NEWS

More than two years ago, Gaza resident Hanin Muhammad accompanied by her 39-year-old sister Sabreen, a kidney transplant recipient, was flown to the Iraqi capital Baghdad for medical treatment. But Muhammad has since been confined to the Private Nursing Home Hospital inside Baghdad’s Medical City complex, thousands of miles away from her home in Gaza, as her travel documents have been confiscated by Iraqi authorities.

“My six children are in Gaza, and I am entering my third year without seeing them,” 40-year-old Muhammad told Al Jazeera.

Her family home in Rafah was destroyed by Israeli forces, forcing her children to be displaced into makeshift tents located between Rafah and Khan Younis.

“I check on them through other people because they lack internet connection. I am begging anyone to intervene so we can get back to Egypt, register, and see our children,” she said. Currently, Palestinians can go in and out of Gaza only using the Rafah crossing, which opens into Egypt.

Muhammad, who travelled to Iraq as a medical companion to her sister, is part of a forgotten cohort of 46 Palestinians evacuated to Iraq, comprising 21 patients and 25 family escorts.

According to health authorities tracking the group, the clinical breakdown of the patients highlights the severity of their conditions, which include five oncology patients, four suffering from blood disorders, one cardiac patient, one kidney disease patient, and 10 patients wounded in the ongoing genocidal war that has killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 172,000.

The group was flown to Baghdad in March 2024 on a military aircraft in coordination with the Iraqi and Egyptian governments, with a symbolic presence from the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo.

These rare evacuations highlight a much broader medical crisis back home. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 20,000 patients and wounded people are currently waiting to travel abroad for medical treatment.

Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the ministry’s Information Unit, reported that 1,200 children in Gaza now suffer from spinal cord injuries and paralysis directly resulting from Israeli attacks, while some 4,000 children require urgent treatment abroad.

Despite the overwhelming need, official data provided by al-Waheidi shows that only 154 children have been allowed to leave Gaza since the Rafah crossing, the enclave’s only gateway to the outside world, partially reopened in February amid heavy Israeli restrictions.

The crisis is equally dire for newborns: in 2025, more than 4,000 women had premature deliveries, and at least 4,800 babies were born with low birth weights – double the pre-war figure. Last year alone, 457 infants died in their first week of life.

For the handful who made it out, like the group in Iraq, the promised sanctuary quickly devolved into a cage defined by confiscated documents, restricted movements, and systemic neglect.

Confiscated documents and suspended lives

Upon their arrival from Egypt’s Heliopolis Hospital, the promised short-term recovery windows evaporated. Evacuees state that their primary identification and travel documents were immediately seized.

“When we left Egypt for Iraq, the Iraqi authorities took our identification papers from the Egyptians, and we haven’t seen them since,” Muhammad told Al Jazeera.

“When we asked for them, they told us they were held by Iraqi Intelligence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We demand them back, but no one answers us.”

The Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad issued new passports for those lacking them, but according to Muhammad, these documents remain unstamped by the Iraqi government and are functionally useless. She noted that without the official stamps, they cannot travel anywhere.

This administrative vacuum has completely frozen the lives of the companions. Noor Ibrahim, a pseudonym for a young woman who arrived as an escort for her cancer-stricken aunt, is stranded along with four of her aunt’s children.

“I have been engaged for four years, and my fiancé and family are in Gaza,” Ibrahim told Al Jazeera. “We left on the promise that it would be a temporary six-month treatment trip, but now, two years have passed.”

She expressed deep frustration as she is stuck inside the medical complex, emphasising that she just wants to return to Egypt, from where she can travel to Gaza to complete her marriage and start her life.

The stress of the confinement has also severely exacerbated underlying health conditions. Ibrahim noted that while her aunt received the necessary cancer treatment, she has developed various other undisclosed health complications in Iraq, and her psychological state is exhausted from leaving her husband and family behind in war-ravaged Gaza.

Retaliation and dire conditions

For the Palestinians living inside Baghdad’s Medical City complex, daily life has become a grind of material deprivation and psychological distress. The evacuees are completely cut off from any monetary stipends, leaving them entirely dependent on the hospital for basic shelter and local citizens for additional charity.

Samah Abdul Moati, 65, who battles leukaemia, liver cancer, and an arm injury, is accompanied by her injured 43-year-old son and her daughter-in-law. She painted a grim picture of their daily life.

“The hospital brings food every day, but no one can eat it because it is unfit for consumption,” Abdul Moati told Al Jazeera. “We are surviving on the grace of local well-wishers who don’t fail us. But we don’t care about the treatment any more – we just want to return to our children.”

Abdul Moati’s situation is compounded by unfathomable grief: two of her sons were killed in the war, two others have platinum implants from injuries, her husband is fighting cancer in a Gaza intensive care unit with no one to care for him, and her daughters and orphaned grandchildren are living in tents for displaced people.

“The hardest feeling is that I am trapped between the hospital walls while my heart is outside with my family and my people,” Abdul Moati said. “My husband is in the intensive care unit alone, and my children and grandchildren are in tents under the cold and fear.”

Compounding their alienation, evacuees who have tried to protest or publicise their predicament faced swift administrative blowback. When they demanded their right to travel five months ago and spoke to the media, hospital management retaliated by locking down the ward and banning them from even visiting the hospital garden.

Muhammad revealed that they were only allowed out after journalists wrote about their situation, adding that officials continuously throw them from one department to another without providing any straightforward answers.

Bureaucratic runaround

The spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Saif Albadr, did not answer repeated calls from Al Jazeera.

While the head of public relations at the Health Ministry, Ruba Falah Hassan, told Al Jazeera that the case is “political.”

“Frankly, this is a political issue, not health-related.. I’m not authorised to talk about it,” she stated.

The newly appointed Iraqi government spokesperson, Haidar Al-Aboudi, told Al Jazeera that he “will look into the matter”.

For the Palestinians stranded in the Medical City, they maintain that they lack the financial means to buy commercial airline tickets even if their papers are returned, meaning they desperately need a coordinated effort by a charity or government body to facilitate their travel back to Egypt.

“I am not asking for a luxury or an exception,” Abdul Moati pleaded in her final remarks.

“I am asking for a simple human right: that my family does not remain divided between life and death. Open a safe path, facilitate our family reunification, and let me return to my family before it is too late.”

The pressure is mounting on the shaky ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran with an increasing pace of tit-for-tat strikes between the two foes and Iran’s suspension of peace talks after blaming Israel’s deepening advance into Lebanon. Exacerbating tensions, Tehran claimed it will “completely block” the Strait of Hormuz while threatening to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait as well. Located at the mouth of the Red Sea, it is another critical regional chokepoint. The Strait of Hormuz has been largely closed to most traffic by Iran since not long after the launch of Epic Fury on Feb. 28.

All these actions are taking place against the backdrop of sputtering negotiations between the U.S. and Iran that have yet to achieve any tangible results.

“Given the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Lebanon and considering that Lebanon was among the preconditions for the ceasefire, and now this ceasefire has been violated on all fronts including Lebanon, the Iranian negotiation team will stop ‘dialogues and text exchanges through intermediaries,’” the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency stated on Monday. The two sides had been talking through mediators in Pakistan and Qatar.

“Also, the resistance front and Iran have resolved to completely block the Strait of Hormuz and activate other fronts including the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, in order to punish the Zionists and their supporters,” the outlet added.

Iran has been allowing some ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz through what it calls a system of fees paid for environmental and other services. Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has helped guide the passage of about 70 commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, according to The New York Times. This involves communicating and coordinating with ships, not escorting them, CENTCOM told the publication. Most of these transits appear to be closer to Oman than Iran, the publication added.

There were no details provided by Iranian officials about how Iran would completely close the Strait of Hormuz or when such a move could begin.

Tasnim also did not offer specifics about Iran’s threat toward the Bab al-Mandeb Strait or what it could entail. However, the Houthi rebels of Yemen, an Iranian proxy group, waged a protracted 15-month campaign against shipping in that region starting in the fall of 2023. TWZ has previously highlighted concerns that the Houthis could resume these attacks on behalf of Iran in the current conflict. As we have noted, Houthi strikes in this area would add further global economic strain and place additional burden on U.S. forces.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed, Saudi Arabia is rerouting its oil exports through pipelines to the Red Sea. A disruption of that transit option could cause oil prices to rise much higher and more quickly than they already have, creating a cascading wave of financial impacts and shortages across the globe, and especially in Asia. Even if the Strait of Hormuz were opened today, it will still take months for the global economy to recover from the shock. Meanwhile, for Saudi Arabia, the simultaneous closure of both straits is a long-standing nightmare, a financial double-whammy.

