chief

In his first major shake-up since taking over the Los Angeles Police Department in November, Chief Jim McDonnell has given new assignments to more than a dozen officials from the upper ranks.

Faced with ongoing struggles to woo new recruits and uncertainty around his plans to overhaul the LAPD, McDonnell gave the first indications about how he intends to reorganize by elevating three deputy chiefs — Emada Tingirides, Michael Rimkunas and Scott Harrelson — to top positions and resurrecting a long-dormant bureau.

The moves were announced in a departmentwide email last week but aren’t expected to take effect until later this month.

Tingirides, who lost out to McDonnell in a bid to become chief last fall, becomes assistant chief in charge of the Office of Operations, which oversees patrol functions. She was recently announced as a finalist for the same job in Fort Worth, according to local news reports. Her recent promotion is seen by some inside the department as a move to convince her to stay. She becomes the highest-ranking Black woman in the department’s history.

Harrelson will now be in charge of the department’s training and recruitment efforts as the head of the Office of Support Services, replacing Assistant Chief Daniel Randolph, who is expected to retire in the coming weeks.

Filling out McDonnell’s inner circle are two other holdovers from the administration of former Chief Michel Moore: Rimkunas and Dominic Choi, who served as interim chief until McDonnell took over in November. Choi remained an assistant chief but was named McDonnell’s chief of staff — in effect the department’s No. 2.

The head of the bureau that includes internal affairs, Rimkunas will now run the Office of Special Operations.

McDonnell also resurrected the department’s Human Resources Bureau, which was shut down in 2004 when McDonnell he was a senior official under former Chief William J. Bratton. He didn’t immediately say what the new bureau’s responsibilities will be.

It’s unclear whether McDonnell will have to submit parts of his reorganization plan to the City Council, which in the past has had to sign off on changes to the department’s structure.

When he took the job last year, McDonnell initially said he wanted to spend at least three months studying the LAPD to understand how it had changed since he came up through the ranks. He left in 2010 to become the top cop in Long Beach, then served a term as L.A. County sheriff. His early review timeline was thrown off, he told reporters at a news conference last week, because of the fires in January and the recent protests over federal immigration raids.

The series of major incidents, McDonnell said, presented an unexpected opportunity to evaluate his senior staff to see how they performed “in crisis mode.”

The chief added that he had delayed his realignment for the “outcome of the budget to see where we were” and the completion of a monthslong study of the department by Rand Corp., a global policy think tank brought in last year to conduct a top-down review. The study was recently finished, and McDonnell said he was reviewing its recommendations, as well as those made by the numerous internal working groups he had convened to look at recruitment, discipline and other workplace issues.

Without offering details, McDonnell hinted that another one of his priorities will be beefing up the department’s detective ranks and overhauling the system that handles misconduct complaints against officers, long a source of controversy and frustration.

“I have in rough form what I think it could look like, but I certainly want to get the input from those who are dealing with it on a day-to-day basis on how do we best deal with the nuances of doing the job today with the number of resources that we have,” he told reporters.

McDonnell has come under growing pressure from critics who have said he is moving too slowly to make changes, with more urgency required as the city gets ready to host events such as the next year’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games.

In other personnel moves announced last week, McDonnell moved Deputy Chief Marc Reina from the Training Bureau to South Bureau, where he previously worked as captain, and promoted German Hurtado, the department’s immigration coordinator, to deputy chief over Central Bureau, which has been the epicenter of recent protests.

Hurtado has been named in at least two pending lawsuits by LAPD officials accusing him of covering up unjustified uses of force by officers during the 2020 protests. The city has denied wrongdoing and is fighting the cases in court.

“As far as I know, I’m only named as a witness in those cases, and I’m not at liberty to talk about ongoing lawsuits,” Hurtado said when reached Monday by The Times.

McDonnell also demoted Assistant Chief Blake Chow to his civil service rank of commander — a similar trajectory to McDonnell, who was made to drop a rank during the tenure of former Chief Charlie Beck. Capt. Ray Valois, who helped oversee the department’s response to the Palisades fire, was elevated to commander in the Valley Bureau.

SEOUL, July 17 (UPI) — South Korea’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong on fraud charges related to a 2015 merger, lifting a legal cloud that had hung over the country’s richest man for years.

The top court said it found no errors in the ruling by the Seoul High Court in February, which acquitted Lee of charges of stock manipulation and accounting fraud in a controversial $8 billion deal involving two of the company’s affiliates.

That merger, between Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T Corp., helped solidify Lee’s control of the company after his father, then-Chairman Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014. Prosecutors alleged that Lee and other Samsung officials engineered a favorable merger ratio by artificially inflating Cheil’s value and depreciating Samsung C&T, harming minority shareholders in the process.

A lower court last year also cleared Lee of the charges. Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Court cannot be appealed, ending a legal battle that has gone on since Lee was first indicted on the fraud charges nearly five years ago.

Lee’s legal team said the ruling “clearly confirmed” that the merger was legitimate.

“We sincerely thank the court for its wise judgment after five years of faithful deliberations,” the lawyers said in a statement.

Lee served roughly 18 months in prison after being convicted in a separate 2017 bribery case involving former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

The legal drama has added to Samsung’s challenges as it navigates intense competition in key industries such as smartphones and semiconductors.

Last week, the tech giant announced a 56% decline in operating profits for the second quarter of the year, citing factors such as the impact of U.S. semiconductor export restrictions to China. South Korea is also facing U.S. President Donald Trump‘s pending 25% tariffs, currently scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 1.

