NEWS

The Lyrid meteor shower was first recorded almost 3,000 years ago by Chinese astronomers.

And they were named after the constellation of Lyra from where the meteors appear to originate and occurs every year from 16 to 25 April, but often peaking around 22 April.

Distinctive features of the Lyrids are their colours and brightness – along with exceptionally bright fireballs from time to time, outshining the planet Venus.

The colours are created by very small dust particles – no bigger than a grain of sand – interacting with the particles and ions in Earth’s atmosphere.

As the grains heat up and ionise, they produce the light we can see with the trail produced as the meteor cools and fades.

Fireballs are made when larger pieces of debris – more like the size of a grape or an acorn – pass though the atmosphere. As they are so much bigger when they heat up they create a flash and a line, often called a train, behind them.

While the Lyrid meteor shower is visible every year, Comet Thatcher takes 415 years to complete its orbit of the Sun and won’t be visible again until 2283.

Hezbollah MP, Hassan Fadlallah said that Hezbollah will eliminate the “yellow line” declared by Israel in southern Lebanon, stressing that “no one will be able to disarm the party.”

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Fadlallah said: “We will topple this yellow line through resistance, through our insistence on our legitimate right to defend ourselves and our country.”

He added: “The Israeli army’s attempt to establish a buffer zone, under the guise of a front line, a yellow line, and a green line—we will break all these lines. We will not accept any of them, and we will reach our villages on the internationally recognized borders, no matter the sacrifices, no matter the cost.”

“There will be no disarmament of the resistance, and no one in Lebanon or abroad will be able to disarm it”, he added.

He said that “it is in the interest of the President of the Republic to withdraw from the path of direct negotiations with Israel,” adding that Hezbollah wants the ceasefire to continue.

“It is in the interest of Lebanon, the President of the Republic, and the government to withdraw from the path of direct negotiations and return to a national consensus on the best option for Lebanon,” he said, describing the move toward direct negotiations as “a unilateral decision on a fateful matter related to Lebanon’s future.”

He added: “We will reject and confront any attempt to impose political prices on Lebanon through concessions offered to this Israeli enemy.”

Fadlallah added he wants the ceasefire to continue, alongside efforts to ensure the withdrawal of the occupation army, the return of displaced persons to their villages, the release of prisoners, and the launch of a reconstruction program.

Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Pressure campaigns

In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

Legal victories

Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”

Within a year where big language models write press releases, student papers, and even peer-reviewed articles with a single press of a button, guesswork is not an option that teachers, editors, and grant reviewers can afford. They require valid methods of determining whether they are looking at a page that was designed by a human being or generated by an algorithm. The boundary is more than ever indistinct: text generators of the modern era do not only imitate idiosyncratic diction, they also reference sources and sprinkle their text with rhetorical flourishes, which traditionally were the bane of automation. But there are still prints, prints of fingers, that are revealed by a rigorous check-up.

Why Detection Matters in 2026

Key Linguistic Signals Still Holding Up

Long before you open a dedicated detector, close reading can raise red flags. AI prose often exhibits low burstiness, sentence lengths fluctuate within narrow bands, and high lexical predictability, especially in mid-length passages. Repeated use of transitional adverbs such as “moreover,” “furthermore,” and “overall” in rhythmic sequences is another giveaway. Similarly, large models smooth out idiosyncratic contractions, turning informal drafts into formally homogenized copy. When a reviewer suspects such fingerprints, a quick trip to Smodin to check if text is AI generated offers an immediate probability score without exporting the manuscript. Still, numbers alone are insufficient; the linguistic context of the assignment, the native proficiency of the writer, and genre conventions must frame interpretation.

Burstiness versus Perplexity: What the Metrics Really Say

Turnitin is LMS-based but is English-centric. Copyleaks can also analyze code snippets or prose, and is used in computer-science classes. Smodin is more concerned with breadth and sub-second throughput, with a thousand-word manuscript taking less than five seconds. Comparative reviews, such as Quillbot vs Grammarly vs Smodin, show that no single tool prevails in every context. Experienced editors therefore run suspect passages through at least two detectors before escalating to human forensic analysis.

Layered Verification Workflow

Beyond Algorithms: Human Tactics That Still Work

Raid is part of Moscow’s hardline social conservatism and clampdown on political life.

Russian police have raided the country’s top publishing house on suspicion that it has been disseminating “homosexual propaganda”, local media report.

Police reportedly seized thousands of books on Tuesday and took Yevgeny Kapiev, the chief executive of Eksmo, in for questioning. The raid appears to be part of Moscow’s pivot to hardline social conservatism with repressive laws running alongside a clampdown on political life and aggressive foreign policy.

Police targeted Kapiev as part of a “criminal case on extremism” over the publication of books “dealing with LGBT themes”, Eksmo communications director Yekaterina Kozhanova told the AFP news agency.

The firm’s finance director, head of distribution and deputy commercial director were also interrogated, Kozhanova said.

Eksmo is suspected of unofficially marketing books, including novels, that promote “gay propaganda” to Russian youth, the broadcaster Ren-TV reported.

An investigation into Eksmo was opened last year when authorities said “LGBT propaganda” had been “detected” in books published by its Popcorn Books subsidiary and they arrested several members of its staff.

Ultraconservative turn

Books showing approval of same-sex relations have been banned in Russia for more than 10 years.

The law has been tightened recently, requiring publishers to remove publications and destroy entire editions if they depict same-sex relationships.

The persecution of LGBTQ individuals, organisations and communities has intensified in the past decade or so as the Kremlin heralds “traditional values”. That drive has included a crackdown on films, books, art and culture, among other areas of social life.

Cultural producers have faced significant pressure even when they focus on giants of Russian culture. Biographies of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita, and the poet, actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky have to be marked with warning labels because they are seen as promoting drug-taking.

The ultraconservative social turn has accelerated since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ activists should be designated as “extremists” and banned activities of the “international LGBTQ movement”.

Courts have issued fines and jail sentences to people displaying LGBTQ “symbols”, such as clothes, jewellery or posters featuring the rainbow flag.

Out of 49 European countries, the Rainbow Europe organisation ranked Russia third from bottom in terms of tolerance of LGBTQ people.

Pete Hegseth says the decision is based on the principle of ‘medical autonomy’ and criticises the mandate as ‘overreaching’.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the flu vaccine will no longer be obligatory for members of the country’s military, the latest step under President Donald Trump to shift vaccine policy in the federal government.

Hegseth said in a video shared on social media on Tuesday that the decision was based on principles of “medical autonomy” and religious freedom.

“We’re seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capabilities. In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it,” said Hegseth.

“The notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member, everywhere, in every circumstance at all times is just overly broad and not rational.”

The Trump administration has framed vaccine refusal as a matter of personal moral and religious principle, rolling back some policies meant to safeguard against preventable diseases.

Hegseth’s directive allows various military services to request that the mandate be kept in place, giving them a window of 15 days to do so.

The announcement comes after what health officials described as a particularly severe flu season when infections surged in the US. Public health experts have recommended that everyone aged six months or older get an annual flu vaccine.