Just the recent news of the kinetic exchanges between the U.S. and Iran and Tehran’s decision to call off talks has sent the price of oil once again shooting upwards.

After dropping to a little more than $91 per barrel partly in the wake of President Donald Trump’s unfounded claim he was lifting the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, the price as of 11:20 a.m. EDT was once again closing in on $100 per barrel, according to OilPrice.com. It reached a high this year of more than $114 a barrel in early May.

Defending against renewed Houthi attacks could require military assets at a time when the U.S. is already heavily committed to Operation Epic Fury and its aftermath that has seen a significant amount of equipment destroyed or damaged and munitions expended. During the previous Houthi Red Sea campaign, the U.S. and allies deployed numerous warships, including the Eisenhower and Truman Carrier Strike Groups (CGS) to both defend against Houthi attacks and strike targets in Yemen. These operations resulted in a large expenditure of air defense and strike munitions, with Houthi capabilities remaining degraded, but intact after it was all over.

You can see video from some of those encounters below.

Strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi Targets by USS Gravely, USS Carney, and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower

Despite the widespread publicity over Tehran’s new positions, Trump told NBC News on Monday that he ​had not heard from Iranians that ‌they were suspending talks. The president added that silence would be fine and he was ​willing to wait.

“I think we’ve been talking ​too much if you want to ⁠know the truth. I think going silent ​would be very good, and that could be ​for a long time,” the president proclaimed. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to ​go and start dropping bombs all ​over there. We’ll just go ‌silent. ⁠We’ll keep the blockade.”

“I think I can wait as long as they want,” Trump continued. “They’re losing a fortune.”

Meanwhile, amid all this turbulence, the U.S.-Iran negotiations remain in limbo.

Early Monday morning, Trump took to social media to claim “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us.”

Iranians have pushed back on the notion that they are eager for or close to making a deal. You can read more about the reported terms and scope of the talks in our previous reporting here.

As we mentioned earlier in this story, even before Iran reportedly called off talks, there was a heightened state of tension as the U.S. and Iran exchanged a new round of blows.

In a statement on X, U.S. Central Command said that at about 7:30 a.m. Tehran time on Monday,  “U.S. forces successfully intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait. These missiles were immediately defeated and no American personnel were harmed.”

The command added that it “remains vigilant and will continue to protect our forces from Iranian aggression while supporting the ongoing ceasefire.”

Kuwait condemned the attack.

The Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry “affirms the State of Kuwait’s reservation of its full right to take whatever measures are necessary to preserve its security and defend its territories, holding Iran fully responsible for these heinous aggressions, in accordance with international law, the United Nations Charter, and the relevant Security Council resolutions,” it stated on X.

Iran, for its part, claimed it launched strikes on an unnamed U.S. base in response to U.S. attacks on Iranian targets on Saturday and Sunday.

In a post on X late Sunday, CENTCOM said it “conducted self-defense strikes on Iranian radar and command and control sites for drones in Goruk, Iran and Qeshm Island this weekend. The measured and deliberate strikes occurred on Saturday and Sunday in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters. U.S. fighter aircraft swiftly responded by eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters.”

“No American service members were harmed,” the command stated. “CENTCOM will continue to protect U.S. assets and interests in response to unwarranted Iranian aggression during the ongoing ceasefire.”

UPDATE: 5:43 PM EDT –

Netanyahu says “he spoke this evening with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not stop firing at our cities and citizens – Israel will strike terrorist targets in Beirut,” according to the Israeli prime minister’s office. “This position of ours remains unchanged. Concurrently, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”

The conversation came after Trump claimed on Truth Social that: “I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi! I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY.”

Meanwhile, Hezbollah continued firing on Israeli troops.

“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in the area of Metula, a launch was identified falling adjacent to IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon,” IDF stated on Telegram. “No injuries were reported.”

Other sirens heard in northern Israel, meanwhile, were determined to be false alarms, according to IDF.

UPDATES

As we noted earlier in our story, Iran is using the escalation of the Israeli-Hezbollah fight as a reason to walk away from peace talks, at least for now.

The move came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ordered attacks on what he called “terror targets” in the Hezbollah stronghold of the Dahieh section of Beirut. 

“Together with the Minister of Defense, I have instructed the IDF to strike terrorist targets in Beirut,” Netanyahu announced. “There will not be a situation in which Hezbollah attacks our cities and our citizens, and its terrorist headquarters in Beirut, in Dahiyeh, remains out of bounds.”

The Israeli leader added that “we are continuing to deepen our operational activity on the ground in southern Lebanon and are eliminating Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah is on the run. We are determined to restore security to the residents of the north, just as we did for the residents of the south.”

Netanyahu’s statement followed Israel proclaiming that it is operating north of the Litani River, a traditional demarcation line for Israeli incursions into Lebanon. Advancing north of the river marks a large escalation and the first time Israel has been that far from its border since withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000.

The IDF on Sunday announced it captured Beaufort Castle on Sunday. Overlooking the Beaufort Ridge on the Litani, the castle was once home to Crusaders, seized by them in 1139.

Netanyahu claimed the latest battle over the ancient structure was a victory for Israel.

“The capture of Beaufort is a dramatic stage and a dramatic change in the policy we are leading,” Netanyahu postulated. “We have broken the barrier of fear. We are taking the initiative. We are operating on all fronts – in Syria, in Gaza, in Lebanon. We have established security zones beyond our borders to protect our communities.”

הלוחמים הגיבורים שלנו כבשו את הבופור ואנחנו ממשיכים עד שנשלים את המשימה pic.twitter.com/j0oBy2z9cG

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) May 31, 2026

An unspecified aircraft fired an AGM-114 Hellfire missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged merchant vessel trying to run the blockade, CENTCOM said in an X post on Sunday.

CENTCOM forces “observed M/V Lian Star transiting international waters toward an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman and issued more than 20 warnings while informing the vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade” on May 29, the command stated. “A U.S. aircraft disabled the vessel by firing a Hellfire missile into the ship’s engine room after Lian Star’s crew failed to comply. The ship is no longer transiting to Iran.”

Since the blockade went into effect April 13, “U.S. forces have disabled five commercial vessels and redirected 116 to fully enforce the blockade as a ceasefire with Iran remains in effect,” CENTCOM added.

Other ships have been stopped from running the blockade by having bombs dropped down their smoke stacks, fighters firing 20mm cannon shells at their rudders and inert rounds from a destroyer’s five-inch gun blasting their engine rooms.

A U.S. military aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into a ship’s engine room to prevent it from breaking through the American blockade of Iranian ports. U.S. forces issued more than 20 warnings to the Gambia-flagged ship.

Read more at: https://t.co/PHz1HnlxHk

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) June 1, 2026

Further highlighting the ongoing danger to shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a cargo vessel transiting the Gulf about 40 nautical miles southeast of Umm Qasr, Iraq, has been hit by an unknown projectile on its starboard side, causing a large explosion, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported on Monday.

UKMTO said it was unaware of any immediate environmental impact.

Since the launch of Epic Fury, UKMTO has received 53 reports of incidents affecting vessels operating in and around the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz (SOH), and Gulf of Oman. There have been 29 reported attacks, 22 reported suspicious activities and two reported hijackings.

Iran claims it produced a new fast attack speedboat for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN). Dubbed the Rajab 27th, the semi-official Iranian Mehr News Agency described the vessel as a “fast attack watercraft featuring a trimaran hull design, which enhances stability and maneuverability in challenging maritime conditions.”

Mehr also said that the Rajab 27th is “capable of launching two sea-based cruise missiles with a range of 700 kilometers.”

The vessel, stated Mehr, is designed to conduct operations in sea states with wave heights of up to nearly 10 feet, the outlet added.

The unveiling of the new speedboat “highlights the continued development of the IRGC Navy’s fast-attack and missile-equipped maritime capabilities, which play a key role in Iran’s naval defense strategy and operations in southern waters,” Mehr posited.

TWZ cannot independently verify the Iranian claim, though it should be noted that the IRGC has invested heavily in its fleet of small boats for decades as TWZ has explored in the past. In addition to being armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, as well as artillery rockets and other weapons, they can also be used to lay naval mines. While the president claimed that 159 Iranian ships have been destroyed, the IRGC still has a large number of these small vessels.

The images below, taken during the unveiling ceremony, show glimpses of the Rajab 27th with what appear to be a missile container on either side of the boat.

Iran also claims it has restored gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gas field, the head of the Pars Oil and Gas Company has told state media. As we previously reported, the facility was attacked by Israel in March.

