue, around the Palestinian question, or in the struggle over new regional coalitions can become a trigger. That is why the most accurate way to describe what is happening is neither as an inevitable war nor as an empty bluff, but as an accelerating strategic movement toward conflict.

Türkiye and Israel have not yet crossed the line into direct military confrontation. More than that, there is still room between them for restraint, tactical calculation, and an awareness of the price both sides would pay in the event of open war. But the problem is that the strategic environment around them is becoming increasingly broken, while mechanisms of trust continue to erode. In such conditions, even the absence of a direct intention to fight is no guarantee that war will not emerge from the logic of events itself.

If no new system of restraints emerges, if not even minimal formats for crisis management appear, if outside powers continue to use Turkish-Israeli contradictions in their own games, and if domestic political regimes continue to feed on external confrontation, then today’s verbal clashes may well prove to be the prologue to a far harsher and more dangerous phase of Middle Eastern politics. And then the argument over what exactly Erdogan said and how exactly the Israeli press retold it will remain only a minor detail against the background of a far more consequential process. A process in which two powerful states are gradually training themselves to look at one another not as difficult neighbors, but as future major adversaries.

The US is a “dictatorship” that is “willing to bomb, break and destroy without regard to human rights” in order to rob other countries of natural resources, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has told RT’s Rick Sanchez.

In an interview set to be aired on Monday, Sanchez asked the Belarusian leader about US foreign policy staying the same regardless of whom Americans vote into the White House.

Washington’s policy in Venezuela and Cuba, as well as its Middle East wars “show that you are true dictators,” Lukashenko said, arguing that US rhetoric about democracy and human rights strikes hollow in light of massacres like the attack on the Iranian school in Minab in February. The bombing killed at least 175 people, most of them children, according to Tehran.

Washington pursues its main interests, “control over oil and gas,” by “any means necessary,” he said. “You’re willing to bomb, break and destroy without regard to human rights. That’s the essence of a dictatorship.”

Watch the full interview on RT on Monday at 8:30 AM Moscow time.

South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) has been accused of white supremacy and double standards over its alleged failure to label Israel’s military actions in Gaza as genocide.

Speaking at a DA event in Johannesburg on Wednesday, Pastor Nigel Branken, an activist, voiced his dislike for the party.

“I’m one of those people who really don’t like you. I’ve never liked the DA. I find the DA to be the most racist party, full of white supremacy,” Branken said.

“The question for me is a big one. How can we even trust you to lead when you can’t acknowledge that there’s a genocide going on in Gaza?” he asked the DA mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Hellen Zille.

”You say we must wait for the ICJ to rule. The ICJ has found that there’s a plausible case of genocide. The ICJ has said we must respect the rights of people. Amnesty International has ruled. Human Rights Watch has ruled. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has ruled, and you continue to deny that there’s a genocide. Where is your morality?” he said as the crowd heckled him.

”Your party keeps telling us it can’t do anything; it can’t influence what’s happening there. Your party can influence it,” he said amid people trying to stop him.

”You can support other ICJ cases, you can support sanctions. You can support the stopping of coal exports; you can support the prosecution of people serving in the IDF. That is what you can do, Helen Zille. That is what you can do. Shame on you,” he concluded.

Brilliant. The hypocrisy and sophistry is astounding. 73 000 civilians, including childrenj murdered - a war crime - and not a single word of condemnation. An ICC fugitive and no demands for his arrest. Unconscionable.

The DA has never “waited” for any international court to… https://t.co/1R69DkBZ1u

— Phumzile Van Damme (@zilevandamme) April 16, 2026

In a calm response, Zille said there are terrible and serious things happening in the world and she takes great interest in those issues. However, she insisted that South Africa also has its own project which has never succeeded on, which is bringing all citizens to live in harmony.

On social media, the video triggered a surge of commentary, some amused, others scathing.

@JuliRee_Mts “White on white violence “This white man calls out the DA on being racist and calls out their defence on Apartheid during Helen’s campaigns trail.”

@TumishoMasha ”The DA will lose votes for this mark my words.”

@Knick_RSA “We must find this White Brother we need this type of White people in Politics. He speaks truth to power! Right in the Face.”

First published by IOL

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing new calls to resign after it was confirmed that disgraced former British Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson had been appointed despite not being cleared by security officials.

Mandelson, who was London’s envoy in Washington between February and September 2025, was arrested earlier this year over allegations that he leaked sensitive British government data to late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The media claimed he continued friendly relations with Epstein even after the disgraced financier’s imprisonment in 2008, while also receiving money from him.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that Mandelson had failed the vetting by the Cabinet Office in 2024, but the Foreign Office ignored its recommendations and still made the 72-year-old ambassador.

Downing Street confirmed the report, but stressed that Starmer, who previously assured the parliament that “due process” had been followed in the envoy’s appointment, was unaware of Mandelson’s security clearance problems.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch told BBC that it was “completely preposterous” for the Labour government to claim that Starmer didn’t know about the situation.
“This story does not stack up. The prime minister is taking us for fools. All roads lead to a resignation,” she stressed.

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, insisted that Starmer “must go” if he really misled the parliament and the public.

Starmer is refusing to step down, telling journalists on Friday that he was “absolutely furious” over not having been informed about Mandelson’s failed vetting, calling it “staggering” and “unforgivable.” He promised to address the lawmakers on Monday to “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency.”

However, the British media appears to be unconvinced by the prime minister’s excuses. On Friday, The Times warned about “a new crisis for Starmer, whose premiership almost collapsed over the Mandelson scandal in February.”

The headline in the Daily Mail read: “Starmer on brink as his Mandelson ‘lies’ are exposed,” while the Express insisted that the prime minister “must resign after blatant lies to MPs.” The Telegraph described the PM’s position as “scarcely credible,” adding that “he cannot survive.”

The Mandelson affair has already dealt a heavy blow to Starmer’s team, with his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, quitting in February after taking the blame for the appointment of an envoy with known links to Epstein.

McSweeney’s departure was followed by that of the prime minister’s communications director, Tim Allan, who said he was stepping down to allow Starmer to build a “new team.”

The British royal family and Andrew, the younger brother of King Charles III, have also been hit by the new trove of Epstein documents. Already stripped of his titles over his ties to the late sex offender, the ex-prince is now facing allegations of “misconduct in public office” due to allegedly supplying Epstein with sensitive documents.

US President Donald Trump has again lashed out against NATO, stressing that he does not need its help in the Strait of Hormuz, and saying that the military bloc was “useless when needed” during the war on Iran.