The second Trump administration has reflected some of the backlash to public health guidelines and mandates that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hegseth himself has called that period an “era of betrayal” for the country’s armed forces. More than 8,400 members of the military were ejected for failure to abide by a 2021 mandate to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Trump administration has also rolled back vaccine recommendations in other areas, announcing earlier this year that it would not recommend flu shots and other forms of vaccines for all children. A lawsuit was filed challenging that effort, and the policy was temporarily blocked by a federal judge as the legal challenge plays out.

For the first time since at least the launch of Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, an Iranian-linked vessel was interdicted in the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) region, the Pentagon confirmed to The War Zone. The boarding of the Botswana-flagged oil tanker M/T Tifani came just days after Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told reporters, including from The War Zone, that the U.S. would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran” anywhere in the world. The move also follows the U.S. firing on and seizing the Iranian cargo ship Touska on Sunday in the Arabian Sea.

Meanwhile, as the clock ticks down toward the end of a fragile ceasefire between the U.S and Iran, the future of peace negotiations remains very much uncertain, which we will discuss later in this story. 

“Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the stateless sanctioned M/T Tifani without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility,” the Pentagon stated Tuesday morning on X.

 “As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran—anywhere they operate. 

International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels. The Department of War will continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”

Video released by the Pentagon shows about two dozen armed troops boarding two MH-60S Seahawk helicopters on a U.S. Navy Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) ship. The video then cuts to the troops repelling onto the deck of the Tifani and searching that vessel.

The Pentagon did not say where the incident took place, however, according to MarineTraffic.com, the Tifani was last located yesterday in the Indian Ocean, about halfway between Sri Lanka and Indonesia and some 2,000 miles southeast of Iran.

The Pentagon told us that “multiple agencies” played a role in seizing the ship. We have reached out for additional details.

Gregory Brew, Senior Analyst, Iran and Oil for Eurasia Group, stated on X that the Tifani departed from Iran’s Kharg Island on April 5 and that the ship appears to have continued sailing on after the boarding. We asked the Pentagon for more details about the ship’s disposition and they referred us to the White House, which sent us back to the Pentagon.

The ship was sanctioned under a 2018 executive order issued by President Donald Trump during his first term designed to counter Iranian malign activities and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

UPDATES

The status of peace talks in Pakistan remains murky. While Vice President JD Vance and other top officials are expected to leave for the negotiations today, Iranian officials have yet to officially commit. The main sticking points remain the future of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, the Strait of Hormuz, the status of its ballistic missile inventory and support for proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis of Yemen.

“A diplomatic source in Pakistan says no diplomatic delegation from Iran has been dispatched to Islamabad ‘so far,’” the official Iranian IRNA news agency stated on Tuesday. “In response to speculations about possible negotiations in Pakistan, a diplomatic source told IRNA on Tuesday that no delegation from Iran has arrived in the Pakistani capital.”

The source clarified that “neither official nor unofficial information has been received regarding any Iranian involvement in the negotiations in Islamabad.”

In a brief phone call, Trump told CNBC host Joe Kernan he thinks the U.S. is “going to end up with a great deal” with Iran to end the war, even as he said he does not expect to extend a ceasefire due to expire on Wednesday.

“I think they have no choice,” Trump said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” when asked what he expected to come out of a second round of peace negotiations with Iran. “We’ve taken out their navy, we’ve taken out their air force, we’ve taken out their leaders.”

The president added that he is ready to resume the conflict if a deal with Iran does not appear in the offing.

“Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with – but we’re ready to go,” Trump answered when asked if he needs at least the prospect for a signed deal either today or tomorrow.

Trump also said “I don’t want to do that,” when asked if he would extend the ceasefire beyond tomorrow if talks with Iran appear promising.

As the sun sets on Israel’s Memorial Day, 12 torches, together symbolising the spirit of the nation, are lit to mark the beginning of Independence Day, the anniversary of the country’s establishment in 1948 – which led to the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians.

To be selected to light one of the torches over the resting place of Theodor Herzl, the man widely credited with the creation of modern Zionism, is regarded as one of the greatest honours in Israel.

This year, among those selected to light the torch on Tuesday evening is Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbi so controversial that even the Israeli military – an organisation that admits to having killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza – has publicly distanced itself from him. A military spokesperson said last week that Zarbiv “was not selected in coordination” with the military, and was not representing it at the ceremony, despite his being an army reservist.

Obliterate

Zarbiv first came to national prominence in Israel in the early months of 2024, when the 52-year-old rabbi and state rabbinical judge was filmed throwing grenades at Palestinians in Khan Younis during a firefight.

Since then, he has recorded himself gleefully demolishing Palestinian homes – his name even becoming a verb meaning to flatten or obliterate – and has delivered sermons from the ruins of Rafah promising “victory and settlement”. Zarbiv pairs it all with the traditional mannerisms of a religious leader, punctuating his threats and violence with footage of him blowing on a traditional ram’s horn, or shofar, as well as reciting prayers and parts of the Torah.

Zarbiv has also shared footage of himself taking part in the demolition of homes in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces are accused of deploying the same scorched earth tactics as they did during Gaza’s genocide.

Speaking to Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 in January 2025, Zarbiv boasted of the destruction inflicted on Gaza.

“There are tens of thousands of dead. The dogs and the cats ate them because no one collected them,” he said. “Tens of thousands of families – they have not a piece of paper, no childhood photo, no IDs, they have nothing. No home, there is nothing. They come, they have no idea where their house is. It’s something unbelievable.”

While the army leadership itself might be seeking to distance itself from Zarbiv, the rabbi himself says that he represents his fellow soldiers.

“I am one soldier among many, I am a soldier of the Givati Brigade,” he said in an interview last week.

Illegal settlement

Last week, the Israeli organisation Kerem Navot, which monitors illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, filed a complaint to Israel’s judicial watchdog after confirming that Zarbiv had built his home illegally on private Palestinian land in the Beit El settlement, accusing him of violating the ethics rules for both judges and rabbinic judges.

That had no bearing, however, on Transport Minister Miri Regev’s decision to nominate Zarbiv for the torch-bearing ceremony.

“Rabbi Zarbiv, a father of six, continues to serve in reserve duty and combines in his life in an inspiring way between the book and the sword – between Torah and the army, between study and action, and between spiritual leadership and security responsibility,” the right-wing minister said.

She continued, describing the man now accused of multiple war crimes as representative of a generation “that refuses to part with responsibility, that chooses to bear the burden and continue to build, out of great faith in the future”.

Nevertheless, in January 2025, The Hind Rajab Foundation, the Belgian-based NGO that seeks to prosecute Israeli soldiers on the basis of the video evidence they themselves frequently provide, filed an official complaint against Zarbiv with the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the foundation’s lawyers, Zarbiv’s gleeful boast of destroying 50 buildings per week in Gaza, participating in the complete destruction of entire neighbourhoods, and having publicly incited violence and hatred through his appearances on Israeli media, were clear enough breaches of the Geneva Convention and Rome Statute to deserve prosecution.

Zarbiv was not a neutral public figure being honoured for civic virtue, Dyab Abou Jahjah, cofounder of The Hind Rajab Foundation, told Al Jazeera. Rather, “he is a notorious perpetrator of grave international crimes”, Abou Jahjah said.