Touraj Dehqani said on Sunday that the platforms had not been damaged in the attacks, Iran’s official IRNA news agency claimed.

“Dehqani said production ⁠from the three platforms ⁠was being ⁠routed to other processing plants in the region while repairs ‌continued at damaged facilities,” Al Jazeera noted.

Iran has restored gas production at three offshore platforms ⁠in the South Pars gas field that had been forced to halt output after Israeli attacks disrupted processing capacity ⁠at some onshore facilities, Iranian state media reports citing the chief executive ⁠of the Pars… pic.twitter.com/SGyTCRa2yH

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) May 31, 2026

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Scotland, Liverpool and Celtic great Sir Kenny Dalglish is undergoing treatment for cancer.

The former forward and manager wanted to keep the news private but confirmed the diagnosis after accidentally sharing the news initially in an “inadvertent social media post”.

“I am currently undergoing treatment for cancer,” Dalglish, 75, wrote on social media. “Unlike my mobile phone use, the treatment is going well.

“Ideally, this would have remained private because that’s the way it should be, but my useless technology skills have forced my hand.

“Obviously I did not mean to make this matter public so I would appreciate it if the privacy of my family and myself are respected.

“As ever, thank you to the wonderful medical staff who have shown incredible care and discretion, not just for me but for many, many others. They are a credit to themselves.”

Dalglish scored 167 goals in 320 appearances for Celtic between 1969 and 1977 before going on to make 515 appearances for Liverpool.

The legendary forward scored 30 goals in 102 caps for Scotland.

In a statement, Liverpool said: “The support, best wishes and love of everyone at Liverpool FC are, and will be, with Sir Kenny and his family.

“The club would also like to underscore his request for privacy moving forward.”

Technology stocks led a broad market rally across China and Hong Kong on Tuesday as investors poured into artificial intelligence related companies despite continuing uncertainty surrounding developments in the Middle East.

The strongest gains came from major technology firms including Tencent and Meituan, helping push Hong Kong’s technology index to one of its biggest daily advances in months. The rally reflected growing investor confidence in China’s technology sector, particularly in artificial intelligence, even as markets monitored fragile diplomatic efforts and ceasefire discussions involving regional conflicts.

The performance highlights an increasingly important theme in global markets: investors are weighing geopolitical risks against the powerful growth narrative surrounding artificial intelligence and technology innovation.

Background

Chinese technology stocks have experienced a volatile few years marked by regulatory scrutiny, slowing economic growth, property market challenges, and shifting investor sentiment.

However, the global artificial intelligence boom has provided a fresh catalyst for the sector.

As major technology companies race to develop AI models, digital assistants, and enterprise applications, investors have increasingly focused on firms capable of benefiting from the next phase of technological transformation.

At the same time, geopolitical developments continue to influence market sentiment. Escalating tensions in the Middle East, concerns about energy prices, and broader uncertainty in global financial markets have periodically weighed on risk assets.

Against this backdrop, Tuesday’s rally suggests that technology driven growth expectations remain a dominant force in investor decision making.

What Happened?

Major Chinese and Hong Kong equity indices posted strong gains:

• Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 2.5 percent.
• The Hang Seng Tech Index surged 4.7 percent.
• China’s STAR 50 Index gained 1.6 percent.
• The ChiNext Index climbed 2.7 percent.
• The CSI300 advanced 1.5 percent.
• The Shanghai Composite Index increased 0.4 percent.

Technology stocks were the primary drivers of the rally.

Tencent shares jumped more than 10 percent following reports that the company is moving closer to launching an artificial intelligence agent integrated into WeChat, China’s largest social media and messaging platform.

Meituan also gained strongly after investors reacted positively to signs that intense competition in China’s food delivery industry may be beginning to ease.

The rally extended beyond technology, with artificial intelligence related shares and non ferrous metal companies also recording significant gains.

Tencent’s AI Push Captures Investor Attention

Why Tencent’s Move Matters

The strongest market reaction centered on Tencent.

Reports suggesting that the company is nearing the launch of an AI agent for WeChat generated excitement because of the platform’s enormous user base of approximately 1.4 billion people.

If successfully deployed, such an AI assistant could become one of the largest consumer facing artificial intelligence applications in the world.

The development is significant because AI competition is increasingly shifting from standalone chatbots toward integration within existing digital ecosystems.

Companies that already possess massive user networks may have advantages in scaling AI services rapidly.

The Strategic Importance of WeChat

WeChat occupies a unique position within China’s digital economy.

The platform combines messaging, payments, shopping, business services, entertainment, and social networking into a single ecosystem.

Integrating AI directly into this environment could significantly enhance user engagement while creating new revenue opportunities through advertising, commerce, and premium services.

Investors appear to be viewing Tencent’s AI ambitions as a potentially transformative growth driver.

Why Meituan’s Gains Matter

Signs of Competitive Stabilization

Meituan’s rise may appear surprising given its latest quarterly loss.

However, investors focused less on earnings and more on indications that subsidy driven competition in China’s rapid delivery sector is beginning to moderate.

For much of the past year, food delivery companies have engaged in aggressive pricing battles designed to capture market share.

While beneficial for consumers, these strategies have pressured corporate profitability.

Evidence that the competitive environment is stabilizing could improve future earnings prospects across the sector.

Shift Toward Profitability

Investors often reward companies when they believe industry conditions are becoming more rational.

For Meituan, expectations of reduced subsidy spending may be viewed as a pathway toward stronger margins and improved financial performance.

The AI Investment Narrative Continues

Artificial Intelligence Remains a Global Theme

One of the most important lessons from Tuesday’s rally is that artificial intelligence continues to dominate market thinking.

Despite geopolitical uncertainty, investors remain eager to identify companies positioned to benefit from AI adoption.

This trend is not limited to the United States.

Chinese technology firms are increasingly being evaluated based on their ability to develop competitive AI products, infrastructure, and services.

Zhipu AI’s Listing Plans

Another development attracting attention was the announcement that Zhipu AI intends to pursue a domestic stock market listing in Shanghai.

The move highlights growing confidence among Chinese AI firms and demonstrates the sector’s increasing importance within China’s capital markets.

A successful listing could further strengthen investor interest in domestic AI development.

The Middle East Factor

Why Investors Remain Cautious

Although technology optimism drove markets higher, geopolitical developments remain a significant source of uncertainty.

Investors continue monitoring negotiations involving the United States, Iran, Israel, and regional actors.

Potential disruptions to energy markets remain a key concern because rising oil prices can increase inflation pressures and slow economic growth globally.

Markets Are Balancing Two Competing Forces

Current market behavior reflects a balancing act.

On one side are geopolitical risks, including conflict, energy market volatility, and diplomatic uncertainty.

On the other side is enthusiasm surrounding technological innovation and artificial intelligence.

Tuesday’s rally suggests that, at least for now, investors believe technology driven growth opportunities outweigh immediate geopolitical concerns.

Analysis: Why China’s Technology Sector Is Regaining Momentum

The significance of Tuesday’s rally extends beyond a single trading session.

It reflects a broader reassessment of China’s technology sector.

For several years, investors viewed Chinese technology companies primarily through the lens of regulatory risk, slowing growth, and geopolitical tensions.

Today, artificial intelligence is changing that narrative.

Investors increasingly see Chinese firms as participants in a global technological transformation rather than merely domestic internet companies.

Tencent’s gains illustrate this shift particularly well.

The market reaction was not driven by short term earnings or cost cutting measures. Instead, it was driven by expectations regarding future technological capabilities and growth potential.

Another important factor is capital flows.

China remains one of the few major emerging markets attracting investment across equities, bonds, and currencies simultaneously. This provides a supportive backdrop for asset prices even when external risks remain elevated.

At the same time, investors should not ignore underlying challenges.

China’s economy continues to face pressures from weak consumer demand, property sector difficulties, and slower growth compared with previous decades.

Artificial intelligence enthusiasm may boost valuations, but sustained market strength will ultimately require broader economic improvement.

Nevertheless, Tuesday’s performance suggests that global investors increasingly view China’s technology sector as a key participant in the AI revolution rather than merely a recovery story.

Future Scenarios

Scenario One: AI Momentum Continues

Technology companies successfully launch new AI products and attract additional investment.

This could drive further gains across China’s technology sector and strengthen market sentiment.

Scenario Two: Economic Weakness Limits Gains

Artificial intelligence enthusiasm remains strong, but broader economic challenges constrain corporate earnings and consumer spending.

Technology stocks continue rising, though at a slower pace.

Scenario Three: Geopolitical Risks Reemerge

Escalating tensions in the Middle East or worsening global economic conditions trigger risk aversion.

Investors shift away from growth assets, leading to increased market volatility.