On Friday afternoon, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that the key oil and gas freight corridor was “completely open” for all commercial vessels for the remainder of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, which is set to end next week.

Just an hour later, Trump took to Truth Social and confirmed that the Strait of Hormuz was open to traffic, later claiming that Tehran has agreed to “never close it again.” He also stressed that the regional US blockade against Iranian vessels would continue until Washington’s demands were met.

pic.twitter.com/VZ5R6TKxf5

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 17, 2026

Trump has for weeks slammed his European NATO allies for not joining the war on Iran, after the country effectively blocked the strait to ships from what it called hostile nations. The US president hinted that the US could leave the military bloc as a result.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who co-chaired the meeting alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, announced that London and Paris would launch a “multi-national mission to protect freedom of navigation as soon as conditions allow.”

Trump has already accused Starmer of being a fair-weather friend earlier in the Iran conflict. Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, the US president suggested he could rethink the trade deal Washington struck with London last year, giving the UK a reprieve from his tariff onslaught.

The EU’s newly unveiled age‑verification app is a “surveillance tool” disguised as a privacy‑respecting solution, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has warned. Security researchers were reportedly able to bypass its protections in under two minutes.

The app, which was presented by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, is intended to let users prove their age online without revealing personal data. Von der Leyen called it “technically ready” and said it meets the “highest privacy standards.”

But Durov has dismissed those claims, alleging that the app is “hackable by design” and is part of the EU’s three‑step plan – to present a “privacy‑respecting” but vulnerable app, let it get hacked, then remove privacy features under the guise of fixing it.

“The EU bureaucrats needed an excuse to silently start turning their ‘privacy‑respecting’ age verification app into a surveillance mechanism over all Europeans,” Durov said.

The EU’s push for mandatory age checks comes as several countries have adopted similar measures. Australia has already banned social media for under‑16s, while Denmark, France, Spain, Italy and Greece are jointly testing age‑verification tools. Germany has proposed a similar ban. 

However, critics argue that these laws create centralized “honeypots” of personal data and increase surveillance risks. In the UK, a proposed digital ID scheme has already drawn fire, with opponents warning of a “police state.”

Durov, who has long clashed with Western governments over free speech, has repeatedly warned that digital freedom is being eroded and that “a dark, dystopian world is approaching fast – while we’re asleep.”

EU and NATO officials fear that European armies would be unable to conduct a major military operation – such as a hypothetical war with Russia that Brussels continues to claim could be imminent – without a secure supply of fossil fuels. EU lawmakers and NATO officials met this week to assess how reliance on oil affects military readiness, according to Euractiv.

The proposed solution looks distinctly like a notorious Brussels brainchild – conceived in strict adherence to the EU’s green agenda, impractical, and intended to be borne by the bloc’s national governments.

Europe’s fuel squeeze

Only two months ago, US President Donald Trump was blaming Cuba’s communist system for a lack of jet fuel – deliberately caused by his administration’s naval blockade of the island nation. Now, capitalist European governments are facing similar pressures after disruptions linked to Trump’s war on Iran.

In its latest monthly report, the International Energy Agency warned that Europe – which sources roughly three-quarters of its jet fuel from the Middle East – could soon face physical shortages. Analysts estimate this could happen by June if only half of lost supply is replaced, or by August if 75% is restored.

Airlines for Europe (A4E), a major industry group, has already called for coordinated kerosene purchases to tackle the situation.

Tanks don’t run on electricity 

“Fossil fuels are the Achilles’ heel of our defense,” Finnish MEP Pekka Toveri, a former general, reportedly said after the EU/NATO meeting, noting that “Leopard tanks do not run on electricity.”

NATO’s director for defense enablement and resilience, Julien Kita, said modern military equipment is even more fuel-hungry than previous generations. He warned: “In the unlikely scenario of a full-scale NATO operation, the air domain would account for around 80% of fuel demand. And that requires a lot of fuel.”

Polish MEP Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz echoed the concern, saying the EU could “invest millions in rearmament… but if we cannot secure fuel for tanks and jets, there will be nothing to move.”

European intelligence agencies claim a large-scale conflict with Russia is likely to break out by 2030, even as Moscow denies any hostile intentions.

Tanks must go green

During the discussions, officials reportedly proposed ‘carbon-neutral’ fuels as the main long-term solution, including biofuels, hydrogen, and products derived from renewable electricity.

Hydrogen – a highly-volatile fuel that is difficult to store – remains far from becoming a viable substitute for hydrocarbons. It only found use as rocket propellant for space launches and in some niche applications, such as air-independent propulsion in German Type 214 submarines.

The Toyota Mirais, which almost a decade ago became the first commercially-available car to run on hydrogen fuel cells, is one of the worst-selling models. Just 210 units were bought last year, down from 499 in 2024.

But how will the EU pay for alternative fuels for war?

While domestic manufacturing of non-fossil fuels can potentially solve scarcity of supplies, warfare is as much a calculation of what you can afford as it is what you can do with the capabilities.

Cheap mass-produced drones became the dominant feature of the Ukraine conflict. They also give Iran leverage over the best-funded military in the world. And the EU’s economic perspectives are not particularly good at the moment. 

The replacement strategy would have benefited from abundant nuclear power – but as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen admitted herself, the bloc made a “strategic blunder” by suppressing it and pressing for wind and solar instead.

While EU institutions are promoting an ideologically-pure solution for a purportedly existential problem, implementation would ultimately fall to individual member states.

A European Commission official told Euractiv that additional funding for sustainable fuels could be made available through the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), a grant distribution mechanism.

“The program includes security of supply among its priorities, although it is ultimately up to member states to decide what falls within that scope,” the official said.

The implementation of joint projects between Moscow and Brazzaville is expected to further strengthen bilateral ties, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has said. 

During his working visit to the Republic of the Congo, the minister stated that Russia places high priority on developing comprehensive relations with the African country.  

“We [Russia] are confident that the implementation of joint projects and the expansion of cooperation in various fields will help deepen the partnership between our countries at all levels and bring tangible benefits to the peoples of both states,” Novak noted. 

Novak arrived in Congo (Brazzaville) on Thursday as the head of a Russian delegation and took part in the inauguration ceremony of President-elect Denis Sassou Nguesso. As part of the trip, the minister visited the Russian House in the capital and paid tribute at a monument to Yuri Gagarin, where he laid flowers.  

At the same time, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko and Congolese Foreign Minister Jean-Claude Gakosso discussed preparations for the third Russia–Africa Summit, which is planned for this year in Moscow.  

