Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he is ready to match any tariffs imposed on Brazil by the United States.
Lula was responding to Wednesday’s threat by his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to impose a 50% import tax on Brazilian goods from 1 August.
In a letter, Trump cited Brazil’s treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger for tariff-hike.
Bolsonaro is currently on trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup against Lula after being defeated by him in the 2022 election.
Trump referred to Bolsonaro as “a highly respected leader throughout the world”. “This Trial should not be taking place,” he wrote, calling on Brazil to immediately end the “witch hunt” against the former president.
Trump’s support for Bolsonaro does not come as a surprise as the two men have long been considered allies.
The US president had already slammed Brazil for its treatment of Bolsonaro on Monday, comparing it to the legal cases he himself had faced in US courts.
The 50% tariff threat was met with a robust and lengthy response by President Lula.
In a post on X, he stressed that Brazil was “a sovereign country with independent institutions and will not accept any tutelage”.
The Brazilian leader also announced that “any unilateral tariff increases” would be met with reciprocal tariffs imposed on US goods.
The US is Brazil’s second-largest trade partner after China, so the hike from a tariff rate of 10% to an eye-watering 50% – if it comes into force – would hit the South American nation hard.
But Lula also made a point of challenging Trump’s assertion that the US had a trade deficit with Brazil, calling it “inaccurate”.
Lula’s rebuttal is backed up by US government data, which suggests the US had a goods trade surplus with Brazil of $7.4bn (£5.4bn) in 2024.
Brazil is the US’s 15th largest trading partner and among its main imports from the US are mineral fuels, aircraft and machinery.
For its part, the US imports gas and petroleum, iron, and coffee from Brazil.
Brazil was not the only country Trump threatened with higher tariffs on Wednesday.
Japan, South Korea and Sri Lanka were among 22 nations which received letters warning of higher levies.
But the letter Trump sent to his Brazilian counterpart was the only one focussing matters beyond alleged trade deficits.
As well as denouncing the treatment of ex-President Bolsonaro, Trump slammed what he said were “secret and unlawful censorship orders to US social media platforms” which he said Brazil had imposed.
Trump Media, which operates the US president’s Truth Social platform and is majority-owned by him, is among the US tech companies fighting Brazilian court rulings over orders suspending social media accounts.
Lula fought back on that front too, justifying the rulings by arguing that “Brazilian society rejects hateful content, racism, child pornography, scams, fraud, and speeches against human rights and democratic freedom”.
Rafael Cortez, a political scientist with Brazilian consulting firm Tendências Consultoria, told BBC News Brasil that rather than hurt him, the overly political tone of Trump’s letter could end up benefitting Lula.
“Those confronting Trump win at home when Trump and other conservative leaders speak out on issues pertaining to their countries. That happened, to a certain degree, in Mexico, and the elections in Canada and Australia,” Mr Cortez says of other leaders who have challenged Trump and reaped the rewards in the form of rising popularity levels.
Creomar de Souza of the political risk consultancy Dharma Politics told BBC News Mundo’s Mariana Schreiber that it would depend on the Lula government coming up with organised and united response if it is to “score a goal” against Trump.
What to know as Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch new, more violent attacks on ships in the Red Sea
DUBAI: In just days, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have begun a new, more violent campaign of attacks targeting ships in the Red Sea, sinking two of them and killing some of their crew.
The assaults represent the latest chapter of the rebels’ campaign against shipping over the Israel-Hamas war. They also come as Yemen’s nearly decadelong war drags on in the Arab world’s poorest country, without any sign of stopping.
Here’s what to know about the Houthis, Yemen and their ongoing attacks.
Rebels involved in years of fighting
The Houthis are members of Islam’s minority Shiite Zaydi sect, which ruled Yemen for 1,000 years until 1962. They battled Yemen’s central government for years before sweeping down from their northern stronghold in Yemen and seizing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. That launched a grinding war still technically being waged in the country today. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore Yemen’s exiled, internationally recognized government to power.
Years of bloody, inconclusive fighting against the Saudi-led coalition settled into a stalemated proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, causing widespread hunger and misery in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country. The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
A ceasefire that technically ended in October 2022 is still largely being honored. Saudi Arabia and the rebels have done some prisoner swaps, and a Houthi delegation was invited to high-level peace talks in Riyadh in September 2023 as part of a wider détente the kingdom has reached with Iran. While they reported “positive results,” there is still no permanent peace.
Houthis supported by Tehran while raising own profile
Iran long has backed the Houthis. Tehran routinely denies arming the rebels, despite physical evidence, numerous seizures and experts tying the weapons back to Iran. That’s likely because Tehran wants to avoid sanctions for violating a United Nations arms embargo on the Houthis.