“His selection [for the Independence Day ceremony] is therefore not incidental – it is revealing,” Abou Jahjah added. “When an individual implicated in acts that constitute genocide is elevated in this way, it reflects the underlying logic of a state project historically rooted in the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. From that perspective, his selection is entirely consistent.”

B’tselem, the Israeli rights group, is also

among those objecting to Zarbiv’s selection.

“The government’s decision to laud Zarbiv as an ‘exemplary citizen’, after more than two years of genocide in Gaza and amid a reality of unprecedented state and settler violence in the West Bank, represents a state-level endorsement of the complete dehumanization of Palestinians and the systematic destruction of Palestinian life,” B’tselem said in a statement.

“This selection sends a clear message to the citizens of Israel and the entire world: In Israel, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes are the ‘spirit of the nation’,” the group added.

Authoritarian leaders like President Vladimir Putin are faced with a dilemma: they require their military forces to competently conduct campaigns against external enemies, but these same capabilities make them more capable of successfully initiating coups to remove the incumbent leader.  Putin, like other leaders of his ilk, is forced to balance policies which promote competence in the armed forces with measures that ensure regime survival.  The latter are referred to as ‘coup-proofing’ measures, the implementation of which, to some extent explain the underperformance of the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

Counterbalancing and Parallel Forces

The coup-proofing measure of most consequence to Russia’s military performance in Ukraine is ‘counterbalancing’.  This involves the introduction of new security forces to counterbalance the military and each other.  A splintered security sector filled with various armed groups are in competition with each other for funding, recruits, and supplies, as well as the ruling autocrat’s attention, which is ultimately vital for attaining the aforementioned resources. 

Counterbalancing confers three advantages.  Firstly, it promotes loyalty by encouraging competition and distrust between militarized factions who must demonstrate allegiance to the leader to secure resources.  Secondly, it deters coups because the officers and senior figures distrust their counterparts in other organizations; and thirdly, it prevents the likelihood of a coup succeeding as it is more difficult for military and security forces operating under disparate chains of command to coordinate and cooperate effectively.

To quote, a 2017 paper appearing in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, ‘If coups are akin to coordination games, counterbalancing can be understood as an effort to add additional players to the game – actors who lack the incentive to move in concert with the others.’

Counterbalancing is rarely used in isolation and may be combined with other coup-proofing measures.  For example, authoritarian leaders frequently favour loyalty over meritocracy when selecting staff for senior military and security positions.

Mercenaries as Parallel Forces

Several parallel armed groups exist outside of the Russian military’s chain of command.  The most high-profile example is the use of mercenaries from Wagner Group, formerly led by Yevgeny Prigozhin until his demise in August 2023.  Wagner Group employs an estimated 50,000 soldiers, 40,000 of which are believed to be released prison convicts.  For Putin, the introduction of mercenaries to the war in Ukraine conferred several benefits including a degree of plausible deniability, less domestic blowback from casualties, and an alternative source of manpower which was especially valuable prior to the partial mobilization in September 2022.

From a coup-proofing perspective, the introduction of a private military company (PMC) with overlapping responsibilities to the regular military promoted greater competition between senior leaders.  This rivalry was exacerbated by the contest for vital resources like ammunition, supplies and personnel. 

The feud between Wagner’s late leader with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov was especially bitter.  Prigozhin frequently levelled scathing criticism at the two men, and other senior military officers for their handling of the war, accusing them of stealing the credit for Wagner’s battlefield successes in Ukraine, and even attempting to sabotage the PMC’s efforts by withholding vital ammunition. 

For a time, this suited Putin.  Prigozhin was careful to avoid directly criticizing the Russian president himself which helped to deflect any blame Putin might receive from the public onto his generals.  Moreover, Prigozhin’s actions appeared to fit a preestablished pattern in Russian politics whereby senior figures jostle against each other to secure the president’s favour. 

There are several Russian PMCs in addition to Wagner Group.  Konstantin Pikalov, once thought to be Prigozhin’s right hand man and the head of Wagner operations in Africa, heads his own mercenary group called ‘Convoy’, which were founded in occupied Crimea in Autumn 2022.  Another group is ‘Redut’, which was likely formed to provide security for Russian-owned facilities in Syria, but it believed to have been one of the first PMCs to provide personnel during the invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom also has mercenaries in the guise of ‘private security organizations’, which energy companies were permitted to create after a new law was passed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in February 2023.  It is unclear whether the various groups associated with Gazprom subsidiary Gazprom Neft will exclusively guard the company’s energy facilities or whether they will take on active combat roles in Ukraine.

Other Parallel Forces

Mercenaries are not the only parallel forces at play.  In 2016, Putin formed the Rosgvardiya (National Guard) under the leadership of Viktor Zolotov, the president’s former bodyguard.  The formation of the Rosgvariya entailed the reorganization of preexisting internal security forces into a new agency which directly reports to Putin.  Ostensibly, the Rosgvardiya’s responsibilities largely concern public order, policing, and counterterrorism, but the 300,000 to 400,000 strong force certainly acts as a deterrent to would-be coup-plotters.  The Rosgvardiya has also reportedly seen action in Ukraine.

Similar examples of counterbalancing can be seen in the intelligence sphere.  Three of the country’s most important intelligence services, the GRU, the SVR, and the FSB, each have their own elite special forces contingents.  Competition and mutual distrust between the three is rife due to a high degree of overlapping tasks and low degree of cooperation.  The FSB have attracted a particularly high degree of rancour from the GRU and SVR because of its increasingly proactive role conducting operations beyond its domestic remit.  Additionally, counterintelligence officers from the FSB are embedded directly within the armed forces to monitor signs of dissent. 

Finally, there are parallel forces provided by the Russian republics.  Just two days after the invasion of Ukraine, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed leader of Chechnya, confirmed that the 141st Special Motorized Regiment – better known as the Kadyrovites – were operating in the country.  The Kadyrovites are essentially a paramilitary organization loyal to Kadyrov, functioning as his private army. 

Like Prigozhin, Kadyrov has been highly critical of the Russian military leadership but avoided levelling such critiques at Putin.  By emphasizing the effectiveness of Chechen fighters over regular Russian forces, Kadyrov may have been hoping to make himself appear more indispensable to Putin.

How Coup-Proofing Degrades Military Effectiveness

The introduction of several players incentivized to hold each other in mutual suspicion is not conducive to an effective and unified war effort, as events in Ukraine have demonstrated.  As explained by James M. Powell, coup-proofing ‘undermines the fighting capacity of a military by creating coordination challenges in the field.’  Unity of command is necessary for a coup to be effective, but it is just as necessary for conducting a war.  The absence of unified command has thus jeopardized the entire Russian war effort.

The lack of a unified command structure was evident in the early stages of the war.  In the first months following the invasion, Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies and analysts were unable to identify a single overall commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine.  Instead, it was believed that separate formations were drawn from each of Russia’s four military districts and placed under the command of senior officers from each district, with Putin taking on an oversized role, sometimes reportedly giving orders to field formations.  Last April, Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov was finally named as overall commander but there have been at least three reshuffles at the top since then.