The country’s business community welcomed news of the acquittal Thursday, predicting it would give a boost to the country’s largest conglomerate.

“In an era of fierce global competition in cutting-edge industries, the removal of legal uncertainties surrounding a key company like Samsung is expected to have a positive ripple effect not only on the firm but on the Korean economy as a whole,” Kang Seok-koo, head of the research division at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said in a statement.

Civic groups, however, criticized the Supreme Court ruling as biased in favor of the massive chaebol, or conglomerates, that have long dominated South Korea.

“The result of this trial is that the court has once again made a pro-chaebol ruling with a passive and narrow interpretation of the law,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy said in a statement. “We strongly condemn the judiciary for making a shameful decision that undermines social justice by acting as a shield for corporate power.”

Football clubs should pay towards the £70 million cost of policing their matches in the UK, the head of the Metropolitan Police has told the BBC.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, the country’s most senior police officer, asked why organisers of events that require policing to support their security do not pay for it, and said there should be “more of a polluter pays approach”.

Sir Mark’s comments came as he called for the creation of 12 to 15 bigger police forces as part of his plans for radical police reforms.

He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme the current model of 43 forces across England and Wales needed to be reduced to cope with increased demand and overstretched funding.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a 2.3% annual funding increase for policing in England and Wales in last month’s Spending Review. Many forces have criticised the funds as falling “far short”.

Sir Mark said reforms would help police forces, including the Met, “make the best use of the money we’ve got”.

As part of funding concerns, the commissioner also cited the £70 million cost of policing football in the UK, most of which is spent on Premier League matches in England.

“Why isn’t the organiser paying for that, rather than local communities who lose their resources to go to football matches?” he said.

A move to make football clubs pay was previously suggested to the Times by the head of the UK’s football policing unit and later criticised by sports bodies who said it could threaten events and lead to increased ticket prices.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir Mark suggested the number of police forces needed to be reduced by two-thirds and said bigger forces would be better able to utilise modern technology.

He added the 43-force model designed in the 1960s had not been “fit for purpose” for at least two decades and hindered “the effective confrontation of today’s threats”.

Speaking to the BBC, the commissioner referred to an “invisible spaghetti” behind police forces that was responsible for “sucking resources and costs”.

“Lots of the smaller forces can’t actually do all the services locally and they’re having to club together and run complicated collaborations,” he said, adding that with “bigger local forces and one national body” they could “cut away” with a lot of that cost and waste.

The commissioner was questioned by Kuenssberg on the likelihood of the reform going ahead, referencing similar Labour plans in 2006 which were dropped following significant opposition.

Sir Mark said reform was “essential”, adding that spending on policing and public safety has dropped substantially over the last decade or more.

“I don’t see that changing dramatically. We’ve got to make the best use of every pound the government can give to us,” he added.

Put to him that he had warned he would have to de-prioritise some crimes, and asked what the force will not investigate, Sir Mark said: “So I don’t want policing activity to fall off the list, and I know that the mayor and the home secretary have pushed hard for the most police funding that we can get.

“We are determined to improve day in and day out experiences of Londoners on the streets. We can only do that if we focus ruthlessly on police work.”

Naim Qassem says his group will not surrender or lay down weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the group to disarm.

The Hezbollah chief says the Lebanese group remains open to peace, but it will not disarm or back down from confronting Israel until it ends its air raids and withdraws from southern Lebanon.

“We cannot be asked to soften our stance or lay down arms while [Israeli] aggression continues,” Naim Qassem told thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday for Ashura, an important day in the Shia Muslim calendar.

Ashura commemorates the 680 AD Battle of Karbala, in which Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, was killed after he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate. For Shia Muslims, the day symbolises resistance against tyranny and injustice.

The Beirut area, a Hezbollah stronghold, was draped in yellow banners and echoed with chants of resistance as Qassem delivered his speech, flanked by portraits of his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel in September last year.

Israel launched a wide-scale assault on Lebanon on October 8, 2023 – a day after Palestinian group Hamas, which counts Hezbollah as an ally, stormed the Israeli territory, killing some 1,100 people and taking about 250 others captive.

The Hamas attack was immediately followed by Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The Israeli genocidal campaign was accompanied by a brutal blockade on entry of food and medical aid, bringing the enclave’s 2.3 million residents to the brink of starvation.

Israel’s simultaneous attack on Lebanon escalated into a full-scale war by September 2024, killing more than 4,000 people, including much of Hezbollah’s top leadership, and displacing nearly 1.4 million, according to official data. A United States-brokered ceasefire nominally ended the war in November.

However, since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to occupy five strategic border points in southern Lebanon and has carried out near-daily air strikes that it says aim to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities. Those strikes have killed some 250 people and wounded 600 others since November, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” Qassem said in his video address.

“We will not be a part of legitimising the occupation in Lebanon and the region. We will not accept normalisation,” he added, in an apparent response to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar saying his government was “interested” in such a move.

Qassem said Hezbollah’s weapons would not be on the negotiating table unless Israel “withdraws from the occupied territories, stops its aggression, releases the prisoners, and reconstruction begins”.

“Only then,” he said, “will we be ready for the second stage, which is to discuss national security and defence strategy.”

On Saturday, Israeli drones carried out four strikes on southern Lebanese towns, killing one person and wounding several others. Most of the Israeli attacks have targeted areas near the border, but Israeli warplanes have also hit residential neighbourhoods in Beirut’s southern districts, causing panic and mass evacuations.

