progress

Queensberry promoter Frank Warren has said that Irish boxer Lee Reeves is “making progress” after being hospitalised following his fight in Dublin on Saturday night.

The 31-year-old’s condition was described as “critical but stable” after he was admitted for treatment following his defeat to Gary Cully.

Reeves was fighting for the vacant BUI Celtic super-lightweight title but was knocked out in the 10th round at the 3Arena.

The Limerick southpaw was stretchered out of the ring after the fight.

An update provided by Warren on Thursday struck a positive note.

“My team have been in touch with Lee Reeves’ team and he is making progress. That is what we’re hearing and thank the Lord for that,” Warren said.

“With Lee and it’s all about time. Time hopefully can be a healer.”

Warren added that his hope was that Reeves would be able to “get back to his family as soon as possible”.

Global hunger declined for the third consecutive year in 2025, offering a rare piece of positive news for food security after years of setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict and economic instability. Yet the United Nations warns that the gains remain fragile, with climate change, geopolitical tensions and disruptions to global trade threatening to reverse recent progress.

According to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, jointly produced by five U.N. agencies, approximately 645 million people or 7.8% of the global population experienced hunger last year. That marks an improvement from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022, continuing a gradual downward trend.

While the figures suggest the world is moving in the right direction, U.N. experts caution that achieving the goal of ending hunger by 2030 remains far from guaranteed.

Hunger Declines Across Every Continent

For the first time in several years, every continent recorded improvements in hunger levels, including Africa, where progress has historically been the slowest.

Asia accounted for much of the global improvement, led by significant gains in India, while Latin America and the Caribbean continued building on earlier successes. Several African nations—including Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Senegal—also reported improvements after years of deteriorating food security.

Despite these advances, Africa remains the world’s most food-insecure region. Around 309 million people, or roughly one in every five Africans, continue to suffer from chronic undernourishment.

U.N. officials described the continent’s improvement as encouraging but modest, emphasizing that much more investment will be needed to sustain progress.

India Emerges as a Key Driver

India played a central role in reducing global hunger statistics.

Home to nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, the country has lowered hunger levels to below 10%, driven by expanded welfare programs, increased agricultural productivity and improvements in food distribution.

The country’s progress demonstrates how targeted government policies combined with economic growth can substantially improve food security even in densely populated developing economies.

Elsewhere, the Dominican Republic also achieved sufficient progress to be removed from the global hunger map.

Climate and Geopolitical Risks Persist

Despite encouraging trends, the U.N. warns that several emerging risks could quickly undermine global food security.

One of the most immediate concerns is the disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where escalating tensions in the Middle East have increased transportation costs and driven up prices for fuel and fertilizers—critical inputs for agricultural production worldwide.

Higher energy costs inevitably translate into more expensive food production and distribution, placing additional pressure on consumers already facing elevated food prices.

Meanwhile, forecasters are monitoring the possible emergence of a strong El Niño weather pattern, which could reduce crop yields across many vulnerable regions through droughts, floods and extreme temperatures.

Together, geopolitical instability and climate shocks threaten both food availability and affordability.

Hunger Is Falling, But Healthy Diets Remain Unaffordable

The report also highlights an important distinction between reducing hunger and improving nutrition.

Although fewer people are experiencing chronic hunger, 2.69 billion people still cannot afford a healthy diet.

The U.N. estimates that a nutritious daily diet costs an average of $4.28 per person when adjusted for purchasing power—well beyond the reach of many households in low-income countries.

The affordability gap is especially severe in Africa, where 66.1% of the population cannot afford healthy food, more than double the levels recorded across much of Asia and Latin America.

Poor transport infrastructure, inadequate cold-storage facilities and fragmented regional trade continue to make nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, dairy and meat significantly more expensive across the continent.

Nutrition Challenges Extend Beyond Hunger

The report also warns that improving calorie intake alone is not enough.

Child malnutrition remains widespread in many developing countries, while anemia among women continues to worsen. At the same time, adult obesity is increasing globally, illustrating the growing “double burden” of malnutrition in which undernutrition and unhealthy diets coexist.

This reflects broader structural problems within global food systems, where inexpensive calories are often more accessible than balanced nutrition.

What’s Next?

U.N. experts remain cautiously optimistic that global hunger can continue declining through 2030, provided governments maintain investments in agriculture, strengthen international trade and improve resilience against climate shocks.

However, the outlook depends heavily on geopolitical stability. Continued conflict in the Middle East, disruptions to major shipping routes, worsening climate events or prolonged trade barriers could rapidly increase food prices and slow or reverse recent gains.