Wagner’s increasing share of frontline duties further undermined unity of command, with Prigozhin and his mercenaries not subject to the authority of the regular armed forces.  Tensions between Prigozhin and the miliary leadership culminated in Wager Group’s mutiny in June.  A civil war or coup seemed momentarily possible in Russia until a deal was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.  Prigozhin was later killed in a plane crash in August removing him from the chessboard altogether, but his insubordination was a clear sign that Putin had miscalculated and allowed the rivalries simmering between the members of his inner circle to burn too hot.

Beyond Prigozhin’s dramatic rebellion, Coup-proofing has created other unintended consequences which have hindered Russia’s military efforts.  An overemphasis on loyalty at the expense of competence coupled with fierce competition between the security and defence services have created incentive structures that have undermined honesty and integrity, inter-service cooperation, and professionalism. 

These trends were identified by analysts as being particularly pervasive in the Russian intelligence community even before the invasion of Ukraine.  For example, a 2021 Congressional Research Service report noted that ‘Agencies compete with each other for greater responsibilities, budgets, and political influence, often at the expense of other agencies.’  As Mark Galeotti puts it, ‘The competition for presidential approval is especially strong and has led to a perverse competition to tell the boss what they think he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear.’  This culture likely incentivised the Russian intelligence community to provide briefings to Putin prior to the invasion that confirmed his preconceptions that Ukraine would offer little resistance.

It is equally questionable if the most competent officers have been granted the responsibility to lead Russia’s war on Ukraine.  Sergei Surovikin, a veteran of several conflicts and broadly considered to be capable officer by most military analysts, was made the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine in October 2022.  However, Surovikin was replaced in January the following year by Valery Gerasimov, despite the latter having already attracted much of the blame for implementing a faulty strategy in his role as the Chief of the General Staff.  In August, Surovikin was then stripped of his role as the commander of the Russian aerospace forces due to suspicions that he was linked to the Wagner rebellion. 

Other officers have met similar fates.  On July 12, Major General Ivan Popov, who led the 58th Combined Arms Army stationed in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhya region, disclosed that he had been relieved of his command after he made complaints to Gerasimov regarding the lack of troop rotations.  He also highlighted issues his soldiers were having with counterbattery radar and artillery reconnaissance.  Popov’s dismissal indicates that senior military personnel are seemingly unable to report the facts on the ground to their superiors without facing charges of disloyalty or disciplinary action.  Such a culture, especially within the Russian military’s highly hierarchal command structure will make it increasingly difficult for commanders to make informed decisions based on accurate information.

Thus far, Putin’s coup-proofing strategy has succeeded in fragmenting the Russian security elite sufficiently to secure his hold on power, despite Prigozhin’s short-lived insubordination.  However, these same measures which have enabled Putin to safeguard his rule have seriously undermined Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.  The constituent parts of Russia’s defence and security apparatuses fail to act as a whole and there is ample evidence that senior leaders have been promoted on the basis of perceived loyalty over competence.  A culture of competition and distrust has hindered cooperation, coordination, and honesty, which has led to poor decision-making, the results of which have played out on the battlefields of Ukraine since February last year.

There was a time when various developments from this past week – such as the Israeli government spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting ultra-nationalist marches, a sanctioned settler leading army-escorted livestock raids on a Palestinian village, and the Israeli finance minister calling for the full military occupation and settlement of Gaza while speaking at once-dismantled occupied West Bank settlements – would have been met with outcry or debate in some corners of Israeli society.

This week, however, they have become routine, as United Nations experts describe Israeli policy as “ethnically cleansing the West Bank through daily attacks resulting in killing, injury, and harassment of women and children, and the widespread destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods”.

Against that backdrop, this past week brought intense and coordinated settler attacks on villages near Ramallah, continued Israeli strikes on civilians in Gaza, new evictions and demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem, and US-Hamas diplomatic talks in Cairo that showed some glimmers of progress – while falling well short of what either side has demanded.

Gaza: Strikes, starvation, and a partial offer on weapons

Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes, gunfire and drone attacks continued throughout the week as the humanitarian crisis worsened.

On April 14, a strike on a police vehicle on al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City killed four people, including three-year-old Yahya al-Malahi, whose father said his family had been leaving a relative’s wedding. A strike on the Shati refugee camp later the same day killed at least five more.

On April 16, brothers Abdelmalek and Abdel Sattar al-Attar were killed in Beit Lahiya in an area that witnesses said fell outside the zone under Israeli military control along the so-called “yellow line”. On April 17, brothers Mahmoud and Eid Abu Warda were shot dead by a drone while trying to get water in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood; a drone separately struck a water desalination facility in the same area, killing one more. The following day, two civilian contractors delivering water on behalf of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were shot dead by Israeli troops in northern Gaza.

Since the October ceasefire, 777 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and at least 2,193 injured, as of April 20. Since October 7, 2023, the cumulative death toll stands at 72,553 – a figure revised upwards this week after the Gaza Ministry of Health certified an additional 196 deaths.

Meanwhile, aid access into Gaza remains severely constrained. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations and partner aid inflows declined by 37 percent between the first and second three-month periods following the ceasefire. Bakeries have scaled back production due to dwindling flour and fuel, with Palestinians reporting hours-long queues for bread.

Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov told an Egyptian news channel this week that Israeli restrictions at border crossings remain “the primary obstacle” preventing sufficient aid from reaching Gaza.

On the diplomatic front, direct US-Hamas talks in Cairo this week focused on implementing phase-one commitments before any discussion of disarmament. No official agreement has been reached.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order the military to “immediately prepare for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip” and establish Israeli settlements there if Hamas refuses to disarm entirely. Smotrich made the declaration while attending a ceremony commemorating the re-establishment of the illegal settlement of Sa-Nur, which had previously been dismantled by Israel in 2005 along with settlements in Gaza and several others in the northern West Bank.

Coordinated attacks and killings in the West Bank

The week’s most sustained violence in the West Bank took place across a cluster of villages northeast of Ramallah – Khirbet Abu Falah, al-Mughayyir and Turmus Aya – where three new illegal Jewish outposts have been established in the past two months, all on privately owned Palestinian land in Area B, which is supposed to be under limited administrative control of the Palestinian Authority. One such outpost was built on land from which the Abu Najjeh community – itself already forcibly displaced from Ein Samiya in the summer of 2023 – was recently violently expelled from.

On April 18, settlers launched simultaneous coordinated attacks on all three villages, according to local activists. In Turmus Aya, settlers arriving in more than a dozen vehicles burned a home and a car, with a military force near the outpost refusing to intervene, according to local activists. In Khirbet Abu Falah, dozens of settlers gathered at a newly established outpost before descending on Palestinian homes; soldiers subsequently raided the village themselves, according to locals. In al-Mughayyir, soldiers stopped two small children playing in the street, pushing them to the ground. They drove away before settlers on a government-supplied quad bike attacked a Palestinian driver on the nearby road.