Qassem’s speech came as the US envoy to Turkiye and Syria, Tom Barrack, was expected in Beirut on Monday. Lebanese officials say the US has demanded that Hezbollah disarm by the end of the year. Israel has warned it will continue striking Lebanon until the group is disarmed.

But Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun has repeatedly called on the US and its allies to rein in Israel’s attacks, noting that disarming Hezbollah is a “sensitive, delicate issue”.

Antonio Guterres raises alarm over ‘dangerous escalation’ after hours-long Russian drone and missile barrage this week.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned a Russian drone and missile attack against Ukraine this week that has been described as the largest such assault in the three-year war.

In a statement on Saturday, Guterres’s spokesperson said the Russian strikes “disrupted the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, once again underlining the ongoing risks to nuclear safety”.

“The secretary-general is alarmed by this dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties,” the statement read.

Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired more than 500 drones and 11 missiles at the capital Kyiv overnight into Friday in an attack that killed one person, injured at least 23 others and damaged buildings across the city.

The sounds of air raid sirens, kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated until dawn.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “deliberately massive and cynical”.

Russia has been stepping up its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities as United States-led efforts to reach a ceasefire to end the war have stalled.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, warned of a possible new Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, a part of northeastern Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting since Russia invaded in 2022.

Moscow has been slowly grinding its way along several parts of the Ukrainian front line in recent months, throwing forth continuous waves of infantry as it seeks to press home its advantage in troops and munitions.

Russian forces have already pushed into northern Ukraine’s Sumy region over the past months, carving out a small foothold there.

Russia fired 322 drones and decoys into Ukraine overnight into Saturday, Ukraine’s air force said. Of these, 157 were shot down and 135 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.

Ukraine has also ramped up its retaliatory strikes in Russia, with the Ministry of Defence saying it shot down 94 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday, along with 45 further drones in the morning and early afternoon.

Four Ukrainian drones also were shot down while approaching Moscow on Saturday, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Meanwhile, a woman was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Rostov region, the acting governor said.

Separately, the Ukrainian military said in a statement on social media on Saturday that its special forces struck Russia’s Borisoglebsk military airfield in the Voronezh region, hitting a glide bomb store and a trainer aircraft.

The military said that other aircraft were also likely hit, without giving details.

The governor of Voronezh, Alexander Gusev, wrote on Telegram that more than 25 drones were destroyed over the region overnight. He said a power line was temporarily damaged, but made no mention of a military airfield.

The attacks come as Ukraine’s Zelenskyy said on Friday that he had a “very important and fruitful” phone conversation with US President Donald Trump in his efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences.

The US president also spoke to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a day earlier in a conversation that he said was disappointing.

“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed,” Trump said after the call on Thursday. “I’m just saying I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that it was “preferable” to achieve the goals of Russia’s invasion through political and diplomatic means.

“But as long as that is not possible, we are continuing the special operation,” he said.

UN official Volker Turk drew ire of the Venezuelan government after condemning what he says are abuses by state forces.

Venezuela’s National Assembly has voted to declare United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk persona non grata after he publicly criticised the government’s human rights violations.

The unanimous Tuesday declaration follows comments from Turk last week before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, condemning what he said were arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances.

In remarks before the declaration, Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez accused Turk of turning a “blind eye” to other rights abuses, such as the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants living in the United States to a detention facility in El Salvador.

However, Turk released a statement expressing concern over those deportations in May, while his remarks about alleged abuses in Venezuela come at a time when numerous human rights organisations have condemned the Venezuelan authorities’ crackdown on political opposition after a contested election last July.

The declaration of Turk as persona non grata does not have an immediate impact, but the government could move to expel his office from the country, as has occurred in the past.

Tensions have been high in Venezuela since President Nicolas Maduro declared victory in a 2024 presidential election, which the opposition has maintained was fraudulently stolen by the government.

Human rights groups have said that the Maduro government oversaw a crackdown on dissent after the election, which left dozens dead. Police also arrested opposition lawmakers, whom the government accuses of collaborating with hostile foreign powers.

A recent legislative and regional election saw lower turnout amid calls for a boycott from the opposition and fear of government repression.

While the Maduro government has criticised the administration of US President Donald Trump for its mass deportation of immigrants living in the US, which has also drawn concern from human rights groups, Venezuela has been open to cooperation with the Trump administration on questions of immigration enforcement, agreeing to receive people deported from the US in March.

Iran has taken an unequivocal stance against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarily dismissing its chief Rafael Grossi’s request to visit nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the United States during a 12-day conflict earlier this month.

“Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” said Araghchi on X on Monday. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

In tandem, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Tehran had halted cooperation with the IAEA due to what he called Grossi’s “destructive” behaviour towards Iran, his office said.

“The action taken by parliament members … is a natural response to the unjustified, unconstructive, and destructive conduct of the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Pezeshkian told Macron in a phone call, according to a presidency statement.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian leadership is making it clear that the IAEA is an “international body with defined responsibilities and these responsibilities are not political but technical”. But, he added, Tehran views the nuclear agency as an international body “under immense [political] pressure from Israel and the United States”.

Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on nuclear facilities.

A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24.

Since the start of the conflict, Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes, but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.

‘Anger of Iranian public opinion’

In the meantime, France, Germany and Britain have decried “threats” made against Grossi.

“France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemn threats against the director general of the IAEA Rafael Grossi and reiterate our full support to the agency,” Foreign Ministers Jean-Noel Barrot, Johann Wadephul and David Lammy said in a joint statement.

