The US and other Western countries have been reducing their funding, prioritising their defence spending instead.
The plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could rapidly deteriorate further unless more funding can be secured for critical assistance services, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Bangladesh has registered its biggest influx of Myanmar’s largest Muslim minority over the past 18 months since a mass exodus from an orchestrated campaign of death, rape and persecution nearly a decade ago by Myanmar’s military.
“There is a huge gap in terms of what we need and what resources are available. These funding gaps will affect the daily living of Rohingya refugees as they depend on humanitarian support on a daily basis for food, health and education,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
The humanitarian sector has been roiled by funding reductions from major donors, led by the United States under President Donald Trump and other Western countries, as they prioritise defence spending prompted by growing concerns over Russia and China.
Baloch added: “With the acute global funding crisis, the critical needs of both newly arrived refugees and those already present will be unmet, and essential services for the whole Rohingya refugee population are at risk of collapsing unless additional funds are secured.”
If not enough funding is secured, health services will be severely disrupted by September, and by December, essential food assistance will stop, said the UNHCR, which says that its appeal for $255m has only been 35 percent funded.
In March, the World Food Programme announced that “severe funding shortfalls” for Rohingya were forcing a cut in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6 per person.
More than one million Rohingya have been crammed into camps in southeastern Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Most fled the brutal crackdown in 2017 by Myanmar’s military, although some have been there for longer.
These camps cover an area of just 24 square kilometres (nine square miles) and have become “one of the world’s most densely populated places”, said Baloch.
Continued violence and persecution against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in mainly Buddhist Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, have kept forcing thousands to seek protection across the border in Bangladesh, according to the UNHCR. At least 150,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh over the past 18 months.
The Rohingya refugees also face institutionalised discrimination in Myanmar and most are denied citizenship.
“Targeted violence and persecution in Rakhine State and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar have continued to force thousands of Rohingya to seek protection in Bangladesh,” said Baloch. “This movement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, spread over months, is the largest from Myanmar since 2017, when some 750,000 fled the deadly violence in their native Rakhine State.”
Baloch also hailed Muslim-majority Bangladesh for generously hosting Rohingya refugees for generations.
In a provocative move that fuses foreign policy with ideological allegiance, United States President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on all Brazilian exports, effective August 1, 2025. The announcement came in a letter posted on social media, in which Trump explicitly linked the proposed tariffs to two ongoing domestic issues in Brazil: the judicial proceedings against far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro – whom Trump described as the victim of a political “witch-hunt” – and recent rulings by the Brazilian Supreme Court against US-based social media companies, including former Trump ally Elon Musk’s X. By doing so, Trump has escalated a trade dispute into a direct attempt to influence Brazil’s internal affairs – using economic pressure to serve political ends and undermining the country’s sovereignty in the process.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva responded swiftly and unequivocally: “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage,” he declared, adding that Brazil’s judiciary is autonomous and not subject to interference or threat. Under Brazilian law, digital platforms are obligated to monitor and remove content that incites violence or undermines democratic institutions, and they may be held legally accountable when they fail to do so.
While a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian exports might appear economically devastating, it could in fact become a strategic turning point – and even a blessing in disguise. Brazil has both the resilience and the diplomatic tools to weather this storm and emerge stronger.
The United States is one of Brazil’s largest trading partners, typically ranking second after China – or third if the European Union is considered as a single bloc. Brazilian exports to the US include industrial goods such as Embraer aircraft, iron and steel, crude oil, coffee and semiprecious stones, alongside agricultural products like beef, orange juice, eggs and tobacco. In return, Brazil imports large quantities of US-manufactured goods, including machinery, electronics, medical equipment, chemicals and refined petroleum. Notably, the US has maintained a trade surplus with Brazil for the past five years.
Should Washington proceed with the 50 percent tariffs, Brasília has several retaliatory options under its Economic Reciprocity Law. These include raising import tariffs on US goods, suspending clauses in bilateral trade agreements, and – in exceptional cases such as this – withholding recognition of US patents or suspending royalty payments to American companies. The impact on US consumers could be immediate and tangible, with breakfast staples like coffee, eggs and orange juice spiking in price.
Brazil is not without friends or alternatives. The country has already been deepening ties with fellow BRICS members (China, India, Russia, South Africa) and newer partners in the bloc. This dispute only strengthens the case for accelerating such integration. Diversifying export markets and embracing South-South cooperation isn’t just ideological; it’s economically pragmatic.
Closer to home, the tension presents an opportunity to reinvigorate South American integration. The long-held regional dream of enhanced collaboration – from trade to infrastructure – could gain new momentum as Brazil reassesses its global alignments. This realignment could breathe life into stalled Mercosur bloc initiatives and reduce dependence on an increasingly erratic relationship with the US.
Ironically, Trump’s aggressive move may weaken his ideological allies in Brazil. While Bolsonaro supporters (including members of his family) have praised the US president’s intervention, they may be missing its broader political consequences. Trump’s past influence abroad has often backfired, with right-wing candidates in countries like Canada and Australia paying the price. A similar outcome in Brazil is not unthinkable. Lula, who has consistently positioned himself as a pragmatic, diplomatic and stabilising global figure, may gain political ground from this latest episode. His defence of sovereignty, democratic institutions and balanced international relations could resonate more deeply with Brazilian voters ahead of next year’s elections.
This moment need not be seen as a crisis. Rather, it presents a pivotal opportunity for Brazil to assert itself as a sovereign economic power – less reliant on Washington and more engaged with an emerging multipolar global order. If Lula navigates it wisely, Trump’s latest provocation may deliver not only a diplomatic win but a significant boost to his re-election prospects. In attempting to punish Brazil, Trump may well have undercut both his foreign policy ambitions and his ideological allies abroad.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Bitcoin has reached a new all-time high, trading at more than $118,000 (€100,000) on Friday. It followed an enthusiastic trading day on the US stock markets on Thursday, where the main index for tech companies, the Nasdaq, hit a record value.
Interest in Bitcoin was fuelled by a bullish, optimistic trading outlook across risk assets and an appetite for investment in tech companies, such as Nvidia, which recently surged to a $4 trillion valuation.
Bitcoin’s all-time high also comes days before what the US House of Representatives, one of Congress’ two chambers, has labelled as “Crypto Week”, starting on 14 July. This is when lawmakers are expected to debate a series of bills that could define the regulatory framework for the industry in the United States.
Bitcoin gained more than 20% this year against the US dollar.
Bloomberg’s data shows that investors poured around $1.2 billion (€1bn) into Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds) on Thursday, pushing the price to a new high beyond $116,000 before the rally continued on Friday.
