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Kathmandu, Nepal – Pabit Tandukar was shouting slogans against Nepal’s government outside the country’s parliament building in the capital Kathmandu when he felt sharp pain cutting through his leg.

The 22-year-old university student was taken to the trauma centre of Kathamandu’s Bir Hospital on Monday, where doctors confirmed he had been hit by a live copper bullet.

“We were there for a peaceful protest. They were initially firing tear gas at us and we were pushing back. Suddenly, I was shot,” Tandukar told Al Jazeera.

At least 19 protesters were killed, and hundreds – like Tandukar – were injured after security forces fired live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas shells at youth agitators on Monday, after what began as a peaceful protest descended into violent clashes with law enforcement officers.

The killings have pushed Nepal into a political crisis. Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned from the position on Monday evening, claiming moral responsibility, and on Tuesday, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned.

But the thousands of young people who hit the streets of Kathmandu and other cities in Nepal on Monday, as part of what the organisers have called a Gen-Z movement, are demanding more – a dissolution of parliament and new elections.

The protests have erupted amid growing criticism of alleged corruption, and anger over perceptions that the families of the country’s ruling elite – including leading politicians – live lives of relative luxury while Nepalis struggle with a per capita income of less than $1,400 a year.

Then, the government last week banned 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and X, after they missed a September 3 deadline to register with the country’s authorities under a controversial new law. That ban further raised anger against the government among young, digitally native Nepalis, though the government said it was trying to stop the use of fake online identities to spread rumours, commit cybercrimes, and disturb social harmony.

By Tuesday, though, that simmering anger and the protests it led to had exploded into even more violence, with the killings of civilians by security forces becoming the lightning rod galvanising youth, who returned to the streets for a second day in a row.

“The government should not have fired bullets at students,” Tandukar said.

‘This one is for KP Oli’

Joining the protest near parliament on Monday, Megraj Giri* aimed a stone at a CCTV placed on the northern wall of the legislature building in New Baneshwor, in the heart of Kathmandu.

The government had imposed a curfew – which was extended on Tuesday – but Giri was defiant. “This one is for KP Oli,” he shouted, referring to the prime minister, as his missile shattered the camera.

That’s not how the organisers of the protest had imagined things would turn out.

“We planned a peaceful protest with cultural events and fun,” said Anil Baniya of Hami Nepal [translated as We Nepal], one of the organisers, speaking to Al Jazeera.

“During the first few hours, it went as planned, until some external forces and political party cadres joined in the protest and agitated the armed forces and pelted stones.”

Organisers have not named specific parties or external agents whom they blame for instigating the violence. But it was when some protesters began to climb the walls of the parliament complex to enter that security forces fired back, Baniya said.

Some of the protesters who were hit were schoolchildren still in their uniforms – it is unclear whether they were among any of the 19 who were killed.

The Kathmandu District Administration Office imposed curfew in that part of the city, and Nepal deployed its army. Armed forces also entered the Civil Service Hospital near Parliament to capture protesters, and shot tear gas, causing chaos in the facility. Toshima Karki, a doctor turned member of parliament, was at the hospital helping the injured when she witnessed the attack.

“No matter what, the government should not have used bullets. They murdered young people,” added Baniya.

Until late on Monday night, videos also emerged showing armed police officers carrying out search operations in houses near the protest area.

Among those killed was Sulov Raj Shrestha, who was studying civil engineering in Kathmandu.

“He was always smiling and had a friendly behaviour,” Sudhoj Jung Kunwar, a friend of Shrestha, recalled, speaking to Al Jazeera. “I just found out; he had his GRE exams today.”

Kathmandu Engineering College, where Shrestha studied, posted on Facebook: “We mourn, we protest, we condemn……  Sulov…..your nation has failed you…”

Political analyst Krishna Khanal blames “sheer negligence” on the part of the government for the killings.

“The young people should have been handled well; even if they crossed the parliament building, there were other ways to control them,” Khanal told Al Jazeera.

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International have both condemned the killings and called for transparent investigations into the events of Monday.

Speaking to the press late Monday night, Prithvi Subba Gurung, Nepal’s communications and information technology minister, announced the social media ban was being lifted.

But while the ban might be over, it is the killings on Monday that have now emerged as the principal issue inflaming passions on Nepal’s streets.

‘We demand mass resignation’

While the social media ban drew global attention, many protesters said their grievances run much deeper.

“We need to kick these old leaders out of power. We are tired of the same old faces,” said 27-year-old Yugant Ghimire, an artificial intelligence engineer who took part in Monday’s protest.

“The government is on a power trip, there is rampant corruption, no one is accountable,” Ghimire told Al Jazeera.

The movement has found support from sections of the political class, including Balen Shah, the mayor of Kathmandu, who is also a popular rapper.

Posting on social media on Sunday, Shah wrote, “Tomorrow, in this spontaneous rally, no party, leader, worker, lawmaker, or activist will use it for their own interest. I will not attend due to the age limit, but it is important to understand their message. I give my full support.”

Meanwhile, before Monday’s protest, Oli was largely dismissive of the movement. “Just by saying Gen Z, one is free to do anything, just by saying you don’t like it,” Oli said to an audience of his party cadres on Sunday.

That approach appears to have backfired on the government. On Tuesday, as the government imposed an indefinite curfew in Kathmandu, protesters defied those restrictions to set the homes of several politicians on fire.

Organisers of the protests have now released a set of “non-negotiable demands” which include the dissolution of the parliament, mass resignation of parliamentarians, immediate suspension of officials who issued the order to fire on protesters, and new elections.

Protest leader Baniya said the movement would continue “indefinitely until our demands are met”.

“We now have more of a duty to live up to the expectations of our friends who were murdered by the state,” said Baniya. “We need to topple this government, we demand mass resignation and we want them out. This is our country.”