“We call on Iranian authorities to refrain from any steps to cease cooperation with the IAEA,” they added. “We urge Iran to immediately resume full cooperation in line with its legally binding obligations, and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of IAEA personnel.”

While none specified which threats they were referring to, Iran’s ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed.

Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency’s inspectors.

On Monday during his weekly press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the Iranian parliament’s decision to halt cooperation with the IAEA reflected the “concern and anger of the Iranian public opinion”.

He further criticised US and European powers for maintaining what he described as a “political approach” towards Iran’s nuclear programme.

At least 935 people were killed during the recent conflict with Israel, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations said later on Monday they supported the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and urged that negotiations resume for a deal to address Iran’s nuclear program, according to a joint statement.

“We reaffirm that Iran can never have nuclear weapons, and urge Iran to refrain from reconstituting its unjustified enrichment activities,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the country is involved in efforts to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue and a guarantee against a return to escalation by all parties.

Pezeshkian issued an official apology to the Qatari people in a phone call to Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani after the targeting of Al Udeid Air Base, the biggest US military base in the Middle East, he added.

WASHINGTON — A somewhat reluctant Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in this year’s most far-reaching immigration case and decide whether President Trump was justified in seeking to revoke a popular Obama-era policy that allowed more than 700,000 immigrants brought to the country illegally as children to temporarily live and work in this country.

Given the conservative majority on the court, the so-called Dreamers’ best hope for victory almost surely depends on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Though Roberts has repeatedly ruled that the president enjoys broad powers when it comes to immigration, he is also one of the few remaining conservative justices who has shown a willingness to side with liberals on high-profile cases, including one recently in which he agreed that the Trump administration had not adequately defended its actions — the same issue in play in the Dreamers case.

Roberts is a conservative with four other Republican appointees on his right, including Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, Trump’s two appointees. He wrote the 5-4 ruling last year upholding Trump’s travel ban and said then the immigration laws entrust enforcement to the chief executive.

In what may be preview to how they view the Dreamers case, Roberts and the court’s other conservatives in 2016 blocked a similar but more sweeping Obama order, which would have protected as many as 4 million people who were living illegally in the country.

And in recent months, the chief justice played a key role in two other immigration victories for Trump. In late July, a 5-4 majority including Roberts overturned a federal judge in Oakland and cleared the way for Trump to shift $2.5 billion of military construction funds to pay for a border wall. In September, the court overturned a federal judge from San Francisco and let Trump enforce a new ban on asylum claims at the southern border from migrants who did not seek asylum in Mexico.

Those two cases were decided as emergency orders and without a full opinion. They reflect what has become the familiar pattern since Trump took office. The ACLU and Democratic state attorneys have rushed to federal courts in California and New York and won a series of quick rulings that put Trump’s initiatives on hold. When the cases reached the Supreme Court, Trump and his lawyers have often prevailed.

But Roberts is emerging as one of the court’s most unpredictable votes, most famously siding with liberals twice to uphold the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Conservatives were equally disappointed in June when Roberts joined with the court’s four liberals to block the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The chief justice agreed the law gave Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross authority over the census, but he concluded nonetheless that the secretary had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by giving a “contrived” and “pretextual” reason for adding the new question. Hardly anyone believed Ross’ claim that he was seeking to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. Critics said it was designed to reduce census participation among Latinos.

That ruling, though highly procedural, has given hope to lawyers for the Dreamers. They include Ted Olson, a Republican and the U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush. He argued that when Trump terminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program in 2017, he did not give a valid explanation to justify the move. Federal judges in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., agreed. They said Trump’s repeal rested on the false claim that Obama’s order was illegal from the start.

“The executive can change course on enforcement policies, but not in arbitrary and unreasoned ways,” he wrote. His brief argued that presidents for 70 years had used “parole” or “deferred action” to shield large groups of immigrants and refugees, including Hungarians in the 1950s, Cubans in the 1960s and Vietnamese and Cambodians in the 1970s. “DACA is lawful. The administration could have left [it] in place. It did not have to end this humanitarian policy that allows nearly 700,000 people to stay in the only country they have ever really known,” he said.

In November 2018, the 9th Circuit Court upheld a district judge’s order that had blocked Trump’s repeal.

UCLA law professor Hiroshi Motomura, an expert on immigration law, said the court’s opinion by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw “reminds me very much of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion in the census case.” Motomura said the judge ruled that DACA could be rescinded, but there had to be a valid reason articulated. The decision could not rest on the “erroneous premise” that DACA was unlawful, the judge said.

For his part, Trump has continued to insist President Obama’s order broke the law because it exceeded the powers of the president. It was a “totally illegal document,” he tweeted in September. Trump has noted that Congress could pass legislation to protect Dreamers. But attempts to do so have failed in the past, largely because Trump has insisted that Democrats also agree to accept new limits on legal immigration in exchange for the protections for Dreamers.

Trump’s Solicitor Gen. Noel Francisco has the easier argument in the high court. If Obama as president was free to grant temporary relief to the Dreamers, Trump as president is free to change course, he said. That is especially so for the chief executive’s “decision to rescind a discretionary policy of non-enforcement against a category of individuals who are violating the law on an on-going basis,” he wrote.

The National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles says there are more than 700,000 DACA recipients here now. They arrived on average at age 7, have lived here more than 20 years and are the parents of 256,000 children who are U.S. citizens.