The following morning, settlers raided a sheep pen in al-Mughayyir and stole 70 sheep. When residents pursued them, settlers fired live ammunition, activists said. Israeli military and police then escorted the Or Nachman outpost’s founder, Amishav Malt, back into the village, where he led a raid that he claimed was to recover stolen sheep – a tactic local activists say is routinely used to justify further theft. One Palestinian resident was beaten unconscious by police, according to local activists. Soldiers then enabled Neria Ben Pazi – the founder of another local illegal outpost who is internationally sanctioned by Australia, Belgium, France and Britain – to steal sheep from a restrained Palestinian resident. At least 20 military vehicles subsequently laid siege to the village entrance.

Beyond these villages, settler attacks on shepherds, farmers and residents were documented across numerous communities, including olive trees cut down in Yatma near Nablus, and the theft of livestock and crops in Jifna and several communities in Masafer Yatta. Settlers erected a barbed wire fence on the path that children from Umm al-Khair use to reach their school, blocking their safe access ever since.

On April 16, Israeli forces staged a raid on Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem, during which they shot dead 17-year-old Mohammed Rayan. Soldiers prevented ambulances from treating him, instead removing his body – denying his family proper Muslim burial rites. Four others were shot with live fire. On April 18, Israeli forces killed Mohammed Suwaiti, 25, in Khirbet Salama, southwest of Hebron, claiming he was approaching the illegal settlement of Negohot.

According to the latest OCHA humanitarian situation report, in 2026, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been displaced by demolitions, settler attacks, and evictions – including more than 1,100 children. Settler attacks now account for 75 percent of all displacement recorded this year, with March recording the highest monthly settler injury toll since documentation began in 2006.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the incidents reported on this week, but has yet to receive a reply.

East Jerusalem evictions

In occupied East Jerusalem, demolitions and evictions continued at an elevated pace. Israeli authorities demolished the home of 80-year-old cancer patient Abu Kamel Dweik in Silwan’s al-Bustan neighbourhood, at least the eighth demolition in the area this month.

According to OCHA, since January 2026, at least 86 Palestinian-owned structures have been demolished in East Jerusalem, displacing more than 250 people, with roughly half demolished by their owners to avoid additional fines.

In addition to further home demolitions in al-Bustan expected shortly, the extended Basha family – six households comprising 12 people, most over 60, who have lived in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter for nearly a century – now face court-ordered eviction by April 26.

The week also saw reports from Israeli media that the Netanyahu government is allocating approximately 1.2 million shekels ($400,000) to expand the ultra-nationalist Jerusalem Day marches across the country next month – yearly events marked by vulgar, racist slogans and violent attacks on Palestinian neighbourhoods.

With such funding, the marches are being expanded to several mixed Jewish-Arab cities including Lydd (Lod), where Jerusalem Day clashes in 2021 escalated into days of violence. That the state is now directly subsidising such events reflects the broader influence of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose reach over police operations has itself become the subject of a rare legal challenge.

Israel’s High Court this week ordered Ben-Gvir to reach an agreement with the attorney general to curb his political interference in police work, after his repeated alleged violations of a prior agreement not to do so. Critics say his tenure has radicalised the police’s approach toward Palestinians – a charge given weight by documented incidents of police facilitating settler attacks and, in some cases, participating directly in violence against Palestinian residents.

United States President Donald Trump has said a nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he withdrew from in 2018 during his first term in office.

The original 2015 accord took roughly two years of negotiations to reach and involved hundreds of specialists across technical and legal fields, including multiple US experts. Under it, Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to subject itself to inspections in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions.

But Trump took the US out of that pact, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Before the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February, the US had made new demands – including additional restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the restriction of its ballistic missiles programme and an end to its support for regional armed groups, primarily in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Trump’s latest remarks come amid growing uncertainty about whether a second round of talks will proceed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as a two-week ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran approaches the end in just a day.

So, what was the JCPOA, and how did it compare to Trump’s new demands?

What was the JCPOA?

On July 14, 2015, Iran reached an agreement with the European Union and six major powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US, and Germany – under which these states would roll back international economic sanctions and allow Iran greater participation in the global economy.

In return, Tehran committed to limiting activities that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

These included reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, to less than 300kg (660lb), and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent – far below weapons-grade of 90 percent, but high enough for civilian purposes such as power generation.

Before the JCPOA, Iran operated roughly 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges. Under the deal, that number was cut to a maximum of 6,104, and only older-generation machines confined to two facilities, which were subject to international monitoring.

Centrifuges are machines which spin to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope – enrichment – in uranium, a key step towards potential bomb-making.

The deal also redesigned Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to prevent plutonium production and introduced one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever implemented by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In exchange, Iran received relief from international sanctions which had severely damaged its economy. Billions of dollars in frozen assets were released, and restrictions on oil exports and banking were eased.

The deal came to halt when Trump formally withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal in 2018, a move widely criticised domestically and by foreign allies, and despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.

“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said in October 2017.

He reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” tactic. These targeted Iran’s oil exports, as well as its shipping sector, banking system and other key industries.

The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table to agree to a new deal, which also included a discussion about Tehran’s missile capabilities, further curbs on enrichment and more scrutiny of its nuclear programme.

What has happened to Iran’s nuclear programme since the JCPOA?

During the JCPOA period, Iran’s nuclear programme was tightly constrained and heavily monitored. The IAEA repeatedly verified that Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, including one year after Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the agreement.

Starting in mid-2019, however, Iran began incrementally breaching the deal’s limits, exceeding caps on uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels.

In November 2024, Iran said it would activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed that Tehran had informed the nuclear watchdog that it planned to install more than 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.

In December 2024, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material. Most recently, in 2025, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440kg (970lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium.

What are Trump’s latest demands for Iran’s nuclear programme?

The US and its ally, Israel, are pushing Iran to agree to zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon, while providing no evidence for their claims.

They also want Iran’s estimated 440kg stock of 60pc enriched uranium to be removed from Iran. While that is below weapons-grade, it is the point at which it becomes much faster to achieve the 90 percent enrichment needed for atomic weapons production.

Iran has insisted its enrichment effort is for civilian purposes only. It is a signatory to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a strongly worded statement, said Trump had no right to ⁠⁠”deprive” Iran of its nuclear ⁠⁠rights.

What else is Trump asking for?

Restrictions on ballistic missiles

Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, Tehran had always insisted negotiations should be exclusively focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.

US and Israeli demands, however, extended beyond that. Just before the war began, Washington and Israel demanded severe restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.

Analysts say this demand was at least partly triggered by the fact that several Iranian missiles had breached Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” defence system during the 12-day war between the two countries in June last year. While Israel suffered only a handful of casualties, it is understood to have been alarmed.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly warned, without evidence, about the dangers of Iran’s long-range missiles, claiming Iran is producing them “in very high numbers” and they could “overwhelm the Iron Dome”.

Iran has said its right to maintain missile capabilities is non-negotiable. The JCPOA did not put any limits on the development of ballistic missiles.

However, a United Nations resolution made when adopting the nuclear agreement in July 2015 did stipulate that Iran could not “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons”.

Ending support for proxy groups

The US and Israel have also demanded that Iran stop supporting its non-state allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of groups in Iraq. Together, these groups are referred to as Iran’s “axis of resistance”.

In May last year, Trump said Tehran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons”, during a GCC meeting in Riyadh.

Three days before the war on Iran began in February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump accused Iran and “its murderous proxies” of spreading “nothing but terrorism and death and hate”.