In addition, the ministers raised the topic of expanding trade and economic cooperation, with a focus on projects in the fields of energy, infrastructure, healthcare, and personnel training. 

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, discussions were held in line with agreements reached during talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso in Moscow in May and in Beijing in September. 

The Cuban government attempted to open a direct back-channel with US President Donald Trump last week, tapping a private businessman to hand-deliver a sealed letter to the White House, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources.

The reported message, which was ultimately intercepted, was meant to bypass US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has pursued a policy of regime change on the island.

The move was orchestrated by Raul Rodriguez Castro, grandson and chief aide of 94-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro, who is widely considered one of the island’s most powerful figures, the report said. It added that the letter bore an official Cuban government seal and was formatted as a diplomatic note.

The courier, Roberto Carlos Chamizo Gonzalez, 37, a luxury tourism and high-end car rental entrepreneur based in Havana, was stopped by security officers at Miami International Airport, who confiscated the letter and sent him back to Cuba.

The paper suggested that the move appeared designed to circumvent US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants and Washington’s most forceful advocate for maximum pressure on Havana.

Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, suggested that an attempt to sidestep the top US diplomat was “downright foolish and bound to backfire,” adding that “it’s worse to go with an unknown with no personal relationship to the president, which makes it look more foolish.”

The back-channel bid comes as Cuba is reeling under its worst economic crisis in decades. After US forces kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, Washington severed Cuba’s main oil lifeline from Caracas and imposed a near-total fuel blockade. The island is also struggling with recurring complete blackouts.

Trump has labeled Cuba “a failing nation”, threatened a “friendly takeover,” and has said recently that the US “may stop by Cuba” after the war in Iran. Havana has warned it is ready for any American attack.

The US could impose travel restrictions on European officials attending the FIFA World Cup this summer over concerns of rising anti-Semitism, Euractiv has reported.

The idea was raised by Yehuda Kaploun, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi serving as special envoy for combating anti-Semitism under President Donald Trump, the outlet said on Friday.

Kaploun spoke this week at an event organized by the European Jewish Association in Brussels, stating that his office is “holding countries accountable for ministers who are saying things, and they are not being allowed into the country.”

An EU official cited by Euractiv claimed that Kaploun privately linked aniti-Semitism allegations to access for the 2026 World Cup. Asked for clarification, the US official said the administration “can take any step that the secretary of state and the president deem necessary,” while declining to discuss “any nitty gritties.”

At the European Jewish Association Annual Policy Conference in Brussels, @USAmbToBelgium and I reiterated the Administration's strong support of Belgium's Jewish community and thanked @MargolinRabbi and @EJAssociation for their efforts to highlight the concerns of Jews across… pic.twitter.com/kzxhCxdyqt

— Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun (@StateSEAS) April 16, 2026

Rise in anti-Semitism in Europe?

Accusations of anti-Semitism have frequently been used by Israeli officials to undermine opponents of its policies. However, a recent report from Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs suggests that the problem is particularly bad in the US rather than any European nation.

Relations between Israel and several European governments have deteriorated in recent months, particularly due to the bombing campaign in Iran. Some countries have taken concrete steps to undermine the operation, as opposed to just rejecting Trump’s call to join it.

Spain condemned the strikes as illegal and refused to allow the US to use its airbases. France blocked flights carrying munitions for Israel from crossing its airspace. Belgium reportedly intercepted two military shipments from Britain passing through Liege Airport en route to Tel Aviv.

In the Netherlands, lawmakers voted on Thursday to suspend and partially scrap an EU-Israel association agreement. The proposal to sanction West Jerusalem this way faced opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban but gained momentum after his recent electoral defeat.

World Cup marred by chaos

The economic impact of the 2026 World Cup – to be hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico – remains uncertain. Just this week, the Financial Times reported that US hotels have begun lowering summer prices amid fears of weak demand. Owners fear inflation, anti-American sentiments, and high ticket costs could discourage international visitors.

FIFA was partially responsible by canceling thousands of hotel reservations intended for teams and technical staff. While overbooking is common for large events, the scale in this case exceeded expectations, the report said.

Fans have also expressed frustration over ticketing practices, as detailed by the Los Angeles Times. It described a backlash against a newly introduced premium tier above Category 1, misleading some buyers who will be receiving less favorable seating than anticipated.

The tournament has also been directly affected by the US-Israeli war on Iran. Tehran has no intention to send a team to compete on enemy territory. Football federation president Mehdi Taj suggested relocating matches involving Iran to Mexico, though FIFA chief Gianni Infantino has signaled that the schedule will remain unchanged.

President Donald Trump said on Friday that the US would work alongside Iran, using “a lot of excavators” to recover Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and bring it to the United States. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei, however, reiterated that Iran would not give up the stockpile, which he described as “as sacred as Iranian soil.” Tehran maintains it is not seeking nuclear weapons, a claim disputed by the US and Israel.

The US and Iran continue behind-the-scenes talks as the two-week ceasefire is set to expire next week.

The situation remains tense in the Strait of Hormuz, where some ships have been able to pass after Iran announced it would reopen the strategic shipping route to all commercial vessels. However, most tankers and cargo ships attempting to cross have suddenly turned back, according to maritime tracking services.

Iranian parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf later clarified that the strait would “not remain open” as long as the US continues its naval blockade of Iranian ports.

A 10-day ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon on Friday following several weeks of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that claimed more than 2,000 lives in the country.

Here are the latest developments:

• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz is “completely open” to commercial vessels for the remainder of the ceasefire, which is due to expire on Tuesday

• Trump thanked Tehran and said the strait is “open and ready for business,” but added that the US naval blockade on Iran “remains in full force” until a deal is “100% complete”

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) warned the US and Israel they will face a “regret-inducing” response if attacks continue

• At least 2,196 people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced in Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes and evacuation orders to expand a “security zone”

Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates. You can also read our previous updates here.

British oil and gas giant BP has been sued in Kenya over claims that toxic waste from oil exploration four decades ago poisoned water sources and caused deaths in the East African country.

The case, filed by 299 petitioners, was allowed to proceed by a Kenyan High Court and centers on exploration work carried out in the 1980s by Amoco Corporation, later acquired by BP, near Kargi and Kalacha in the Chalbi Desert in the country’s north.

The petitioners say waste containing hazardous substances, including radium isotopes, arsenic, lead and nitrates, was dumped in unlined pits or left exposed, according to court documents cited by AP. They allege the contamination poisoned groundwater, sickened residents and livestock, and contributed to more than 500 deaths.

