United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward, accompanied by other E3 members German Ambassador Ricklef Beutin and Deputy French Ambassador Jay Dharmadhikari, speaks to members of the press about Iran and nuclear weapons at UN Headquarters in New York City, US, August 29, 2025. — Reuters
UK’s envoy Barbara says ‘our asks were fair and realistic’.
Iran however, showed no seriousness, says Barbara.
Offer “full of unrealistic preconditions”, says Iran’s envoy.
UNITED NATIONS: Britain, France and Germany are pressing Iran to take a deal that would hold off fresh UN sanctions.
The three European powers said that the offer gives Tehran more time for talks on its nuclear programme, but only if it allows inspectors back in and eases Western fears about uranium stockpiles.
UN envoys for the three countries – known as the E3 – issued a joint statement before a closed-door Security Council meeting, a day after they launched a 30-day process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme.
The E3 offered to delay reinstating sanctions – known as snapback – for up to six months if Iran restored access for UN nuclear inspectors, addressed concerns about its stock of enriched uranium, and engaged in talks with the United States.
“Our asks were fair and realistic,” said Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward, who read the statement. “However, as of today, Iran has shown no indication that it is serious about meeting them.”
“We urge Iran to reconsider this position, to reach an agreement based on our offer, and to help create the space for a diplomatic solution to this issue for the long term,” she said, with her German and French counterparts standing next to her.
In response, Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the E3 offer was “full of unrealistic preconditions”.
“They are demanding conditions that should be the outcome of negotiations, not the starting point, and they know these demands cannot be met,” he told reporters.
Iravani said the E3 should instead back “a short, unconditional technical extension of Resolution 2231”, which enshrines a 2015 nuclear deal that lifted UN and Western sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.
Sino-Russian draft
Russia and China have proposed a draft UN Security Council resolution that would extend the 2015 deal for six months and urge all parties to immediately resume negotiations. But they have not yet asked for a vote.
The pair, strategic allies of Iran, have removed controversial language from the draft – which they initially proposed on Sunday – that would have blocked the E3 from reimposing UN sanctions on Iran.
Iravani described the Russian and Chinese draft resolution as a practical step to give diplomacy more time. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, China or Russia.
UN nuclear inspectors have returned to Iran for the first time since it suspended cooperation with them after attacks in June on its nuclear sites by Israel and the United States. But Iran has not yet reached an agreement on how it would resume full work with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The protesters say locals are being priced out of central Mexico City
The timing of the first of several recent anti-gentrification protests in Mexico City was no coincidence – 4 July, US Independence Day.
Demonstrators gathered in Parque México in Condesa district – the epicentre of gentrification in the Mexican capital – to protest over a range of grievances.
Most were angry at exorbitant rent hikes, unregulated holiday lettings, and the endless influx of Americans and Europeans into the city’s trendy neighbourhoods like Condesa, Roma and La Juárez, forcing out long-term residents.
In Condesa alone, estimates suggest that as many as one in five homes is now a short-term let or a tourist dwelling.
Others also cited more prosaic changes, like restaurant menus in English, or milder hot sauces at the taco stands to cater for sensitive foreign palates.
But as it moved through the gentrified streets, the initially peaceful protest turned ugly.
Radical demonstrators attacked coffee shops and boutique stores aimed at tourists, smashing windows, intimidating customers, spraying graffiti and chanting “Fuera Gringo!”, meaning “Gringos Out!”.
At her next daily press conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the violence as “xenophobic”.
“No matter how legitimate the cause, as is the case with gentrification, the demand cannot be to simply say ‘Get out!’ to people of other nationalities inside our country,” she said.
Masked radicals and agitators aside though, the motivation for most people who turned out on 4 July was stories like Erika Aguilar’s.
After more than 45 years of her family renting the same Mexico City apartment, the beginning of the end came with a knock at the door in 2017.
Long-term residents of the Prim Building, a 1920s architectural gem located in La Juárez district, they were visited by officials clutching eviction papers.
Erika, the eldest daughter, recalls the shocking news: “They came to every apartment in the building and told us we had until the end of the month to vacate the premises, as they weren’t going to renew our rental contracts.
“You can imagine my mother’s face,” adds Erika, her voice momentarily wavering. “She’d lived here since 1977.”
The owners were selling to a real estate company. But they gave the residents a final, albeit unrealistic offer.