Iran has refused to enter a dialogue about limiting its support for these armed groups.

Can Trump really get a new deal that is ‘much better’ than the JCPOA?

According to Andreas Kreig, associate professor of Security Studies at King’s College, London, Trump is more likely to secure a new deal that closely resembles the JCPOA, with “some form of restrictions on enrichment, possibly with a sunset clause, and international supervision”.

“Iran might get access to frozen assets and lifted sanctions much quicker than under the JCPOA, as it will not agree to a long drawn-out, gradual lifting of sanctions,” Krieg pointed out.

However, he warned that the political landscape in Tehran has hardened. “Iran now is a far more hardline and less pragmatic player that will play hardball at every junction. Trump cannot count on any goodwill in Tehran,” he said.

“The IRGC is now firmly in charge… with likely new powerful and tested levers such as the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates as a parallel elite military force to the army and has a great deal of political and economic power in Iran. It is a constitutionally recognised part of the Iranian military and answers directly to the supreme leader.

Overall, Krieg stressed, the US-Israel war on Iran “leaves the world worse off than had Trump stuck to the JCPOA”, even if a new compromise is eventually reached.

Moreover, since the revocation of the JCPOA, the US and Israel have waged two wars on Iran, including the current one. The 12-day war in June last year included attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and killed more than 1,000 people.

Attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have continued since the latest war began on February 28, including on the Natanz enrichment facility, Isfahan nuclear complex, Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Nevertheless, King’s College’s Krieg said there is still room for a negotiated outcome if Tehran and Washington scale back their demands.

“Both sides can compromise on enrichment thresholds, and on temporary moratoriums on enrichments. But Iran will not surrender its sovereignty to enrich altogether, and the Trump administration will have to meet them halfway,” he said.

“While the Iranians will commit on paper not to develop a nuclear weapon, they will want to keep R&D [research and development] in this space alive.”

Economic incentives will be central, he added. “Equally, Iran would want to get immediate access to capital and liquidity. Here, the Trump administration is already willing to compromise.”

The Jamieson Greer has told Mexican industry leaders that tariffs imposed by Donald Trump will remain in place, even as negotiations to revise the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement intensify ahead of a July review deadline.

The remarks, delivered during meetings in Mexico City, signal a major shift from decades of tariff free trade under USMCA and its predecessor NAFTA.

End of Zero Tariff Era

According to multiple sources, Greer made it clear that the United States does not intend to return to a zero tariff framework.

This marks a fundamental change in North American trade policy, where free trade in autos and parts had been the norm for over 30 years. The introduction of tariffs, including a 25 percent duty on automotive imports, has disrupted deeply integrated supply chains across the region.

Impact on Key Industries

The implications for Mexico are significant:

• More than half of Mexico’s auto and steel exports go to the United States
• Vehicle exports have already declined, with job losses in the auto sector
• Steel and aluminum industries face steep duties, some as high as 50 percent

These pressures have weakened Mexico’s competitive position, especially as the United States has negotiated lower tariffs with other partners.

Shifting Trade Rules

U.S. negotiators are also pushing for stricter rules of origin.

Proposals include requiring 100 percent North American sourcing for key components such as engines and electronics, up from current thresholds of around 75 percent. This would force manufacturers to further regionalize supply chains, potentially increasing costs but aligning with Washington’s goal of boosting domestic production.

Mexico’s Position

The Mexican government, led by Claudia Sheinbaum, is seeking relief from tariffs as part of the USMCA review. Officials aim to secure at least partial reductions, particularly in the auto and steel sectors, before finalizing broader trade revisions.

However, the latest signals from Washington suggest that while some easing may be possible, a full rollback is unlikely.

Why It Matters

This development underscores a broader shift in global trade policy away from pure free trade toward managed trade and economic security.

For Mexico, the stakes are high due to its deep economic integration with the United States. Persistent tariffs could reshape manufacturing patterns, investment decisions, and employment across North America.

What’s Next

Formal negotiations are set to begin in late May, with both sides aiming to resolve key disputes before the July deadline.

Key areas of focus will include:

• Tariff levels on autos and metals
• Rules of origin requirements
• Broader economic security cooperation

The outcome will determine the future structure of North American trade.

Analysis

The U.S. position reflects a strategic recalibration rather than a temporary policy shift. By normalizing tariffs, Washington is prioritizing domestic industry and supply chain control over traditional free trade principles.

For Mexico, this creates a structural challenge. Its export driven model, built on open access to the U.S. market, now faces persistent barriers. While some adjustments may preserve competitiveness, the era of frictionless trade appears to be over.

Ultimately, the negotiations will test whether North America can adapt to a new trade paradigm or whether tensions will deepen within one of the world’s most integrated economic regions.

With information from Reuters.

In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments say Israel is violating ‘human rights’.

Spain, Slovenia and Ireland have urged the European Union to debate suspending its association agreement with Israel, saying the bloc can no longer remain “on the sidelines” as conditions worsen in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the three countries had formally requested that the issue be placed on the agenda.

“Spain, along with Slovenia and Ireland, has requested that the suspension of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Israel be discussed and debated today,” Albares said.

“I expect every European country to uphold what the International Court of Justice and the UN say on human rights and the defence of international law. Anything different would be a defeat for the European Union,” he added.

In a joint letter sent last week to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments said Israel had taken a series of measures that “contravene human rights and violate international law and international humanitarian law”, adding that it breached the 1995 agreement that outlines political, economic and trade relations between the EU and Israel.

They said repeated appeals to Israel to reverse course had been ignored. The ministers pointed to a proposed Israeli law that would impose the death penalty by hanging on Palestinians convicted in military courts, describing it as “a grave violation of fundamental human rights” and a further step in the “systematic persecution, oppression, violence and discrimination” faced by Palestinians.

They also cited the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying conditions there were “unbearable”, with continuing violations of the ceasefire agreement and insufficient aid entering the territory.

The letter warned that violence in the occupied West Bank was also intensifying, with settlers acting “with absolute impunity” alongside ongoing Israeli military operations, causing civilian deaths.

“The European Union can no longer remain on the sidelines,” the ministers wrote, calling for “bold and immediate action” and saying all options should remain on the table.

The three countries argued Israel was in breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which ties relations to respect for human rights. An earlier EU review had already found Israel was failing to meet those obligations, they said, adding that the situation had deteriorated further since then.

During a donor conference in Brussels, Kallas said the estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza had risen to $71bn.

Ireland and Spain first pushed for a review of the agreement in 2024, but the effort failed to win enough backing from member states supportive of Israel. A later Dutch-led initiative succeeded in triggering an EU assessment, which concluded Israel had “likely” breached its obligations under the pact.

Possible trade measures, including suspending parts of the relationship, were later discussed but not implemented after Israel pledged to significantly increase humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Occupied Territories Bill

Ireland is also seeking to revive its Occupied Territories Bill, first introduced in 2018, which would ban trade in goods and services from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the West Bank. Progress has stalled despite unanimous backing in the lower house of parliament, the Dail.