Much of the investments pouring into crypto came through ETFs. Cryptocurrency-based ETFs make it easier for investors to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies without having to buy them directly. These funds have exploded in popularity since bitcoin ETFs began trading in US markets last year.
The strong interest in crypto boosted the price of the second-biggest crypto asset, too. Ethereum gained more than 6%, and traded at around $3,000 (€2,600) on Friday.
Meanwhile, the US President continues to expand his crypto-related offerings. Trump was once a bitcoin sceptic but has since warmly embraced the cryptocurrency industry.
On Tuesday, his family business Trump Media filed paperwork at the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval to launch the “Crypto Blue Chip ETF” later this year.
This is a new exchange-traded fund tied to the prices of five popular cryptocurrencies. The proposed ETF would have 70% of its holdings in bitcoin, 15% in Ethereum, and 8% in Solana, a cryptocurrency popular in the meme coin community.
The Trump administration has pushed for crypto-friendly regulations and laws, in line with the president’s ambitions to make the US the world capital for crypto.
Lawyers for victims of human rights abuses committed during Peru’s decades-long armed conflict have pledged to appeal to international bodies to overturn a law passed by the country’s Congress, which would grant amnesty to prosecuted military and police members, as well as other forces.
“We’re not only going to the domestic arena to seek its invalidation, but we’ve already taken some action at the international level,” lawyer Gloria Cano, director of the Pro Human Rights Association, said during a news conference on Thursday.
A congressional commission on Wednesday approved the bill granting amnesty to members of the armed forces, national police and local self-defence committees, said legislator Alejandro Cavero, third vice president of the country’s Congress.
Cano also said her association had already alerted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and planned to go to the United Nations, as well.
After the Peruvian Congress passed the bill, Volker Turk, the UN’s national human rights coordinator, said on X that “impunity does not hide the crime, it magnifies it.”
Amnesty International earlier urged the legislature to side with victims and reject the bill. “The right to justice of thousands of victims of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence would be violated,” the rights group said on X.
A coalition of human rights organisations in Peru said the new law could wipe out 156 convictions and another 600 cases that are being prosecuted.
The law, which awaits President Dina Boluarte’s approval, benefits uniformed personnel who were accused, are still being investigated or are being tried for crimes stemming from their participation in the country’s armed conflict from 1980 to 2000 against left-wing rebels. Boluarte has not made any comment on the amnesty, even before its passage.
The bill was presented by Congressman Fernando Rospigliosi, from the right-wing Popular Force party of Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former leader Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori’s decade as president from 1990 was marked by ruthless governance.
The new law specifies that a humanitarian amnesty will be granted to people more than 70 years old who have been sentenced or served a prison sentence.
Critics have warned that the legislation would hinder the search for truth about the period of violent conflict, which pitted state forces against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebels, and killed about 70,000 people.
“Granting amnesty to military and police officers cannot be a reason for impunity,” Congressman Alex Flores of the Socialist Party said during debate on the bill.
There have been numerous attempts in recent years to shield the military and police from prosecution in Peru for crimes committed during the conflict – but opponents of amnesty have found success before at international bodies.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has at least twice previously declared amnesty laws in Peru invalid for violating the right to justice and breaching international human rights standards.
Human rights advocates believe that Peru’s membership of the Inter-American System of Human Rights and the obligations this entails make the amnesty law unconstitutional.
Amnesty laws passed in 1995 in Peru shielded military and police personnel from prosecution for human rights abuses committed during the conflict, including massacres, torture, and forced disappearances.
Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the majority of the conflict’s victims were Indigenous Peruvians caught between security forces and the Shining Path. It also found that there are more than 4,000 clandestine graves across the country as a result of the two decades of political violence.
In August 2024, Peru adopted a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002, shutting down hundreds of investigations into alleged crimes committed during the conflict.
The initiative benefitted the late Fujimori and 600 prosecuted military personnel.
United States President Donald Trump has drawn mockery after he complimented the president of Liberia for speaking English “beautifully”, even though it is the country’s official language.
“Such good English, where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” Trump asked Joseph Boakai during a meeting with five African leaders at the White House on Wednesday.
“In Liberia?” Trump asked. Boakai seemed to chuckle before responding: “Yes sir.”
Alex Vines, head of the Africa Programme at the London think tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera: “President Trump’s limited knowledge of Africa was on show with his comment on President Boakai’s quality of English.”
Liberia was founded in 1822 as a colony for freed Black American slaves as white Americans sought to address what they saw as a problem – the presence of Black people in the United States once slavery ended.
Here is a potted history of the African nation:
Where is Liberia and how populous is it?
The country of five million people is located on the Western African coast and is bounded by Sierra Leone to the northwest, Guinea to the north, Ivory Coast to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west.
Liberia was founded in 1822 and became a republic in 1847. It is now Africa’s oldest republic and is seen by many as a symbol of African self-determination. Along with Ethiopia, it is the only African nation that was never colonised during Europe’s scramble for the continent.
There are officially 16 ethnic groups that make up Liberia’s Indigenous African population, with the largest being the Kpelle.
(Al Jazeera)
How, why and when was Liberia founded?
As the abolitionist movement against slavery gained ground in the US in 1822, a group of 86 formerly enslaved people arrived in Liberia’s present-day capital, Monrovia, the country’s largest port.
Jehudi Ashmun, a white American, was leading efforts by the American Colonization Society (ACS) to resettle free people of colour in Africa. While some chose to emigrate willingly, the organisation is known to have pressured or coerced others into relocating.
ACS was established by white Americans who believed that the presence of free Blacks in America posed a threat to the nation, as they might incite those who remained in slavery to rebel. Some also believed in the “inferiority” of Black people and thought them unable to achieve equality in American society. The organisation’s goal was, therefore, to establish a colony in West Africa that would take them in.
Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic in 1847, becoming the first African republic to achieve such status and be recognised by Western nations. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, an African American who had emigrated to Liberia in 1829 and become a politician, was elected the first president of the new country.
JJ Roberts, President of Liberia, 1847 [Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images]
While Indigenous leaders resisted American attempts to purchase land, the newborn country was created after a US Navy officer coerced a local ruler to sell a strip of land to ACS. Its capital was named Monrovia after the US’s fifth president, James Monroe, who had procured government money for the project.
It is estimated that, in total, about 12,000 formerly enslaved Black Americans immigrated to Liberia between 1820 and 1861.
Who makes up the population?
African Americans and their descendants, known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the government of Liberia thanks to their ties with the US government, through which they were able to conduct trade, until a military coup ended their influence in 1980.
Despite being a minority of about 5 percent of the total population in Liberia, from the start of the republic, they mostly excluded the Indigenous African population from any meaningful participation in the political life of the country.
