Category: 2. World

On Saturday night, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intercepted and boarded the Handala, an aid ship that attempted to reach Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a grassroots international collective that has worked to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza since 2010. According to the coalition, IDF soldiers beat and choked the American labor activist Chris Smalls, who was onboard the ship. Smalls is most well-known for co-founding the Amazon Labor Union.

The Handala, which carried food, baby formula, diapers and medicine, was attempting to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza, as Palestinians there continue to starve in what UN-backed hunger experts have called a “worst-case scenario of famine” that is unfolding.

“The Freedom Flotilla Coalition confirms that upon arrival in Israeli custody, US human rights defender Chris Smalls was physically assaulted by seven uniformed individuals. They choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition wrote in a statement posted on Instagram on Tuesday morning.

“When his lawyer met with him, Chris was surrounded by six members of Israel’s special police unit. This level of force was not used against other abducted activists. We condemn this violence against Chris and demand accountability for the assault and discriminatory treatment he faced.”

Smalls, the only Black person onboard the boat, was one of 21 members of the group who were detained. Others included 19 civilians, including parliamentarians, medics and engineers, and two journalists. Jacob Berger, a Jewish American actor who shared on Instagram that Smalls was in “great spirits” after his detention – everyone else who was detained, he said, should be released on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The interception of the Handala came as more than 30 Israeli public figures called for “crippling sanctions” over Israel’s starvation of Gaza. Donald Trump said he wanted “to make sure [Gazans] get the food, every ounce of food” during a recent meeting with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.

The Handala was not the first effort by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to deliver aid to Gaza. Previous attempts, including one in June in which Greta Thunberg was arrested, were also intercepted by Israel. In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 activists setting sail for Gaza on the Mavi Marmara.

“We are calling on others around the world, definitely our countries, to live up to their obligation of enforcing international law, of protecting human rights, but also other institutions that are founded to do the same,” said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American attorney and Handala member, in an appearance on Monday on Democracy Now. “We should not be waiting for Israel to give permission for food or other humanitarian aid to enter … we need to be breaking, challenging and breaking the blockade.”

While they were onboard the flotilla, Araf said that the US government did not make contact with the seven American members of the crew, though France, Spain and Italy contacted their citizens to offer consular services after their detention. It is not yet clear if Smalls or any other American citizens have been contacted since their detention.

They were “legitimizing Israeli piracy on the high seas. And that is unacceptable to us,” she said, referring to countries that offered services following the illegal boarding in international waters.

“And that is the kind of impunity that our governments, all governments, really, have been allowing Israel to just violate international law.”

The two-day meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, which ends Tuesday, is taking place amid the latest reports that starvation and famine are taking place in Gaza, and growing global outrage at Palestinians not getting food due to Israeli policies and practices.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

At least 25 people have been killed across Ukraine in overnight and early morning Russian air strikes that hit a prison and a hospital, local officials say.

They say the deadliest attack was on the Bilenke penitentiary in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where 16 inmates were killed and more than 50 injured.

A separate Russian strike on people queuing for humanitarian aid killed five in the north-eastern Kharkiv region. Three people were killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, including a pregnant woman. Another casualty was reported elsewhere in the region.

Later on Tuesday, Donald Trump confirmed a deadline of 8 August for Russia to agree a ceasefire, or else face sweeping sanctions.

The US president had issued an ultimatum to Moscow on Monday during a visit to the UK, saying he would reduce the 50-day deadline previously issued to Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.

In response to the overnight strikes on Ukraine, Zelensky said Russia “must be forced to stop the killings and make peace” via “tough” sanctions.

In a statement on Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s justice ministry said four glide bombs hit the Bilenke penitentiary shortly before midnight, destroying the dining hall, administrative headquarters and quarantine area.

It said that more than 50 people were injured, and 44 of them had to be taken to hospital.

The ministry had earlier reported 17 inmates were killed but later amended the death toll.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner said attacking a prison was a gross violation of humanitarian law as people in detention did not lose their right to life and protection.