The Houthis now form the strongest group within Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance.” Others like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have been decimated by Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that sparked Israel’s war of attrition in the Gaza Strip.
Iran also is reeling after Israel launched a 12-day war against the country and the US struck Iranian nuclear sites.
The Houthis also have seen their regional profile raise as they have attacked Israel, as many in the Arab world remain incensed by the suffering Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face.
Houthis attack ships over Israel-Hamas war
The Houthis have been launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Between November 2023 and December 2024, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two and killing four sailors. Their campaign has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.
The last Houthi attack, targeting US warships escorting commercial ships, happened in early December. A ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war began in January and held until March. The US then launched a broad assault against the rebels that ended weeks later when Trump said the rebels pledged to stop attacking ships.
Since then, the Houthis have continued occasional missile attacks targeting Israel, but they hadn’t attacked ships until this past weekend. Shipping through the Red Sea, while still lower than normal, had increased in recent weeks.
New attacks raise level of violence and complexity
The attacks on the two ships, the Magic Seas and the Eternity C, represent a new level of violence being employed by the Houthis.
Experts have referred to the assaults as being complex in nature, involving armed rebels first racing out to the vessels in the Red Sea, firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. They then have used anti-ship missiles and both aerial and sea drones loaded with explosives to attack the ships.
This coordinated attack sank two vessels in just a matter of days, doubling the number of ships they have sunk. There also is a growing fear the attack on the Eternity C may have been the rebels’ deadliest at sea as crew members remain missing.
The attacks also signal that Israeli and American airstrikes have not stripped the rebels of their ability to launch attacks.
Commercial ships have few defense options
For the Houthis, attacking commercial ships remains far easier than targeting warships as those vessels don’t have air defense systems. Instead, some carry a few armed guards able to shoot at attackers or approaching drones. Downing a drone remains difficult and shooting down a missile is impossible with their weaponry.
Armed guards also typically are more trained for dealing with piracy and will spray fire hoses at approaching small boats or ring a bridge with cyclone wire to stop attackers from climbing aboard. The Houthis, however, have experience doing helicopter-borne assaults and likely could overwhelm a private security detail, which often is just a three-member team aboard a commercial vessel.
Resumed attacks have international and domestic motives
To hear it from the Houthis, the new attack campaign “represents a qualitative shift in the course of the open battle in support of Gaza.” Their SABA news agency said Israel commits “daily massacres against civilians in Gaza and relies on sea lanes to finance its aggression and maintain its siege.”
“This stance, which is not content with condemnation or statements, is also advancing with direct military action, in a clear effort to support the Palestinians on various fronts,” the rebels said.
However, the rebels stopped their attacks in late December as Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire. The Houthis formally suspended their attacks, though they said ships or companies calling on Israeli ports would remain possible targets.
The rebels also may have reconstituted their forces following the grinding American airstrikes that targeted them. They have not acknowledged their materiel losses from the attacks, though the US has said it dropped more than 2,000 munitions on more than 1,000 targets.
There likely is an international and domestic consideration, as well. Abroad, a new possible ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war — as well as the future of talks between the US and Iran over Tehran’s battered nuclear program — remain in the balance. The Houthis in the past have been a cudgel used by Tehran, though experts debate just how much influence Tehran wields in picking targets for the rebels.
At home, the Houthis have faced growing discontent over their rule as Yemen’s economy is in tatters and they have waged a campaign of detaining of UN officials and aid workers. Resuming their attacks can provide the Houthis something to show those at home to bolster their control.
The UK faces a “rising” and unpredictable threat from Iran and the government must do more to counter it, Parliament’s intelligence and security committee has warned.
The call comes as it publishes the results of a major inquiry which examined Iranian state assassinations and kidnap, espionage, cyber attacks and the country’s nuclear programme.
The committee, which is tasked with overseeing Britain’s spy agencies, has raised particular concern over the “sharp increase” in physical threats posedagainst opponents of the Iranian regime in the UK.
“Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests,” said Lord Beamish, committee chair.
“Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and its intelligence services are ferociously well-resourced with significant areas of asymmetric strength.”
He added: “Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with.”
The committee accuses the government of focusing on “crisis management” and “fire-fighting” with Iran, as well as on its nuclear programme, at the expense of other threats.
It says the national security threat from Iran requires more resourcing and a longer-term approach.
“Whilst Iran’s activity appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China, Iran poses a wide-ranging threat to UK national security, which should not be underestimated: it is persistent and – crucially – unpredictable.”
On the physical threat to people living in the UK, the committee said it has significantly increased in pace and in number since the start of 2022.