The DACA policy emerged from the Obama administration’s strategy to target criminals, drug traffickers, security threats and repeat border crossers for arrest and deportation. As such, it made no sense to go after young people who had been brought into the country as children and had clean records since.

In 2012, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a memo setting out the new policy and said it was based on “the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion.”

“Our nation’s immigration laws must be enforced in a strong and sensible manner. They are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case,” she said. “Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language.”

Those who were younger than 16 and had lived in the United States for at least five years were invited to come forward. If they passed a background check, they could be granted deferred action “on a case-by-case basis” and obtain a work permit.

A year later, Napolitano was named the president of the University of California system and she is one of the lead plaintiffs in the suits to preserve DACA. One of the three cases to be heard together Tuesday is called the Department of Homeland Security vs. Regents of the University of California.

“I hope the Supreme Court justices don’t lose sight of the lives that are at issue,” Napolitano said. “They are really American in every way. They have grown up here. They have succeeded here at UC. They are the kind of young people we want.”

Opinion polls have found more than three-fourths of those surveyed — Republicans as well as Democrats — said they favored granting permanent legal status to the Dreamers.

A year ago, however, the administration’s lawyers urged the high court to take up the issue and to uphold Trump’s repeal.

But the justices waited and took no action for months, perhaps hoping that Congress and the president would resolve the legal status of the Dreamers.

With no prospect of congressional action, the justices announced on the last day of their term in late June they would decide on Trump’s repeal of DACA.

Rafael Grossi raises concern over Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, just below weapons grade.

Iran may be able to restart uranium enrichment in a matter of months despite a wave of attacks by the United States and Israel that targeted its nuclear infrastructure, according to the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi.

The remarks came on Saturday, days after US President Donald Trump insisted this month’s attacks had set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “by decades”.

Speaking to CBS News on Saturday, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said while key facilities had been hit, some are “still standing”.

“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Grossi said, adding that it could even be sooner.

He raised concerns over Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, just below weapons grade, which could theoretically produce more than nine nuclear bombs if refined further.

He acknowledged the IAEA does not know whether this stockpile was moved before the bombings or partially destroyed. “There has to be, at some point, a clarification,” he said.

Israeli attacks

The Israeli assault began on June 13 with strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military sites.

Israel claimed the attacks were designed to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, an accusation Tehran has consistently denied. The US joined the offensive days later, hitting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the wake of the attacks, Iranian lawmakers moved to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and denied Grossi’s request to inspect facilities, including the underground enrichment plant at Fordow.

“We need to be in a position to confirm what is there, where it is, and what happened,” Grossi said.

The Iranian Ministry of Health reported at least 627 civilian deaths across the country during the 12-day assault that also saw 28 people killed in Israel in retaliatory strikes launched by Iran, according to Israeli authorities.

On Saturday, Iran’s judiciary said an Israeli missile strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 23 killed 71 people, including military recruits, detainees and visitors.

During the first meeting of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s recently downsized vaccine panel, the group voted to stop recommending flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a vaccine preservative.

In a lengthy June 24 X post that preceded the meeting, Kennedy, who spent two decades as an anti-vaccine movement leader, described thimerosal using terms such as “toxic” and said hundreds of studies identify it as a carcinogenic “potent neurotoxin”. He also said there are high doses of mercury in flu shots recommended to pregnant women and children.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices’ (ACIP) two-day meeting on June 25 and 26 included discussion of vaccines containing thimerosal before its vote on flu vaccines.

ACIP is an independent group which provides vaccine recommendations the CDC director reviews and decides whether to formally adopt. Earlier in June, Kennedy dismissed 17 ACIP members, replacing them with seven new members, including people who’ve expressed doubt about vaccine efficacy and promoted anti-vaccine falsehoods.

Doctors and scientists who study vaccines have been researching thimerosal’s use for decades. Here’s what we know about the vaccine preservative and its removal from flu vaccines.

What is thimerosal? 

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines.

Many people – particularly those who are pregnant or breastfeeding – encounter warnings about consuming mercury, such as in seafood. But those warnings are about methylmercury, which is found in certain kinds of fish and is known to be toxic to people when consumed at high levels.

Thimerosal contains ethylmercury – a single-letter difference that might not sound significant, but is.

Human bodies can break down and excrete ethylmercury quickly, meaning it is less likely to cause harm. By contrast, methylmercury is more likely to accumulate in the body and cause harm.

In vaccines, thimerosal is added to prevent harmful microbes such as bacteria and fungi from growing in vaccine vials.

“Introduction of bacteria and fungi has the potential to occur when a syringe needle enters a vial as a vaccine is being prepared for administration,” the CDC’s website said. “Contamination by germs in a vaccine could cause severe local reactions, serious illness or death. In some vaccines, preservatives, including thimerosal, are added during the manufacturing process to prevent germ growth.”

Thimerosal has been at the heart of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism for 20 years.

In 2005, Kennedy wrote an article co-published by Rolling Stone and Salon that alleged leading health agencies including the CDC and US Food and Drug Administration had colluded with vaccine manufacturers to conceal a study that found thimerosal “may have caused autism in thousands of kids”. Scientists and researchers said Kennedy’s argument was inaccurate and misleading. Continued research has found no link between thimerosal and autism. Kennedy’s article was removed from Rolling Stone, and Salon retracted it in 2011.

In 2015, Kennedy wrote a book opposing thimerosal’s use in vaccines.

Which vaccines use thimerosal? 

Thimerosal is not used in the vast majority of vaccines.

All vaccines the CDC routinely recommends for children age six or younger are available without thimerosal.