Indigenous people who had migrated from western Sudan in the late Middle Ages constitute a majority of the population. A smaller portion also migrated from neighbouring western African states during the anti-slave-trade campaign and European colonial rule in the 1800s.
In more recent years, it has opened its doors to refugees from neighbouring countries, especially from the Ivory Coast, where civil war broke out in 2002 and 2011.
What is the official language of Liberia?
English is Liberia’s official language, though more than two dozen Indigenous languages are spoken there as well.
Americo-Liberians, who dominated political power until the military coup in 1980, imposed English as the commonly spoken language when they founded the republic in 1847.
Other languages spoken by Liberia’s Indigenous ethnic groups fall under three main groups, all belonging to the Niger-Congo language family: the Mande, Kwa and Mel languages.
A member of a burial team holds bullet casings and a bullet while searching to exhume the remains of former Liberian President William R Tolbert, assassinated during a coup in 1980, and those of 13 officials from his government, in Monrovia, Liberia, on February 20, 2025 [Carielle Doe/Reuters]
What caused the civil wars in Liberia?
Liberia has endured two major civil wars in more recent decades. The country’s conflicts were deeply rooted in ethnic divisions.
Samuel Doe, a member of the Indigenous Krahn ethnic group, led a military coup in 1980, which overthrew the Americo-Liberian government and put an end to its political dominance marked by ethnic inequalities. Liberian President William R Tolbert was assassinated during the coup.
However, Doe ushered in a period of authoritarianism and human rights abuses that led to the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars.
The first war erupted in 1989, when Charles Taylor, a descendant of freed American slaves, launched an armed rebellion against Doe, which killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.
A second war broke out in 1999 when a rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), began a military offensive to topple Taylor’s government with the support of neighbouring Guinea.
The conflict spilled over into Guinea and Sierra Leone but subsided in 2003 with the intervention of international peacekeeping forces and Taylor’s resignation and exile.
Taylor was accused of human rights violations and indicted by a United Nations-sponsored war-crimes tribunal in 2003. He received a sentence of 50 years in prison.
What is the situation now?
Liberia has mostly experienced political stability since the second civil war ended. It held democratic elections in 2017, marking the first peaceful transfer of power since 1944.
Boakai was elected president in 2023 with 50.64 percent of the vote for a six-year term, defeating former international football star George Weah.
Vines, from Chatham House, said: “Ethnicity is less important in Liberia today and Americo-Liberians are a lot less dominant.”
“Liberians still perceive close ties with the US,” especially because of deep connections with many Green Card holders, Vines said, but the significant cut of USAID funding to the African continent earlier this year came as a shock.
During Wednesday’s White House meeting with Trump, Boakai described Liberia as “a longtime friend of the United States”.
“We believe in your policy of making America great again,” he told Trump at the meeting before advocating for US investment in his country. “We just want to thank you so much for this opportunity.”
People wait to vote at a polling station during the presidential and parliamentary elections in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on October 10, 2023 [Harry Browne/Anadolu via Getty Images]
Why did Trump meet the leaders of Liberia and other West African nations?
The five countries whose leaders met Trump – namely Liberia, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Senegal – possess untapped natural resources, including rare earth minerals. The US president saluted them as “very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits and wonderful people”.
Vines said Boakai’s presence at the White House was “opportunistic”, as the Liberian president was already on a trip to the US, rather than a reflection of deep historical ties between the two nations.
Africa has become a battleground for global influence in the US-China geopolitical rivalry, but Trump is known for his apparently dismissive remarks about the continent.
During his first term as president, Trump caused outrage after criticising immigration to his country from El Salvador, Haiti and the African continent, which he reportedly dubbed “s***hole countries”.
The current Trump administration is also known to be seeking to deport people who have outstayed their visas or are otherwise in the US illegally to West African countries willing to receive them.
According to some media reports, a plan was presented at Wednesday’s meeting, but it remains unclear what Trump offered in exchange and whether any leaders were willing to accept his offer.
Dhaka, Bangladesh — On July 16, 2024, as security forces launched a brutal crackdown on student protesters campaigning against then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian government, Bangladeshi rapper Muhammad Shezan released a song.
Titled Kotha Ko (speak up in Bangla), the song asked: “The country says it’s free, then where’s your roar?”
It was the day that Abu Sayed, a protester, was killed, becoming the face of the campaign to depose Hasina after 15 years in power. Sayed’s death fuelled the public anger that led to intensified protests. And Shezan’s Kotha Ko, along with a song by another rapper, Hannan Hossain Shimul, became anthems for that movement, culminating in Hasina fleeing Bangladesh for India in August.
Fast forward a year, and Shezan recently released another hit rap track. In Huddai Hutashe, he raps about how “thieves” are being garlanded with flowers – a reference, he said, to unqualified individuals seizing important positions in post-Hasina Bangladesh.
As the country marks the anniversary of the uprising against Hasina, protest tools that played a key role in galvanising support against the former leader have become part of mainstream Bangladeshi politics.
Rap, social media memes and graffiti are now also a part of the arsenal of young Bangladeshis looking to hold their new rulers accountable, just as they once helped uproot Hasina.
A social media meme mocking the Bangladesh government logo, by showing a mob beating a person, highlighting the law and order chaos that followed Hasina’s ouster [Masum Billah/Al Jazeera]
‘Do less drama, dear’
As mob violence surged in Bangladesh last autumn in the aftermath of Hasina’s ouster, a Facebook meme went viral.
It showed the familiar red and green seal of the Bangladesh government. But instead of the golden map of the nation inside the red circle, it depicted stick-wielding men beating a fallen victim.
The text around the emblem had been tweaked – in Bangla, it no longer read “People’s Republic of Bangladesh Government,” but “Mob’s Republic of Bangladesh Government”.
The satire was biting and pointed, revealing an uncomfortable side of post-Hasina Bangladesh. “It was out of this frustration that I created the illustration, as a critique on the ‘rule of mobs’ and the government’s apparent inaction,” said Imran Hossain, a journalist and activist who created the meme. “Many people shared it on social media, and some even used it as their profile picture as a quiet form of protest.”
After the student-led revolution, the newly appointed interim government under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus embarked on a sweeping reform agenda – covering the constitution, elections, judiciary and police.
But mob violence emerged as a challenge that the government struggled to contain. This period saw mobs attacking Sufi shrines and Hindu minorities, storming women’s football pitches, and even killing alleged drug dealers – many of these incidents filmed, shared and fiercely debated online.
“After the July uprising, some groups in Bangladesh – many of whom had been oppressed under the previous regime – suddenly found themselves with a lot of power. But instead of using that newfound power responsibly, some began taking the law into their own hands,” Hossain said.