Typhoon is the 16th to hit Guangdong province and causes closures of schools, public transport and cancels flights.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated as Typhoon Tapah has made landfall in southern China, causing flight disruptions and school closures.

State broadcaster CCTV said the storm made landfall on Monday morning in the city of Taishan in Guangdong province, unleashing powerful winds and torrential rain.

The Guangdong Meteorological Bureau raised a yellow alert, the third highest in China’s four-tier warning system, and forecast thunderstorms and gale-force winds.

Authorities said an estimated 60,000 people have been evacuated across southern China before the storm came ashore with maximum winds of 108 kilometres per hour (67 miles per hour).

Guangdong’s Emergency Management Department ordered the suspension of all outdoor activities and closed recreational areas like parks and beaches. Schools were also closed.

Guangdong has been hit by 16 typhoons this year. Tapah is expected to move northwest, gradually losing power until it exits the province.

In Taishan, classes were suspended for 120,000 students at schools and kindergartens across the city as an estimated 41,000 people in Jiangmen were evacuated. Chinese state media reported that 3,300 emergency personnel were on standby in the city.

The southern cities of Jiangmen, Maoming and Zhuhai also raised typhoon warnings and announced school closures.

In Hong Kong, a major regional economic hub, hundreds of flights were cancelled, and travellers were stranded at the airport awaiting information on when flights would continue. Macao, a nearby casino hub, also ordered the closure of its schools, public transport and taxis and reported disruptions to flights.

In the neighbouring city of Yangjiang, just west of Hong Kong, an estimated 1,785 workers were evacuated from 26 offshore wind platforms along with 2,026 people from fish farms.

Authorities have warned residents in areas impacted by the typhoon to remain vigilant.

Pakistan began evacuations last month after India released water from overflowing dams into low-lying border regions.

Nearly 300,000 people have been evacuated in the past 48 hours from flood-hit areas of Pakistan’s Punjab province following the latest flood alerts by India, officials have said, bringing the total number of people displaced since last month to 1.3 million.

A new flood alert was shared with Pakistan by neighbouring India through diplomatic channels early on Wednesday, said Arfan Ali Kathia, director-general of Punjab’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

Floodwaters have submerged dozens of villages in Punjab’s Muzaffargarh district, after earlier inundating Narowal and Sialkot, both near the border with India.

Authorities are also struggling to divert overflowing rivers onto farmlands to protect major cities, as part of one of the largest rescue and relief operations in the history of Punjab, which straddles eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.

The flood alert on Wednesday was the second in 24 hours following heavy rains and water releases from dams in India.

Thousands of rescuers using boats are taking part in the relief and rescue operations, while the military has also been deployed to transport people and animals from inundated villages, said Kathia.

Rescuers are also using drones to find people stranded on rooftops in the flood-hit areas. Kathia said more than 3.3 million people across 33,000 villages in the province have been affected. The damage is still being assessed and all those who lost homes and crops would be compensated by the Punjab government, he said.

Landslides and flooding have killed at least 30 people in India’s Punjab state, home to more than 30 million people, and nearly 20,000 have been evacuated since August 1.

In Pakistan, tent villages are being set up and food and other essential items are being supplied to flood-affected people, said Kathia, though many survivors complained about a lack of government aid.

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif visited flood-hit areas in Muzaffargarh on Wednesday, meeting with displaced families at the camps.

About 40,000 people are in the relief camps, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. It remains unclear where the rest are sheltering.

Malik Ramzan, a displaced resident, said he chose to stay near his inundated home rather than enter a relief camp. “There are no liveable facilities in the camps,” he said. “Food isn’t delivered on time, and we are treated like beggars.”

Facilities at the camps “are very poor,” said Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Multan in Punjab. “There’s no clean drinking water, no proper toilet facilities, plus the fact that it’s very hot and humid, so it leads to dehydration.”

While these families have fans to keep cool in the heat, “there are frequent power breakdowns, so these people now are very vulnerable when it comes to their health and, of course, the outbreak of diseases.”

Last week’s flooding mainly hit districts in Kasur, Bahawalpur and Narowal.

Pakistan began mass evacuations last month after India released water from overflowing dams into low-lying border regions.

The latest floods are the worst since 2022, when climate-induced flooding killed nearly 1,700 people in Pakistan.

At least two children were killed and more than a dozen others injured in a mass shooting at a Catholic school in the US city of Minneapolis. A church service was underway when police say a shooter began firing through the windows.

THERE is a reckoning coming. The people of Britain have had enough.

A new poll by Find Out Now has Reform UK winning a majority of 140 seats at the next general election. The big poll-of-polls gives us a 10-point lead. People are fed up. And one thing they are fed up with the most is illegal immigration.

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I went along to watch a protest outside the Britannia Hotel in London’s Canary Wharf, now a luxury hostel for asylum seekers, and felt for myself how high feelings are running.

Protesters like the famous Pink Ladies don’t want these illegal immigrants in their communities. Does anybody? Who voted for this madness?

That’s why our party, Reform UK, is backing more peaceful protests and asking people to demand that their local councils take action to empty the migrant hotels. But we can’t stop there.

We need to detain and deport illegal immigrants. Then I think they’re going to stop coming, and we can get back to some sort of peace and normality.

It’s no wonder people are angry. Just look at the shocking numbers that came out this past week.

We learned that, in the year up to June 2025, 110,000 more migrants applied for asylum in Britain –that’s the highest number since records began. More than 50,000 illegal immigrants have landed on our beaches since Labour were elected last July.

At the end of June, 32,100 asylum seekers were housed in hotels at taxpayers’ expense – up another 8 per cent since Keir Starmer moved into 10 Downing Street.