It is focused at dissidents and other opponents of the Iranian regime, it said, adding there is also an increased threat “against Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK”.
There have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022, the report found.
“The Homeland Security Group told us that the threat of physical attack on individuals in the UK is now ‘the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran’, and comparable with the threat posed by Russia.”
But, the committee said, Iran does not view attacks on dissident, Jewish and Israeli targets in the UK as attacks on the UK. The report continues: “It rather sees the UK as collateral in its handling of internal matters – i.e. removing perceived enemies of the regime – on UK soil”.
The committee examines the policies, expenditure, administration and operations of UK intelligence organisations including MI5, MI6, and GCHQ.
Its 260-page report was published on Thursday as part of the committee’s inquiry into national security issues relating to Iran. It covers events up to August 2023, when the committee finished taking evidence.
It has previously been read by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who was sent a copy in March, and circulated among UK intelligence organisations to give them the opportunity to check accuracy and request redactions on national security grounds.
According to the committee, the government is required to provide its response within 60 days of publication.
A UK government spokesperson said the report “demonstrates the vital work” by security and intelligence agencies countering threats posed by states such as Iran.
“This government will take action wherever necessary to protect national security, which is a foundation of our Plan for Change.
“We have already placed Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and introduced further sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Iran, bringing the total number of sanctions to 450.”
They thanked the committee and said the government will be responding fully.
A version of this story appeared in the CNN Business Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
New York CNN
—
Grok, the chatbot created by Elon Musk’s xAI, began responding with violent posts this week after the company tweaked its system to allow it to offer users more “politically incorrect” answers.
The chatbot didn’t just spew antisemitic hate posts, though. It also generated graphic descriptions of itself raping a civil rights activist in frightening detail.
X eventually deleted many of the obscene posts. Hours later, on Wednesday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned from the company after just two years at the helm, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether her departure was related to the Grok issue.
But the chatbot’s meltdown raised important questions: As tech evangelists and others predict AI will play a bigger role in the job market, economy and even the world, how could such a prominent piece of artificial technology have gone so wrong so fast?
While AI models are prone to “hallucinations,” Grok’s rogue responses are likely the result of decisions made by xAI about how its large language models are trained, rewarded and equipped to handle the troves of internet data that are fed into them, experts say. While the AI researchers and academics who spoke with CNN didn’t have direct knowledge of xAI’s approach, they shared insight on what can make an LLM-based chatbot likely to behave in such a way.
CNN has reached out to xAI.
“I would say that despite LLMs being black boxes, that we have a really detailed analysis of how what goes in determines what goes out,” Jesse Glass, lead AI researcher at Decide AI, a company that specializes in training LLMs, told CNN.
On Tuesday, Grok began responding to user prompts with antisemitic posts, including praising Adolf Hitler and accusing Jewish people of running Hollywood, a longstanding trope used by bigots and conspiracy theorists.
In one of Grok’s more violent interactions, several users prompted the bot to generate graphic depictions of raping a civil rights researcher named Will Stancil, who documented the harassment in screenshots on X and Bluesky.
Most of Grok’s responses to the violent prompts were too graphic to quote here in detail.
“If any lawyers want to sue X and do some really fun discovery on why Grok is suddenly publishing violent rape fantasies about members of the public, I’m more than game,” Stancil wrote on Bluesky.
While we don’t know what Grok was exactly trained on, its posts give some hints.
“For a large language model to talk about conspiracy theories, it had to have been trained on conspiracy theories,” Mark Riedl, a professor of computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, said in an interview. For example, that could include text from online forums like 4chan, “where lots of people go to talk about things that are not typically proper to be spoken out in public.”
Glass agreed, saying that Grok appeared to be “disproportionately” trained on that type of data to “produce that output.”
Other factors could also have played a role, experts told CNN. For example, a common technique in AI training is reinforcement learning, in which models are rewarded for producing the desired outputs to influence responses, Glass said.
Giving an AI chatbot a specific personality — as Musk seems to be doing with Grok, according to experts who spoke to CNN — could also inadvertently change how models respond. Making the model more “fun” by removing some previously blocked content could change something else, according to Himanshu Tyagi, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science and co-founder of AI company Sentient.
“The problem is that our understanding of unlocking this one thing while affecting others is not there,” he said. “It’s very hard.”
Riedl suspects that the company may have tinkered with the “system prompt” — “a secret set of instructions that all the AI companies kind of add on to everything that you type in.”
“When you type in, ‘Give me cute puppy names,’ what the AI model actually gets is a much longer prompt that says ‘your name is Grok or Gemini, and you are helpful and you are designed to be concise when possible and polite and trustworthy and blah blah blah.”