As with rap songs, such memes had also played a vital role in capturing the public mood during the anti-Hasina protests.
After security officials killed hundreds of protesters on July 18 and 19, Sheikh Hasina was seen crying over damage to a metro station allegedly caused by demonstrators. That moment fuelled a wave of memes.
One viral meme said “Natok Kom Koro Prio” (Do less drama, dear), and was viral throughout the latter half of July. It mocked Hasina’s sentimental display – whether over the damaged metro station or her claim to “understand the pain of losing loved ones” after law enforcement agencies had killed hundreds.
Until then, ridiculing Sheikh Hasina had been a “difficult” act, said Punny Kabir, a prominent social media activist known for her witty political memes over the years, and a PhD student at the University of Cologne.
While newspaper cartoonists previously used to lampoon political leaders, that stopped during Hasina’s rule since 2009, which was marked by arrests of critics and forced disappearances, she said.
“To face off an authoritarian regime, it’s [ridiculing] an important and powerful tool to overcome fear and surveillance,” Kabir said. “We made it possible, and it broke the fear.”
Protesters on Dhaka streets on August 2, 2024 [Masum Billah/Al Jazeera]
‘If you resist, you are Bangladesh’
As fear of Sheikh Hasina faded from social media, more people found their voice – a reflection that soon spread onto the streets. Thousands of walls were covered with paintings, graffiti, and slogans of courage such as “Killer Hasina”, “Stop Genocide” and “Time’s Up Hasina”.
“These artworks played a big role in the protests,” said political analyst and researcher Altaf Parvez. “Slogans like ‘If you are scared, you’re finished; but if you resist, you are Bangladesh’ – one slogan can make all the difference, and that’s exactly what happened.
“People were searching for something courageous. When someone created something that defied fear – creative slogans, graffiti, cartoons – these became sources of inspiration, spreading like wildfire. People found their voice through them,” he added.
That voice did not go silent with Hasina’s departure.
Today, memes targeting various political parties, not just the government, are widespread.
One of Imran’s works uses a Simpsons cartoon to illustrate how sycophants used to eulogise Hasina’s family for its role in Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war when she was in power. Now, the cartoon points out, loyalists of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)’s leader Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman are trying to flatter their family for their contribution to the country’s independence movement. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the freedom struggle, while Zia’s husband Ziaur Rahman was a senior army officer who announced the country’s independence on March 27, 1971.
Another meme from a popular Gen-Z Facebook page called WittiGenZ recently highlighted allegations of sexual misconduct by a leader of the National Citizen Party (NCP) – a party formed by Bangladesh’s students.
Protesters draw graffiti and write slogans against Sheikh Hasina on the walls of Dhaka [Masum Billah/Al Jazeera]
What comes next for political art in Bangladesh?
Political analysts in Bangladesh believe the tools that contributed to toppling Sheikh Hasina will continue to be relevant in the country’s future.
“Memes and photo cards in Bangladesh essentially do what X does in the West. They provide the most effective short-form political commentary to maximise virality,” said US-based Bangladeshi geopolitical columnist Shafquat Rabbee.
Bangladesh’s central bank unveiled new banknote designs inspired by the graffiti created by students during last July’s monsoon uprising, a nod to the art form’s widespread popularity as a means of political communication.
And rap, Rabbee said, found a natural entry in Bangladeshi politics in 2024. In Bangladesh’s context, back in July 2024, political street fighting became a dominant and fitting instrument of protest against Hasina’s repressive forces, he said.
The artists behind the songs say they never expected their work to echo across Bangladesh.
“I wrote these lyrics myself,” Shezan said, about Kotha Ko. “I didn’t think about how people would respond – we simply acted out of a sense of responsibility to what was happening.”
As with Shezan’s song, fellow rapper Hannan’s Awaaz Utha also went viral online, especially on Facebook, the same day – July 18 – that it was released. “You hit one, 10 more will come back,” a line said. As Hasina found it, they did.
The rappers themselves also joined the protests. Hannan was arrested a week after his song’s release and was only freed after Hasina resigned and fled to India.
But now, said Shezan, rap was there to stay in Bangladesh’s public life, from advertising jingles to lifestyle. “Many people are consciously or subconsciously embracing hip-hop culture,” he said.
Made in Palestine is a documentary short set inside the Hirbawi textile factory, the last remaining producer of the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.
Run by three brothers, the sons of founder Hajj Yasser Hirbawi, the family business has preserved this craft since 1961. But the brothers say the factory is more than just a workplace.
It’s a living symbol of resistance, memory and pride, woven deep into Palestinian heritage and identity.
The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between players and donor-backed collectives formed over the past several years to funnel money to athletes or their schools.
Those arrangements hold no “valid business purpose,” the memo said, and don’t adhere to rules that call for outside NIL deals to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit.
The letter to Division I athletic directors could be the next step in shuttering today’s version of the collective, groups that are closely affiliated with schools and that, in the early days of NIL after July 2021, proved the most efficient way for schools to indirectly cut deals with players.
Since then, the landscape has changed yet again with the $2.8-billion House settlement that allows schools to pay the players directly as of July 1.
Already, collectives affiliated with Colorado, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia and others have announced they’re shutting down. Georgia, Ohio State and Illinois are among those that have announced plans with Learfield, a media and technology company with decades of licensing and other experience across college athletics, to help arrange NIL deals.
Outside deals between athlete and sponsor are still permitted, but any worth $600 or more have to be vetted by a clearinghouse called NIL Go that was established by the new College Sports Commission and is being run by the auditing group Deloitte.
In its letter to the ADs, the CSC said more than 1,500 deals have been cleared since NIL Go launched on June 11, “ranging in value from three figures to seven figures.” More than 12,000 athletes and 1,100 institutional users have registered to use the system.
But the bulk of the letter explained that many deals could not be cleared because they did not conform to an NCAA rule that sets a “valid business purpose” standard for deals to be approved.
The letter explained that if a collective reaches a deal with an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, the standard is not met because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.
The same would apply to a deal an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose” according to the NCAA rule.
Sports attorney Darren Heitner, who deals in NIL, said the guidance “could disproportionately burden collectives that are already committed to spending money on players for multiple years to come.”
“If a pattern of rejections results from collective deals submitted to Deloitte, it may invite legal scrutiny under antitrust principles,” he said.
On a separate track, some college sports leaders, including the NCAA, are seeking a limited form of antitrust protection from Congress.
The letter said a NIL deal could be approved if, for instance, the businesses paying the players had a broader purpose than simply acting as a collective. The letter uses a golf course or apparel company as examples.
“In other words, NIL collectives may act as marketing agencies that match student-athletes with businesses that have a valid business purpose and seek to use the student’s NIL to promote their businesses,” the letter said.