“They told us that if we could raise 53m pesos ($2.9m; £2.1m) in two weeks, we could keep the building,” she remembers with a hollow laugh.
“It’s a fortune! New apartments were available for around one to 1.5m pesos ($50,000 to $80,000) back then.”
Today, her old home is covered by tarpaulin and scaffolding, as a construction team converts it into luxury “one, two and three-bed apartments designed for short and medium-term rentals”, boasts the company’s website.
“It’s not a construction for people like me,” Erika – a newspaper layout designer – comments ruefully. “It’s for short-term letting in dollars. In fact, before we were forced out, we’d already started to see rents being charged in dollars in some buildings here.”
Erika Aguilar and her family now have to travel for two hours to get into central Mexico City
Erika and her family now live so far out of the city centre, they are officially in the neighbouring state, almost two hours away by public transport. It is what activist Sergio González refers to as “losing the right of centrality, with everything that entails”.
His group has recorded more than 4,000 cases of “forced displacement of residents with roots” from La Juárez district over the past decade. He was one of them.
“We are facing what we call an urban war,” he says at one of the subsequent anti-gentrifications protests held after 4 July.
“What’s in dispute is the ground itself – who does and who doesn’t have rights to this ground.” Most of the residents forced out of his neighbourhood were unable to stay in the city, he says. “They’ve lost rights which are protected under the city’s constitution.
“The first apartment I rented here cost around 4,000 pesos a month in 2007,” Sergio explains. “Today, that same apartment costs more than 10 times as much. It’s an outrage. It’s pure speculation.”
In face of the growing anger, the mayor of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, unveiled a 14-point plan intended to regulate rent prices, protect long-term residents, and build new social housing at affordable prices.
But for Sergio, and thousands like him, the mayor’s plan came too late. He believes the administration needs to do more to tackle gentrification in Mexico at its core.
“We have a local and federal government which continues to promote a neoliberal economic model, that hasn’t changed,” Sergio argues.
“For as much as they have increased the social security safety net for people, which personally I think is very good, that hasn’t changed the economic paradigm by which they govern.”
He called the mayor’s measures “palliative”, and a case of “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted”.
Getty Images
Recent protests against gentrification in Mexico City have led to shops being attacked
Claudia Sheinbaum’s critics say she failed to meaningfully tackle the issue when she was the capital’s mayor and, in fact, actively enticed foreigners to resettle in Mexico City by signing a partnership agreement with Airbnb to boost tourism and digital nomadism in 2022.
Erika points the finger of blame at a range of people for her family’s upheaval – the building’s former owners for selling to a real estate development company, the city government for not protecting long-term residents, even the tenants themselves for failing to act sooner over the creeping gentrification taking place around them.
However, she does not particularly blame the foreigners who have flocked to Mexico in their droves, particularly around the coronavirus pandemic. “If I had the means to live better elsewhere, I’d probably do it too,” she reasons, “and tourism has been good for Mexico, it’s a source of income.”
Yet plenty of others, including many on the recent marches, do blame the recent American and European arrivals – at least in part. They accuse them of being tone deaf to Mexican customs, of failing to learn Spanish or, in many cases, even pay taxes.
The wave of well-heeled Americans heading south feels particularly galling to some when placed in contrast with the Trump administration’s harsh treatment of Mexican and other immigrants in the US. Immigration is a problem when travelling from south to north yet apparently fine in the opposite direction, argue activists.
Back at the site of the 4 July protest, a wide esplanade at Parque México, the graffiti calling for “Yankees Out!” has been whitewashed, and the early-morning boxing and salsa classes continue unabated, often in English rather than Spanish.
Given the cost of living and the polarised politics in the US, the draw of the leafy streets of Condesa is obvious.
“It’s quiet, walkable, the park obviously is a great draw for people. It’s peaceful. We’ve really enjoyed it,” says Richard Alsobrooks during a short trip to Mexico City with his wife, Alexis, from Portland, Oregon.
As they walk through the Mexican capital, they admit to having half a mind to resettle here one day. “Obviously we don’t want to contribute to gentrification,” says Alexis, acknowledging the extent of the problem.
“But you need to have a good job in the US, and obviously the dollar goes a lot further here. So, I can understand the appeal – especially for those who can work remotely.”
Richard, who works for a major US sportswear company, says “the cost of living in America is too high”, and too often predicated around the idea of working until your 70s.