Over that same year, the Labour government spent £4.76 billion managing the asylum mess that they and their Tory predecessors have created.

This outrageous sum is the equivalent of hiring 86,500 more police officers, or 16 million winter fuel payments for British pensioners at the higher rate.

If I were a young male over the Channel in a migrant camp, I’d be thinking to myself it doesn’t matter where I’m from or what I’ve done in the past, get on a small boat to Britain and within 24 hours I could be in a four-star hotel, three meals a day, wifi, mobile phone, free to roam the streets and do pretty much whatever you want, because the authorities haven’t got the foggiest who you are.

What have we done as a nation? We see it in the news every week now, that an asylum seeker has been either charged or found guilty of disgusting attacks on women and girls.

The door’s open, we’ve invited these people in, some of them serious wrong ‘uns, and treated them like honoured guests.

But the tide is starting to turn. Last week the decent people of Epping in Essex won a big victory for us all, when the high court ruled that asylum seekers must leave the town’s Bell Hotel.

Parents and concerned residents had been protesting outside the hotel since an illegal migrant housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

They were slandered as “far-right” lunatics by Labour and the BBC, and attacked by leftie “Antifa” thugs who we saw being bussed in by the police! But they bravely stood up and won, despite home secretary Yvette Cooper shamefully hiring expensive lawyers to attack them in court.

People around the country are now protesting outside migrant hotels and telling their councils to take action. Nigel Farage was the first to call for more peaceful protests, and the councils that Reform won in the May elections will do everything in their power to follow Epping’s lead.

Now we need to go further. Next week, Reform UK will announce our proposals for mass deportations that will finally stop the boats and tackle the crisis.

And we are very clear that, to make this happen, the UK will need to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, which lets liberal foreign judges override the sovereignty of our parliament on immigration law.

National emergency

This is a national emergency. Labour’s latest scheme, to move migrants from hotels into homes into our communities, can only make matters worse.

But let’s not forget that the last Conservative government started the problem. So it’s a bit rich for them to start attacking migrant hotels now.

When I was a Tory MP, I spoke up asking the government to detain illegal immigrants in secure camps ready for deportation. Instead, they housed them in hotels.

I was constantly told to shut up by the “One Nation” lot of Conservative MPs. This is of their making, and they should all apologise right now.

Reform Uk stands foursquare with the people protesting peacefully across Britain. And we will defend free speech against the authorities that want to lock up anybody who speaks out.

On a protest in my constituency of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, some women in their sixties and seventies came up to me and said Lee, are we really far-right? And I said no, you’re just right.

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The al-Khasfa site, near Iraq’s second-largest city, could contain 4,000 remains and possibly thousands more.

Iraqi officials have begun the excavation of what is believed to be a mass grave left behind by ISIL (ISIS) during its years of carnage exacted upon the civilian population after it seized large swaths of the nation from 2014 onwards, until being vanquished three years later.

Local authorities were working alongside the judiciary, forensic investigators, the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation and the directorate of mass graves to carry out the excavation in al-Khafsa, south of the northern city of Mosul, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported on Sunday.

The site – a sinkhole about 150 metres (nearly 500 feet) deep and 110 metres (360 ft) wide – is believed to have been the grisly scene of some of the worst massacres committed by ISIL.

Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs Foundation’s mass graves excavation department, told The Associated Press news agency that his team began work on August 9 at the request of the Nineveh province.

The operation will initially be limited to gathering visible human remains and surface evidence, while preparing for a full exhumation that officials say will require international support, al-Asady said.

The foundation will then build a database and start collecting DNA samples from families of suspected victims.

Full exhumations can only proceed once specialised assistance is secured to navigate the site’s hazards, including sulfur water and unexploded ordnance. The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification.

Because of the presence of these elements, al-Khafsa is “a very complicated site,” al-Asady added.

Based on unverified accounts from witnesses and families and other unofficial testimonies, authorities estimate the site could contain at least 4,000 remains, with the possibility of thousands more.

Al-Khasfa is located near Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, where ISIL took control before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017. At its peak, ISIL ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom, spanning across Iraq and Syria, with Raqqa in the latter being the capital of their self-declared “caliphate”.

The group was notorious for its brutality. The group carried out massacres of thousands of the Yazidi people and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women. The Yazidis, a long-persecuted group whose faith is rooted in Zoroastrianism, are still recovering from the horrors of ISIL’s onslaught on their community in Iraq’s Sinjar district in 2014.

Rabah Nouri Attiyah, a lawyer who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineveh, told the AP that information points to al-Khasfa being “the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history”.

Al-Asady, however, said investigators have not yet been able to confirm its size.

About 70 percent of the estimated human remains there are believed to belong to Iraqi army and police personnel, as well as other victims, including Yazidis.

Interviews conducted with numerous witnesses from the area suggest ISIL fighters brought people there by bus to kill them. “Many of them were decapitated,” al-Asady said.

In addition to ISIL-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.

RACING bosses were left with no choice but to issue mass bans after multiple rules breaches at Ascot’s Shergar Cup.

Four jockeys have been banned for a total of 32 days.

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The BHA’s official sanctions came after Maureen Haggas – wife of trainer William – questioned the standard of rider at this year’s edition.

All of the jockeys who picked up bans are based outside of Britain – and included Hugh Bowman.

The Australian is famed for his association with Winx, one of the greatest racehorses of all time who won more than £14.5million on the track.

The BHA report read: “Karis Teetan, the rider of VENTURE CAPITAL, placed third, was found to have used his whip once above the permitted level of six and without giving his mount time to respond from inside the final furlong.

“He will be suspended for eight days from Tuesday 26 August to Tuesday 02 September 2025, inclusive.

“Hugh Bowman, the rider of LA PULGA (IRE), placed second, was found to have used his whip once above the permitted level of six, without giving his mount time to respond and in the incorrect place from approximately one and a half furlongs out.