US president also eyes blanket tariffs of 15 to 20 percent on other trading partners as his trade war widens.
President Donald Trump has announced that the United States would impose a 35 percent tariff on imports from Canada next month, while eyeing blanket tariffs of 15 or 20 percent on most other trading partners as he broadens his trade war.
In a letter released on his social media platform on Thursday, Trump told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney the new rate would go into effect on August 1 and would go up if Canada retaliated.
They met again at the G7 summit last month in Canada, where leaders pushed Trump to back away from his punishing trade war.
In an interview with NBC News published on Thursday, Trump also said that other trading partners that had not yet received such letters would likely face blanket tariffs.
“Not everybody has to get a letter. You know that. We’re just setting our tariffs,” Trump said in the interview.
“We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20 percent or 15 percent. We’ll work that out now,” Trump was quoted as saying by the network.
In recent days, he also set new tariffs on a number of countries, including allies Japan and South Korea, along with a 50 percent tariff on copper.
On Friday, Myanmar, which was also hit by stiff Trump tariffs, pleaded with Trump for a reduction in the 40 percent tariff rate, with ruling Senior General Min Aung Hlaing saying he is ready to send a negotiation team to Washington if needed, according to state media.
Locked in talks
Canada and the US are locked in trade negotiations, hoping to reach a deal by July 21, and the latest threat seems to put that deadline in jeopardy.
Canada, as well as Mexico, are trying to find ways to satisfy Trump so that the free trade deal uniting the three countries, known as the USMCA, can be put back on track.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement replaced the previous NAFTA accord in July 2020, after Trump successfully pushed for a renegotiation during his first term in office.
It was due to be reviewed by July of next year, but Trump accelerated the process by launching his trade wars after taking office in January.
Canadian and Mexican products were initially hard hit by 25 percent US tariffs, with a lower rate for Canadian energy.
Trump targeted both neighbours, saying they did not do enough on undocumented immigration and the flow of illicit drugs across borders.
But he eventually announced exemptions for goods entering his country under the USMCA, covering large swaths of products. Potash, used as fertiliser, got a lower rate as well.
Here are the key events on day 1,233 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Friday, July 11:
Fighting
Russia’s escalation of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities led to a three-year high in the number of civilians killed or wounded in June, the United Nations said. The UN verified at least 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded during the month – the highest combined toll since April 2022.
Russia unleashed heavy air strikes on Ukraine, killing two and wounding 26, before a conference in Rome at which Kyiv won billions of dollars in aid pledges, and US-Russian talks at which Washington voiced frustration with Moscow over the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s latest assault involved about 400 drones and 18 missiles, primarily targeting the capital.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had hit “military-industrial” targets in Kyiv as well as military airfields. It denied targeting civilians, although towns and cities have been hit regularly in the war, and thousands have been killed.
Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defences had brought down four Ukrainian drones bound for the Russian capital. Three airports in the Moscow area – Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky – suspended operations temporarily but later resumed, Russia’s aviation authority said.
In the Kursk region in western Russia, Acting Governor Alexander Khinstein said a Ukrainian drone had killed a man in his own home, two days after four people died in a drone attack on the city’s beach.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said 14 drones were shot down over the Bryansk region and another eight over the Belgorod region, which border Ukraine. A later ministry bulletin said 26 Ukrainian drones were destroyed over the Kursk and Bryansk regions.
The Vatican’s embassy in Kyiv was slightly damaged during Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, the embassy said in a statement. Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, the Vatican’s envoy to Ukraine, told Vatican News he had witnessed drones circling the embassy grounds and heard several explosions.
Weapons
United States President Donald Trump, for the first time since returning to office, will send weapons to Kyiv under a presidential power frequently used by his predecessor, two sources familiar with the decision told Reuters. The package could include defensive Patriot missiles and offensive medium-range rockets, the sources said.
Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has signed a previously announced deal to supply Ukraine with more than 5,000 air defence missiles from Thales. The deal was first announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer on March 2.
Politics and diplomacy
Participants in a Rome conference on the economic recovery of Ukraine have pledged more than 10 billion euros ($11.7bn) to help the war-torn country, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced.
Meloni said Russia should face tougher sanctions to increase pressure on it to halt the war in Ukraine. She also said that firms that have helped Russia fund its war on Ukraine by doing business with the country should be excluded from profiting from Ukraine’s reconstruction.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had reinforced the message that Moscow should show more flexibility in dealing with Kyiv during his 50-minute talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN foreign ministers’ summit in Malaysia.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged President Trump to “stay with us” in backing Ukraine and Europe. Speaking in Rome, where a Ukraine summit was being held, Merz said Germany was prepared to buy Patriot air defence systems from the US and provide them to Kyiv.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has complained that the Trump administration’s contradictory actions and words made it difficult to work with, though Moscow was dedicated to working on improving ties with Washington. However, he denied that there was a slowdown in efforts to normalise US ties.
France and the United Kingdom agreed to reinforce cooperation over their respective nuclear arsenals, as the two European countries seek to respond to growing threats to the continent and uncertainty over their US ally. The deal was reached after French President Emmanuel Macron concluded a three-day visit to the UK.
The UK has announced that Paris would be the new headquarters for the so-called “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, with plans under way for a future coordination cell in Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said he would replace Ukraine’s ambassador to the US and was considering his defence minister, Rustem Umerov, for the post. He said the main task would be to strengthen Ukraine in its defence efforts in the war against Russia, and Umerov was a key figure in doing that.
Hungary has summoned the Ukrainian ambassador after a report that a Hungarian-Ukrainian dual citizen was beaten to death during forced mobilisation, an allegation Ukraine’s army rejected, saying he died of a pulmonary embolism.
Beijing said it was still “verifying” the case of a Chinese father and son detained by Ukraine for allegedly trying to smuggle navy missile technology out of the war-torn country. Relations between Kyiv and Beijing, a key Russian ally, are strained, with Ukraine accusing China of enabling Russia’s invasion through trade and of supplying technology, including for deadly drone attacks.
Crime
A senior Ukrainian spy officer has been shot in a residential car park in Kyiv before his assailant fled on foot in broad daylight, according to authorities and video footage verified by Reuters. Kyiv’s police force said it was working to identify the gunman and that “measures are being taken to detain him”.
Democrats in the United States Senate have released a string of text messages and email correspondences that they say raises questions about the executive branch’s commitment to complying with court orders.
On Thursday, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released what he described as “whistleblower” evidence about government lawyer Emil Bove.
In his role as acting deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove directed his colleagues to ignore or mislead courts about President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts, according to Durbin.