Both think, though, it is possible to relocate in the right way. “If you treat those around you with respect and try to be part of the community, that goes a lot further than trying to make somewhere your own,” says Richard.
“Exactly,” agrees Alexis. “Learn the language. Pay your taxes!”
Yet the speed of change in Mexico City over the past decade has left casualties.
American tourists Alexis and Richard Alsobrooks say they can see the appeal of moving to Mexico City
Erika’s family life has spun on its axis in a matter of months, and her mother has struggled with depression. As we wander through her former neighbourhood streets in La Juárez, the memories come flooding back.
“That was a great bar called La Alegría, over there was the tortillería [tortilla shop], the tlapalería [hardware shop], I used to buy candies in that place when I was little,” says Erika pointing to another shop.
“Most of all I miss the people, the community. There’s hardly any families or children here anymore.”
Most of those small businesses are gone, replaced by hip cafes and expensive eateries.
“I think the soul of La Juárez has died a bit,” she laments. “It’s like you’ve been living in a forest, and gradually the trees are uprooted and then suddenly you realise you’re living in a desert.”
Enforced disappearance inflicts profound suffering on victims and violates their right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment Organization of American States
Missing but never forgotten: Stories of the disappeared International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Enforced disappearance inflicts profound suffering on victims and violates their right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment The Council of Europe
37 years on, victims of thousands of enforced disappearances still await justice in IIOJK Kashmir Media Service
Egyptian authorities have detained dozens of teenage TikTok influencers in recent weeks, accusing them of offences ranging from violating family values to laundering money.
Police have announced multiple arrests, while prosecutors say at least 10 cases of alleged unlawful financial gains are under investigation. Travel bans, asset freezes, and the confiscation of devices have also been imposed.
Critics argue the crackdown is part of a broader effort to police speech and tighten state control in a country where social media has long served as one of the few alternatives to heavily state-influenced media.
Many of those detained were children during the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Lawyers say vague indecency laws give authorities wide latitude, allowing them to scour old posts for material deemed unlawful and then charge influencers with financial crimes.
A star detained
One of the most prominent detainees is 19-year-old Mariam Ayman, known online as Suzy El Ordonia, who has 9.4 million followers. Arrested on August 2, she faces charges of distributing indecent content and laundering 15 million Egyptian pounds ($300,000).
The Interior Ministry said she was arrested after complaints about her posts. In a final video before her detention, she acknowledged controversy over her content but insisted she never intended harm.
“Egyptians don’t get arrested just because they appear on TikTok,” she said.
Her lawyer, Marawan al-Gindy, said indecency laws were being applied inconsistently.
“There is a law that criminalises indecent acts, but what we need is consistent application and defined rules, not just for TikTok, for all platforms.”
Path to fame
Like many young Egyptians, Suzy began by posting casual videos of daily life and makeup routines. Her popularity skyrocketed after a viral livestream in which she joked with her father, a bus conductor, sparking a nationwide catchphrase.
She later shared videos of family life, travels, and her sister with a disability, helping break stigma. But even lighthearted clips, critics say, can highlight social hardships and be construed as veiled criticism of the state.
Shortly after Suzy appeared on a podcast describing her dreams of improving her family’s life, the interviewer, Mohamed Abdel Aaty, was also arrested.
Rights groups alarmed
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemned what it called an “aggressive security campaign” based on vague morality provisions in the 2018 cybercrime law, which criminalises violating “principles or family values in Egyptian society.”
EIPR lawyer Lobna Darwish said the law is so broad that TikTokkers have been prosecuted for content no different from mainstream television. The group has tracked at least 151 people charged under the law in more than 109 cases over the past five years.
Authorities have also encouraged citizens to report “immoral” content, with the Interior Ministry itself running a TikTok account that comments on videos urging compliance with moral standards.
The campaign has widened beyond young women to include people with dissenting religious views or LGBT Egyptians. In some cases, leaked private content has been used to justify investigations.
Money and Morality
TikTok says it removes videos that violate community guidelines, with more than 2.9 million taken down from Egypt in the latest quarter. The company declined Reuters’ request for comment.
Social media adviser Ramy Abdel Aziz said TikTok creators in Egypt can earn about $1.20 per thousand views — far less than in the United States, but still significant in a low-wage economy.
Financial analyst Tamer Abdul Aziz questioned whether content creators should be the focus of money-laundering probes.
“If there’s a crime, you look at the owner or the financial flows, not the performers,” he said.