What’s Next?

Investors will closely watch Tencent’s progress in launching AI features for WeChat and monitor adoption rates if the product is introduced.

Attention will also focus on upcoming earnings reports, AI related announcements, and developments surrounding Zhipu AI’s planned listing.

Beyond technology, markets will continue evaluating geopolitical developments in the Middle East and their potential impact on energy prices and global investor sentiment.

The interaction between technological optimism and geopolitical uncertainty is likely to remain one of the defining themes for financial markets throughout the coming months.

Conclusion

Tuesday’s rally demonstrates that artificial intelligence remains one of the most powerful forces shaping global investment decisions. Strong gains in Tencent, Meituan, and other technology companies highlight growing confidence in China’s ability to participate in the next phase of AI driven innovation.

While geopolitical risks continue to create uncertainty, investors appear increasingly willing to look beyond short term tensions and focus on long term technological opportunities. Whether this momentum can be sustained will depend not only on AI breakthroughs but also on the broader health of China’s economy and the stability of the global geopolitical environment.

With information from Reuters.

Suggestions that criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic in Australia risk hardwiring a dangerous confusion. Questioning the behaviour of a foreign state is not the same as denigrating or attacking a people who may have links with that state. The State of Israel is represented by its embassy in Canberra, not by the Jewish community in our cities and suburbs.

But the knee-jerk reaction to the attack on a Jewish celebration in Sydney is solidifying that confusion. On December 14, 2025, as Jewish families gathered near Sydney’s Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah, two gunmen opened fire, killing 15 people and injuring many others in one of the worst attacks in Australia’s history. In response, the federal government set up a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, led by former High Court justice Virginia Bell. On April 30, 2026, the commission delivered its interim report, raising serious concerns about how we define anti-Semitism.

The commission has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA offers examples that include criticism of Israel as evidence of anti-Semitism. But such a broad definition collapses critical commentary on Israel’s policy in Gaza, its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli officials’ dehumanising comments about Palestinians into a racist attack on Australia’s Jews. How does that make sense to anyone?

This is not an abstract question. The blurring of these categories acts as a brake on public debate. It narrows the range of permissible language used to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where Australians have watched entire neighbourhoods destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians killed.

The official line from governments in relation to Israel is that Israel has a “right to exist” and an obligation to defend its citizens, which appears to give Israel carte blanche to decimate the entire Gaza Strip and kill tens of thousands of Palestinians. But no other state enjoys this exceptional treatment. No other state can do what it wishes simply because it has a “right to exist”. Australia has that right, but that right has never shielded governments in Canberra from fierce criticism, whether over First Nations dispossession, offshore detention or climate inaction. When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008 for the wrongs past governments had done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australia’s legitimacy as a state was not under threat. Rudd was reflecting the public mood by distancing his government from the policies of the past. It was not seen as challenging Australia’s right to exist.

Yet in debates about Israel, the invocation of the “right to exist” and anti-Semitism operates as a conversation stopper. It closes the door to a frank discussion about the State of Israel and its behaviour. We cannot talk about occupation, apartheid and war crimes because that is anti-Semitic. This is a troubling precedent that insulates Israel from moral and political accountability.

The commission was established in response to a real and deeply upsetting surge in anti-Semitic violence. But its framework could cast suspicion on genuine inquiry into the behaviour of Israel. It entrenches a form of exceptionalism that actually weakens Australia’s democratic norms.

A liberal society must be able to draw a clear line: hatred, discrimination or violence against Jews is anti-Semitic and unacceptable; criticism of a foreign government is not.

There is also a cost to Jewish Australians when that line is blurred. Public debate routinely treats “the Jewish community” as a single, pro-Israel bloc, represented by a handful of bodies. This is simply not true. Many Australian Jews are alarmed to see the destruction of Gaza in their name. Some have mobilised against Israel’s actions.

To assume unanimous Jewish support for Israeli actions is to deny Jewish Australians their agency. Worse, it risks casting Jewish dissenters as inauthentic. If the policy settings shaped by this commission casts such voices as anti-Semitic, they will be erased twice over: excluded from the definition of the community and penalised for speakingup. This is silencing dissent, masquerading as protection.

If public institutions reinforce the idea that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews, they risk feeding anti-Semitism.

Images of Gaza’s destruction on the news have galvanised global public opinion. Many young Australians have marched for an end to Israeli policies and freedom for Palestine. The message that such protests against Israel are anti-Semitic could not be any more counter-productive and harmful for Australian democracy. That will only breed resentment against the Australian political system for ignoring what everyone sees on their TV screens, and, dangerously, feed the very anti-Semitic narratives the commission should be challenging. Those who already hold anti-Semitic views will feel confirmed in their belief that Jews act collectively through Israel. The commission cannot afford to fall into this trap.

To the credit of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), they have avoided the conflation of Israel and Jewish people and have not adopted the IHRA definition. The interim commission report has not embraced the most heavy-handed proposals in circulation; there is no rush to ban protest slogans or criminalise political expression. There is room for optimism that the commission can still address the issue in its final report.

Here are the standards it needs to uphold to protect social cohesion in Australia:

First, an unambiguous distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. Second, a recognition of the diversity of Jewish opinion, including among those who oppose Israel’s actions, and the inclusion of those voices in efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Third, a defence of political space for Palestinians and their allies to describe their experiences of occupation, dispossession and siege in their own terms, while  rejecting any dehumanising or racist language about Jewish people.

Anti-Semitism in Australia is a threat to the Jewish community (regardless of political views) and the very foundation of our social cohesion. But seeking to address the scourge of anti-Semitism by conflating critical views of the State of Israel with hatred of Jews will only make matters worse. Such approach will suppress debate, limit freedom of speech and inquiry that has already led to self-censorship at our universities and entrench the very confusion that sustains anti-Semitism.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Serena Williams has shaken up the tennis world by announcing her competitive return to the game after a nearly four-year absence.

The 23-time Grand Slam winner and mother of two said on Monday that she will compete in women’s doubles at this month’s Queen’s Club Championships in the United Kingdom, where media reported she will play with 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko.

The 44-year-old American great received a wildcard entry for the competition, which is seen as a warm-up for Wimbledon, the year’s third Grand Slam.

“I’m very happy. Me and Serena have stayed in touch, which is really, really nice because I really look up to her,” Mboko said at the French Open last week.

Williams ended months of speculation over a rumoured return with a cheeky social media video captioned: “Good news travels fast.”

‘It will bring people to watch tennis’

Former world number one Lindsay Davenport said she believes Williams could make an appearance at her home Grand Slam, the US Open, in a couple of months.

“It seems like she’s trying to work her way up maybe to the US Open, and those fans would be so ready to see her back on a singles court there,” Davenport said.

Williams won seven Wimbledon titles and six at the US Open before stepping away from the game in 2022. In doubles, she won six titles at Wimbledon and two at the US Open – all with her older sister Venus Williams.

Four-time major champion Naomi Osaka, who beat Serena Williams in the 2018 US Open final for her first major title, was excited at the prospect.

“It will bring people to watch tennis,” Osaka said. “I’m going to be tuned in to the first match, for sure. I think a lot of people are. Everyone knows Serena and Venus were my role models growing up, so it’s going to be cool to see her on the grounds again.”

Osaka was joined by several current players in sharing their excitement at the news of Serena Williams’s return.

“She’s a legend. It’s inspiring to see,” top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka said at the ongoing French Open. “I’m excited to see her play and probably face her. … It’s very good news for tennis.”

Coco Gauff, who looked up to Serena Williams growing up, chimed in as well.

“One of my biggest regrets was not being able to play her,” the world number four said.

Gauff also commented on Williams’s Instagram post, saying, “Dreams come true.”

Singles return on the cards?

Fellow American and former champion John McEnroe suggested Williams could compete in singles at Wimbledon, which starts on June 28 .

“She’s not getting any younger, but she’s Serena Williams, so I bet you she would tell me about wanting to win the whole damn thing,” McEnroe said in Paris.

The Queen’s Club tournament starts on Monday, and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said Williams will play “with a partner to be announced in due course”.

“Queen’s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,” Williams said in a statement. “Grass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I’m excited to be back competing on one of the sport’s most iconic stages.”

Davenport said some current women’s players travelled to Florida to practise with Williams recently.

“I don’t think anyone’s admitted to that, but I do know that some of them were,” Davenport said. “So I think she has kind of a handle on where the level is. But I don’t know if she’s been playing a two-hour singles match, right? We’ll have to see how she can handle that physically.”

Williams, who has won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles overall in her storied career, became eligible to compete in February after reregistering for a mandatory antidoping programme six months earlier – the first step towards a comeback.