“Text messages, email exchanges, and documents show that the Department of Justice misled a federal court and disregarded a court order,” Durbin wrote on social media.
“Mr Bove spearheaded this effort, which demanded attorneys violate their ethical duty of candor to the court.”
Bove – formerly a personal lawyer to President Trump during his criminal trials – was recently nominated to serve in a lifetime position as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. But the Senate must first vote to confirm him to the role.
“Emil Bove belongs nowhere near the federal bench,” Durbin wrote. “This vote will be a litmus test for Senate Judiciary Republicans.”
Durbin indicated the emails and texts he released come from a Justice Department source: Most of the names in the correspondences have been redacted.
But they appear to corroborate allegations made in a complaint in June by Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department lawyer who worked under Bove until his dismissal in April.
In his complaint, Reuveni alleged that Bove told Justice Department lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*** you’” if they interfered with President Trump’s deportation plans.
The expletive came up in the context of Trump’s controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that, until recently, had only been used in the context of war.
Trump, however, has argued that undocumented immigration constituted an “invasion” and has attempted to deport people under the law’s authority, without allowing them to appeal their removal.
According to Reuveni, Bove explained to the Justice Department that Trump planned to start the deportation flights immediately after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. He “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.
Reuveni understood that interaction as an attempt to circumvent the power of the courts.
In another instance, Reuveni said he was discouraged from asking questions about the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite a court protection order.
When Reuveni admitted before a Maryland court that he did not have “satisfactory” answers about Abrego Garcia’s return, he said Trump officials pressured him to make assertions against Abrego Garcia that “were not supported by law or the record”. He was fired shortly afterwards.
The documents gathered by Senate Democrats appear to offer a look inside those incidents.
In one series of emails, dated March 15, Reuveni responded to a notification that planes bearing deportees under the Alien Enemies Act were still in the air.
“The judge specifically ordered us not to remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air,” he wrote back.
The emails reflected an injunction from District Judge James Boasberg barring deportations and ordering the planes to turn around.
Nevertheless, the planes landed in El Salvador and delivered their human cargo to a maximum security prison, where many remain to this day.
In another instance, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replied to an email thread by saying: “My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership and DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it.”
Text messages also show Reuveni and an unnamed colleague discussing Bove’s request to tell the courts “f*** you”.
“Guess we are going to say f*** you to the court,” one text message reads.
In another, the colleague appears to react to Trump officials lying before the court. “Oh sh**,” they write. “That was just not true.”
In an interview published with The New York Times on Thursday, Reuveni underscored the grave dangers posed by an executive branch that he sees as refusing to comply with judicial authority.
“The Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” he told the Times.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has responded with defiance, repeating its claim that Reuveni is simply a “disgruntled employee” lashing out at the employer who fired him.
“He’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
“No one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.”
Bove himself denied ever advising his colleagues to defy a court order. The Senate is set to decide on his confirmation to the circuit court in the coming weeks.
If he passes the Senate Judiciary Committee – in a vote scheduled for July 17 – he will face a full vote on the Senate floor.
Health Department says immigrants will lose access to 13 more federal programmes, including an educational project for low-income children.
United States officials are cutting down further on undocumented immigrants’ access to healthcare programmes and benefits as part of President Donald Trump’s widening immigration crackdown.
On Thursday, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was broadening its interpretation of a 1996 law that prohibits most immigrants from receiving federal public benefits.
The decision means that undocumented immigrants will no longer be eligible for an additional 13 programmes.
They include Head Start, a pre-school educational programme, and projects that address family planning, mental health, substance abuse and efforts to reduce homelessness.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivise illegal immigration,” HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said on Thursday.
“Today’s action changes that – it restores integrity to federal social programmes, enforces the rule of law and protects vital resources for the American people.”
Critics fear the added restrictions will further marginalise a vulnerable group of immigrants who often have scarce resources, exacerbating public health crises in the US.
The new restrictions relate to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996.
That law — passed under Democratic President Bill Clinton — barred those living in the country without valid immigration documents and those on temporary visas, like students or foreign workers, from receiving major benefits from the federal government.
However, the scope of the restrictions was not spelled out, as the law did not define what counted as “federal public benefits”.
To make things clearer, the HHS issued a legal interpretation in 1998, which prevented access to 31 programmes. Medicaid — an insurance programme for low-income households — and Social Security were among them, as was the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
In a statement released on Thursday, the HHS claimed “the 1998 policy improperly narrowed the scope of PRWORA”, allowing undocumented immigrants to access programmes which “Congress intended only for the American people”.
With Thursday’s additions, the total number of restricted programmes rises to 44.
The HHS’s new policy, which is subject to a 30-day public comment period, will take effect when it is published in the Federal Register.
Since starting his second presidential term in January, Donald Trump has made it a priority to tackle undocumented immigration.
Critics have accused his administration of violating human rights and the US Constitution, as well as exceeding his presidential authority.
As part of Trump’s campaign of mass deportation, for example, the president invoked a controversial wartime legislation to deport hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March. Opponents argue that Trump falsely declared undocumented immigration to be an “invasion” in order to justify denying the immigrants their right to due process.
Mahmoud Khalil, a former student activist imprisoned for more than three months, has filed a wrongful detention claim against the administration of President Donald Trump, seeking $20m in damages.
Thursday’s court filings allege that the Trump administration smeared his reputation, maliciously prosecuted Khalil and unlawfully imprisoned him.
The claim names the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of State as defendants.
In an interview with The Associated Press (AP), Khalil said he hopes his claim will show that the Trump administration cannot bully activists into silence.
“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”
Thursday’s claim is likely to be the precursor to a full-fledged lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Khalil, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, said he plans to use any money he receives from his claim to help other activists whose speech Trump has attempted to suppress.
He also told the AP he would accept an apology and a revision of the Trump administration’s deportation policies. Khalil himself continues to face deportation proceedings as a result of his activism.
What happened?
Born to Palestinian parents in Damascus, Syria, Khalil was a face for the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
United Nations experts and human rights groups have warned that Israel’s tactics in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”, and Columbia University became the epicentre for global, student-led protests.
“I’m one of the lucky ones who are able to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, the folks who are getting killed back in Palestine,” Khalil told Al Jazeera in May 2024.
But Trump campaigned for a second term on pledges to crack down on immigration to the US and stamp out the antiwar protests, which he described as anti-Semitic.
Upon taking office in January, Trump issued executiveorders setting the stage for the removal of foreign nationals deemed to have “hostile attitudes” towards the US or who were accused of supporting “threats to our national security”.
One of the orders instructed federal authorities to take “actions to remove such aliens” from the US.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump wrote at the time. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Khalil was the first major arrest in Trump’s crackdown on the student protesters. Video shot by his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, on March 8 shows plain-clothed immigration officers handcuffing Khalil and leading him out of his university apartment complex in New York City.