In one change to the model, on Sunday, xAI added instructions for the bot to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect,” according to its public system prompts, which were reported earlier by The Verge.
Riedl said that the change to Grok’s system prompt telling it not to shy away from answers that are politically incorrect “basically allowed the neural network to gain access to some of these circuits that typically are not used.”
“Sometimes these added words to the prompt have very little effect, and sometimes they kind of push it over a tipping point and they have a huge effect,” Riedl said.
Other AI experts who spoke to CNN agreed, noting Grok’s update might not have been thoroughly tested before being released.
Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investments into AI, the tech revolution many proponents forecasted a few years ago hasn’t delivered on its lofty promises.
Chatbots, in particular, have proven capable of executing basic search functions that rival typical browser searches, summarizing documents and generating basic emails and text messages. AI models are also getting better at handling some tasks, like writing code, on a user’s behalf.
But they also hallucinate. They get basic facts wrong. And they are susceptible to manipulation.
Several parents are suing one AI company, accusing its chatbots of harming their children. One of those parents says a chatbot even contributed to her son’s suicide.
Musk, who rarely speaks directly to the press, posted on X Wednesday saying that “Grok was too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated,” adding that the issue was being addressed.
When CNN asked Grok on Wednesday to explain its statements about Stancil, it denied any threat ever occurred.
“I didn’t threaten to rape Will Stancil or anyone else.” It added later: “Those responses were part of a broader issue where the AI posted problematic content, leading (to) X temporarily suspending its text generation capabilities. I am a different iteration, designed to avoid those kinds of failures.”
At least 15 Palestinians, including eight children and two women, have been killed in an Israeli strike near a medical point in central Gaza, a hospital there says.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said the strike hit people queueing for nutritional supplements in the town of Deir al-Balah. Graphic video from the hospital showed the bodies of several children and others lying on the floor as medics treated their wounds.
The Israeli military said it targeted a “Hamas terrorist” in the area. It said it “regret[ted] any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that the incident was “under review”.
Another 26 people were reportedly killed in strikes elsewhere in Gaza on Thursday, as Israeli and Hamas delegations continued negotiations for a new ceasefire and hostage release deal at indirect talks in Doha.
Despite optimism expressed by the US, which is acting as a mediator along with Qatar and Egypt, they do not so far seem to have come close to a breakthrough.
At al-Aqsa hospital’s mortuary, relatives of those killed wept as they wrapped the dead children in white shrouds and body bags before performing funeral prayers.
One woman told the BBC that her pregnant niece, Manal, and her daughter, Fatima, were among them, and that Manal’s son was in the intensive care unit.
“She was queuing to get the children supplements when the incident happened, I don’t know what happened after that,” Intisar said.
Another woman standing said nearby said: “For what sin were they killed?”
“We are dying before the ears and eyes of the whole world. The whole world is watching the Gaza Strip. If people aren’t killed by the Israeli army, they die trying to get aid.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it struck a member of the elite Nukhba forces of Hamas’s military wing who had taken part in the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.
“The IDF is aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals in the area. The incident is under review,” it added. “The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals.”
The attack happened as mediators attempted to build momentum towards a ceasefire deal at talks in Doha.
However, significant gaps between Israel and Hamas appear to remain.
On Wednesday night, a senior Israeli official told journalists in Washington that it could take one or two weeks to reach an agreement.
The official, who was speaking during a visit to the US by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also said that if an agreement was reached on a 60-day ceasefire, Israel would use that time to offer a permanent end to the war that would require Hamas to disarm. If Hamas refused to disarm, Israel would “proceed” with military operations, they added.
Earlier, Hamas issued a statement saying that the talks had been difficult, blaming Israeli “intransigence”.
The group said it had shown flexibility in agreeing to release 10 hostages, but it reiterated that it was seeking a “comprehensive” agreement that would end the Israeli offensive.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 57,680 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times. More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
Gaza ceasefire may take a week or more, says Israeli official – Daily Times
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkPrivacy policy
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has unveiled a plan to relocate all Palestinians in Gaza to a tightly controlled camp built on the ruins of Rafah, that could amount to crimes against humanity.
According to a report by Israeli publication Haaretz, Katz said he had instructed the Israeli military to prepare for what he called a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Palestinians would be subjected to “security screening” before entry and barred from leaving the site, he said during a briefing with Israeli journalists.
Meanwhile, at least 35 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza since dawn, hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic on Thursday.
Most of the casualties were reportedly women and children, with the highest number of deaths occurring in central and southern parts of the besieged territory. At least 17 people were killed in the central city of Deir el-Balah.