The lawsuit, filed at the Land and Environment Court in Isiolo, also names Kenyan state agencies, accusing them of failing to act despite evidence of contamination.

BP has not publicly responded to the court’s decision. It also declined to comment, AP reported. The ruling does not determine whether the allegations are true, but allows the claims to be heard in full. The case is due back in court in May.

The multinational oil and gas company is not the first Western energy firm to face legal action in Africa. British energy giant Shell, operator of the SPDC joint venture, has been embroiled in multiple lawsuits and compensation claims over oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. French oil major TotalEnergies, which has operated in Nigeria for more than six decades, has also faced criticism from communities and activists over alleged spills, pollution and environmental neglect.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has once again attacked the press, accusing journalists of producing an “endless stream of garbage” in their coverage of the Iran conflict and comparing the Pentagon media pool to the Pharisees, a Jewish group in the Bible who often clashed with Jesus.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host appointed by US President Donald Trump to lead the US Department of Defence, has repeatedly clashed with the press more than a year into his tenure.

Hegseth’s latest comments follow critical coverage of his “CSAR 25:17” reading at the Pentagon prayer service, which was labeled “fake” due to its similarity to the fictional passage from Ezekiel recited by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

“I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.”

“The Pharisees – the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time – they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report,” he added. “But … even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter, they were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.”

The Pentagon chief had previously accused media outlets of producing “fake news.” In March, he criticized the “dishonest and anti-Trump press” for trying “to downplay progress, amplify every cost and call into question every step.” Later that month, Hegseth said journalists highlighted US casualties in the Iran war “to make the president look bad,” including the six US Army reservists killed in an Iranian attack on an operations center in Kuwait.

Hegseth’s latest remarks come as Trump and officials in his administration have increasingly framed aspects of the Iran war in biblical terms and used references to the Bible in public statements about the conflict and related military actions.

Multiple US military commanders have reportedly offered religious interpretations of the attack on Iran, with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) saying some described Trump as a harbinger of the Second Coming and the conflict as a “signal fire” for Armageddon. Separately, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure healing a man, which drew online criticism.

The US has expanded its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, telling its military to pursue Iran-linked vessels everywhere around the globe, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, has said.

Washington announced it would stop ships from accessing Iranian ports on Monday after talks with Tehran’s representatives in Pakistan failed. Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz for the Americans and their allies following the US-Israeli attack on the country on February 28. The US blockade of the key waterway, accounting for some 20% of international crude and LNG trade, further increased the strain on the global economy, causing oil and gas prices to skyrocket.

US forces outside the Persian Gulf area will also “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran,” Caine told journalists on Friday.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff singled out operations in the Pacific, saying that the US would be going after vessels that left Iran’s ports before the blockade started, according to AP.

It provided a list of contraband items to be confiscated, which included weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials, oil products, iron, steel, and aluminum.

According to the US Central Command, a total of 14 ships heading to the Strait of Hormuz have turned around since the announcement of the blockade. None of the vessels have so far been boarded.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that Pakistani tanker Shalamar became the first ship to exit the Strait of Hormuz with a cargo of crude oil since Monday.

On Thursday, Iranian UN envoy Amir-Saeid Iravani labeled the US blockade “a clear act of aggression,” accusing Washington of breaking international law by infringing upon rightful maritime commerce.

Passage for all commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is now completely open, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi declared on Friday. He added that the waterway will remain open for the remainder of the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Araghchi’s announcement came shortly after a 10-day truce came into force between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, which has been one of the major obstacles to a peace deal between Iran and the US.

Writing on X, the Iranian minister stated that “in line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire.”

He noted however, that the vessels would be allowed to move along the “coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran,” suggesting that the strait will remain under Tehran’s control.

The Strait of Hormuz has been shut down ever since the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran in late February. The closure has driven up energy prices and rattled the global economy, disrupting one of the world’s most important trade arteries, which handles around 20% of global crude exports.

In the minutes following Araghchi’s announcement, oil prices plummeted by more than 10%, with Crude oil dropping to just over $83 per barrel and Brent coming in at around $88.

Indian refiners are making payments for Iranian oil in yuan, after a temporary sanctions-waiver by the US enabled New Delhi to buy crude from the Middle Eastern country, Reuters reported.

The US issued the one-month waiver on March 20, which Washington says will not be extended.

Payment for the Iranian cargoes is a complicated issue due to the US sanctions on Tehran, deterring some prospective buyers of crude from the country.

Indian Oil Corp bought 2 million barrels of Iranian oil in ‌April, the country’s first purchase of Iranian crude in seven years, reportedly worth $200 million.

New Delhi has also allowed four vessels carrying Iranian oil to berth for its largest private refiner, Reliance ⁠Industries.

Both trades are being settled through ICICI Bank, a private bank, which is routing funds in Chinese yuan via its Shanghai branch, the news outlet reported.

Indian refiners have previously used yuan to settle some Russian oil purchases.

The yuan’s emergence as a global currency would be essential for Beijing to turn into a true “financial powerhouse,” President Xi Jinping has said, amid concerns about the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

Iranian crude accounted for 11.5% of India’s total imports before it ceased purchases in 2019 after the tightening of US sanctions.

New Delhi is the world’s third-largest importer and consumer of oil and procures 90% of its requirements from abroad.

The Daily Telegraph’s incoming owner, German-based media conglomerate Axel Springer, is demanding that its employees now stick to a pro-Israel stance, British journalist Owen Jones has reported, citing a letter circulated among staff.

Earlier this week, the UK government cleared Axel Springer’s £575 million ($778 million) takeover of The Telegraph – a right-leaning newspaper which is at times dubbed the ‘Torygraph’ for its support of the Conservative Party – with the deal expected to close by the end of June. Axel Springer already owns German newspapers Bild and Die Welt as well as Politico.

On Wednesday, Jones reported, citing a Telegraph insider, that CEO Mathias Dopfner had circulated a letter among employees laying out the company’s binding “Essentials.” The first point prioritizes “freedom, freedom of expression, the rule of law, and democracy,” while the second states that “we support the right of Israel to exist and oppose all forms of antisemitism.”

Jones said that “the description of the Essentials is, frankly, Orwellian,” adding that out of almost 200 countries in the world, only one is mentioned in the document.

He also cited a frustrated Telegraph insider, who argued that “affirming the right of a country committing genocide and ethnic cleansing is more than a little concerning,” adding: “It also raises the question of how any reporting from the paper can be considered factual if that is our core principle.”