“He will be suspended for 12 days from Tuesday 26 August to Saturday 06 September 2025, inclusive.

“Sarej Narredu, the rider of CLAYMORE (FR), unplaced, was found to have used his whip without giving his mount time to respond approximately two furlongs out.

“He will be suspended for four days from Tuesday 26 to Friday 29 August 2025, inclusive.

“Dario Di Tocco, the rider of TEAM PLAYER, placed second, was found to have used his whip onceabove the permitted level of six and without giving his mount time to respond from approximately one and a half furlongs out.

“He will be suspended for 8 days from Tuesday 26 August to Tuesday 02 September 2025, inclusive.”

Haggas, daughter of Lester Piggott, didn’t hold back when saying the quality of rider needs to be improved at the team event.

Speaking last Saturday, she said: “There are some bloody good riders here today, but the general feeling among trainers is that the standard of jockey is noticeably lower than usual.

“Hugh Bowman and Karis Teetan are very good riders but, without pointing any fingers, there are one or two who maybe shouldn’t be here.”

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Remember to gamble responsibly

A responsible gambler is someone who:

• Establishes time and monetary limits before playing
• Only gambles with money they can afford to lose
• Never chases their losses
• Doesn’t gamble if they’re upset, angry or depressed
• Gamcare – www.gamcare.org.uk
• Gamble Aware – www.gambleaware.org

Find our detailed guide on responsible gambling practices here.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan visited Capitol Hill just weeks after Inauguration Day, with other administration officials and a singular message: They needed money for the White House’s border security and mass deportation agenda.

By summer, Congress delivered.

The Republican Party’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law July 4 included what’s arguably the biggest boost of funds yet to the Department of Homeland Security — nearly $170 billion, almost double its annual budget.

The staggering sum is powering the nation’s sweeping new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, delivering gripping scenes of people being pulled off city streets and from job sites across the nation — the cornerstone of Trump’s promise for the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Homeland Security confirmed over the weekend ICE is working to set up detention sites at certain military bases.

“We’re getting them out at record numbers,” Trump said at the White House bill signing ceremony. “We have an obligation to, and we’re doing it.”

Money flows, and so do questions

The crush of new money is setting off alarms in Congress and beyond, raising questions from lawmakers in both major political parties who are expected to provide oversight. The bill text provided general funding categories — almost $30 billion for ICE officers, $45 billion for detention facilities, $10 billion for the office of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — but few policy details or directives. Homeland Security recently announced $50,000 ICE hiring bonuses.

And it’s not just the big bill’s fresh infusion of funds fueling the president’s agenda of 1 million deportations a year.

In the months since Trump took office, his administration has been shifting as much as $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other accounts to pay for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, lawmakers said.

“Your agency is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Noem during a Senate committee hearing in the spring.

The senator warned that Homeland Security would “go broke” by July.

Noem quickly responded that she always lives within her budget.

But Murphy said later in a letter to Homeland Security, objecting to its repurposing funds, that ICE was being directed to spend at an “indefensible and unsustainable rate to build a mass deportation army,” often without approval from Congress.

This past week, the new Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, along with a subcommittee chairman, Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, requested a briefing from Noem on the border security components of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, which included $46 billion over the next four years for Trump’s long-sought U.S.-Mexico border wall.

“We write today to understand how the Department plans to outlay this funding to deliver a strong and secure homeland for years to come,” the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to the homeland security secretary, noting border apprehensions are at record lows.

“We respectfully request that you provide Committee staff with a briefing on the Department’s plan to disburse OBBBA funding,” they wrote, seeking a response by Aug. 22.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press the department is in daily discussions with the committee “to honor all briefing requests including the spend plan for the funds allocated” through the new law.

“ICE is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity,” she said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”

Deportations move deep into communities

All together, it’s what observers on and off Capitol Hill see as a fundamental shift in immigration policy — enabling DHS to reach far beyond the U.S. southern border and deep into communities to conduct raids and stand up detention facilities as holding camps for immigrants.

The Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies are being enlisted in what Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, calls a “whole of government” approach.

“They’re orienting this huge shift,” Bush-Joseph said, as deportation enforcement moves “inward.”

The flood of cash comes when Americans’ views on immigration are shifting. Polling showed 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a “good thing” for the country, having jumped substantially from 64% a year ago, according to Gallup. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now.

At the same time, Trump’s approval rating on immigration has slipped. According to a July AP-NORC poll, 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his handling of immigration, down slightly from 49% in March.

Americans are watching images of often masked officers arresting college students, people at Home Depot lots, parents, workers and a Tunisian musician. Stories abound of people being whisked off to detention facilities, often without allegations of wrongdoing beyond being unauthorized to remain in the U.S.

A new era of detention centers

Detention centers are being stood up, from “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida to the repurposed federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, and the proposed new “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana. Flights are ferrying migrants not just home or to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison but far away to Africa and beyond.

Homan has insisted in recent interviews those being detained and deported are the “worst of the worst,” and he dismissed as “garbage” the reports showing many of those being removed have not committed violations beyond their irregular immigration status.

“There’s no safe haven here,” Homan said recently outside the White House. “We’re going to do exactly what President Trump has promised the American people he’d do.”

Back in February, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee, emerged from their private meeting saying Trump administration officials were “begging for money.”

As Graham got to work, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a leading deficit hawk, proposed an alternative border package, at $39 billion, a fraction of the size.

But Paul’s proposal was quickly dismissed. He was among a handful of GOP lawmakers who joined all Democrats in voting against the final tax and spending cuts bill.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit stored vast volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s cloud servers, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call.