Analysis: Progress Is Real, But Food Security Remains Fragile

The latest U.N. report demonstrates that coordinated public policies, agricultural investment and social protection programs can reduce hunger on a global scale. India’s progress, alongside improvements across Latin America and parts of Africa, shows that meaningful change is possible even amid economic uncertainty.

Yet the report also highlights a growing challenge: food security is increasingly shaped by forces beyond agriculture itself. Climate change, global shipping disruptions, energy prices and geopolitical conflicts now influence what people eat as much as farming does. While hunger is declining, access to affordable, nutritious food remains out of reach for billions. Sustaining progress will therefore require not only producing more food, but building more resilient supply chains, improving regional trade and adapting agricultural systems to an increasingly volatile global environment.

With information from Reuters.

Hardly anyone walking up Peppertree Lane notices the Hollywood Bowl Museum on the way to the amphitheater entrance. The overlooked museum, however, has been refreshed with an enchanting new exhibition. Well-timed, it provides an excellent primer on changing L.A. mores seen through the history of the Bowl over the past century.

Change is again upon us. As Angelenos have evolved, so have our ideas about the Bowl. A concert was a concert and audiences of yore dressed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, indoors or out. Men wore coats, ties and fedoras. I have a photo of my mother at the Bowl on a chilly 1940s evening sporting, like other ladies around her in the inexpensive bleachers, her mink stole.

The Bowl was said to boast, before the construction of the Hollywood Freeway, a natural acoustical, well, bowl. Even so, sonic adventurers, beginning with Leopold Stokowski in the 1930s, experimented with amplification in an obsessive, seemingly quixotic effort to locate a mythical sonic grail on the Cahuenga Pass. Boys with their toys, thought The Times’ feisty critic Isabelle Morse Jones.

We now have it with a spectacular new sound system along with the old caveat: Beware of what you wish for.

The Bowl, of course, remains the Bowl. Last week when the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its summer season in the venue it built and has managed for over a century, there were all the familiar alfresco and musical pleasures: convivial picnicking, fine weather, inimitable atmosphere, a white-jacketed orchestra on an iconic stage. The museum’s panorama of ageless ambience is this summer enhanced by increased yet snappy security and a handsome “John Williams Stage” plaque honoring L.A.’s beloved composer.

The newly designed white French loudspeakers suspended over the Bowl stage along with ground-level white cubes of super-effective subwoofers have clean, unobtrusive lines that well fit the shell. Their unobtrusive placement complements their immersive musicality, hitherto only possible outdoors with high-end earphones or headphones connected to sophisticated digital acoustic conversion equipment costing a bundle. For the first time, a dollar seat (there are still a few for the L.A. Phil) strives for such sonic bliss.

It feels miraculous. You are in an excellent concert hall-like acoustical environment while in the great outdoors. Our earbuds have already trained us to think of music as a private escape from reality. Even so, to be in that environmentally exclusive sonic world while sharing music with thousands of others in a special setting, ironically begins to feel more artificially escapist than a crummy sound system that reminds you of where you are.

Will we — should we — learn to love it and find anything less artificial? Car audio systems creating concert hall conditions suggest we will. Audiophiles well know that you get used to new equipment, no matter how revelatory it first sounds, very quickly.

A few years ago, when I heard a demonstration of a souped-up, hi-res recording in surround Dolby Atmos of excerpts from Wagner’s “Die Walküre” on a 32-speaker Burmester audio system crammed into a fancy Mercedes SUV, I was scared out of my wits. “Apocalypse Now” on the 405 is not for the faint of heart.

Yet I’ve spared no expense on what I find a more refined sound system in my Volvo, which I now use more and more for audio books than music. The richer, more human quality of a recorded voice is like having a virtual companion reading to you. I’m less in a hurry. It’s nice to have a pal at rush hour.

It is far too soon to say what ways the fabulous new Bowl sound system, which happens to be AI-endowed, might become friend and/or foe. In the first two L.A. Phil classical concerts, the white speakers brought out wonders and caused problems. But the minimal Bowl rehearsal time allows little opportunity to fine-tune.

One big change in Bowl priorities has been the rise of pop as king. Not that long ago, the L.A. Phil’s opening night was the Bowl opening night, suitable for conspicuous socialite picnicking. Not only has the Bowl opener been turned over to star pop performers (who bring in bigger bucks), this year there wasn’t even a first L.A. Phil Tuesday. That date became yet another money-maker with private event — a screening of “Moana” with live orchestra, luckily before the disappointing reviews and box office performance. The first L.A. Phil concert of the season was moved to Wednesday and poorly attended.