Children receiving the routine paediatric vaccine schedule “can get completely immunised without any thimerosal-containing vaccines”, said Dr Mark Sawyer, a paediatrics professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and a paediatric infectious disease physician.

Some childhood vaccines have never contained thimerosal. These include the measles, mumps and rubella – or MMR – vaccine, the varicella or chickenpox vaccine, the inactivated polio vaccine and the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines – including all childhood vaccines – as of 2001, the CDC said.

Thimerosal is still used in vaccines today, but not as widely.

The preservative is in only a small fraction of influenza vaccine vials, specifically the multi-dose vials that constitute a small portion of the US flu shot supply, Dr Jake Scott told PolitiFact. Scott is a Stanford University School of Medicine infectious disease specialist.

The FDA said thimerosal use has declined as vaccine manufacturers have developed more single-dose vaccines that do not require preservatives.

Scott said the CDC lists 12 influenza vaccine formulations for the 2024 to 2025 flu season, which will also cover the 2025 to 2026 season because no new flu vaccines have been licensed. Of those 12 vaccines, just three are multi-dose vaccines that contain thimerosal at 25 micrograms – equal to 25 millionths of a gram – per dose, he said.

CDC’s supply data shows single-dose, thimerosal-free syringes make up about 96 percent of the US flu vaccine supply, leaving roughly 4 percent as multi-dose vials, Scott said.

“Single-dose syringes are the default for paediatrics and prenatal care, so real-world exposure is even lower,” he said.

Because flu vaccines with thimerosal constitute a small portion of the influenza vaccine supply, public health experts told The Washington Post the committee’s vote to stop recommending them would have a limited impact, although it could make flu shots more expensive and less accessible in some parts of the US.

What does research show about thimerosal?

Because anti-vaccine activists’ focus has centred on whether thimerosal causes autism, numerous scientific studies have investigated a potential link and found no causal relationship between the preservative and autism.

When scientists evaluated thimerosal’s potential impacts and risks they found:

• Giving infants vaccines containing thimerosal “does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants” as the ethylmercury “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools” after vaccination.
• Three controlled and two uncontrolled observational studies “consistently provided evidence of no association” between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
• “No scientific evidence exists that thimerosal-containing vaccines are a cause of adverse events among children born to women who received influenza vaccine during pregnancy.”

Vaccine researchers told PolitiFact that thimerosal was removed from vaccines out of an abundance of caution, not because research proved that thimerosal was unsafe.

Thimerosal was removed from vaccines because people thought it might cause problems, said Rachel Roper, a microbiology and immunology professor at East Carolina University. But ultimately, “studies were done and it was shown to be safe”.

There’s no evidence to date that thimerosal “causes any harm whatsoever”, Sawyer said.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has said he is “optimistic” that members will agree to a major boost in defence spending and stressed that Washington is “totally committed to the alliance”, on the second day of the organisation’s annual summit.

Leaders of the transatlantic alliance’s 32 members are meeting in the Dutch city of The Hague on Wednesday under pressure from the Trump administration to approve new targets of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, amid swirling questions over United States President Donald Trump’s commitment to the alliance.

But, speaking before a leaders’ meeting on the second and final day of the annual summit, NATO Secretary-General Rutte insisted there was no question of Washington, NATO’s most powerful member, backing away from the alliance or its underlying principle of mutual defence.

“There is absolute clarity that the United States is totally committed to NATO, totally committed to Article 5,” he said, referring to the cornerstone collective defence principle enshrined in NATO’s founding treaty, which holds that an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all.

“And yes, there is also an expectation, which will be fulfilled today, that the Canadians and the Europeans will speed up their spending, making sure that we are able to defend ourselves against the Russians and others,” he said.

He expected the summit to be “transformational” for the alliance, he added.

Trump sows doubt

Trump has repeatedly complained that Washington carries too much of the military burden, and questioned whether the alliance should defend members who failed to meet its defence spending targets.

His administration has demanded that NATO allies agree to increase their defence spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP), up from the current target of 2 percent.

Nine NATO members currently spend less than the existing 2 percent target on defence, according to NATO estimates.

En route to The Hague on Tuesday, Trump further stoked doubts over his commitment to the alliance when asked whether Washington would abide by NATO’s mutual defence guarantees.

“Depends on your definition,” Trump told reporters. “There’s numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right? But I’m committed to being their friends.”

But speaking to journalists before the summit opened, Trump sought to reassure allies over the US committment to mutual defence, saying: “We’re with them all the way.”

Washington’s ‘problem with Spain’

In response to the US demands to boost defence spending , some NATO countries like Germany and the United Kingdom have already announced major new investments in their militaries, acknowledging the need to respond to the threat posed by Russia, in particular.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Germany would increase spending to become “Europe’s strongest conventional army”, while the UK, which has already said it will meet the new spending targets, has announced the purchase of a fleet of fighter jets capable of carrying tactical nuclear missiles.

But other countries signalled their resistance to the proposed targets, which are to be met by a 2035 deadline. Spain, NATO’s lowest defence spender last year, according to NATO estimates, has said it will not be able to meet the target by 2035, calling the figure “unreasonable”.

Belgium has also indicated that it will not make the 5 percent target, while Slovakia said it reserves the right to determine its own defence expenditure, The Associated Press news agency reported.

On Tuesday, Trump singled out Spain’s stance, saying: “There’s a problem with Spain. Spain is not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them, frankly.”