The surveillance system, operational since 2022, was built by Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s secretive intelligence branch. It enables the unit to collect and retain recordings of millions of daily phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The revelations initially reported on Wednesday stem from leaked Microsoft documents and testimonies from 11 sources, including from Israeli military intelligence and the company.

According to the leaks, a large amount of the data appeared to be stored on Microsoft’s Azure servers located in the Netherlands and Ireland, the Guardian reported.

Three sources from Unit 8200 said that the cloud-based system helped guide deadly air strikes and shaped operations across the occupied Palestinian territories.

Microsoft said that CEO Satya Nadella, who met with Unit 8200’s commander Yossi Sariel in 2021, was unaware of the nature of the data to be stored. The company has said an internal review found “no evidence to date” that Azure or its artificial intelligence (AI) tools were “used to target or harm people”.

The revelations come after the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, issued a report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in its occupation and war on Gaza.

The report noted that Microsoft, which has operated in Israel since 1991, has built its largest hub outside the US in Israel and began integrating its technologies across the country’s military, police, prisons, schools, and settlements.

Since 2003, the company has deepened ties with Israeli defence, acquiring surveillance and cybersecurity start-ups and embedding its systems in military operations. In 2024, an Israeli colonel called cloud technologies such as those offered by Microsoft “a weapon in every sense”.

The Guardian reported that internal records at Microsoft showed that Nadella offered support for Sariel’s aim to move large volumes of military intelligence into the cloud.

A Microsoft statement cited by the Guardian said it “is not accurate” to say he provided his personal support for the project.

Microsoft engineers later worked closely with Israeli intelligence to embed security features within Azure, enabling the transfer of up to 70 percent of Unit 8200’s sensitive data to the platform.

While Israeli officials claim the technology helps thwart attacks, Unit 8200 sources said the system collects communications indiscriminately, which are often used to detain or blackmail Palestinians. “When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason … that’s where they find the excuse,” one source was cited as saying.

Some sources alleged the stored data had been used to justify detentions and even killings.

The system’s expansion coincided with a broader shift in Israeli surveillance, moving from targeted tracking to bulk monitoring of the Palestinian population. One AI-driven tool reportedly assigns risk scores to text messages based on certain trigger words, including discussions of weapons or martyrdom.

Sariel, who resigned in 2024 after Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7, 2023, had long championed cloud-based surveillance.

As Israel’s war on Gaza continues, with more than 61,250 Palestinians killed, including 18,000 children, the surveillance programme remains active. Sources said the existing data, combined with AI tools, continues to be used in military operations.

Microsoft claimed it had “no information” about the specific data stored by Unit 8200.

A former cleaner claims he was forced to bury the bodies of hundreds of women and girls, on the orders of supervisors at one of southern India’s most revered temples. As Soraya Lennie explains, the case has shocked the country and sparked accusations of a three-decade old cover up.

New Delhi, India – After spending three decades racked with guilt, scared on sleepless nights, and often changing cities, a 48-year-old Dalit man appeared in Karnataka with information about one of the most horrific alleged crimes in India.

Emerging from hiding after 12 years, the man, who once worked as a sanitation worker at the much-revered Dharmasthala temple, told police on July 3 that he was coming forward with “an extremely heavy heart and to recover from an insurmountable sense of guilt”. As a court-protected witness, the man’s identity cannot be revealed under the law.

“I can no longer bear the burden of memories of the murders I witnessed, the continuous death threats to bury the corpses I received,” he said in his statement, reviewed by Al Jazeera, “and the pain of beatings – that if I did not bury those corpses, I would be buried alongside them”.

Now, the whistleblower wants to help in the exhumation of “hundreds of dead bodies” he buried between 1995 and 2014 – many of them women and girls, allegedly murdered after sexual assaults, but also destitute men whose murders he claims to have witnessed.

After days of sustained pressure from activists and public outcry, the Karnataka government – ruled by the opposition Congress party – has created a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the allegations of assault and murder.

So, what did the protected witness reveal in his complaint? Does the temple town have a history of rape and murder? Are more victims coming forward now?

‘Hundreds of bodies’: What’s in the complaint?

Situated on the scenic lower slopes of the Western Ghats, Dharmasthala, an 800-year-old pilgrimage village, is located on the banks of the Nethravathi River in the Belthangady area of the Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka state, where nearly 2,000 devotees visit daily.

On July 11, the man, fully draped in black clothing with only a transparent strip covering his eyes, appeared at a local court in Belthangady to record his statement.

The complainant, who belongs to the Dalit community – the least privileged and often persecuted group in India’s complex caste hierarchy – joined the temple in 1995 as a sanitation worker.

At the beginning of his employment, he said in the complaint, he noticed dead bodies appearing near the river. “Many female corpses were found without clothes or undergarments. Some corpses showed clear signs of sexual assault and violence; injuries or strangulation marks indicating violence were visible on those bodies,” he noted.

However, instead of reporting this to authorities at the time, the man said he was forced to “dispose of these bodies” after his supervisors beat him up and threatened him, saying, “We will cut you into pieces; we will sacrifice all your family members.”

The supervisors, he claimed, would call him to specific locations where there were dead bodies. “Many times, these bodies were of minor girls. The absence of undergarments, torn clothes, and injuries to their private parts indicated brutal sexual assault on them,” he said. “Some bodies also had acid burn marks.”

The man has told the police and the court that he is ready to undergo any tests, including brain-mapping and a polygraph, and is willing to identify the spots of mass burials. Some sites are likely to be exhumed in the coming days.

In the nearly 20 years he worked at the temple, the man said he “buried dead bodies in several locations throughout the Dharmasthala area”.

Sometimes, as instructed, he burned dead bodies using diesel. “They would instruct me to burn them completely so that no trace would be found. The dead bodies disposed of in this manner numbered in the hundreds,” he said.

Why did he go into hiding?