Davenport admitted that her former opponent would face a tough challenge.

“It’s not going to be easy. If anyone could do it, certainly, it could be her.”

Grand Slam social media accounts used more playful language to celebrate her return, using the goat emoji to symbolise her status as the “greatest of all time”.

Williams joins list of champions making comebacks

Williams is not the only top-level athlete with unfinished business as advancements in training and medical care have allowed for longer careers across several sports.

Seven-time track gold medallist Allyson Felix said this year that she would try to make the US squad in what would be her sixth Olympics. She is aiming to secure a spot on the mixed 4x400m relay team at the 2028 Los Angeles Games despite having previously said the Tokyo Games would be her last.

“It’s just ⁠⁠about testing the limits, kind of an experiment of what’s still left there,” the 40-year-old Felix, who gave birth to her second child in 2024, told the NBC TV network’s Today show last month.

Her fellow American Lindsey Vonn became the oldest downhill skier to win a World Cup race in December when she mounted a comeback after knee-replacement surgery.

Vonn, whose Milano-Cortina Olympics campaign ended abruptly with a horrific crash, was among the first top-level athletes to offer her encouragement to Williams on social media.

Vonn and Felix both celebrated Williams’s comeback announcement on social media.

In tennis, longtime Williams friend Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark made it to the fourth round at the US Open in 2023 and 2024 during her own comeback campaign while older sister Venus became the oldest WTA singles match winner since 2004 when she returned from a 16-month absence last year.

Serena Williams’s “return is an expression of her passion for competition”, WTA Chairwoman Valerie Camillo said in a statement on Monday. “I cannot wait to see her face a new generation.”

Bafana Bafana’s departure was delayed due to non-issuance of visas for several players and support staff.

The South African national team members have left for their World Cup training base in Pachuca, Mexico, in advance of their opening game against the tournament cohosts on June 11.

The delegation that left on Monday did not include assistant coach Helman Mkhalele, who has yet to obtain a United States visa.

The charter flight departed Johannesburg following a frantic 24 hours after the squad was originally scheduled to leave on Sunday, but was held back by a delay in obtaining visas in what was described as an administrative bungle by the South African Football Association (SAFA).

Mkhalele, a former international winger who played 66 times for Bafana Bafana, including at their World Cup debut in France in 1998, will have to travel later after his visa application was initially denied.

Blaming the US Consulate General in Johannesburg for the delay, SAFA president Danny Jordaan told the South African Broadcasting Corporation, “They refused the visa, but gave no reasons. It is very difficult to deal with the process where you get no information.”

“We don’t know [why it was denied], we are clutching in the dark, but we hope the matter will be resolved [soon]. All of the players are [on the flight] and 99 percent of the technical staff.”

South Africa are due to play Jamaica in a friendly on Friday before taking on Mexico in the showpiece opening match in Mexico City.

“Now we are very happy that we can go to Mexico,” South Africa coach Hugo Broos said. “The past days have been a little bit stressful with all the problems we had, but those problems are behind us now, and we can focus on what’s coming.”

“These 10 days go very fast. Once we get there, we will start working, focusing on the first game against Mexico, so time will pass very quickly. I think everybody is looking forward to starting the World Cup.”

South Africa are in Group A and will face Czechia in Atlanta on June 18 and South Korea in Monterrey, Mexico, six days later.

They are appearing in their fourth World Cup and looking to advance from the group stage for the first time.

Zee will broadcast the 2026 and 2030 World Cups and the 2027 Women’s World Cup among 39 FIFA tournaments until 2034.

FIFA has struck a deal with India’s Zee Entertainment to broadcast the World Cup in the country, ending a months-long ⁠⁠standoff over the tournament’s availability in one of the last major markets where rights remained unsold.

While the financial terms of the package – signed on Monday – were not disclosed, FIFA reportedly sought about $100m for the 2026 and 2030 tournaments before ‌‌slashing its asking price to $60m.

The deal gives Zee a toehold in India’s sports broadcast market, where the Reliance-Disney joint venture JioStar holds rights ranging from the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament to the English Premier League football.

It covers 39 FIFA events over eight years through 2034, including ‌‌the ‌‌Women’s World Cup in 2027, according to a joint statement from FIFA and Zee.

Shares ⁠⁠of Zee were about 7 percent higher on the day ⁠⁠after the announcement.

The agreement came just 10 days before the tournament kicks off on June 11 across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Last month, experts told Al Jazeera that the kickoff times for the majority of the matches are the biggest concern for Indian broadcasters since many games will be played at odd hours for the Indian audience, with a 10-12 hour time difference between the host cities and the South Asian nation.

Only 14 out of the total 104 World Cup games will begin before midnight for fans in India.

The final will be held in New Jersey on July 19, beginning at 19:00 GMT, which will be 12:30am on July 20 in India. By comparison, 98.4 percent of matches at the 2018 World Cup started before midnight, and 82.5 percent at the following edition in Qatar.

Karan Taurani, executive vice president at investment firm Elara Capital, sees TV as a “struggling” medium in India.

“When you have these kinds of sporting events, effectively it is mostly digital that is monetising and raising big money,” Taurani told Al Jazeera. “That is a big reason why no one’s showing interest in the FIFA World Cup.”

Taurani explained that cricket leads the sports economy market in India.

“Only a small fraction of people who watch the Indian Premier League will watch the FIFA World Cup,” he said, adding that an even smaller fraction tune in past midnight to watch a match.

Viacom18 paid ⁠⁠about $60m for rights to the 2022 ⁠⁠World Cup, which was hosted in Qatar in time zones far more favourable for Indian audiences. Most of this year’s matches will be screened late at night in India due to the ‌‌time difference, something that dampened broadcaster appetite and complicated FIFA’s sales efforts.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi says the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is no longer a workable model. Iran’s nuclear technology and capabilities have advanced significantly, and any future agreement must reflect today’s realities, including the impact of the recent conflict.

Malak Mahmoud, the heavily pregnant woman filmed being thrown to the ground by a Dutch police officer as her Palestinian husband from Gaza was detained, has spoken to Al Jazeera.

Police in Zeist issued a statement saying they are reviewing the use of force and have opened an investigation, but have not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Media freedom advocates condemn move as latest effort to curtail independent reporting on the US military.

The United States Department of Defense has barred journalists from its press office, the latest move by the Pentagon to restrict media access since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said on Monday that the administration had re-designated the office as a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” due to its use by speechwriters with access to classified government information.

“These speechwriters routinely handle classified material and require SIPRNet access,” Valdez said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera, referring to the secure computer network used by the Pentagon to share classified information.

“As a result, journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space. Access to the office of the Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and to the Press Secretary remains available by appointment only,” Valdez added, using the Trump administration’s preferred title for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Washington Post first reported the change.

The move follows a slew of steps by the Trump administration to curtail the ability of US media outlets to report on the military and other areas of the government.

In March, the Defense Department said it would no longer allow media outlets to maintain offices at the Pentagon after a judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit challenging the imposition of new rules for obtaining press credentials.

The Pentagon also announced that journalists would require an official escort while inside the complex, a policy that The New York Times is seeking to overturn in a separate lawsuit filed in May.

The National Press Club, the main professional organisation for journalists in the US, condemned the latest restrictions as a “troubling escalation” in the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail media scrutiny of the Pentagon.

“Independent reporting on the US military is not optional,” National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr said in a statement.

“When journalists are pushed farther from the institutions they cover, the American people are left with less information, less transparency, and less oversight. Any effort to restrict that access should alarm everyone who values a free and informed society.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy organisation, also criticised the move.

“It’s rare for anything other than disingenuous spin and outright lies to come out of the Pentagon’s press office these days, so it’s hard to imagine what basis they have to call the space classified,” Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the organisation, told Al Jazeera.

“The only thing sensitive or confidential about the information released by Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is that it’s not true.”

The U.S. military has confirmed the loss of an “MQ-1” drone to Iranian fire this weekend. This has led many to question whether American forces are flying the venerable Predator again, some eight years after the type’s official retirement. It is also very possible, if not likely, that the uncrewed aircraft in question was an MQ-1C Gray Eagle, a related but different design still in active U.S. Army service. Regardless, rebooting U.S. Predator operations might still be an attractive course of action, especially to help plug gaps left by dozens of MQ-9 Reaper losses to Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, but actually doing it may be harder than it seems.

American forces “conducted self-defense strikes on Iranian radar and command and control sites for drones in Goruk, Iran, and Qeshm Island this weekend,” according to a brief press release that U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) issued late yesterday. “The measured and deliberate strikes occurred on Saturday and Sunday in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters. U.S. fighter aircraft swiftly responded by eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters.”