‘A more balanced NATO’

Other NATO leaders, however, expressed their full support for the alliance and the increased defence spending targets on Wednesday.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said “Article 5 is clear … and means collective defence and there is no discussion about this article,” as he arrived at a meeting.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters that the boost to military spending was important and necessary.

“The disarmament was allowed to go on for too long,” she said.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb, whose country borders Russia, told reporters that he believed the alliance was evolving.

“I think we’re witnessing the birth of a new NATO, which means a more balanced NATO, and a NATO which has more European responsibility,” he said, according to the Reuters news agency.

NATO Chief Mark Rutte also said Europe would increase defence spending in a ‘BIG way’ thanks to US pressure.

United States President Donald Trump has shared a series of texts from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praising his attacks on Iran and the pressure he placed on allies to increase their military spending.

Trump shared Rutte’s texts in a screenshot posted to his social media website, Truth Social, on Tuesday, as he travels to a NATO summit in the Netherlands.

“Mr President, dear Donald, Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer,” the message reads.

Afterwards, Rutte defended Trump’s decision to share what appeared to be private messages. The NATO chief added that his tone in the messages – which some said seemed to mimic Trump’s own style of writing – was “appropriate”.

The messages highlight European efforts to form a productive relationship with Trump, who has frequently said the continent must spend more on its military capabilities. He has also questioned the value of the US’s economic and security partnerships with NATO allies in Europe and Canada.

The texts also underscore the widespread praise Trump has received from European leaders for his bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, even though those strikes are considered by many to be illegal under international law.

In his messages, Rutte commends Trump for pushing European nations to increase their military spending, stating that NATO members have agreed to boost such spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP).

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” said Rutte, adding that Trump had achieved what “NO American president in decades could get done”.

Trump had been pushing for increases to NATO defence spending since his first term, from 2017 to 2021. He has long accused NATO allies of taking advantage of the US by relying on its military might.

Previously, NATO members had agreed to a spending goal that represented 2 percent of their GDP. Trump had pushed for that to be raised to 5 percent, with 3.5 percent of that sum dedicated to “hard defence” investments like weaponry.

Some countries, however, including Spain, have pushed back against the calls to increase military spending, calling the demand “unreasonable”.

“There’s a problem with Spain. Spain is not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them, frankly,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way to the two-day meeting.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to send mixed signals about his commitment to NATO, a mutual defence alliance created during the Cold War. It has been a cornerstone of US and European cooperation ever since.

Trump has long signalled ambivalence towards Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s founding document. That article includes a mutual defence clause that requires NATO members to consider an attack on one country to be an attack on the group as a whole.

When pressed about his commitment to Article 5 on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that there could be “numerous definitions” of the clause. Rutte, asked about the comment, said he had “no doubt” that the US was committed to mutual defence.

Criticisms of NATO are not new or unique to Trump. Sceptics have pointed out that the threat it was created to balance against, the USSR, had long ceased to exist. Proponents, meanwhile, have argued the alliance serves as an important bulwark against modern-day military aggression.

But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 breathed new life into the organisation, expanding its ranks with the addition of countries like Finland and Sweden and prompting increased calls for greater defence spending.

“I don’t agree with that assessment at all.” Responding to Al Jazeera’s James Bays, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte denied that the military alliance is acting hypocritically by not criticising the US for its actions in the Middle East.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says US strikes have ‘devastated the Iranian nuclear programme’ while avoiding Iran’s troops and civilians. The Pentagon chief praised President Donald Trump’s commitment to ‘peace through strength’ for halting Tehran’s perceived nuclear ambitions.

Rafael Grossi, chief of the United Nations’s atomic watchdog, has warned that an Israeli strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could trigger a regional catastrophe, as the two countries continue to trade attacks for the eighth straight day.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the UN Security Council on Friday that a direct hit on Russian-built Bushehr, located on the the Gulf coast, could “result in a very high release of radioactivity”, with “great consequences” beyond Iran’s borders.

“I, therefore, again call for maximum restraint,” said Grossi, telling delegates at an emergency session on the Iran-Israel conflict that armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place.

In a worst-case scenario, a strike on Bushehr, which contains “thousands of kilogrammes of nuclear material”, would require evacuation orders to be issued for areas within several hundred kilometres of the plant, including population centres in other Gulf countries, he said.

Grossi said that a strike on the two lines that supply electricity to Bushehr could cause its reactor core to melt, with dire consequences.

Authorities would have to take protective actions, administering iodine to populations and potentially restricting food supplies, with subsequent radiation monitoring covering distances of several hundred kilometres.

Grossi appealed for a diplomatic solution and repeated his willingness to travel to negotiate a deal.

“The IAEA can guarantee through a watertight inspection system that nuclear weapons will not be developed in Iran,” he said.

Grossi made his comments as Iranian news portal rouydad24 reported that air defences in the city of Bushehr had been activated. No information about the target of the alleged Israeli attack was initially available.

Israel raising ‘spectre of fear’

Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, claiming Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, an accusation Iran has denied, saying its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes.

Also speaking at the meeting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Iran-Israel conflict could ignite a fire that no one can control and called on all parties to “give peace a chance”.

Iran’s UN ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani stressed the civilian toll of Israel’s attacks on the country, at one point holding up photos of Iranian children killed in the bombings.

Iravani said Israel’s attacks constituted “gross violations of international law”, urging the UN to take action, warning that if the non-proliferation regime were to collapse, the Security Council would “share responsibility with the Israeli regime”.