By 2014, having worked there for 20 years, he said, “The mental torture I was experiencing had become unbearable.”

Then, a girl from his own family was sexually harassed by a person connected to the supervisors at the temple, leading to a realisation that the family needed “to escape from there immediately”. In December 2014, he fled Dharmasthala with his family and informed no one of his whereabouts.

Since then, the family has been living in hiding in a neighbouring state, and changing residences, he said.

“However, I am still living under the burden of guilt that does not subside,” he said. “But my conscience no longer allows me to continue this silence.”

To back his claims, the man recently visited a burial site and exhumed a skeleton; he submitted the skeleton and its photograph during exhumation to the police and the court via his lawyers.

Today, the actual number of dead bodies is not what matters to the former sanitation worker, a person closely associated with the case told Al Jazeera. They requested anonymity to speak.

“Even if it was just two or three women, and not hundreds, their lives matter,” they said, reflecting on why the whistleblower came forward. “If there is a chance at justice, their bodies getting proper rituals, we want to take it.”

Did he identify the victims?

No, he did not identify them by name. However, he detailed some of the burials in his statement to the police.

He recalled that in 2010 he was sent to a location about 500 metres (1,640ft) from a petrol pump in Kalleri, nearly 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Dharmasthala. There, he found the body of a teenage girl.

“Her age could be estimated between 12 to 15 years. She was wearing a school uniform shirt. However, her skirt and undergarments were missing. Her body showed clear signs of sexual assault. There were strangulation marks on her neck,” he noted in his statement. “They instructed me to dig a pit and bury her along with her school bag. That scene remains disturbing to this day.”

He detailed another “disturbing incident” of burying a woman’s body in her 20s. “Her face had been burned with acid. That body was covered with a newspaper. Instead of burying her body, the supervisors instructed me to collect her footwear and all her belongings and burn them with her,” he recalled.

Have similar crimes been linked to Dharmasthala in the past?

Yes. There have been repeated protests over the years regarding the discovery of bodies of rape-and-murder victims in and around Dharmasthala, dating back to the 1980s.

These protests have been sporadic but persistent, often led by local groups, families and political organisations.

In 1987, marches were organised in the town to protest the rape and murder of 17-year-old Padmalata. The demonstrations exposed alleged cover-ups by influential figures but were reportedly quashed through intimidation and legal pressure.

The town saw protests flare again in 2012 with the “Justice for Sowjanya” movement, after another teenager was raped and murdered. That case remains unsolved.

Over the decades, families and local political groups have held demonstrations and submitted memorandums to authorities, linking cases such as the 2003 disappearance of medical student Ananya Bhat to larger allegations of mass graves and unnatural deaths.

S Balan, a senior lawyer in the Karnataka High Court and a human rights activist, told Al Jazeera that the killings and mysterious disappearances in Dharmasthala date back to 1979.

“The souls of young girls are crying for justice; hundreds of girls who disappeared were abducted, were raped, and were killed,” Balan told Al Jazeera. “India has never seen this gravity of offence in its republic after independence.”

Balan also met the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah last Wednesday with a delegation of lawyers, urging him to form the SIT to probe the alleged mass rapes and murders.

“The chief minister was serious about it. He told us that he will talk to the police and do [what’s needed],” said Balan.

How have the temple authorities reacted?

The administration of the Dharmasthala temple has long been controlled by the powerful Heggade family, with Veerendra Heggade serving as the 21st Dharmadhikari, or hereditary head, since 1968.

Heggade, a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, is a member of the parliament’s upper house. He was nominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2022.

His family wields significant influence in the region, overseeing a wide network of institutions.

In 2012, the family came under public scrutiny following the rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya, a resident of Dharmasthala. Her body was discovered in a wooded area bearing signs of sexual assault and brutal violence. Sowjanya’s family has consistently alleged that the perpetrators had ties to the temple’s leadership.

In a statement shared on Sunday, July 20, the temple authorities expressed support for a “fair and transparent” investigation and expressed hope that the investigation would uncover the truth.

K Parshwanath Jain, the official spokesperson for Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala, said the whistleblower’s complaint has “triggered widespread public debate and confusion across the country”.

“In light of public demand for accountability, we understand that the state government has handed over the case to a Special Investigation Team,” he said. “Truth and belief form the foundation of a society’s ethics and values. We sincerely hope and strongly urge the SIT to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation and bring the true facts to light.”

Have the families of missing people come forward?

Yes. Sujatha Bhat, the mother of Ananya Bhat, who disappeared in 2003, has responded publicly to the whistleblower’s shocking revelations about alleged mass burials in Dharmasthala.

The 60-year-old retired CBI stenographer said she has lived in fear for more than two decades but was motivated by media reports of the worker’s testimony and the discovery of skeletal remains. She filed a new complaint with the police last Tuesday.

Bhat said she believes her daughter may have been among the many women who faced abuse and met a violent end, only to be buried without a trace.

She recalled that she was discouraged from pursuing the case further. “They told us to stop asking questions,” she reportedly said, emphasising the climate of fear and silence that surrounded Dharmasthala for decades.

Speaking with reporters after filing the complaint, Bhat appealed: “Please find my daughter’s skeletal remains and allow me to perform the funeral rites with honour.”

She said she wants to “give peace to Ananya’s soul, and let me spend my final days in peace”.

July 19 (UPI) — Five people in Baltimore were hospitalized for a reported mass overdose incident, one week after 27 were sickened in the same area of the city because of a “bad batch” of drugs, police said.

The victims Friday were in serious condition, Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said at a news conference, including addition to two who refused treatment after first responders deployed Narcan.

The 911 calls started coming just before 9 a.m. Friday and not from a concentrated area as last week, police said. Both incidents are in the historic Penn North neighborhood of West Baltimore.