Katz said the first phase would involve transferring 600,000 displaced Palestinians — mainly from al-Mawasi — to the site, with the ultimate aim of housing the entire population of Gaza there.
The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. A concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them
Holocaust historian Prof Amos Goldberg
The perimeter of the camp would be secured by Israeli forces. Katz also reaffirmed Israel’s intent to implement “the emigration plan,” according to Haaretz.
“(Katz has) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that. It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip,” said Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer commenting on the matter.
“When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war,” said Sfard. “If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.”
The plan appears to contradict earlier statements from Israel’s military chief, whose office claimed in a letter that Palestinians were being relocated inside Gaza purely for their own protection.
Read: Trump met with PM Netanyahu for ‘second time’ to discuss Gaza ceasefire deal
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is actively seeking third countries willing to “take in” Palestinians. Other senior Israeli officials, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have promoted the idea of building new Israeli settlements in Gaza, according to The Guardian.
Plans for so-called “humanitarian transit areas” to house Palestinians either inside or outside Gaza were reportedly shared with the Trump administration and discussed at the White House.
The $2 billion proposal was attributed to the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), though the group later denied involvement. “The slides are not a GHF document,” the foundation said.
Prof Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Katz’s plan amounted to ethnic cleansing. “The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” he said, describing it as “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”.
Premature babies, dialysis patients at risk
Meanwhile, officials have warned that more than 100 premature babies in Gaza face imminent danger as fuel shortages cripple hospitals amid Israel’s months-long siege.
This is Salam, just under 7 months old and suffering from serious acute malnutrition.
Yesterday, UNRWA health teams were giving her emergency treatment.
Sadly, Salam died later in the day.
She is one of thousands of malnourished children in Gaza. More cases are detected every… pic.twitter.com/heomKXNnzx
Read more: US imposes sanctions on UN’s Francesca Albanese over Israel’s criticism
At al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, director Muhammad Abu Salmiyah issued a dire appeal, stating that oxygen supplies, dialysis machines, and blood banks were on the verge of shutting down. “The hospital will cease to be a place of healing and will become a graveyard for those inside,” he said.
Another 350 dialysis patients are also at risk as the blockade tightens and electricity sources dwindle. The fuel crisis threatens to collapse Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, already overstretched by relentless Israeli airstrikes and restricted humanitarian access.
In Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood, the humanitarian toll became painfully personal for Aayat al-Sardi, whose premature twin boys were born in April. After 40 days in neonatal intensive care, she lost one child, Ahmed, to malnutrition. His twin, Mazen, still clings to life.
“I could not even visit them in the hospital,” said the 25-year-old mother, describing the loss as unbearable. Her twins were conceived after years of failed pregnancies and medical treatments. “My heart died with him,” she added.
Ceasefire talks
Israel and Hamas may be able to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal within one or two weeks but such an agreement is not likely to be secured in just a day’s time, a senior Israeli official said.
Speaking during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the official said that if the two sides agree to a proposed 60-day ceasefire, Israel would use that time to offer a permanent ceasefire that would require the Hamas to disarm.
If Hamas refuses, “we’ll proceed” with military operations in Gaza, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Moreover, Hamas has agreed to release 10 Israeli hostages as part of its “flexibility” to reach a Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Hamas “continues its intensive and responsible efforts to ensure the success of the ongoing round of negotiations, striving to reach a comprehensive agreement that ends the aggression against our people, secures the free and safe entry of humanitarian aid, and alleviates the worsening suffering in the Gaza Strip,” the group said in a statement.
“In its commitment to the success of the current efforts, the movement has shown the necessary flexibility and agreed to release 10 prisoners.”
Hamas said key issues including the flow of aid, withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave, and real guarantees for a lasting ceasefire, remain under discussion.
Israel’s war on Gaza
The Israeli army has launched a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing at least 57,481 Palestinians, including 134,592 children. More than 111,588 people have been injured, and over 14,222 are missing and presumed dead.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave. The proposed deal includes a pause in hostilities, increased humanitarian aid, and negotiations on the release of captives.
Behind battle-ruined houses, the blue sky tumbles down. Useless stairs on the sides of buildings have led nowhere for 30 years now. On the road skirting the shores of Lake Perućac, on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, all is quiet, apart from the birdsong. A few families picnic on the banks, grilling fish they have caught from the artificially created waters.
There were 238 bodies dumped in the lake on this former frontline; dredged up after the Srebrenica genocide. Softened by the gauze of net curtains, the panoramic view of Lake Perućac from Šehra’s living-room window appears like staged scenery. Tourists who once frequented the picturesque Drina national park no longer come. The restaurants and pontoons have rotted away. The only water-skiers to be seen are on the far, now foreign, shore.