Ilan Weiss died defending Kibbutz Beeri on the day Hamas attacked
The body of Israeli hostage Ilan Weiss has been recovered in an operation in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military has announced.
Weiss, 56, was killed during Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
The remains of a second hostage, whose identity has not been released yet, were also recovered, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.
Israel launched a massive offensive in Gaza following the attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to the territory as hostages.
At least 63,025 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Ilan Weiss was killed while defending Kibbutz Beeri on the day of the attack. His body was taken to Gaza.
Weiss’s wife, Shiri, and daughter, Noga, were taken hostage by Hamas on the same day. They were released during a temporary ceasefire in November 2023.
“Ilan showed courage and noble spirit when he fought the terrorists on that dark day,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, before praising Weiss’s family’s “extraordinary strength in their struggle for his return”.
After the latest announcement, 48 hostages remain in Gaza – 20 of whom Israel believes are still alive.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing strong domestic pressure to agree a deal that would enable the return of all hostages still in captivity. Huge protests have been held demanding an end to the war.
However Israel is pushing ahead with its plan to take over Gaza City and eventually establish control over the entire Strip. Netanyahu argues the defeat of Hamas will secure the release of the hostages.
Western countries – and the UN – have warned that an operation in an area of Gaza where more than a million people live would have devastating consequences.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said the military was operating with great intensity on the outskirts of Gaza City and would “deepen our strikes”.
The IDF also said a scheduled pause in military action which had been due to come into effect at 10:00 (07:00 GMT) would not apply to Gaza City.
later on Friday, Hamas warned that the planned Gaza City offensive would subject hostages in the area to the “same risks” as those faced by the group’s fighters.
“We will take care of the prisoners the best we can, and they will be with our fighters in the combat and confrontation zones, subjected to the same risks and the same living conditions,” the spokesperson for its armed wing said.
The health ministry said Israeli fire across the besieged territory killed 59 people on Friday. Footage filmed by the Reuters news agency showed a line of bodies in white bags outside Shifa hospital in Gaza City as relatives grieved nearby.
Reuters
Residents of Gaza City have been fleeing ahead of the expected Israeli operation there
“What is the reason? Why did they strike them? Let them tell us, what did they do while they were sleeping? What did a three-year-old child do?” Manal Sahweil, a relative of people killed in an airstrike, said to Reuters.
A further five people including two children died from malnutrition in Gaza, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths to 322, the health ministry said.
Last week, a UN-backed body, which monitors hunger levels around the world, raised its food insecurity status in parts of Gaza to the highest and most severe – confirming famine for the first time. Israel denies there is starvation in the territory.
Since 14 August, the day the offensive was announced, about 20,000 people have been displaced to the south from Gaza City in addition to about 40,000 moving further north, according the UN’s humanitarian affairs office.
Most of Gaza’s population has been repeatedly displaced. More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed and the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed.
Former Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan will lead the Pakistani delegation aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, according to posts from his social media account on Friday.
Earlier this month, it was announced that Pakistan would be joining the Global Sumud Flotilla to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, according to a post on Instagram by the Pak-Palestine Forum, a platform aiming to advance support for the Palestinian cause.
According to its website, the flotilla is a “coordinated, nonviolent fleet of mostly small vessels sailing from ports across the Mediterranean to break the Israeli occupation’s illegal siege on Gaza”.
Reuters reports that dozens of boats carrying aid will depart Spain and Tunisia and set sail for the Gaza Strip. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and Portuguese left-wing politician Mariana Mortagua are among hundreds of people from 44 countries participating in the flotilla. Sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic.
Among the participants is a five-member delegation from Pakistan, led by former senator Khan.
In comments to Dawn.com, the former senator said that the flotilla — the largest civilian aid mission in history — will depart the Tunisian capital on September 4.
“We will be trained on the vessel and the journey from September 1 to 3 in Tunis,” the ex-senator said. “There will be over 100 ships from over 50 countries … this is the biggest humanitarian operation led by civilians,” he said.
“This flotilla is made up of vessels from four different coalitions. One of them, the Sumud Nasantra, includes delegations from the Philippines, Thailand, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, which I am leading,” he added.
Other coalitions participating in the flotilla include the Maghreb Sumud Flotilla, Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Global Movement to Gaza.
“Europe’s Freedom Flotilla will depart from Barcelona, Spain, on September 1,” Khan said. “We are further away, so we will depart on September 4 and converge with the other vessels in the Mediterranean on September 5. We will then travel to Gaza via a sea route.”