There has been a string of tit-for-tat attacks now between the United States and Iran despite an ostensible ceasefire between the two countries. The U.S. military also remains committed to a blockade of Iranian ports, while the regime in Tehran continues to take separate action to throttle routine maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Negotiations between the two sides toward a more definitive end to the conflict are ongoing, as well.

“No American service members were harmed,” yesterday’s release added. “CENTCOM will continue to protect U.S. assets and interests in response to unwarranted Iranian aggression during the ongoing ceasefire.”

What did Iran actually shoot down?

In response to a direct query from TWZ, CENTCOM declined to say whether the “MQ-1” mentioned in the release was a Predator or Gray Eagle. We also reached out to the U.S. Air Force to ask if it had lost a Predator over the weekend, and were directed to contact CENTCOM. We contacted the Army to ask if one of its Gray Eagles was shot down, as well, and were redirected to the Pentagon.

Army aviation units with MQ-1Cs are known to be deployed in the Middle East. In April, the Air Force notably released several pictures of Gray Eagles somewhere in the region, which misidentified them as Predators.

The AP initially reported that the drone Iran shot down was a Predator, but this appears to have been based on CENTCOM’s use of the MQ-1 designation in the press release and not confirmed. The outlet’s story originally said “the U.S. Air Force no longer flies the MQ-1 Predator, the U.S. Army still does,” which was inaccurate, and that passage no longer appears in the piece. While the Gray Eagle is derived from the Predator and has the related MQ-1C designation, it is a distinctly different design more tailored to the Army’s needs. This includes the ability to operate with a smaller logistical footprint and lower crew training requirements.

For its part, Iran has also described what it shot down simply as an “MQ-1,” and has released a video below that it says shows the engagement, as seen through an infrared camera. However, the footage is extremely low resolution, and it is impossible to tell what type of drone it might show. Iranian authorities (as well as the Houthis) routinely release similar, but generally higher-quality clips after claimed shootdowns.

Officially, the Air Force stopped operating the MQ-1 Predator in 2018. As of September 2024, there were 15 MQ-1Bs in storage at the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, according to data the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) previously released. TWZ has also reached out to the Air Force for an updated inventory of Predators in storage, and to ask whether or not any retired examples have been returned to service.

In addition, TWZ has asked General Atomics, the company behind the Predator and the Gray Eagle, as well as the MQ-9 Reaper, for comment.

Factoring in MQ-9 Reaper losses

Despite not yet having an official confirmation one way or the other, it still seems more likely that what Iran shot down was a Gray Eagle, not a Predator. Still, there remains the potential for the U.S. to have resumed Predator operations, possibly on a contractor-owned and/or operated basis, or that it may be considering doing so in the near future. There is one factor in particular that could be a key driver here now, and that is MQ-9 losses.

At a recent hearing, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach had called the Reaper “perhaps the most valuable player” in the latest conflict with Iran. In early March, we commented on how it appeared MQ-9 strikes were by far the most numerous attacks featured in CENTCOM’s ‘highlight’ reels during the conflict.

However, in May, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that “nearly 30 MQ-9 Reapers have been lost in the course of those operations,” citing “people familiar with the matter.” On April 9, CBS News said that tally had already risen to “up to 24” Reapers since the fighting began in February, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

This is all on top of the loss of dozens more MQ-9s to Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen in recent years. The Houthis separately claimed to have shot down another U.S. Reaper just this past weekend.

Air Force Lt. Gen. David Tabor, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, told members of Congress at a hearing on May 13 that the service’s MQ-9 fleet had dwindled to 135 aircraft. This is down from the 165 Reapers the service said were in inventory as of the start of Fiscal Year 2026, according to official budget documents. The size of the fleet had already shrunk from 231 at the start of Fiscal Year 2025.

“We are concerned about how they’ve attrited,” Tabor said at that time, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We’re looking at options to buy back as many of the MQ-9As as we possibly can right now, so there’s a bit of a short-term effort to buy back things immediately, in this fiscal year.”

“We are not divesting the MQ-9,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink also said separately on May 20, per the same report from Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We have had some losses in that aircraft, and we’re working to fill those losses, but in parallel, we are looking at what is the follow-on to the MQ-9 aircraft.”

TWZ recently reported in detail on the Air Force’s latest plans, as they are known now, for a successor to the MQ-9. This effort is the latest in a series of abortive Air Force attempts to develop a Reaper replacement that have spanned more than a decade now.

It is also worth noting here that the U.S. Marine Corps has acquired its own much smaller fleet of Reapers in recent years, and plans to operate the type for the foreseeable future. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also operates Reapers, and has flown Predators, at least in the past.

Last month, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that General Atomics had “less than 10 new or company-owned MQ-9As to offer to the Air Force,” but that “there are a number of decommissioned Reapers that could be brought back online and refurbished by the company,” citing company spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley.

The Reaper, also more formally known as the MQ-9A, is otherwise out of production. General Atomics has moved on to the MQ-9B, an evolved design with significant differences from its predecessor. Any new Air Force purchases of drones in this family would have to be of the new version.

TWZ has also reached out to the Air Force with questions about Reapers in storage and any efforts to return them to service.

Could Reaper losses prompt a Predator comeback?

The scale of MQ-9 losses, as well as the continued heavy use of those drones, brings us back to the possibility of returning Predators to service, even if this has not happened as of yet. Before their official retirement in 2018, questions had been increasingly raised about the risks of flying Predators in anything but permissive airspace.

For years now, Air Force officials have regularly raised similar questions about the Reaper’s vulnerability, as highlighted by an abrupt attempt to stop buying any more of the drones back in 2020. A self-protection pod has been developed to improve the MQ-9’s survivability, but there is no evidence that it has been fielded on a wide scale despite reported moves to do so in recent years.

More recently, the Air Force has shown a willingness to accept significant MQ-9 losses. Furthermore, many of the missions that Reapers are tasked with today could still be performed, at least to a degree, by Predators with an equivalent level of risk.

The piston-engined Predator is a smaller, shorter-ranged, lighter payload, and lower-performance design overall compared to the turboprop Reaper. At the same time, this would also be mitigated by the geography of the current operating environment in the Middle East vis-a-vis Iran, where the distances between available bases and likely operating areas wouldn’t be too far. This would be especially true for sorties in airspace over and around the Strait of Hormuz. As CENTCOM said, the “MQ-1” shootdown this weekend occurred somewhere over “international waters.”

The U.S. military previously used Predators exactly this way to monitor Iranian activities in and around the Persian Gulf from bases in the region. An Iranian Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack jet notably shot at an MQ-1 flying over that body of water back in 2012. That is just one example of Iranian harassment of U.S. drone operations in that timeframe, which got to be so bad that F-22 Raptors had to be called in to ward off Tehran’s tactical jet crews.

Beyond their continued ability to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions, Predators can carry a pair of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. The Hellfire continues to be a very relevant weapon, including for use against small Iranian boats, including ones capable of firing anti-ship cruise missiles or laying mines. Predators could fire them at missile and drone launchers, road-mobile air defense systems, and other Iranian assets on land, too.

Though the MQ-9 can carry a wider selection of precision-guided munitions, Hellfire has remained a key element of that drone’s arsenal, too, including in recent operations against Iran.

The video below includes a clip of an Iranian Ghadir class diesel-electric midget submarine being struck by what has been confirmed to be an AGM-114 Hellfire missile, likely fired by an MQ-9.

Reapers can carry much more ordnance per sortie than the Predator, but the latter could still provide a useful boost in interdiction capacity even with a smaller payload. There is an argument to be made that interdiction would actually be a better role than surveillance and reconnaissance for any remaining Predators. The older drones could be treated as being more expendable than their Reaper cousins, and more readily sent to hunt targets in higher-risk environments as a result.

There is a question of what kinds of upgrades might be necessary in order to return Predators to active duty, such as new datalinks to connect to more modern networks and ground stations. We also do not know what new training might be required to operate them within the context of currently available infrastructure in the Middle East, or anywhere else.

It’s also worth noting that other branches of the U.S. military beyond the Air Force could support a return of Predators to operational service, as well. The Army was actually originally the main operator of the MQ-1, as you can read more about here.

Back in the late 2010s around the Predator’s retirement, the Air Force confirmed to TWZ that there were active discussions about transferring retired MQ-1s to the Navy, either for use by that service or the U.S. Marine Corps. There is no clear indication the Navy or the Marines operated Predators in the end. At around the same time, the Navy was helping lay the groundwork for what ultimately became the Marines’ MQ-9 fleet.