Russian forces have frequently targeted the front-line region of Zaporizhzhia since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

It is one of four south-eastern regions in Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed since 2022, although Moscow does not fully control any of them.

In a separate Russian rocket attack on Tuesday morning, five people were killed in the village of Novoplatonivka, Kharkiv region, the local authorities said.

The villagers had gathered near a local shop to get humanitarian aid, regional police chief Petro Tokar told Ukraine’s Suspilne TV channel.

Ukraine’s officials later released photos showing bodies lying near a destroyed shop.

Another Russian rocket strike hit a hospital in Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk region, killing three people.

A 23-year-old pregnant woman named Diana was among the casualties there, President Zelensky said.

In a statement, he accused Russia of killing Ukrainians when a ceasefire “could have long been in place”.

Earlier in July, Trump set a 50-day deadline for the Kremlin to reach a truce with Kyiv or risk economic penalties, but the warning has not halted Russia’s barrage of strikes.

The wave of attacks came as Russia said its troops were pushing deeper into Ukrainian territory.

At the weekend, Moscow said its forces had seized the village of Maliivka, weeks after claiming control over their first village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has rejected Russia’s claims.

Meanwhile, in Russia, officials said Ukraine had launched dozens of drones overnight in the southern Rostov region, killing one person in their car in the town of Salsk and setting fire to a goods train.

Another person was reported killed in their car in the border region of Belgorod and his wife was wounded.

An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian teacher who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, according to the Palestinian education ministry and an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene of the shooting.

No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham said on X that a settler shot Odeh Hathaleen in the lungs in Umm Al-Khair village in the occupied West Bank.

Residents allege the shooter was Yinon Levy, who is sanctioned by the UK.

Attorney Avichai Hajbi said he was representing a resident “who felt his life was in danger, was forced to fire his weapon into the air” after residents were “attacked by an Arab mob, along with foreign activists, with stones and violence”.

Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist at the scene, told the BBC that at about 17:20 local time (15:20 BST) on Monday, a bulldozer from a nearby Israeli settlement was driven through private Palestinian land, crushing a sewage pipe, multiple olive trees and two fences.

Berner-Kadish and other activists, including Hathaleen’s cousin Ahmad, ran to block the bulldozer. The activist said the driver hit Ahmad in the neck and shoulder with a drill that extended from the bulldozer, with his footage capturing Ahmad falling to the ground. Berner-Kadish did not believe Levy was driving.

While attending to Ahmad’s injuries, Berner-Kadish heard a pop. Running back to the village to get water, he saw Hathaleen lying bleeding from a gunshot wound and Levy, the only settler he saw, holding a gun.

In a video believed to be filmed by a relative of Hathaleen and posted on social media, a man identified as Levy is seen holding a pistol with a bulldozer behind him, as men yell at him. Levy pushes at one man, who pushes back. Levy then raises his pistol and shoots ahead of him, then again into the air.

The clip cuts off when the person filming turns around to run away as women are heard screaming.

The footage does not show what or who the shots hit, if anything, and whether anyone else was shooting. There are no other settlers visible.

Israeli police said it was investigating the incident in the area of Carmel, an Israeli settlement near Umm Al-Khair.

“As a result of the incident, a Palestinian man was pronounced deceased. His exact involvement is under investigation,” police told the BBC.

Police said on Tuesday morning they had detained an Israeli citizen for questioning. Israeli media later reported Levy was released on house arrest.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also detained five Palestinians on suspicion of involvement in the incident, along with two foreign tourists who were present. Berner-Kadish said on Tuesday evening they were still detained.

The activist, who began visiting the village in 2021, said Hathaleen was “one of my best friends in the world” and the two were days away from constructing a football field in the village. He added that Hathaleen was a “warm and loving” father of three young children.

The Palestinian education ministry said Hathaleen was a teacher at a local secondary school.

US congresswoman Lateefah Simon, a Democrat from California, said she was “heartbroken” over the killing of Hathaleen. He and his cousin, “both holding valid visas”, were detained and deported from San Francisco airport last month while travelling for a multicultural faith dialogue, she said.