“People have already heard what is out here and yet they still gotta go get it because their body is calling for it,” one man who goes by the nickname ‘Slim Rob’ told WJZ-TV. “It’s heartbreaking, man. It’s heartbreaking. You got people’s mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents out here — and the kids need them and yet they need that when you can be gone like this.”

On July 10, people were hospitalized in the incident in West Baltimore, which law enforcement officers and community advocates called a “bad batch of drugs.”

“We understand that the supply across the city is very volatile right now,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said. “If you see someone who may be overdosing, help them. If you have Narcan, administer it. Call 911. Don’t walk past anyone who may be experiencing an overdose.

“You can literally save their life by stepping in. That person is a human, that person is a Baltimorean.”

Police Commissioner Richard Worley said the incidents are being investigated separately.

“We also have numerous officers working the area having to locate who the buyers were, who the sellers were and mainly who is bringing the drugs into the area,” Worley said.

Five people were arrested three days later on July 13 in the area on a charge of drug possession with intent to distribute. It’s unclear if the arrested were linked to the mass overdose, according to Baltimore police.

“I understand the frustration,” Scott said about Penn North residents, who felt their concerns have been ignored. “We’re talking about a neighborhood … that has been so disinvested in for so long. We’re not going to change that overnight.”

Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology who examined substances from last week said they contained fentanyl, a powerful painkiller; methylclonazepam, which has sedative effects; Mannitol, a diuretic; quinine, an anti-malaria drug; and caffeine.

Narcan, which is the brand name of naloxone, and fentanyl strips were distributed to the affected neighborhood last week.

“Today’s incident is a painful reminder that our work is far from over,” Scott said.

In Baltimore, opioid overdose deaths reached a high of 1,006 in 2021 and dropped to 895 in 2022 before going back up to 952 in 2023. Last year, there were 698 opioid overdose-related deaths in the city, according to state data.

“People fade away — they’ve got agendas, other things to do,” Vincent Timmons, an outreach specialist at Tuerk House, told the Baltimore Banner. “People don’t remember that area. They’re used to that.”

There have been numerous legal challenges to President Trump’s immigration sweeps across California that have led to at least 3,000 arrests.

But one lawsuit has the potential to dramatically alter the policy.

The ruling

A coalition of civil rights groups and private attorneys sued the federal government, challenging the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens swept up in chaotic arrests that have sparked widespread protests since early June.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, temporarily blocked federal agents in the Southland from using racial profiling to carry out immigration arrests after she found sufficient evidence that agents were using race, a person’s job or their location, and their language to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain an individual.

Frimpong ruled that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, location or employment as a pretext for immigration enforcement is forbidden by the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

The order covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

The judge also ordered that all those in custody at a downtown detention facility known as B-18 must be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.

On Monday, the administration asked a federal appeals court to stay the judge’s order blocking the roving patrols, allowing it to resume raids across the seven California counties.

“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement,” the appeal argued. “This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”

What experts are saying

Legal experts say it’s hard to say just how successful the federal government will be in getting a stay on the temporary order, given the current political climate.

“This is different from a lot of the other kinds of Trump litigation because the law is so clear in the fact finding by the district court,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “So if you follow basic legal principles, this is a very weak case for the government on appeal, but it’s so hard to predict what will happen because everything is so ideological.”

In the past, legal scholars say, it would be extremely uncommon for an appeals court to weigh in on such an order. But recent events suggest it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Courts have backed Trump’s immigration policies in other cases.

• In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the federal government to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” even if they lack a prior connection to those countries.
• That same month, it also ruled 6 to 3 to limit the ability of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders blocking the president’s policies, which was frequently a check on executive power.
• In June, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California’s objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities. California had sued against the deployment.

It’s not an easy case for the government, said Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“I think one thing which makes this case maybe a little bit harder for the government than some of the other shadow docket cases is it really does affect citizens in an important way,” he said. “Obviously the immigration agent doesn’t know in advance when they come up to somebody whether they’re a citizen or a noncitizen or if they’re lawfully present or not.”

What is next?

The Frimpong ruling is now on appeal.

The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at car washes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful arrests without warrants.

Government lawyers argued in their motion that “ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances — for instance, if agents are acting on a tip that identifies that ethnicity — even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” lawyers stated in their motion.

Attorneys said in the motion that speaking Spanish, being at a particular location or one’s job “can contribute to reasonable suspicion in at least some circumstances.”

Government lawyers said Frimpong’s injunction was a first step to placing immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship and was “indefensible on every level.” They asked the higher court to pause the order while the appeal is heard.

The government is also appealing another injunction imposed by a federal judge in the Eastern District of California after Border Patrol agents stopped and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — during a days-long operation in the Central Valley in January.

That case is likely to be heard later this year.

Court reverses lower court ruling that said large staff cuts would effectively hamstring the Education Department.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can proceed with plans to slash funding and resources for the federal Department of Education.

The conservative-majority court ruled on Monday that the government could move forward with plans to lay off nearly 1,400 employees as part of Trump’s push to effectively dismantle the department.

“While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the US Constitution,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement celebrating the decision.

Monday’s ruling cancels a previous order on the administration’s efforts to fire about 1,400 workers at the Education Department, which US District Judge Myong Joun had ruled against in May, stating that it would “likely cripple the department”.

A US Court of Appeals agreed in a ruling on June 4 that the cuts would make it “effectively impossible for the Department to carry out its statutory functions”, which include overseeing student loans and enforcing civil rights law in US education, the site of previous political battles over issues such as federal efforts to combat racial segregation.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of working to effectively abolish federal agencies, established and funded by Congress, through a maximalist interpretation of executive power.

Trump and his Republican allies have depicted federal agencies as being at odds with their political agenda, and as hotbeds of leftist ideology and bureaucratic excess.