That being said, as TWZ wrote at the time, the Air Force’s engagement with the Navy underscored how the Predator still offered relevant capability in a variety of operational contexts. We also noted that the steady miniaturization of sensors and other systems could open up new possibilities for the older MQ-1s.

If it is true that there were only 15 MQ-1Bs left in storage as of 2024, there is a separate question of what happened to the many dozens of other Predators the Air Force had in inventory when the type was retired. TWZ had previously raised the additional possibility that Predators could be employed as targets for live-fire training, as well as research and development and test and evaluation activities, or even converted into one way attack munitions.

What we do know is that MQ-9 remains in very high demand in the Middle East, now further driven by operations against Iran that continue to grind on. We also know that the Air Force has sustained what it has itself described as a concerning level of Reaper losses in recent years. It is unclear how many MQ-9s are out there for the service to ‘buy back’ or when its latest plans for a successor to the Reaper might bear fruit.

Even if the U.S. military has not currently put any Predator drones back on active duty, returning even a relatively small fleet of them to service might still be worth considering as a way to meet operational needs and ease pressure on the hard-hit MQ-9 fleet.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

From an early point in the Russian war in Ukraine, we’ve seen many unorthodox efforts to try to improve the chances of survival of fighting vehicles. Now, Russian trucks are receiving ‘dazzle paint,’ borrowing the same kind of tactic Russia has used for some of its most important military aircraft, to try to confuse seekers on standoff weaponry that use image-matching capability.

Several images showing the unusually painted Russian trucks have appeared on social media channels in recent days. So far, examples of Ural and KAMAZ heavy-duty truck designs have surfaced. There are at least two distinct patterns so far: a zebra-style application of broadly straight lines, and a more organic, leaf-like, swirling design. In both cases, they extend over most external surfaces, including the wheels and tires. It is not entirely clear if the white paint is applied over a layer of black, or portions of black, or if the white is simply coated over the standard base color of very dark green. It could be a mix of both application concepts, as well.

At first sight, the truck patterns recall the iconic paint scheme that the U.K. Royal Navy pioneered for its warships back in World War I. ‘Dazzle paint’ or ‘dazzle camouflage’ was devised in 1917 by official War Artist Norman Wilkinson, as a means of reducing losses to attacks by German submarines, or U-boats. The geometric patterns work by using highly contrasting color blocks, often heavily featuring black and white,  as part of a carefully constructed pattern that breaks up the form of the ship and makes it harder to judge range and perspective.

As you can read about here, this kind of naval camouflage scheme appeared again during World War II, and on several occasions since then.

When first introduced, dazzle paint was intended to trick the human eye, normally looking through a periscope. There was still a benefit to be had in protecting vessels after the introduction of improved rangefinders and radar. For the eye, it made it harder to judge a ship’s course and speed, as well as simply identifying it reliably.

The same basic principle is at work on the dazzle-painted Russian trucks, although now it’s an artificial eye — chiefly using electro-optical and/or infrared cameras — that is supposed to be fooled.

Increasingly, Ukrainian drones are using artificial intelligence (AI) to boost their combat effectiveness. The revolutions that are coming as a result of embedding of AI into lower-end drones is something you can read about in our past feature here. This includes machine vision: a process of the drone learning object recognition, identification, classification, and tracking, as well as providing recommendations for the operator on what to do, provided there is an operator at all and the drone is not running autonomously.

AI-enabled capabilities make lower-end drones more resistant to electronic warfare systems and make it easier for them to be employed in networked swarms. Above all else, they can result in the cutting of the invisible radio frequency tether of constant man-in-the-loop control that in many ways hampers the potential of this class of drones.

The drawback of machine vision that the Russian countermeasure is supposed to exploit is the onboard AI agent’s capacity for learning object recognition. While it may be able to recognize a 6×6 Ural, for example, out of a wide range of potential truck targets, if the appearance of the vehicle is distorted enough, it will not be positively identified, or at least meet the threshold of corroboration that would result in a kinetic act. However, still with many drones that feature AI assistance, a human operator stays in or on the loop for all critical decisions.

This raises the question of how successful the dazzle-painted trucks might be, although the thinking here presumably stresses avoidance of detection during the autonomous target-search phase, rather than the endgame of an engagement. It is also worth noting that these kinds of paint schemes only really have value in areas where they are unlikely to be seen by any Ukrainian human eyes, even remotely via a sensor; after all, they are far more conspicuous than their standard-painted counterparts. It’s also possible that a drone could be taught to specifically hunt these patterns, as nothing else on the battlefield would look like them and they would be confirmed hostile by default.

Overall, paint schemes are another logical, if extemporized response to a growing threat in the Russian rear areas, following the example of the Russian trucks loaded with logs as makeshift armor to protect against kinetic threats in the early phases of the war.

This has been followed by successive counter-drone measures, best exemplified by the increasingly complicated ‘cope cages,’ ‘turtle tanks,’ nets, and arrays of spikes that have appeared on a range of vehicles on both sides of the war.

Perhaps most apposite, however, is the example of Russian bombers and strike aircraft being covered with disused tires, something that first appeared in around August 2023. TWZ was first to postulate that these were most likely intended to confuse the seekers on Ukrainian cruise missiles and drones that use image-matching capability. This was subsequently confirmed by a senior U.S. military technologist.

A “sort of classic unclassified example that exists is like a picture of a plane from the top, and you’re looking for a plane, and then if you put tires on top of the wings, all of a sudden, a lot of computer vision models have difficulty identifying that that’s a plane,” Schuyler Moore, U.S. Central Command’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer, explained in September 2024.

Moore said this as part of a larger discussion about AI models and data sets.

It’s also worth noting that Russian combat ships based in Crimea also received unique shading to break up their silhouettes for the same purpose during this period.

As TWZ has explored in detail in the past, AI is now pushing drones toward a major new evolution, if not a revolution in capabilities.

As well as the possibility of operating in large groups or fully networked swarms, it means long-range one-way attack drones can conduct dynamic targeting deep in contested territory. Trucks, for example, can be hunted and struck far behind the front lines, where once they were safe and where air defenses are sparse.

This is a scenario we have set out in the past, too:

“Waves of similar drones could be sent to their own individual geographical ‘kill boxes,’ or defined areas of engagement. Collectively, they could put enemy targets at risk over a huge area persistently without ‘doubling up’ and attacking the same target twice. Using machine learning/AI and associated hardware, they could not just identify targets of interest, but also differentiate moving from still targets, to ensure they are indeed active (not destroyed or already damaged) vehicles. Meanwhile, they can be set to engage other target types, such as surface-to-air missile systems or other high-priority targets, regardless of whether they are static or not. Even troop movements on the ground could potentially be recognized and attacked. All the parameters as to what the drone can engage, and where it can do so, can be defined and tailored to each mission before launch.”

It is also worth noting that different types of sensors will be affected to different degrees by passive countermeasures like complex paint jobs. While electro-optical sensors may have issues with the patterns, infrared may not, especially at longer wavelengths.

TWZ has previously highlighted how AI algorithms can be rapidly trained in a digital environment, as well as incorporate data collected from actual real-world employment, to improve their ability to spot, categorize, and engage targets. It is, however, unclear how hard it would be to overcome infinite dazzle patterns. It could, as Schuyler Moore observed, lead to software programmers spending inordinate amounts of time on computer vision with very little to gain, once a new pattern arrived.

While it remains to be seen how effective the dazzle-painted trucks might be, they are another sign of drones, especially AI-enabled ones, being one of the key drivers of innovation on the modern battlefield.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella will face left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda in the run-off for Colombia’s presidential election next month. Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo explains what this means for Colombians.

Tournament director Amelie Mauresmo, herself a former women’s world number one, had regularly pointed to the possibility of short two-set matches as the reason for often overlooking the women.

“The match-ups are always interesting for both men and women, but there are multiple factors for us to make the choice,” Mauresmo said earlier on Monday.

“As you know, the potential length of the matches is something that we are also looking at.”

On picking Sabalenka against Osaka, she added: “It was obvious that it should be a night match tonight.”

There was a school of thought that Mauresmo might have looked elsewhere, though, had men’s world number one Jannik Sinner still been in the tournament.

Sinner would have been scheduled to play on the same day, but without him the men’s matches taking place on Monday lacked star power.

If Sabalenka against Osaka did not take place under the lights, then which women’s match would conceivably ever be picked?

With that came a sense of expectation.

If the match ended up being a dud, then it could have been used by critics as a stick to beat the women’s game with.

That, others argue, was a situation created by the French Open’s reluctance to showcase its female stars in the first place.

Was the burden which it placed on Sabalenka and Osaka to represent the women’s game fair?