He was swiftly moved from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where he was held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena ahead of his planned deportation.
Inside the legal proceedings
Lawyers for Khalil, however, swiftly filed two challenges: one against his deportation and one against his detention, in what is called a habeas corpus petition.
Because of the swift and clandestine nature of his departure to Louisiana, Khalil’s lawyers have said they did not know where their client was in the initial days after his arrest. Khalil is a permanent US resident, and his wife a citizen.
To justify his deportation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That provision allows the secretary of state to remove any foreign nationals he believes to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
Khalil has not been charged with any crime. The US, however, is a close ally of Israel and has provided military support to its campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 57,762 people.
On March 9, shortly after Khalil’s arrest, the Department of Homeland Security also issued a statement accusing Khalil of anti-Semitism, citing Trump’s executive orders.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” the statement said. “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security.”
Trump himself called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and a “terrorist sympathizer”.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” the president wrote on social media. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
But Khalil and his legal team have accused the Trump administration of violating his constitutional rights to free speech.
Since Khalil’s arrest, other foreign students have been arrested too, including Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk, who was reportedly imprisoned for writing an opinion article in her student newspaper against Israel’s war.
On June 20, a judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil’s release. He missed the birth of his first child while incarcerated.
One of India’s greatest adversaries has shown up at Lord’s and given England the edge on the first day of the third Test.
As England’s best batter, Joe Root has had a middling impact on the tied Test series so far. But grafting for more than five hours on a roasting pitch on Thursday earned him an unbeaten 99 that was easily beaconed in a total of 251-4 at stumps.
Root fought for almost the entire first day to vindicate captain Ben Stokes’s decision to bat first. Stokes was with him at stumps, on 39, but struggling with a groin or adductor issue that may affect whether he bowls. He had a chance in the last over to run a second single to give Root his century but declined.
Root’s grit typified an approach by England that was more caution than aggression, unconventional in the team’s three years under coach Brendon McCullum and Stokes, the “Bazball” era.
“Slightly different to the way we usually put together an innings but we’ll take it,” batter Ollie Pope told the BBC radio broadcast. “We want to be a team that is positive and entertaining, but we want to play to the situation. Our order is pretty fast scoring on our good days. We all know we can score hundreds off 120 balls, but we need to dig in off this sort of surface.”
Joe Root of England, far left and Mohammed Siraj of India, centre, exchange words during day one of the third Test [Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Bazball takes a break at Lord’s
Despite hardly a cloud in the sky over Lord’s, usually a template for a great batting day, England displayed its slowest scoring in the first session of a Test and reached 100 at its second slowest pace under Bazball. The run rate dropped to 2.75 in the afternoon.
India’s fearsome pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj squeezed the scoring. India’s fielding was tight, and the green-tinged pitch became sluggish enough for spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar to bowl 20 of the day’s 83 overs and take one wicket.
Root was slow but steadfast without offering India a single chance.
In the process, he became the first batter to hit 3,000 Test runs against India. He reached his 23rd half-century in 33 Tests against India – he’s averaging 58 – and was one run away from his 11th Test hundred against India, which would tie Steve Smith’s record.
His only previous half-century in the series held together the successful last day run chase in the Leeds opener when England was four down and still 118 runs behind.
This time, he fought for almost the entire day to glue England’s first innings in two big partnerships of 109 with Pope and an unbeaten 79 with Stokes. Root has set the platform for England to rack a big total on Friday while India will be pleased it has not been “Bazballed”.
“Joe Root has inspired everyone in the changing room and in this country,” Pope said. “Fingers crossed he can make it a massive one tomorrow.”
England was more “Bazbore” for a long time in the afternoon as Root and Pope grinded out a sleepy wicketless session, including 28 straight dot balls.
There also was a lengthy delay to treat India wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant’s index finger, which was damaged while half-stopping leg byes. He didn’t return for the last half of the day.
After Root and Pope scored only 70 runs in 24 overs in the middle session, the tea interval broke Pope’s focus. In the first ball after tea, Pope went after Jadeja, and Jurel produced a brilliant reflex catch at the stumps. Pope left for 44 off 104 balls.
Harry Brook was then castled on 11 by Bumrah, who grabbed his first wicket in 35 overs stretching back to the Leeds Test. He was rested at Edgbaston.
Ben Stokes of England receives treatment for an injury as Joe Root of England takes a drink [Clive Mason/Getty Images]
England captain hit by leg injury
Stokes joined Root and was playing fluidly until he called for the England medic. He has 39 off 102 balls. Root has 99 off 191, including nine boundaries.
Root came into the game just after the first drinks break in the morning.
Opening batters Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley wobbled during the first hour when the pitch was at its most wicked. But they survived even Bumrah, who found more movement off the pitch than anyone else in the series so far and got a breather at the drinks break. And then they were gone.
The unassuming Nitish Kumar Reddy came into the series only in the second Test for his batting and bowled six expensive overs at Edgbaston. On Thursday, he changed in for Bumrah, and his medium pace lulled Duckett, Crawley and Pope into errors in the same over.
Duckett pulled, Crawley drove and both edged behind. Pope edged to gully, but India captain Shubman Gill couldn’t pull off a stunning one-handed catch.
England were 44-2, but Pope and Root came together and led England safely to lunch and tea.
The US has closed its ports of entry to Mexican cattle for fear of the parasitic, flesh-eating worm spreading north.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denounced a decision by the United States to once again suspend imports of her country’s cattle over a flesh-eating parasite called the screwworm.
On Thursday, Sheinbaum used her morning news conference to call fears of the worm overblown. She pointed out that a single case in the eastern state of Veracruz had prompted the import pause.
“From our point of view, it is a totally exaggerated decision to close the border again,” Sheinbaum said.
At the centre of the cross-border debate is the New World screwworm, a species endemic to the Caribbean and parts of South America. It had previously been eradicated from the northernmost part of its range, in Central and North America.
The US, for instance, declared it eliminated from the country in 1966.
But the parasite may be making a comeback, leaving the US government alarmed about its potential impact on its cattle and beef sector, a $515bn industry.
The New World screwworms appear when a variety of parasitic flies, Cochliomyia hominivorax, lay their eggs near wounds or sores on warm-blooded animals. Most commonly, its hosts are livestock like horses or cattle, but even household pets or humans can be infested.
Each female fly is capable of laying hundreds of eggs. When the eggs hatch, they release larvae that tunnel into the flesh of their hosts, often causing incredible pain.
Unlike maggots from other species, they do not feed on dead flesh, only living tissue. If left untreated, infestations can sometimes be deadly.