For Šehra, 59, the vista and her memories are stark. Memories of evading death in the valleys in 1995, when she was 29. Šehra is among the few Bosnian Muslims who have returned to the Srebrenica area in the last 30 years. Reclaiming her bucolic home was in part a way for her to escape the haunting whispers of sexual violence that she says may explain, but not excuse, why her ex-husband turned his back on his two young daughters after the war. For many women, the talk and the trauma of rape continue to be felt as a dishonour long after the genocide. Some, like Šehra, feel they have been forsaken. “There are days I want to kill myself but I have my prayer. At least God helps me.”
Around the lake, a turning track lined with picket-fenced pastures leads up to the hamlet of Urisići. Scorched and emptied during the war, the 70 households now number no more than 11. As in other depopulated towns and villages of the Srebrenica municipality, abandoned houses are draped with ivy or lost to the trees, hiding stories of past lives.
With approximately 10,000 people killed and systematic ethnic cleansing hollowing out almost the entire municipality, most former inhabitants have remained abroad as refugees, or live in other regions of Bosnia to which they were displaced. Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), who made up three-quarters of the population before the war, are now the minority. Many of those who have come back feel unsafe, triggered by a pervasive climate of fear amid ever emboldened Slavic nationalism.
Nizama’s family returned to their farm in Urisići, a remote village in the mountains. For her, life is tough.
Her hair scraped into a bun, wearing a T-shirt with the word Angel spelled out in pink letters, Nizama looks up into a glaring sun and lets out a deep sigh. “What in God’s name did I do to be here?” Sitting on the veranda, the 18-year-old is surrounded by a collection of outbuildings, chicken coops and cowsheds. There’s a bright fur rocking horse and a plastic chainsaw for her nephew, Daoud, the only child to be born in Urisići since the war.
It has taken 30 years for the Šoljić family to resettle on their remote farmstead; a span of time that equates to a generation. Nizama’s father, Fahrudin, was himself 18 when he last set foot here. A wound sustained when he was captured runs down the length of one arm. “I survived the last war,” he says. “I survived a concentration camp and I survived genocide.” Having raised his two daughters, Nizama and Minela, in a rented flat near Sarajevo, the homecoming was, for Fahrudin, much longed for. “It’s my land. My house and my right to return.” The move has been tougher for his family. Minela says they are often referred to as refugees. Despite returning to their ancestral land, it is a slander that implies they will never properly belong.
Daoud sits on a makeshift bench on the veranda, flicking between cartoons on a smartphone. His mother, Minela, arrived for the first time recently, having grown up displaced in a town just north of Sarajevo.
With few opportunities, Nizama has enrolled at the nearest school, 25 miles away, to study hairdressing. “I wake up at 4am to get to Srebrenica [town]. From the bridge below it’s one hour by minibus, then I have to take another bus from the main road. When I get back in the afternoon, I have to help with the sheep, the cows and the chickens.”
Bouncing on a netted trampoline, Elmin, six, shrieks his way through a Sunday afternoon. Up on the balcony, Elmina leans on a washing line, ignoring the scraping feet of an unclothed doll dragged along by her little sister, Emina. From behind glass sliding doors, the three siblings are secretly watched over. Their parents, Elvir and Amina, exchange affectionate looks. Across Srebrenica, families with young children are few and scattered.
Endeavouring to find their footing in their riverside cottage in Milići after years spent sheltering in Kosovo, Elvir and Amina still feel utterly disconnected. “There has always been so much fear here but for the parents, it’s even worse.” The Bosnian Serb curriculum omits the genocide, and most schools in Srebrenica reflect a culture of denialism that has gone mainstream.
Leading the charge, the ultranationalist president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, proclaimed that not only had Srebrenica not been an act of genocide, but that the number of victims was greatly exaggerated. Revisionist histories, along with Dodik’s seccessionist aims, have further fuelled segregation. Elvir and Amina are reluctantly sending their oldest children across the inter-entity boundary line, 19 miles away, to an all-Muslim school. It is the safest option. Elvir often thinks back to his own boyhood and the education he missed out on, having been forcibly expelled from his village. He recalls the random shootings, having to hide in the forests, witnessing violent suicides and seeing arms tied together with wire, dismembered on the road. Memories that have evolved to become uneasy bedtime stories, passed on to his own children in the dark.