“I don’t really care. There are so many different things to put pressure on myself – that was the last thing on my mind,” said Osaka.

“Shout out to the tournament for trusting us – I hope it was entertaining for people.”

As Israel faces growing international scrutiny for its actions in Gaza and Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Ava Warriner takes a look at the Israeli and US officials who joined the annual Israel Day parade in New York – the world’s largest gathering in support of the State of Israel.

Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG), using publicly available open-source information. Given the carrier picture is largely unchanged compared to last week, this week’s tracker highlights the big-deck amphibious fleet.

Much of America’s fleet of nine amphibious assault ships is hard at work as the U.S. opts to replace the Iwo Jima ARG in Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) with a “sub-optimized” Littoral Combat Force (LCF). The LCF appears to be the first deployment that embodies the Navy’s new more flexible deployment strategy, which could have wider impacts across the fleet in the future. “It’s the way to have force multiplication, to punch bigger than yourself, and that’s done through tailored offsets,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said at SNA earlier this year about the new tailored deployments concept. “That whole thing builds a way to present forces to allow me to do more with less.”

The 24th MEU, operating under the designation LCF-24, deployed to SOUTHCOM and replaced the Iwo Jima ARG. “Distinct from a standard Amphibious Ready Group/MEU deployment, LCF-24 is a purpose-built MAGTF engineered for distributed operations,” SOUTHCOM explained in a statement. The Marine Air-Ground Task Force, with more than 1,300 Marines and Sailors, will operate from both shore-based nodes and aboard Fort Lauderdale, and is certified to “execute a wide array of mission essential tasks, including but not limited to Quick Reaction Force operations such as embassy reinforcement and the tactical recovery of aircraft [and] personnel, while standing ready to support disaster relief activities.”

A Gaza-bound ship carrying aid has begun its voyage from Sweden, weeks after Israeli forces abducted activists on a similar mission in international waters. The ‘Handala II’ vessel says it is carrying humanitarian supplies for Palestinians to break the Israeli blockade on the enclave.

Nvidia is set to bring artificial intelligence to laptop and desktop computers with brands like Microsoft and Dell later this year as the US tech giant broadens its AI presence.

The Santa Clara, California-based AI chipmaker unveiled on Monday at its annual Nvidia GTC event in Taipei new powerful chips that would bring advanced AI functions to laptops and desktop computers.

CEO Jensen Huang said that the new development is “going to reinvent the PC [personal computer]”.

The changes come amid three years of collaboration between Microsoft and Nvidia and pit the latter against companies like chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices and personal computer brands Intel and Apple.

“This is going to be the new PC,” Huang said as he unveiled Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchip — which combines CPU, or central processing unit, and GPU, or graphics processing unit, capabilities — that would power new Windows laptop and desktop computer models in what the company called “AI personal computers”, expected to debut in the fall of this year.

The chip, developed with Taiwan’s MediaTek, will be in compact desktops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and GIGABYTE to follow.

Nvidia, which is already the world’s most valuable company, said the reinvention will be for creating and gaming.

“When it has an autonomous [AI] agent, an agent that’s helping you, that understands you, you could talk to it. It could look at you. You could ask it to read files, go help you do some research. It could do a lot more,” Huang said.

Microsoft said in a separate statement that the personal computers running on Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchips would be able to support “highly capable AI models” and complex workloads. With the new superchips, these personal computers can run AI agents locally, Nvidia said.

“This is the first across the lineup of PC reinvention for 40 years,” Huang said.

Nvidia’s move is significant at a time when demand is growing for the use of personal AI agents, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at the technology research and advisory group Omdia.

“For consumers, it means more choices, which is always a good thing,” Su said.

Neil Shah, analyst and co-founder of Counterpoint Research, described Nvidia’s announcement as a move that’s “revolutionising how PCs would look like in the next 10 years”.

The new laptops and desktop computers “will drive agentic AI applications in every home”, Shah said, with an aim of having an “AI supercomputer” in each household.

Also during Monday’s speech, Nvidia’s Huang said its new Vera CPUs for data centres are in full production and are “going to be our new major growth driver” on the boom of AI agents, with early customers including Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceXAI.

Huang also revealed a humanoid robot reference design that could act as a blueprint for future research, especially within the higher education sector. Nvidia said its “Isaac GR00T” stands nearly 1.83 metres (6 feet) tall and has the humanoid chassis of Chinese robot maker Unitree’s H2. It is equipped with five-fingered dexterous hands, made by Singapore-based robotics startup Sharpa, that are capable of finely controlled movements.

Reception for AI PCs has been mixed so far. HP reported last week that the devices helped prop up quarterly sales, but Dell said earlier this year that demand had fallen short of initial expectations. Qualcomm, looking to capitalise on AI demand, has also been offering AI PCs with Microsoft.

On Wall Street, Nvidia stock rose nearly 4 percent on the news in midday trading. Microsoft ticked up 2.5 percent and Dell surged 9.3 percent. Competitors AMD and Intel, on the other hand, are on the decline. AMD is down 0.1 percent from the market open, and Intel is down by 2.5 percent.

Caracas, June 1, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – A Venezuelan delegation representing the acting Delcy Rodríguez administration held talks with the International Monetary Fund leadership on Saturday in Washington, DC.

The Venezuelan team was led by Economy Vice President Calixto Ortega alongside Central Bank (BCV) President Luis Pérez and other finance officials. In a statement, Caracas called the meeting “productive,” focused on “technical assistance mechanisms” and the Caribbean nation’s efforts to “recover funds” to boost economic recovery.

“With these kinds of meetings, Venezuela ratifies its disposition for dialogue and international cooperation, with independence and self-determination,” the communiqué read. Venezuelan authorities emphasized the country’s “new stage of stability and growth” alongside a commitment to “reestablish ties with multilateral organizations.”

For her part, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva also classified the meeting as “productive” and reiterated the US-based institution’s disposition to “support efforts to strengthen macroeconomic stability.”

Venezuela reestablished ties with the IMF and the World Bank in April after a seven-year hiatus. The move followed the Trump administration’s recognition of Rodríguez as the South American country’s “sole leader” as part of a fast-tracked diplomatic rapprochement between Washington and Caracas.

The acting president hosted a World Bank delegation on May 15 and emphasized “technical cooperation” prospects.

Though Venezuela has been a member of the IMF and the World Bank since 1946, former President Hugo Chávez effectively disengaged from both bodies in the 2000s, labeling them “instruments of US imperialism” and seeking to create Global South integration and lending alternatives.

The Rodríguez government’s IMF meeting came amid announced plans to execute a “comprehensive and orderly” restructuring of the country’s foreign debt, estimated to be as high as US $170 billion.

Caracas’ liabilities stem from a combination of defaulted bonds and loans, international arbitration awards, and accrued interest. Venezuela began to default on its debts in 2017 as US sanctions heavily aggravated the Caribbean nation’s economic crisis and blocked payments. The restructuring process may be one of the largest in history, surpassing Russia (1998) and Argentina (2001).

The acting Rodríguez government is scheduled to present its macroeconomic framework and public debt sustainability analysis to the international finance community this month. The Trump administration issued a license allowing Venezuela to contract financial and advisory services, but direct negotiations with creditors remain prohibited.

The Venezuelan executive hired Centerview Partners as financial advisor for the debt restructuring process. According to Reuters, the decision was taken without a thorough selection process and on the recommendation of Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former Trump administration official and close associate of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Multiple reports in recent days have documented Claver-Carone’s role as a “gatekeeper” for businesses interested in investing in Venezuela as well as a conduit between Rodríguez and the Trump White House.

Venezuelan bonds have risen significantly in recent months as investors expect a windfall after purchasing the defaulted bonds at highly depreciated levels.

Venezuelan authorities have stated that there are “no plans” to take on IMF loans, instead prioritizing access to around $5 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to address infrastructure and public services needs. The IMF issued the SDRs to help countries deal with a liquidity crunch during the Covid-19 pandemic, but its non-recognition of the Nicolás Maduro government barred Venezuela from accessing its share.

For her part, Georgieva has previously stated that Venezuela “desperately needs help” and that the fund would support a loan program, but that prior steps, including clarity on macroeconomic data, are necessary.

Since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Maduro, the Trump administration has extracted significant concessions from the Venezuelan government, including pro-business oil and mining reforms, lucrative deals for Western corporations, and external auditing of the Central Bank. The White House has also seized control of Venezuela’s oil export revenues.

Acting President Rodríguez has additionally installed a commission to evaluate the “strategic” value of Venezuelan state assets and possible privatizations. Plans to reform the country’s tax, labor, and pension laws are likewise underway.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Caracas.