According to Jones, the phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist’ has been “repeatedly deployed by Israel’s cheerleaders across the West to justify Israel’s crimes.” He also remarked that “the Essentials do not prohibit racism in general” and that there “is no explicit rejection of Islamophobia.” The journalist also suggested that Dopfner was deliberately blurring the lines between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel’s actions – including devastating strikes in Gaza and Lebanon.

Dopfner – a self-described “non-Jewish Zionist” – has made no effort to conceal his political views. In October 2023, after Hamas’ attack on Israel, he wrote an op-ed for Politico saying that “the chant ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free’" is tantamount to calls for genocide of the Israelis.

In 2025, he said it was “surprising that Israel is not being celebrated worldwide for its historic strikes” on the Iranian nuclear program while fuming over what he described as “anti-Israel propaganda” in media coverage of the attacks.

In addition, a Die Zeit investigation claimed, citing leaked e-mails, that Dopfner once summarized his beliefs by the phrase “Zionism uber alles” (Zionism above all else).

Europe could run out of jet fuel within weeks if oil supplies continue to be disrupted by the Iran war, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol warned of far-reaching global consequences from what he described as “the largest energy crisis we have ever faced,” triggered by disruptions to oil, gas, and other critical supplies flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US-Israeli bombing campaign prompted Iran to close the critical route, a conduit for roughly 20% of global oil, to “enemy ships,” triggering a breakdown in supply chains. US President Donald Trump declared a blockade of the strait on Sunday after failed talks with Tehran, a move that caused tankers to turn back and pushed oil prices back toward $100 a barrel.

Europe had “maybe six weeks or so” of jet fuel left, according to the agency chief, and unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, “soon we will hear the news” of flights being cancelled due to shortages.

Birol likened the situation to a “dire strait,” warning that the longer disruptions persist, the worse the impact on growth and inflation worldwide. The fallout would mean “higher petrol prices, higher gas prices, high electricity prices,” he said.

Western Europe is widely seen as the biggest loser from the Hormuz blockade due to its heavy reliance on Middle Eastern oil after sanctioning Russian supplies.

Politico reported earlier this month that London’s Heathrow Airport has already seen cancellations linked to soaring jet fuel costs, while Scandinavian carrier SAS has reportedly scrapped about 1,000 flights. Smaller British regional airlines Skybus and Aurigny have also cut services as fuel prices surge roughly 120% year-on-year, and Air France has raised fares on long-haul routes.

Moscow has signaled it is ready to plug any oil supply gap to offset shortages triggered by the Middle East conflict. Earlier this week, Indonesia secured an agreement to import Russian crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas, while the Philippines has taken its first Russian oil cargo in five years after declaring an energy emergency. Vietnam has signed new oil and gas cooperation deals with Moscow, and Thailand has also expressed interest in Russian supplies, underscoring Russia’s expanding role as a key supplier during the crisis.

The Burundian communications minister, Gabby Bugaga, died on Thursday “following an accident,” officials have confirmed.

The government said Bugaga passed away in the early hours of April 16, describing the death as “unexpected” and expressing condolences to his family, colleagues, and the nation.

According to several posts on social media, Bugaga was found dead at the wheel of a Toyota 4x4 parked in a palm oil plantation in Kivoga, northwest of Bujumbura, in Ntahangwa district. However, the exact circumstances remain unclear, with no further details provided by the authorities.

The Ministry of Communication and Media also confirmed on X it had received the news with “dismay.” Staff extended condolences to Bugaga’s family and to members of the media community.

“We are deeply saddened by the news of the sudden death of the Minister,” he wrote on X, adding “may God receive him and reward him for the courage, diligence and dedication that characterized him in all his duties to serve the country.” 

Bugaga had served as communications minister since August 2025, after previously working as a member of the country’s National Independent Electoral Commission. He was a well-known journalist and worked for the National Radio and Television of Burundi (RTNB).

His death comes amid a number of high-profile fatalities involving African officials in recent months. In March, Kenyan MP Johana Ng’eno was among six people killed when a helicopter crashed and caught fire in Mosop, Nandi County.

Earlier this month, James Unomasa Uerikua, the governor of Namibia’s Otjozondjupa Region, died in a car accident. His son also lost his life in the same crash.

South African opposition figure Julius Malema has been sentenced to five years in prison for firing a rifle at a party rally nearly a decade ago, in a ruling that could cost him his seat in Parliament if upheld on appeal.

Malema, leader of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), was convicted last year on five counts, including unlawful possession of a firearm, discharging it in public and reckless endangerment. The charges stemmed from video showing him firing the weapon before supporters at the party’s fifth-anniversary rally in Mdantsane, in Eastern Cape province, in 2018.

Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence. In Thursday’s ruling at the East London Regional Court in KuGompo City, Eastern Cape, the court rejected defense arguments that the shooting was merely celebratory.

“It is clear that if crimes are allowed to go unchecked and unpunished, it poses a serious threat to our democratic state,” Magistrate Twanet Olivier said before delivering the sentence, according to Reuters.

He was, however, granted leave to appeal and remains free pending the outcome. If the sentence stands, South African law would bar him from serving as a lawmaker because he received a prison term of more than 12 months without the option of a fine.

Following the ruling, Malema accused Magistrate Olivier of being “racist” and “possibly a member of AfriForum,” the Afrikaner lobby group that brought the case.

“We can tell you now, no sober judge will ever agree that a person shoot one bullet and then he’s sentenced for five years,” he told supporters outside court.

“They are trying by all means to silence this voice. They will never win,” he said, adding that “we are fighting the enemy and the enemy is white supremacy.”

He founded the EFF in 2013 after being expelled from the African National Congress, the country’s longtime governing party, where he led its youth wing.

US President Donald Trump’s war of words with Pope Leo XIV appears to have split his own MAGA movement. While a number of prominent Republicans have distanced themselves from the exchange, others have stepped in to reassure him of their continued support.

Trump responded with a social media tirade, calling the Pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” and posting an AI‑generated image of himself as a Jesus‑like figure, robed in white, healing a sick man while surrounded by fighter jets and US flags.

Here are the Republican believers who have come out of left field:

Senator Lindsey Graham 

One of the most prominent hawks in Washington slammed Pope Leo in a Fox News interview, claiming the pontiff was “miscalculating” by advocating for world peace.

“The Catholic Church didn’t really get Hitler,” Graham claimed, arguing that the Vatican is now repeating the same mistake by failing to recognize the “evil” of Iran.