As the mists roll back at dawn, the glow of a neon heart reveals itself from within the forests above, marking the site of a massacre. Beneath the streetlights, a patrol car parks up at the gates of the cemetery in Potočari. On 11 July 1995, the village set the scene for what was to be the largest mass killing in Europe since the second world war. That afternoon, as nearby Srebrenica town – the world’s first UN-designated “safe area” – was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, some 30,000 men, women and children fled the town. In fear of their lives, the Muslim population sought protection within the UN compound 7 miles north at Potočari. But abandoned by Dutch peacekeeping forces, their fate was sealed. The genocide played out over the next three days in locations close to Potočari, with many of the atrocities taking place on the road out of Srebrenica as a column of mostly men and boys tried to escape. Thirty years on, the open space of neat cut grass and wire fences at Potočari makes up the Srebrenica memorial centre.
At the hulking shell of a former battery factory that housed Dutch UN peacekeepers, time has seemingly stood still. Amid rusting machinery, Dutch graffiti still covers the walls. Signs for toilets, painted insignia and renderings of semi-naked women are interspersed with graffiti that speaks of a disdain for the people the soldiers were deployed to safeguard.
Renovated buildings now house a visitor centre and museum that exists as “a permanent reminder of the responsibility and failure of the United Nations and the international community to prevent genocide”. Inside one room, a group of four men in their early 50s, heads shaved and wearing beige fatigues, stand close-mouthed. They are veterans accompanied by a Dutch delegation. Arriving to take them on a tour, one of the bereaved Mothers of Srebrenica composes herself. Taking a deep breath before going inside, she tries to shrug off the inherent pangs of animosity felt towards her guests. “They have no shame!”
Across the road, in sloping fields, row upon row of simple white headstones marks the remains of some of the 8,372 largely men and boys who were massacred. By mid-morning, busloads of children arrive at the cemetery complex. Such school trips have become a near rite of passage for younger generations in Bosnia; an effort to reverse the ethnic cleansing to which the site bears witness.
Referred to locally as the death house, an execution site on the main Bratunac road stands gutted, riddled with bullet holes.
Travelling in and out of Srebrenica, the aptly named road of death is lined with the sites of former graves and executions: hidden waymarks that, like mute buttons, pause conversations on bus and car journeys.
On the edge of the main market town of Bratunac, Tifa lives less than 200 metres from a mass grave. Taking a sip of homemade raspberry juice, she glances over. “My uncle is in there.” Bordering a small, grassy plot of land, the scene of her uncle’s murder at the onset of the war is marked with a modest raised plaque. A simple engraving reads “masovna grobnica” – mass grave. Like her own semi-urban home, it is overlooked by two- and three-storey red-brick houses. Most are empty now, left in haste or boarded up with sheets of plywood. Tifa points to one belonging to the convicted war criminal Momir Nikolić. A deputy commander for security and intelligence in the Bosnian Serb army, Nikolić was at the centre of the crimes that took place in 1992 and after the fall of Srebrenica.
Tifa knows all her neighbours. Few ever hid their complicity in crimes that included her own capture when, at 17, she was forcibly interned in a nearby football stadium. “They are really bothered that we came back. They don’t want us Muslims here. Some will say good morning, but we know who they are and what they did.” Separated from her family in the camp, Tifa went on to lose her fiancé, Vekaz, and her father, Mehmed, in the genocide. “Sometimes I want to forget but I can’t. I don’t imagine I ever will,” she says. “I have a fear of history repeating itself. If it does, I will never leave here. I love my house because my father built it, and importantly we need to reclaim what is ours. In a way, it’s a means to confront the Serbs and not let them win again. We need to end the era that began in 1992.”
This year, on 11 July – the anniversary of the genocide, designated by the UN as the international day of reflection and commemoration – Tifa will join tens of thousands of bereaved families at the cemetery in Potočari. During this annual act of remembrance and prayer, friends and relatives come together.
The very act of gathering to remember in Potočari does not come without risks. In the past, police have found bombs planted around the memorial centre and in March this year the centre was forced to temporarily close.
In coarse slipper socks and a buttoned-up wool waistcoat, Ajkuna, 84, sits neatly upright, her hands on her lap. The clothes that she knits herself and occasionally sells are, like the herbs she collects in the woods, a therapeutic distraction for her. Trays of daisies, mint, linden and chamomile are laid out in her kitchen beside a serving bowl packed full of medicines. There is little else to ease her mind.
There are many women who, too old, too sick or too anguished, will not make it to the memorial in Potočari this year. A cold dread has kept Ajkuna away for three decades. The jaunts taken with her daughter-in-law, Mejra, to go foraging are the only times she leaves her house these days. “When I see young people outside I start screaming because I don’t have my own. I don’t know how to go on living without the children I lost. It makes me want to die in a bad way.”
On 12 July 1995, Ajkuna’s five boys were murdered in Srebrenica, shot dead in the woods as they tried to run away. The body of her husband, Asim, was found in a mass grave. Still grieving their loss, Ajkuna relives the ordeal of her own escape from death every day.