Animal health worker Eduardo Lugo treats the wounds of a cow in Nuevo Palomas, Mexico, on May 16 [Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters]
The fear of New World screwworms expanding northwards has caused the US to halt shipments of Mexican cattle several times over the past year.
In late November, it put in place a ban that lasted until February. Then, on May 11, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the US would once again bar entry to Mexican cattle after the “unacceptable northward advancement” of the bug.
A port of entry in Arizona was slated to reopen to Mexican cattle starting on Monday. But that plan was suspended under a new announcement on Wednesday, which implemented the cattle ban once more, effective immediately.
“The United States has promised to be vigilant — and after detecting this new NWS [New World screwworm] case, we are pausing the planned port reopening’s to further quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico,” Rollins said in a statement.
The statement explained that the US hopes to eradicate the parasite, pushing its encroachment no further than the Darien Gap, the land bridge in Panama that connects South and Central America.
It also asserted that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was “holding Mexico accountable by ensuring proactive measures are being taken”.
A worker drops New World screwworm fly larvae into a tray at a facility that breeds sterile flies in Pacora, Panama [Handout/COPEG via AP Photo]
Part of its strategy will be to release male flies — lab-raised and sterilised through radiation — from airplanes in Mexico and the southern US. Female flies can mate only once, so if they pair with a sterile fly, they will be unable to reproduce.
The same strategy has been deployed in the past to control the New World screwworm, as an alternative to more hazardous methods like pesticides that could affect other animals.
In a social media post on June 30, Rollins touted gains in recent weeks, including “over 100 million sterile flies dispersed weekly” and “no notable increase” in screwworm cases in eight weeks.
She thanked her Mexican counterpart, Julio Berdegue, for his help.
“He and his team have worked hand in hand with our @USDA team since May 11 to get these ports reopened. We are grateful,” she wrote.
United Nations 2025 Global AIDS Update says if funding not replaced, Trump’s cuts may reverse ‘decades’ of progress on HIV/AIDS.
Unless funding is replaced, the halt to foreign aid by the administration of US President Donald Trump could reverse “decades of progress” on HIV, the United Nations warns in its annual report on HIV/AIDS.
The United States’ decision to make cuts to the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) could result in six million extra HIV infections and four million more AIDS-related deaths by 2029, according to the 2025 Global AIDS Update released on Thursday.
“HIV programmes in low- and middle-income countries have been rocked by sudden, major financial disruptions that threaten to reverse years of progress in the response to HIV,” the UNAIDS report said.
“Wars and conflict, widening economic inequalities, geopolitical shifts and climate change shocks – the likes of which are unprecedented in the global HIV response – are stoking instability and straining multilateral cooperation,” it added.
According to the report, people acquiring HIV and those dying from AIDS-related causes were at their lowest levels in “more than 30 years”.
However, by the end of 2024, the decline in numbers was “not sufficient” to end AIDS as a public threat by 2030.
Still, the report found that an estimated 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2024, 40 percent less than in 2024.
In new infections, there was a 56 percent decline in sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to half of all people who “acquired HIV globally in 2024”.
“Five countries, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, were on track to achieve a 90 percent decline in new infections by 2030 compared with 2010,” the UN added.
However, the significance of Trump’s cut to the programme is immense, as the US was the largest donor of humanitarian assistance worldwide.
“The sudden withdrawal of the single biggest contributor to the global HIV response disrupted treatment and prevention programmes around the world,” the report said.
While many countries still have enough life-saving antiretroviral drugs and clinics that support those most vulnerable to the infection – including gay men, sex workers and teenage girls – the cut in funding has forced the facilities to close down and prevention programmes to peter out.
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima told the Reuters news agency that “prevention was hit harder than treatment” by the cuts.
“Key populations were the worst affected … they depended on tailored services by community leaders, and those were the first to go,” Byanyima said.
However, even before Trump made the decision to scale back the support shortly after coming into office in January, donors, mainly European countries, were scaling back development assistance.
“They’ve told us that it has to do with defence spending,” she said, adding that figures showed “global health [spending] peaked and then it also started declining with the Ukraine war”.
PEPFAR was launched in 2003 by US President George W Bush, and is the biggest-ever commitment by any country focused on a single disease. UNAIDS called the programme a “lifeline” for countries with high HIV rates.
The EU expects trade relations with the US to remain difficult, even once a principle agreement is reached to resolve the tariff dispute between the two transatlantic partners, according to EU diplomats.
“We are working non-stop to find an initial agreement with the US – to keep tariffs as low as possible, and to provide the stability that businesses need,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday, adding: “But we are also not naïve. We know the relationship with the US may not return to what it once was.”
The EU is awaiting a decision from US President Donald Trump, who has an EU-US trade agreement on his desk with a view to resolve the tariff dispute that has been ongoing since mid-March, according to remarks by his trade secretary Howard Lutnick in the US media.
The US currently imposes 50% tariffs on EU steel and aluminium, 25% on cars and 10% on all EU imports.
But though a framework agreementnow appears within reach, that will only constitute a first step toward a more comprehensive trade deal, and what comes next is causing concern among Europeans.
On 14 July, EU trade ministers will meet to discuss the future of their relation with the US.
EU Member states will not be satisfied by the agreement
“Even if there’s a trade agreement, that would probably not be the end of it,” one EU diplomat said, “trade relations with the US have become fragile, unpredictable.”
Having long advocated a zero-rated tariff offer on all industrial goods from both sides of the Atlantic, the Commission has now settled on a baseline tariff rate of 10% on EU goods arriving in the US. Exemptions may apply to aircraft and spirits, but progress on negotiations on other strategic sectors—such as cars, aluminium, steel, and pharmaceuticals—remains faltering.
The EU diplomat said that member states will not be satisfied with the agreement in principle said now to be in reach.
“Most people expect a deal, but if there’s a deal that doesn’t bring us to a better place from a European perspective than where we were before, we’ll have increased tariffs, it will affect negatively trade between the EU and the US,” he said.
Another EU diplomat predicted difficult negotiations among the 27 EU countries. Once the agreement in principle is approved, each country will take out its calculator to assess how its economy is affected, and what will need to be negotiated in a more comprehensive agreement to limit the negative impact on its trade.
In the short term, tensions could be high over whether the EU should implement the €21 billion retaliation list targeting US products, which has been suspended until July 14. Some countries, like Germany and Italy—highly exposed to trade with the US—favour a flexible, non-escalatory approach. Others, like France, want to show strength.
A second retaliation list is also reportedly ready. According to diplomats, the amount proposed by the Commission—€95 billion worth of US products—has been reduced. However, the Commission said that its implementation has not yet been determined.
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