Graham, a Southern Baptist who says he bases his unconditional support for Israel on the Bible, insists that Iranian leaders are “religious Nazis” who would “kill all the Jews if we let them.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson

The Southern Baptist defended Trump by suggesting that Pope Leo had deserved the backlash for “wading into political waters.”

He also tried to lecture the pontiff on Christian theology, claiming that Pope Leo did not understand the “just war” doctrine which Washington has used to justify its attack on Iran.

Developed by Saint Augustine, the doctrine holds that warfare is permissible only as a tragic last resort to restrain evil and restore peace, never for vengeance or gain. Pope Leo was an Augustinian friar for 12 years.

Johnson, an evangelical Protestant with a business degree from LSU and a law degree he parlayed into running a law school that never enrolled a single student, felt the need to correct the pope on a point of Augustine’s war doctrine.

The same week Johnson offered his lesson from… pic.twitter.com/bavANtL9Yb

— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) April 16, 2026

J.D. Vance

The US Vice President, a Catholic convert, also accused Pope Leo of misinterpreting the Augustine doctrine, urging the pontiff to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” 

He also argued that the Vatican should “stick to matters of morality” rather than foreign policy.

Bernie Moreno

The Catholic senator from Ohio delivered a pointed personal attack, stating that his “mother would be ashamed of the current pope.”

Tom Homan 

Trump’s latest ‘Border Czar’ and a self‑described “lifelong Catholic” told the Vatican to “stay out of immigration” and that they “don’t know what they’re talking about.” He also offered to “sit down to explain” Catholic doctrine to the Pope.

Elise Stefanik

The New York congresswoman claimed on network news that the pope had “politically attacked” Trump, insisting the papacy should remain “strictly spiritual.”

MAGA financier Hal Lambert 

Pope Leo’s criticism of Trump is part of a “Chicago‑centric” plot involving former President Barack Obama to hurt Republicans in the midterms, according to the Point Bridge Capital CEO, a prominent Republican megadonor.

MAGA elites are now regularly delivering lectures about the teachings of Jesus Christ to…the Pope.

This is not “I disagree with the Church on X issue.”

This is “My personal interpretation of the Gospel is superior to the Vicar of Christ.”

It’s deranged in a way I didn’t… https://t.co/p25YXaaOkG

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 17, 2026

A crack in the MAGA movement

Trump has made U-turns on a number of campaign promises, including the war on Iran, and has already seen his support base fracture. His sudden attack on the Catholic Church has ruffled even more feathers within the MAGA movement.

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has become a vocal Trump critic, went further by denouncing the president’s AI Jesus image as “blasphemy” and condemning Trump for attacking the Pope on Orthodox Easter.

Three other prominent conservatives who have recently had a falling out with Trump, namely Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones, all delivered scathing critiques of the president’s feud with the Pope and the AI Jesus image.

Jones and Owens have gone as far as to call for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment, describing him as a “genocidal lunatic.”

Russia has sent an important message to the world by sending a ship with oil to Cuba last month as the US blockades the island, Havana’s envoy to New Delhi has said.

Moscow shipped 100,000 tons of oil required for Cuba’s normal functioning after the US imposed restrictions, Juan Carlos Marsan Aguilera told RT India in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

“After three months without oil, a Russian ship arrived in Cuba,” he said in the latest episode of India, Russia, and the World. “It was more than that, a message [to the world] that Russia would support Cuba at a critical moment.”

Russia was sending a broader message by backing Cuba “because the US was threatening any country supplying oil with tariffs or [an] attack on ships,” the ambassador said.

READFULLTEXT

Moscow proved that it is “possible not to follow rules imposed by the US,” Aguilera noted. “[The] day after [the] ship arrived, [US President Donald] Trump said I am not opposed to any country that would like to supply oil to Cuba,” he said, adding, “that was not true as the possibility of sanctions was always on the table.”

Russia, China, and India are important partners of Cuba, the envoy stated, citing Moscow’s huge presence in the energy and transportation sectors and China’s assistance to the nation’s energy transition.

“India and Cuba have a longstanding history. We are celebrating 66 years of bilateral ties,” Aguilera said.

Cuba supports India’s bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat because in Aguilera’s words, “The Global South needs a relevant position.”

The US blockade of Cuba is an economic war on the island nation, the Cuban ambassador said. Washington’s concept of peace means countries submitting to its interests, which is unacceptable, he said. “Cuba is an obstacle to US dominance,” Aguilera added.

“With this blockade, it is difficult to sustain the healthcare system because you don’t have electricity,” he said, pointing to the huge impact on all vital sectors, including food production. “So this has a massive impact on the entire economy.”

The first Trump administration imposed a raft of measures to strangle the Cuban economy, Aguilera said, adding that the present one had gone even further.

On Trump’s January 29 executive order declaring Cuba “as an extraordinary threat to the US,” Aguilera wondered how a nation of 10 million people could pose a threat to a much larger country.

US officials have warned their European counterparts that the supply of previously contracted American arms could be delayed due to dwindling stockpiles as a result of the war on Iran, Reuters has reported, citing sources.

Tensions have been mounting between Washington and its NATO allies since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, with President Donald Trump branding the Europeans “cowards” for their unwillingness to join the military operation. Trump has also warned of a possible American withdrawal from the bloc.

Several European nations, including those in the Baltic and Scandinavia, are now unlikely to receive promised US arms deliveries in time, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The sources declined to name the exact countries because some share a border with Russia, making the news of possible delays in deliveries “sensitive defense information,” Reuters said.

Trump has long pressured European NATO members to buy more American arms so that they can take security on the continent into their own hands, and also to supply Ukraine during the conflict with Russia.

Moscow has rejected as “nonsense” claims that it harbors any aggressive plans against NATO, saying that Western politicians are using Russia to scare the population and justify increased militarization. According to Russian officials, the country will only fight the bloc if it is attacked first.

On Thursday, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu issued a warning to Finland and the Baltic states over Ukrainian drones reaching Russia via their territory.

Either Western air defenses are proving ineffective against Kiev’s UAVs or Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen can ignore voters’ opinions as she essentially cannot be voted out like recently defeated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Alice Weidel, co-chair of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has said.

The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, with a recent YouGov poll suggesting that it would get 27% of the vote if elections were held now. The CDU/CSU and SPD trail behind with 23% and 13%, respectively, according to the survey.

Speaking at a press conference this week, Weidel acknowledged that Peter Magyar’s landslide victory in the Hungarian election, which ended 16 years of Orban’s rule, was “absolutely legitimate,” but raised concerns about democratic accountability among the EU leadership.