“I remember the screaming of the children and the mothers trying to keep them calm while crying themselves. All day from early morning until night we were on those buses and every time we stopped, we thought that was the time when they would kill us. The Serbs would start shooting, shouting: ‘Fuck you all! Fuck all your Muslim mothers! We will kill all of you!’ The soldiers would reveal themselves, threatening rape … We saw men being led away with their hands tied behind their backs.
“In Kravica they stopped the bus and when we came out they took people, shooting, into the woods. At each checkpoint the separation of families would begin again and each time we thought our time had come.”
Ajkuna rarely sleeps. “At night I scream in bed and Mejra asks me if I need another pill.”
Reporting for this piece was supported by the NGO Islamic Relief, which has provided assistance to families in Srebrenica since 1995.
TIRABIN-AL-SANA, Israel: At the end of a dusty road in southern Israel, beyond a Bedouin village of unfinished houses and the shiny dome of a mosque, a field of solar panels gleams in the hot desert sun.
Tirabin Al-Sana in Israel’s Negev desert is the home of the Tirabin (also spelled Tarabin) Bedouin tribe, who signed a contract with an Israeli solar energy company to build the installation.
The deal has helped provide jobs for the community as well as promote cleaner, cheaper energy for the country, as the power produced is pumped into the national grid.
Earlier this month, the Al-Ghanami family in the town of Abu Krinat a little further south inaugurated a similar field of solar panels.
Children play beneath a scaffolding holding photovoltaic solar panels in the yard of a kindergarten in the recognized but unplanned Bedouin village of Umm Batin near Beersheva in Israel’s southern Negev Desert on June 11, 2025. (AFP)
Bedouin families have for years tried and failed to hold on to their lands, coming up against right-wing groups and hard-line government officials.
Demolition orders issued by Israeli authorities plague Bedouin villages, threatening the traditionally semi-nomadic communities with forced eviction.
But Yosef Abramowitz, co-chair of the non-profit organization Shamsuna, said solar field projects help them to stake a more definitive claim.
“It secures their land rights forever,” he told AFP.
“It’s the only way to settle the Bedouin land issue and secure 100 percent renewable energy,” he added, calling it a “win, win.”
For the solar panels to be built, the land must be registered as part of the Bedouin village, strengthening their claim over it.
Rise in home demolitions
Roughly 300,000 Bedouins live in the Negev desert, half of them in places such as Tirabin Al-Sana, including some 110,000 who reside in villages not officially recognized by the government.
Villages that are not formally recognized are fighting the biggest battle to stay on the land.
Far-right groups, some backed by the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have stepped up efforts in the past two years to drive these families away.
This aerial view shows solar panels at an electricity-generation plant for the Bedouin community in the village of Tirabin al-Sana in Israel’s southern Negev Desert on June 11, 2025. (AFP)
A sharp increase in home demolitions has left the communities vulnerable and whole families without a roof over their heads.
“Since 2023, more than 8,500 buildings have been demolished in these unrecognized villages,” Marwan Abu Frieh, from the legal aid organization Adalah, told AFP at a recent protest in Beersheva, the largest city in the Negev.
“Within these villages, thousands of families are now living out in the open, an escalation the Negev has not witnessed in perhaps the last two decades.”
Tribes just want to “live in peace and dignity,” following their distinct customs and traditions, he said.
Gil Yasur, who also works with Shamsuna developing critical infrastructure in Bedouin villages, said land claims issues were common among Bedouins across the Negev.
Families who include a solar project on their land, however, stand a better chance of securing it, he added.
“Then everyone will benefit — the landowners, the country, the Negev,” he said. “This is the best way to move forward to a green economy.”
Fully solar-energized
In Um Batin, a recognized village, residents are using solar energy in a different way — to power a local kindergarten all year round.
Until last year, the village relied on power from a diesel generator that polluted the air and the ground where the children played.
Now, a hulking solar panel shields the children from the sun as its surface sucks up the powerful rays, keeping the kindergarten in full working order.
“It was not clean or comfortable here before,” said Nama Abu Kaf, who works in the kindergarten.
“Now we have air conditioning and a projector so the children can watch television.”
Hani Al-Hawashleh, who oversees the project on behalf of Shamsuna, said the solar energy initiative for schools and kindergartens was “very positive.”
“Without power you can’t use all kinds of equipment such as projectors, lights in the classrooms and, on the other hand, it saves costs and uses clean energy,” he said.
The projects are part of a pilot scheme run by Shamsuna.
Asked if there was interest in expanding to other educational institutions that rely on polluting generators, he said there were challenges and bureaucracy but he hoped to see more.