Israeli envoy Danny Danon then accused Iravani of “playing victim”. “We do not apologise for defending ourselves. We do not apologise for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. We do not apologise for neutralising the threat,” he said.

Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said that Danon had been “trying to raise the spectre of fear and trying to get more support from other nations for Israel’s actions in Iran”.

Danon, he said, had claimed that Iran had the ballistic missile capability to hit Western Europe and even the east coast of the United States.

Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said Israeli attacks on “Iranian peaceful civilian nuclear facilities” were “liable to plunge us into a hitherto unseen nuclear catastrophe”.

“Israel has disregarded the assessments of the specialist international agency, having … single-handedly, decided to carry out strikes against a sovereign country with no regard for the UN Charter,” he added.

A senior Iranian official told the Reuters news agency that Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that any proposal for zero enrichment – not being able to enrich uranium at all – would be rejected, “especially now under Israel’s strikes”.

Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster

The IAEA’s Grossi spoke a day after an Israeli military official walked back a military spokesperson’s claim that Iran had struck Bushehr, saying the comment had been “a mistake”.

Grossi said he could neither confirm nor deny that Bushehr, Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, had been hit.

Russian nuclear energy chief Alexei Likhachev had earlier said that any attack on the plant, where hundreds of Russian specialists work, could cause a Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster.

Speaking via videolink, Grossi said the IAEA was not aware of any damage at Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow.

He said there had been no nuclear fallout from attacks at the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites and the Natanz enrichment site.

Similarly, no radiological consequences were expected at the Khondab heavy water research reactor, under construction in Arak, which Israel also targeted.

Smith has been a resounding success since taking over at Glasgow in 2022.

He led the club to the European Challenge Cup final in his first season, delivered an extraordinary United Rugby Championship title success in his second, and while injuries took a toll last season, Warriors still reached the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup and the last four in the URC.

Smith has been linked with other jobs throughout the season – most notably the vacant Wales head coach position – and has done little to quell talk that he is seeking a fresh challenge.

“We really like all three coaches we have got on the men’s side and we would really like to retain them,” Williamson said.

“So those conversations are ones I am having now and will continue over the coming weeks. But when it comes to Franco specifically, he is a fantastic coach. He has done an absolutely incredible job and I really, really hope that he will be staying.

“I am actually delighted that he is getting approached and that people are talking about him as being a coach for other people because we want the best coaches in Scotland and it would be frankly pretty disappointing if no one was talking about someone as high quality as him.

“I think that we offer a consistency and a clarity of plan that he will be brilliant in and I am really hopeful that he will be with us.”

Smith is viewed by many as an obvious replacement for Townsend, but Williamson insists such succession planning has not been discussed.

“I don’t think that we necessarily should be looking at our coaching group and saying that we are creating the bench if you like to replace gaps when they arise at any level,” he said.

“I think that we just want to make sure in that moment that we recruit the person who is very best for that role.

“When we are thinking about how we create a pathway that is going to result in us being highly competitive in 2031 and 2035, or 2029 and 2033 for the ladies, we absolutely have to nail that in terms of the continuity around our coaching because that is what is going to breed confidence in our players.

“Having Franco here is an important part of that. But equally, I think Sean Everett has done a brilliant job at the back end of the season. I think he is very proud of the way that team grew and I am excited to see how he goes with a very young player group next year.”

Published on 18/06/2025 – 18:37 GMT+2•Updated
18:43

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The conflict in the Middle East will further worsen the global economic outlook, already strained by ongoing trade disputes, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (FMI) has told Euronews in an interview.

“Being hit by a trade war has consequences. We have projected a decline in global growth by half a percentage point,” Kristalina Georgieva said, adding: “What we witness now is more turbulence in the Middle East, which adds to uncertainty and therefore is bad for business.”

Since Donald Trump’s return to power as leader of the world’s largest economy, international trade has been disrupted by a wave of tariffs imposed by the US administration on its global partners.

Mexico and Canada were the initial targets, followed by a prolonged standoff between the US and China, which saw reciprocal tariffs between the pair soar to more than 100%.

On 2 April— a day he dubbed “Liberation Day”—Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of countries, including the EU. He then declared a 90-day truce, set to expire on 9 July.

Negotiations are currently underway with the EU, which currently faces tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminum, 25% on cars, and 10% on all its exports to the US.

However, the director of the IMF, which is responsible for financial stability across the world and facilitate global trade, admitted that “the global economy has proven to be remarkably resilient to shocks, and that resilience continues.”

In her view, economic uncertainty is becoming the new normal.

“We live in a more shock-prone world, a world of higher uncertainty,” Georgieva said, adding: “For this world, countries need to work hard to be more resilient. Do reforms at home that would make your economies stronger.”

Georgieva, a former vice-president of the European Commission, also expressed optimism with the economic outlook despite the bleak growth figures.

She considered that the recent trade agreement between China and the US and the deal Trump has brokered with the UK to be good signs, saying: “We are in a better place.”

In an uncertain context, she also sees opportunities to be seized—an outlook shared by the European Commission, which is pursuing a strategy of diversifying its trading partners by expanding the number of trade agreements worldwide.

“In Europe, we see an increase in bilateral and plurilateral agreements, which I expect to be a big feature of the future of trade globally,” she told Euronews, adding that it is a great moment for Europe, “a defender of rules-based” global trade exchanges.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the “horrifying, unconscionable suffering” inflicted by Israel in Gaza. Speaking at a Human Rights Council session in Geneva, Switzerland, he accused Israel of blocking life-saving aid and called for impartial investigations on deadly attacks on civilians.