Praising Orban as “an important, critical voice” within the EU, Weidel then agreed with a German journalist from Die Welt, who said that “Orban could be voted out; Ms. von der Leyen cannot be voted out.”

It took von der Leyen only 17 minutes to issue a statement celebrating Magyar’s victory after Orban conceded defeat. “Hungary has chosen Europe,” von der Leyen said. “Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.”

Later, she also called on member states to scrap the national veto in EU foreign policy, claiming qualified majority voting was “an important way to avoid systemic blockages” – a direct swipe at years of Orban’s vetoes on Ukraine-related decisions.

Von der Leyen has faced criticism over numerous controversies since becoming EC president in 2019. Among the most notable is the ‘Pfizergate’ scandal, which centered on personal text messages the EU chief exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during negotiations over a €35 billion deal for 1.8 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses. In May 2025, an EU court ruled the commission had “failed to provide credible explanations” for why the messages were not retained.

Von der Leyen has survived multiple no-confidence votes in the past two years, with her critics lambasting her over a lack of transparency and handling of the immigration issue. She has also long been attempting to force through a series of fundamental changes to EU rules in order to create a two-tier bloc, into which Ukraine could be integrated despite not meeting the usual requirements for member states.

An April 2026 Polling Europe Euroscope survey placed von der Leyen’s approval rating at 33%, a 12% drop from February. A separate Ipsos EuroPulse poll from September 2025 put her positive rating even lower, at just 23%.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Admiral Brad Cooper has praised Israel and Arab states hosting American bases as “exceptional” allies in the war against Iran. He made the remarks amid reports of a possible second round of peace talks this week, as a two-week truce is set to expire on Wednesday.

During a press conference with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Thursday, Cooper hailed Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE as “exceptional teammates.”

“And there’s been no better teammate than Israel,” Cooper added.

“Together, the four best air forces in the world – the Israeli Air Force, the US Air Force, and the air forces of the US Navy and US Marine Corps – together met and exceeded our own military objectives over and over again,” Cooper said.

The admiral recalled that he met Israel’s Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, late last month to ensure the two countries remained “closely aligned.”

Speaking alongside Cooper, Hegseth denied that the war had been “foisted upon” Trump by Israel. “President Trump makes his own decisions about the interests of this country and defending our interests, and then works with allies and partners – in this case Israel, which has a lot of will and a lot of capabilities, which we’re grateful for,” he said.

Kent, who resigned from his position last month in protest of the war, said intelligence agencies could not confirm Trump’s claim that Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons.

In the remote forests of Bastar, a district in central India’s state of Chhattisgarh, the air no longer carries the acrid scent of gunpowder. Instead, the sweet, heady fragrance of Mahua flowers drifts through villages once trapped in the grip of left-wing extremism.

Bastar is famous not only for its forests and diverse tribal groups, but for the Maoist insurgency, functioning for decades as the epicenter of their conflict against Indian security forces. Bastar has been considered a prominent stronghold of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), an armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), a banned political organization in India, since early 2000s. Inspired by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, the rebels advocate for class struggle and agrarian revolution through armed resistance.

What was long touted as the Maoists’ ‘Red Corridor’ – a vast stretch of ‘liberated zones’ from southern India toward Nepal – has now been dismantled. Sustained operations by India’s security forces, particularly since 2024, have significantly weakened the presence of Maoists, also known in the region as ‘Naxalites’ or ‘Naxals’ after the 1967 uprising in Naxalbari village in West Bengal state.  

After more than four decades of insurgency, roads, electricity, schools, and governance are steadily reclaiming territory that the state had lost to armed rebels.

Speaking in parliament on March 30, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said that the left-wing extremists and their supporters had presented a false narrative before innocent tribal people that they were fighting for their rights and to deliver justice to them. He said that Naxalism has now been “almost completely eradicated from Bastar,” and a campaign has begun to build schools and open ration shops in every village there, calling it one of the key achievements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. 

Peace returns

In Puwarti village, birthplace of the notorious Maoist commander Madvi Hidma linked to the deaths of hundreds of security personnel and civilians – a security forces camp now stands where arms training for his battalion once took place. Children play near a newly built Anganwadi child-care center.

Hidma’s deputy, Barse Deva, surrendered in early 2026, and his battalion has largely disintegrated through encounters, surrenders, and dispersal. Similar change is visible in Gougunda, a former Maoist bastion perched on a 660-meter-high cliff surrounded by dense forest. For the first time in living memory, electricity has reached the village. Residents who once lived by the sun’s rhythm now stay up late studying, working, or socializing.

Gangi Muchaki, who opened Gougunda’s first grocery shop with government help, beams under the glow of a solitary LED bulb: “This feels surreal! I still cannot believe that we have electricity, a motorable road and a ‘kirana’ (grocery) shop in our village. The night of red terror is over; this is a new dawn.”

End of Isolation

Maoists had deliberately banned constructing roads or installing electricity poles, as well as telecom towers, to maintain control of these areas through isolation. Today, the Border Roads Organization, an agency under the Ministry of Defence of India developing and maintaining road networks in India’s border regions and remote areas, is cutting all-weather roads through the forests. These road link remote districts in Chhattisgarh toward the southern city of Hyderabad. Arterial roads closed for 15-30 years due to frequent ambushes have now reopened.

Displaced villagers are returning home. In Baleveda village, falling under Narayanpur district, a Border Security Force (BSF) camp now occupies the site where Maoists once held their so-called kangaroo courts and carried out executions.

Ramulal Wadde, a Madia tribesman who lived in exile for 20 years in a slum, has returned as the new sarpanch, an elected head of a village-level self-government, along with about 20 other families. They are now rebuilding homes that fell into disrepair during their absence.

Wadde recalls the terror of those years: “This area is the place where they executed so many innocent villagers, including my relatives, for simply defying their diktats, like giving away one child to Naxal’s Bal Sena or simply daring to go out of the village to the town to see a doctor or study in a state-run residential school.”

His own family suffered losses on both sides of the conflict – one son, who was forced to join the rebels, was eventually killed by security forces, while another was killed by Maoists after he was branded a police informer.

Wadde himself fled after he was labelled an informer. As sarpanch, one of his first acts was symbolic: “The first thing I did as the village head was to raze the Shaheed Minar (a tower to honor the fallen Maoists) to dust. You see the hand pump there. I deliberately paved its platform with the debris of their pillar of pride to trample upon their legacy every day and forever.”