The Trump administration has also sought to impose greater control over US universities, seeking a larger role in shaping curricula and threatening to withdraw federal funds if universities do not comply with government demands concerning issues such as cracking down on pro-Palestine student activism.

In response to the court’s decision on Monday, a liberal legal group that helped bring the challenge to Trump’s efforts lamented that the ruling “dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children”.

Team of forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts begins excavating to identify the remains of about 800 children.

Excavation has begun in Ireland at an unmarked mass burial site to identify the remains of about 800 infants and toddlers who died at a church-run home for unmarried mothers.

The digging of the site on Monday marked the beginning of a two-year investigation planned by Irish and foreign forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts in the western city of Tuam.

The probe comes more than a decade after Catherine Corless, an amateur historian, first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there, forcing the government to form a commission to investigate the matter.

The commission found that the remains of 802 children from newborns to three-year-olds were buried in Tuam from 1925 to 1961 as it discovered an “appalling” mortality rate of about 15 percent among children born at all of the so-called Mother and Baby Homes, which operated across Ireland.

Subsequent test excavations from 2016 and 2017 found significant quantities of baby remains in a disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex.

Ireland’s Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation with experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States.

It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible and reinterment of the remains found, Director Daniel MacSweeney said at a recent news conference in Tuam.

‘Denied dignity and respect’

“These children were denied every human right in their lifetime as were their mothers,” Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters this month, the AFP news agency reported.

“And they were denied dignity and respect in death.”

The Tuam home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours Order, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a housing estate.

Significant quantities of human skeletal remains were found in chambers along with babies’ shoes and nappy pins underneath a patch of grass near a playground during the test excavations.

Corless found records that show as many as 796 babies and children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. State-issued death certificates compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the causes of death.

“It’s been a fierce battle. When I started this, nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs,” Corless, 71, told AFP in May. “I was just begging: Take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied.”

A six-year inquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide.

Catholic nuns ran the so-called mother and baby institution from 1925 to 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too, but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem.

Thousands of Bosnian Serbs participated in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, killing more than 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys in just three days. But only 54 people have ever been convicted. So why are so many killers walking free? Soraya Lennie has the details.

A Southern California Roman Catholic bishop told his diocese of roughly one million parishioners this week that they can stay home on Sundays to avoid Mass while concerns about federal immigration sweeps still loom over the region.

Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino wrote in the decree Tuesday that many church-goers have shared “fears of attending mass due to potential immigration enforcement action” and that “such fear constitutes a grave inconvenience that may impede the spiritual good of the faithful.”

In lieu of Sunday service, Rojas encouraged his members to “maintain their spiritual communion” by praying the rosary or reading scripture and directed diocese ministers to offer support and compassion to the affected.

Since early June, countless Southern California families have been living in fear and gone underground amid an extraordinary federal immigration enforcement push by the Trump administration. Nearly 2,800 people have been caught up in the sweeps in the L.A. area alone, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of undocumented immigrants without any criminal record.

The threat of an immigration raid has rippled through all aspects of Southern California life, including church attendance, where some houses of worship say up to a third or half their congregants are no longer showing up in person.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, multiple people were arrested at or near diocese churches on June 20, including a man at Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair, which ICE officials dispute.

“The accusation that ICE entered a church to make an arrest [is] FALSE,” wrote Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in an email to The Times. “The illegal alien chose to pull into the church parking lot [and] officers then safely made the arrest.”

Days later, Rojas wrote a message to worshipers on Facebook.

He said that he respected and appreciated law enforcement’s role in keeping “communities safe from violent criminals,” but added that “authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God.”

As for his latest edict allowing worshipers to forgo Mass, Rojas said it will remain in effect until further notice or until the circumstances “necessitating this decree are sufficiently resolved.”

Times staff writers Andrew Castillo, Rachel Uranga and Queenie Wong contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the Trump administration to lay off tens of thousands of federal employees and downsize their agencies without seeking the approval of Congress.

In an 8-1 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked mass layoffs at more than 20 departments and agencies.

The court has sided regularly with President Trump and his broad view of executive power on matters involving federal agencies.

In a brief order, the court said “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful,” referring to the plans to reduce staffing. But it said it was not ruling on specific layoffs.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the decision on the grounds that it was narrow and temporary.

Dissenting alone, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should not have intervened.

“Under our Constitution, Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and detail their functions,” she wrote.

Since mid-April, the court has handed down a series of temporary orders that cleared the way for Trump’s planned cutbacks in funding and staffing at federal agencies.

Litigation will continue in the lower courts, but the justices are not likely to reverse course and rule next year that they made a mistake in allowing the staffing cutbacks to proceed.

The layoff case posed the question of whether Congress or the president had the authority to downsize agencies.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said Congress, not the president, creates federal agencies and decides on their size and their duties.

“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress,” she said on May 22.

Her order barred more than 20 departments and agencies from carrying out mass layoffs in response to an executive order from Trump.

They included the departments of Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Services Administration and the National Science Foundation.

She said the planned layoffs are large. The Health and Human Services department plans to cut 8,000 to 10,000 employees and the Energy Department 8,500. The Veterans Administration had planned to lay off 83,000 employees but said recently it will reduce that number to about 30,000.

Labor unions had sued to stop the layoffs as illegal.

Illson agreed that the agencies were not acting on their own to trim their staffs. Rather, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought was leading the reorganization and restructuring of dozen of agencies. She said only Congress can reorganize agencies.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, turned down the administration’s appeal of the judge’s order.

Appealing to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers insisted the president had the full authority to fire tens of thousands of employees.

“The Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal, “and the President does not need special permission from Congress.”

He said federal law allows agencies to reduce their staffs.

“Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,” Sauer wrote.