Abraham said Hathaleen had helped film No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar winner for best documentary feature that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to allow the demolition of homes and expulsion of more than 1,000 villagers in 2022.

Eliram Azulai, the chairman of the local Israeli Mount Hebron Regional Council, said in response to Monday’s incident that they had warned “and demanded the creation of security zones around the communities, and today we witnessed first-hand the danger posed by illegal construction in the area”.

Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024, along with others, because he “used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”.

He denied the allegations to the BBC last year.

He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration, along with others, last year, but President Donald Trump lifted those sanctions.

Gilad Kariv, a member of Israel’s Knesset from the Democrats party, said on X in response to the video that “in the territories, armed Jewish militias operate unchecked”.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.

Settlement expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition.

Settler violence, which has also been on the rise for years, has surged since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

The UN documented at least 27 attacks by settlers against Palestinians that resulted in property damage, casualties or both, between 15 and 21 July, in the West Bank.

The UN says at least 948 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, 15 by Israeli settlers, and another 10 by either Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the war.

At least 52 Israelis have also been killed in Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank over the same period.

US and Chinese negotiators have agreed in principle to push back the deadline for escalating tariffs, although America’s representatives said any extension would need Donald Trump’s approval.

Officials from both sides said after two days of talks in Stockholm that while had failed to find a resolution across the many areas of dispute they had agreed to extend a pause due to run out on 12 August.

Beijing’s top trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, said the extension of a truce struck in mid-May would allow for further talks, without specifying when and for how long the latest pause would run.

However, the US trade representative Jamieson Greer stressed that President Trump would have the “final call” on any extension.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, joined the talks in the Swedish capital to give weight to the US negotiating team, but appeared unable to break the deadlock.

Bessent said he had told Chinese officials that, given US secondary tariff legislation on sanctioned Russian oil, China could face high tariffs if Beijing continued with its Russian oil purchases.

China has taken an aggressive stance in response to Trump’s threatened border taxes, retaliating with tariffs of its own on US goods and blocking the sale of vital rare earth metals and components used by American defence and hi-tech manufacturers.

Trump is on course to impose extra tariffs on Mexico and Canada from Friday, barring last-minute deals. Vietnam, Cambodia and several other south-east Asian countries are also lobbying for extensions to talks to head off a rise in US tariffs.

Negotiations between White House representatives and trading partners threatened with high tariffs have often proved to be drawn out. The EU’s trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, spent more than 200 hours negotiating before the US agreed to reduce a planned 30% tariff to 15% on EU exports to the US in a deal announced on Sunday.

Pascal Lamy, a former director general of the World Trade Organization, said many of the trade agreements announced by the White House were light on detail and needed further negotiation, leading to further uncertainty.

He said the deal struck between the US and EU was “not half-baked, but maybe just two-thirds baked, leaving much more to be discussed and agreed”.

Underlining the stakes, the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday upgraded its global growth forecast to 3% from an estimate in April of 2.8% after the scaling back of the worst Trump trade threats. However, it flagged a potential rebound in tariff rates as a big risk.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to raise tariffs on Indian imports as high as 25% if the allied nations cannot complete a long-sought trade agreement.

“They are going to pay 25%,” Trump said.

When asked by a reporter if India would pay tariffs of 20% to 25%, Trump said, “Yeah, I think so. India has been – they’re my friends.”

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC Monday that an elusive India trade agreement would require more discussion between the two countries.

“They have expressed strong interest in opening portions of their market, we of course are willing to continue talking to them,” Greer said. “But I think we need some more negotiations on that with our Indian friends to see how ambitious they want to be.”

Trump in recent trade agreements has doubled down on countries opening up previously closed markets to US goods. But neither side has highlighted particular sticking points, and India’s commerce minister last week sounded an optimistic tone about the chance of reaching an agreement with the United States before Trump’s self-imposed August 1 deadline.

Although Trump has not yet threatened India with a letter setting a new tariff, as he has done for more than a dozen other trading partners, Trump had set the tariff on Indian goods imported to the United States at 26% on April 2 before pausing those “reciprocal” levies.