Meanwhile, Spain and Slovenia have moved to curb trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank following sustained public protests and growing political pressure. In August last year, Slovenia banned imports of goods produced in Israeli-occupied territories, becoming one of the first European states to take such a step.

Spain followed later that year with a decree banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements, with the measure coming into force at the start of 2026.

All three countries formally recognised the State of Palestine in May 2024, in what was widely seen as a coordinated diplomatic move aimed at increasing pressure for a two-state solution.

Sina* is a 28-year-old video editing assistant who fought hard to build a life in Tehran. After completing mandatory military service, he refused to return to his hometown of Neyshabur in eastern Iran, knowing opportunities for a young man with a background in film editing and independent student theatre were bleak there. Through a college friend, he found his footing at a video content creation studio in the capital, climbing from camera assistant to assistant video editor within six months, before losing his job as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran. As told to Arya Farahand. 

It has been a few days since the guns fell silent, and the sliver of hope I felt when the ceasefire was announced is already fading. Out of all the resumes I sent in desperation, only one company called me for an interview. The salary they offered would not cover the bare minimum to survive. My family keeps calling from Neyshabur, repeating the same line: “Come back, there’s work for you here.” What they intend as a lifeline feels like salt in the wound.

I had stopped taking money from my father, my salary grew, and I was buying gifts for my two sisters. I was, for the first time in my life, truly independent. Now, I am sitting in my grandmother’s empty apartment in Tehran, staring at a phone with almost no internet, waiting for a job offer that’s not coming.

This is what the war has done to me. Not a scratch on my body, but everything else – gone.

Croissants on the roof

The morning the war started, we were in a briefing meeting, drinking tea. A colleague had brought fresh croissants. Then we heard the roar of a fighter jet, a whistle, and seconds later, an explosion.

Our initial instinct wasn’t terror, but naive curiosity. Against every survival guide we had read from the previous war, we piled into the elevator and went up to the roof, mugs still in hand. Pillars of smoke were rising across the city. Then, another explosion hit, deafeningly close. We sprinted for the stairs.

Our manager sent us home. The city had seized up. My driver called to say he couldn’t get through the gridlock, so we started walking – 40 minutes under the glaring sun, past stranded people and stalled cars. At one point, a middle-aged driver lost his nerve, swerving into the bus lane against traffic. A bus appeared head-on and deadlocked the lane. Trapped, he looked ready to explode. I didn’t stick around. I just kept walking.

I went to my grandmother’s house. Hard of hearing, she hadn’t heard a single blast and was simply overjoyed to see me. I drank tea, sat in front of the television, tried to process what was happening, then ate lunch and slept.

The city hollowing out

When I woke up, I reached for my phone, only to be reminded that the internet was dead. I am someone who fills every spare moment with online gaming or Instagram. Without either, the boredom was stifling. I couldn’t smoke in front of my grandmother, and the forced abstinence only added to my agitation.

In the days that followed, the city hollowed out. Whenever I stepped into the alley – using a quick errand as a pretext to sneak a cigarette – I saw fewer and fewer people. In our building, only five of the 12 units remained occupied. I could tell by the empty spaces in the parking garage.

When my cigarette supply ran out, the corner shop didn’t have my brand and the supermarket was charging double. With no certainty that my March salary would be paid, I settled for a cheaper, unknown brand. It was like inhaling truck exhaust.

The days blurred: the unemployment anxiety, the stifling boredom, the desperate secret cigarettes. I tried buying VPNs twice. The first worked for a single day. The second – the seller blocked me the moment I transferred the money.

The closest I have come to death

The true nightmare came on the night of March 5. A mild explosion jolted me awake around 4m. I walked to the kitchen for water. Then a blast ripped through the air – a sound seared into my brain for life. I froze. My grandmother stumbled out of her bedroom in terror. I pulled her into the kitchen.

Then came the barrage. More than 10 consecutive explosions, each less than 10 seconds apart. My grandmother sat on the floor beside me, arms wrapped tightly around my leg, head buried. It was the closest I have ever felt to death.

When it finally stopped, the windows held. My grandmother, shaken, recalled how during the Iran-Iraq war, sirens had warned them in time to reach shelters. What she found most painful about this war was the absolute lack of warning – no sirens, no shelters. Just sitting, waiting for the next blast. With tired legs, she climbed back into bed. I did not sleep until morning.

Ten voices in my head

Through all of it, I kept telling myself, “Hold on”. Our manager had hoped this war, like the previous conflict, would end in under two weeks. Whenever my parents called, begging me to return to Neyshabur, I said no.

On March 17, we had our final online meeting. The studio’s debts were mounting, invoices unpaid, and our manager saw no end in sight – for the war or the internet blackout. For the new Iranian year, starting on March 21, only 200 resources staff would remain. The rest of us were laid off, without pay.

As the call ended, it felt like 10 different voices were screaming in my head. I couldn’t rely on my grandmother’s meagre pension. My father was already supporting a family of four. The calculation was merciless: move back to Neyshabur and work at my uncle’s supermarket. Instead of planning how to improve my life, I was plotting survival.

I packed up and left. It was a gruelling 10-hour bus ride through eerily quiet roads. What haunted me most were the final moments in Tehran. The city felt hollow, silent, swallowed by a darkness I had never seen before.

The void

From Neyshabur, I called my manager, hoping against hope. He laid out the brutal math. During the previous war and the December protests, waiting out the shutdowns had been viable. But a relentless year of economic bleeding, capped by this blackout, had driven revenue to zero. Even if the internet were restored tomorrow and we worked nonstop for months, it wouldn’t be enough. The studio hadn’t paused. It had collapsed.

I updated my resume, bought a return bus ticket, and went back to my grandmother’s apartment. There was nothing to go back to. I just needed to feel like I was doing something.

When the ceasefire was announced, I felt a sliver of hope. It lasted about a day.

My life used to be a blur of motion: the studio, independent theatres, cafes with friends, early mornings and late nights. Now, my entire existence has shrunk to four walls. The war has ended, at least for now. The internet remains largely throttled, the economy is in ruins, and the job market that existed before February 28 has not returned with the ceasefire.

Outside, people are beginning to move through the streets again. For them, perhaps, something is resuming. For me, there is nothing to resume.

I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.

*Name changed for security reasons

Barcelona’s Yamal bags Young Sportsperson of the Year accolade a year after winning the Breakthrough award in 2025.

Tennis ruled the red carpet in Madrid as Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz were crowned Sportswoman and Sportsman of the Year at the Laureus Awards.

The pair were honoured on Monday after glittering 2025 campaigns that saw them finish atop the women’s and men’s tennis rankings, respectively.

Spaniard Alcaraz, 22, reclaimed the year-end world number one spot after capturing two Grand Slam titles at the French Open and US Open, underlining his supremacy across surfaces.

Belarusian Sabalenka, 27, meanwhile, stood alongside him in the winners’ circle in New York and also reached the final in Australia and France, capping a season of relentless consistency.

With her triumph, Sabalenka joins a roll call of Laureus Sportswoman of the Year recipients from her sport, including Serena Williams, Jennifer Capriati, Justine Henin and Naomi Osaka.

Barcelona and Spain athlete Lamine Yamal, 18, won the Young Sportsperson of the Year award. It is the second award for the young Barca forward after being voted Breakthrough Sportsperson of the Year in 2025, making him the youngest athlete to have won two Laureus awards.