Since 2000, violence between insurgents and security forces has claimed nearly 12,000 lives, including over 4,000 civilians, according to the South Asian Terrorism Portal.

Similar scenes of return and reconstruction are unfolding in villages like Khader, where new brick homes funded by the prime minister’s housing scheme are rising amid the jungle. Despite brutal Maoist reprisals – including public beheadings of suspected “informers” witnessed by families – residents are coming back in growing numbers.

Education Replaces Indoctrination

Maoists destroyed or closed hundreds of schools and killed over 20 teachers since 2020 while running indoctrination centers in thatched huts. The state is now reversing the damage. In Bastar’s interior areas, 263 schools have reopened or been newly established, enrolling over 9,000 children, with nearly 100 new buildings under construction.

District officials, including Narayanpur’s district magistrate Smita Jain, conduct ‘Sushasan Shivir’ (Good Governance Camps) on motorcycles without fear, turning them into festive occasions where villagers obtain documents recognized pan-India, including Aadhaar cards (a 12-digit individual identification number issued to Indian residents), ration cards, and other essential documents.

Security forces have cleared jungle paths not only for operations but also to deliver governance directly to remote communities.

Veteran journalist Animesh Paul, who has covered the insurgency for nearly two decades, observes the dramatic shift. “Travelling in a police vehicle today is routine; just months ago, it would have been considered suicidal,” he opines.

Eliminating Leadership, Rehabilitating Cadres

In May 2025, Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju, the general-secretary of the banned CPI (Maoist), was neutralized in a 50-hour encounter in the Abujhmarh hills. Young local recruits like Manish Usendi – whose brother was killed by Maoists for wanting to join the police – played roles in such operations. The collapse of Naxalites accelerated with a chain of high-profile operations executed by security forces. The elimination of top leaders, including Hidma, shattered command structures and triggered mass surrenders.

Over 2,700 Maoists have surrendered in the Bastar region in recent years as part of a larger nationwide trend. Senior officers credit sustained pressure on leadership, financial networks (extortion from contractors and forest produce traders), and infrastructure expansion for reducing the group’s capacity for major attacks.

Chhattisgarh’s Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma, who also holds the Home portfolio, sums up the current phase: “The operation has been successful. But you don’t relieve yourself immediately after the operation. It is time for healing the state. Also, the Naxals are gone, but they’ve left behind landmine-riddled roads, jungles and ponds. The forces are clearing them out to make the jungles safe for everyone.”

Mangtu, who joined as a child soldier at age 14, confides, “I was so smitten by the uniforms and weapons of the Naxals that I accompanied them, almost hypnotized.” Aspiring to become a taxi driver, he adds, “I am training to be a taxi driver; some are getting training to eke out a living as plumbers. I am done with this goalless and endless revolution. I am tired of running and hiding. I want to live a normal life now and start a family.”

Many surrendered rebels revealed the Maoists’ brutal practice of forced sterilization – vasectomies and tubectomies performed without anesthesia on hundreds of young cadres – to sever family bonds and turn them into detached “human weapons.” They are now seeking a reversal procedure.

The dream of a contiguous ‘Red Corridor’ exploiting tribal grievances, poverty, and weak state presence has now collapsed into isolated pockets. Historically, the Naxalite leadership was often from Telugu-speaking regions in the country’s South, as the movement drew from post-Independence agrarian unrest, including the Telangana Struggle of 1946-51. The foot soldiers were local ‘adivasis’, or tribal people, while funding came mainly from local “levies” rather than large-scale foreign support.

After eliminating insurgency, authorities are now replacing parallel local governance structures and Kangaroo courts with transparent governance. Hundreds of security camps that have been established in the villages will further  transition into schools, health centers, or community facilities once the area is fully stabilized. Central forces continue de-mining of areas to ensure physical safety. There are many underlying vulnerabilities – single rain-fed agriculture, dependence on minor forest produce like Mahua flowers and tendu leaves, and lack of irrigation – created fertile ground for insurgency.

The proposed Bodhghat project on the Indravati River, estimated at around $6 billion and intended to generate 125 MW of power and irrigate nearly 700,000 hectares across key districts, could enable multiple crops and reduce the economic fragility that Maoists once exploited.

The grand Maoist vision of a continuous “Red Corridor” stretching from Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh to Pashupati in Nepal now lies in tatters, reduced to scattered remnants in a handful of remote pockets. What remains is the harder, more enduring task: translating military gains into lasting peace through inclusive development, responsive governance, and economic opportunity.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has criticized the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, arguing that it could empower the regional armed group Hezbollah.

The 10-day truce, which took effect on Friday, is aimed at halting Israel’s military operation in Lebanon, which has left 2,196 people dead and 1.2 million displaced.

The IDF renewed airstrikes and expanded their presence in southern Lebanon last month after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in support of Iran.

“While I appreciate every effort to bring peace through diplomacy in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, we have to be realistic about the situation on the ground,” Graham wrote on X.

“I will not support any agreement regarding peace in Lebanon that fails to convince me that it will result in the disarmament and demise of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization,” Graham said.

According to the US State Department, Israel has agreed to halt “offensive military operations against Lebanese targets,” but has reserved the right to “take all necessary measures in self-defense.” The deal also calls on the Lebanese government to prevent Hezbollah from attacking “Israeli targets.”

Hezbollah, which was not involved in the US-mediated negotiations, said the truce must halt all IDF activities in Lebanon.

US President Donald Trump’s true religion is “Israelism” rather than Christianity, conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson has claimed, criticizing the president’s Middle East policies.

Carlson made the remarks in response to controversial statements Trump made over the past week, including his attacks on Pope Leo XIV and posts depicting himself as a Christ-like figure.

On Monday, Trump described the US-born pontiff as “weak” and “terrible for foreign policy” after the pope called Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable” and said that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

On his show, Carlson argued that the US had launched the war against Iran “on behalf of Israel” and “at the instigation of Israel.”

“What’s the religion, honestly, of Donald Trump? It’s not Christianity, clearly. It’s Israelism. It’s the defense of Israel,” Carlson said, adding that support for the Jewish state has become a “civic religion” of the American government.

He described Trump’s social media posts as “iconography” and “attempts to send a statement about faith,” which “doesn’t actually add up to a theology.”

Carlson said Trump’s actions amounted to a “mockery of God by a temporal leader” and praised former US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who labeled the post “more than blasphemy” and “an Antichrist spirit.”

US Vice President J.D. Vance, who is Catholic, sided with Trump, arguing that it is “very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Several senior US officials have invoked religious imagery to justify the war with Iran, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”