Trump has called America’s trade relationship with India “very tough.” He has criticized India as the US goods trade deficit with that nation bas ballooned, doubling over the past decade as trade between the two countries has increased. Trump has also frequently complained about India’s high tariffs.

“They charge more tariffs than any other country,” Trump said on February 13, hours before he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump later mentioned that he told Modi when he met with him, “You’re not treating us right.”

But the White House has taken particular issue with India’s so-called non-tariff trade barriers, including taxes on digital services. The Trump administration has also criticized India for restrictive regulations on foreign imports, including what it calls “uniquely burdensome” testing requirements.

Last year, the US imported $87 billion worth of goods from India, according to Commerce Department data. Meanwhile, India imported $42 billion worth of goods from the US. The top goods the US received from India last year included pharmaceuticals; communications equipment, such as smartphones; and apparel.

Trump and his administration for months have said a deal with India was nearly done. In mid-May, Trump claimed that India had agreed to levy zero tariffs on US exports – a claim that India immediately rebutted.

“India is the highest — one of the highest tariff nations in the world. It’s very hard to sell into India, and they’ve offered us a deal where, basically, they’re willing to literally charge us no tariff,” Trump said May 15 during a roundtable with business leaders in Doha, Qatar.

But India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, later called the announcement “premature.” He said nothing had been decided, calling negotiations between New Delhi and Washington “complicated” and “intricate.”

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald contributed to this report.

PM says Israel must take major steps in coming weeks or the UK will make its move ahead of UN General Assembly in September.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told his cabinet that the United Kingdom will recognise the state of Palestine by September unless Israel takes “substantive steps” to end its war on Gaza and commits to a lasting peace process.

According to a government statement issued after an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Starmer said the move could come before the United Nations General Assembly in New York unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire, halts plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and supports a political path towards a two-state solution.

“[Starmer] reiterated that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas and that our demands on Hamas remain, that they must release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, accept that they will play no role in the government of Gaza, and disarm,” the statement added.

Starmer interrupted ministers’ summer holidays to discuss a draft European-led peace initiative and plans to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, where the UN has warned of looming famine.

While past UK governments have supported Palestinian statehood “when the time is right”, none has publicly tied it to a specific deadline or laid out preconditions so explicitly.

Israel lashed out at the UK following the announcement, calling it a “reward for Hamas” that would only undermine diplomatic efforts to end the war on Gaza.

In a statement posted on X, Israel’s Foreign Ministry claimed the UK’s move would damage any chance of a ceasefire. Israel broke the last negotiated ceasefire in March.

Starmer informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the plan in a phone call before making it public, Reuters reported. Details of the conversation have not been disclosed.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has denied having any talks with Starmer about Britain’s recognition plans.

“We never did discuss it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.

‘The right time’

The proposal, backed by growing voices within Starmer’s own Labour Party, would mark a major shift in the UK’s position, as successive governments have long delayed recognition, citing the need for “the right time”.

With pressure mounting from within Starmer’s own party, his position appears to have shifted. More than half of Labour’s backbench MPs have signed a letter urging the government to formally recognise a Palestinian state as leverage to push Israel towards peace.

Speaking to reporters, Starmer defended the timing and conditions of the announcement, saying the decision was driven by the “intolerable situation” in Gaza and a fear that the two-state solution was slipping out of reach.

“This is intended to further that cause,” he said. “It’s done now because I’m particularly concerned that the idea of a two-state solution is reducing and feels further away today than it has for many years.”

He added that recognition of Palestine would be part of an eight-point peace plan the UK has been developing with European partners. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said France would formally recognise Palestine as a state, becoming the largest and most influential European nation to do so. European Union members Norway, Spain and the Republic of Ireland have previously said they recognise the State of Palestine.

Labour MP Sarah Champion, who organised the letter to Starmer, said there will never be a perfect moment to recognise Palestinian statehood, but warned this might be the last chance.

“What we do have, however, is the perfect storm to prevent a two-state solution ever happening,” she said. “It is now or never if we believe in Palestinians’ right to recognition.”