The former senator emphasised that the flotilla is legal, nonviolent and peaceful.
“It is legal because we will be travelling from international waters, from which we will transition to Palestinian waters, so we are not coming into contact with Israel,” he explained. “We are only carrying food and water.
“We need to break the blockade, establish a humanitarian assistance corridor and stand up against the genocide,” Khan said. “These are our goals.”
Khan noted that he was the only member of the delegation to arrive in Tunis, as the remainder of the delegation are struggling to obtain visas.
“At the moment, I am alone; however, I am trying to help group members obtain visas. They are four men, none of whom are prominent political figures,” he explained.
In a Facebook post, the ex-senator said he had a meeting with the Pakistani ambassador in Tunisia, who him assured of full cooperation.
When asked about the difficulties or even consequences of embarking on this journey to Gaza, the former senator painted three scenarios.
“There are three options. One is that we reach Gaza successfully and are able to break the blockade and show the world what is taking place there,” Khan said. “Another possibility is that they (Israel) could arrest and deport us.”
The former senator could not rule out the possibility of death, recalling that in the past, Israel attacked and killed those who attempted to challenge their stranglehold on the besieged enclave.
“We are putting ourselves at risk so that the world turns its attention to Gaza and it is moved to stop the genocide going on,” he said.
This flotilla is the latest attempt by activists to break Tel Aviv’s blockage of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s previous attempts, the Handala and Madleen, ended in the detention and deportation of the volunteers on board.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed over 63,000 people and injured 157,951, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The United Nations warned last week that with Israeli forces blocking aid, half a million people face “catastrophic hunger” in Gaza, with famine conditions likely to spread further across the Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued its bombardment after approving a plan to seize control of Gaza City, calling it the “last bastion of Hamas.”
Turkey’s top diplomat said Friday that Ankara had closed its ports and airspace to Israeli ships and planes, with a diplomatic source telling AFP the ban applied to “official” flights.
Ties between Turkey and Israel have been shattered by Israel’s war in Gaza, with Ankara accusing Israel of committing “genocide” in the tiny Palestinian territory — a term roundly rejected by Israel — and suspending all trade ties in May last year.
“We have closed our ports to Israeli ships. We do not allow Turkish ships to go to Israeli ports…. We do not allow container ships carrying weapons and ammunition to Israel to enter our ports, nor do we allow their aircraft to enter our airspace,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told lawmakers in a televised address.
Read More: Israel pressures Gaza as Trump eyes post-war plan
Asked for clarification about the minister’s remarks, a Turkish diplomatic source said its airspace was “closed to all aircraft carrying weapons (to Israel) and to Israel’s official flights”.
It was not immediately clear when the airspace restrictions were put in place.
In November, Turkey refused to let the Israeli president’s plane cross its airspace, forcing him to cancel a planned visit to the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan.
And in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a visit to Baku after Ankara reportedly refused overflight rights.
On Monday ZIM, Israel’s biggest shipping firm, said it had been informed that under new regulations passed by Ankara on August 22, “vessels that are either owned, managed or operated by an entity related to Israel will not be permitted to berth in Turkish ports”.
The information was made public in a filing to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in which ZIM warned the new regulation was expected to “negatively impact on the company’s financial and operational results”.
The ban also extended to other ships carrying military cargo destined for Israel, it said.
“Separately.. vessels that are carrying military cargo destined to Israel will not be permitted to berth in Turkish ports; in addition, Turkish-flagged vessels will be prohibited from berthing in Israeli ports.”
Fidan’s remarks were the first public acknowledgement of the ban.
Also Read: UN staff urge rights chief to label Gaza war as genocide
“No other country has cut off trade with Israel,” he told Turkish lawmakers at an emergency session on the Gaza crisis.
Turkish officials have repeatedly insisted that all trade ties with Israel have been cut, vowing there would be no normalisation as long as the Gaza war continues.
But some Turkish opposition figures have accused Ankara of allowing trade to continue, notably by allowing oil shipments from Azerbaijan to pass through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline running through Turkey — claims dismissed by Turkey’s energy ministry as “completely unfounded”.
Although Azerbaijan has long been one of Israel’s main oil suppliers, data published on its state customs website this year no longer showed Israel as one of the countries that purchase oil from Baku, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported earlier this year.