German football great Toni Kroos won the world sporting inspiration award, and retired gymnast Nadia Comaneci got the lifetime achievement prize.

The world action sportsperson award went to American snowboarder Chloe Kim.

Brazilian Gabriel Araujo was the world sportsperson of the year with a disability.

In a first for the awards, the ceremony was hosted by two athletes – both former Laureus winners – Novak Djokovic and Eileen Gu. Last year’s top honours went to gymnast Simone Biles and pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis.

McIlroy takes comeback prize

Elsewhere, Rory McIlroy claimed the World Comeback of the Year Award after ending an 11-year wait to complete the career Grand Slam with a playoff victory at the 2025 Masters, a title he defended in 2026.

Formula One’s Lando Norris was named World Breakthrough of the Year, while Paris St Germain took World Team of the Year after a trophy haul in 2025 that included the French league and Cup, plus their first Champions League crown.

The Laureus World Sports Awards nominees are selected by the global media, while the winners are determined by the 69 members of the Laureus World Sports Academy.

The awards have been presented annually since 2000.

Laureus winners 2026:

• World Sportsman of the Year Award: Carlos Alcaraz
• World Sportswoman of the Year Award: Aryna Sabalenka
• World Team of the Year Award: Paris Saint-Germain
• World Breakthrough of the Year Award: Lando Norris
• World Comeback of the Year Award: Rory McIlroy
• World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability Award: Gabriel Araujo
• World Action Sportsperson of the Year Award: Chloe Kim
• World Young Sportsperson of the Year Award: Lamine Yamal
• Laureus Sporting Inspiration Award: Toni Kroos
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Nadia Comaneci
• Laureus Sport for Good Award: Futbol Mas

This is a very similar situation to the one that surrounded Red Bull’s former head of strategy, Will Courtenay, who is now McLaren’s sporting director.

It emerged at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix that Courtenay had signed to join McLaren when his contract ended, and Red Bull emphasised that he would not be allowed to leave before 2026.

They did not specify exactly when in 2026, and BBC Sport has been told that negotiations were held that led to him starting work at McLaren on 1 January this year.

Despite that, for the entirety of last year, Courtenay stayed in his previous role, even though Red Bull were fighting McLaren for the drivers’ championship.

For now, the same thing will happen with Lambiase – he will continue in his role as Red Bull’s head of racing and race engineer to Verstappen for the foreseeable future.

However, just because Red Bull’s statement announcing his departure said he would not be joining McLaren until 2028 does not necessarily mean that will be the case.

McLaren’s statement said Lambiase would join “no later than 2028”. That means they will be hoping to come to an agreement with Red Bull that shortens that timeframe.

It’s worth pointing out, meanwhile, that McLaren have emphasised that Lambiase is joining to provide support for team principal Andrea Stella, not ultimately replace him.

Stella has until now been fulfilling the role to which Lambiase has been appointed, that of chief racing officer, in addition to that of team principal.

Stella said last week: “Zak (Brown, the chief executive officer of McLaren Racing) and I have built a flat team structure, in which it is essential to ensure all leaders are properly empowered, but at the same time, we must guarantee there is always the necessary level of long-term support.

“It goes without saying that, with this approach, the dual role I currently hold could not be sustainable in the long run.”

McLaren have indirectly – but very clearly – rejected what are said to be inaccurate reports that Stella is on his way to Ferrari.

Stella said in a statement issued by McLaren on Friday: “Some of the recent rumours, including those regarding astronomical salaries and mythical pre-contracts, have made me smile.

“It almost seems as though the ‘silly season’, which usually begins before summer, has arrived early!

“I’m quite used to this sort of thing by now and I take with a smile. It almost looks as if some envious pastry chef has tried to spoil the preparation of a good dessert at the McLaren patisserie. However, we do know very well how to distinguish the good ingredients from the poisoned biscuits.”

Dozens of US veterans and family members of military personnel have been arrested while staging a protest in the US Capitol building in opposition to the war on Iran.

Mérida, April 20, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government launched a “Great National Pilgrimage” to oppose economic sanctions on Sunday, April 19, coinciding with the 216th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence.

The nationwide mobilization seeks to channel popular opposition to the US-led economic blockade into a sustained, nationwide movement. 

The pilgrimage was inaugurated in three Venezuelan regions, with a calendar of marches, assemblies, and cultural activities covering the remaining 21 states before a closing event in Caracas on April 30. 

In western Zulia state, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez led a rally through the streets of Maracaibo. Addressing a crowd, Rodríguez linked the historical struggle for independence to the modern-day resistance against Washington’s unilateral coercive measures.

“It is a date that marks the first cry for independence from a united people, and so, beginning with that historic date, I feel compelled to embark on this pilgrimage,” she declared to the crowd.

Venezuelan leaders have sought to highlight the impact of unilateral coercive measures on living standards and public services to push for their withdrawal.

“We want Venezuela to be free of sanctions, so that it can grow without restrictions,” Rodríguez affirmed at the Zulia rally. “I am speaking to the people of the United States, Europe, and the governments of those countries. Please stop levying sanctions against the Venezuelan people.”

In Puerto Ayacucho, Amazonas, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez led a parallel mobilization on Sunday. He emphasized that the pilgrimage is not merely a political event but a “spiritual and national defense” of the country’s right to self-determination. The campaign’s launch in border states highlighted the disruptions to public services that are generally more acute away from the capital and surrounding areas.

The government’s initiative was also backed by sectors of the moderate opposition. Timoteo Zambrano, deputy from the Democratic Alliance, vowed that his political faction would participate in the pilgrimage.

“[Pilgrimage] is a deeply religious term that unites the world’s religions. We are witnessing a new moment to fight together against sanctions and the blockade,” he said in a press conference in Caracas on Saturday.

For his part, Acción Democrática Secretary-General Bernabé Gutiérrez claimed that Caracas must ask the Trump administration to release proceeds from oil exports “so they reach the state coffers and allow for the solution of our problems.” 

Since January, the White House has imposed control over Venezuelan crude sales, with Venezuela-owed royalties, taxes, and dividends mandated to be deposited in US Treasury-run accounts before being returned to Caracas at US officials’ discretion.

The “Great National Pilgrimage” takes place against a backdrop of nearly a decade of economic pressure from Washington. The first Trump administration launched a “maximum pressure” campaign in 2017 with the goal of triggering regime change.

US Treasury sanctions targeted multiple economic sectors, from mining to banking, and particularly targeted the oil industry, causing an estimated US $25 billion in yearly revenue losses. The blockade also effectively gridlocked Venezuela from international credit markets and saw Venezuelan foreign assets frozen and seized. 

Since the January 3 US military attacks and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, Caracas and Washington have fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement. Acting President Rodríguez has struck a conciliatory tone toward the US, recently thanking Trump and US officials for their efforts in reestablishing “cooperation.”

The US Treasury Department has maintained wide-reaching sanctions in place but issued a series of general licenses in the hydrocarbon, mining, and banking sectors, allowing Western entities to deal with Venezuelan counterparts under restricted conditions.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.