The back-to-back Wednesday and Thursday night programs featured music composed and performed by Americans. Each included a short new work commissioned by the L.A. Phil. On Wednesday, moonlighting Hollywood Bowl Orchestra music director Thomas Wilkins led the premiere of Shaina Taub’s “Suffs” Song Cycle — orchestrations of four songs from her recent musical about women’s suffrage that played just down the road at the Pantages last year. The next evening, Tito Muñoz made a strong L.A. Phil debut in a program that included the premiere of “The Art of the Goal,” celebrating Los Angeles Football Club, and that was credited jointly to filmmaker Josh Kahn and composer Adam Schoenberg.

Both premieres were reminders that the sound system will have many purposes. In “Suffs,” stalwart amplification emphasized the predictability of forthright lyrics and score. AI is supposed to make voices stand out, but it is not helpful to singers’ limitations. On the other hand, is brought out the sumptuous quality Alex Newell’s voice potently making the adamant “Keep Marching” keep marching.

Muñoz’s program was titled “The Classical World Cup,” with music by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and U.S. composers Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland along with Schoenberg. As it turned out, Mexico and the U.S. were already out of World Cup competition, and “Art of the Goal” came across as an eight-minute advertisement for the L.A. footballers. They’re in the dressing room revving up and, on the field, revved up, sped up, cut up with music that excites and far too many shots of a soccer field lined with advertisements, just the kind of branding we hope to escape at the Bowl.

Then again, even though “Goal” was shown only on video monitors, the Bowl with its new sound system worked brilliantly as the grandest cinema on the planet. Hollywood may be hurting, but let the Bowl now save the day by inspiring Hollywood to reinvent, in its backyard, film with live music.

As for regular orchestral music, the sound system was hit and miss. On Wilkins’ program, Valerie Coleman’s dark “Fanfare for Uncommon Times” brought a listener inside brass and percussion. Leonard Bernstein’s lavish orchestrations of his “Three Dances from ‘On the Town’” and Ellington’s “Harlem” benefited from Wilkins’ low-key conducting, offering ease and freedom to the players.

Muñoz’s program was bookended by dance scores — Ginastera’s “Four Dances from ‘Estancia’” and Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid” — that evoke the prairie and the people in it in both viscerally and spiritually. The new sound system and eager performances made the prairie feel close. In between, violinist Randall Goosby brought richness to Barber’s Violin Concerto and the L.A. went in for gripping weirdness in “Sensemayá.”

But who did what? Were balances the conductors’, the sound engineers’, AI’s? While the amplified soundstage is now as huge as the Bowl, attention was increasingly drawn to individuals, heightened by video closeups. A horn flub (and horns flub) stands out. The sound is not just big and bold, but scrubbed clean by AI with the goal of maddening perfection. Will such scrutiny, in the end, make players uptight or liberate them? It’s well to remember that in the early days of synthesizing instruments, violins with perfect vibrato sounded especially fake, until tiny errors generated by chance were added to the sine waves.

The Hollywood Bowl has created a beast. If humanized, the Bowl could serve as antidote to a worrisome AI future. But the question remains whether we can change AI or the newly potent sound waves only make matters worse.

A thick early morning marine layer on Saturday in Huntington Beach left players, coaches and fans arriving for the Battle at the Beach seven-on-seven passing tournament feeling cool and energized. New Servite coach Rick Garretson later joked that back at his former home in Arizona, the temperature was over 100 degrees.

Ray Fenton, the new head coach at Orange Lutheran after earning coach of the year honors at Los Alamitos, didn’t have to wear a hat to cover his shaved head. Neither sun nor one of the most talent-laden group of teams in the tournament history could disrupt where Fenton appears to be taking the Lancers.

“Are we playing selflessly or selfishly? Are we good teammates or not?” Fenton said about what he wanted to learn in the Lancers’ only appearance this summer in a passing competition.

Let’s just say the progress is impressive. Fenton brought along his up-tempo, no-huddle offense from Los Alamitos, and quarterbacks Ezrah Brown and Reagan Toki were executing it in midseason form. Looking on in street clothes was 6-foot-5, 305-pound offensive tackle Lucas Rhoa, a Texas commit who can’t wait to throw his weight around when the pads come on. The Lancers won their first four matches, including an opening win over two-time defending champion Mission Viejo.

They made it to the semifinals until a roadblock sent the Lancers home. St. John Bosco came in as the tournament favorite, and from start to finish, the Braves looked better than each opponent. It was only a matter whether coach Jason Negro was going to use his backups to spread playing time.

The Braves knocked off Corona Centennial in the championship game. Tustin won the other division title.

Junior quarterback Koa Malau’ulu, in his third year as a St. John Bosco starter, has new bulging biceps from his many hours in the weight room. The hard work shows. The ball is coming out quicker from his hand. His priority this summer has been trying to build chemistry with a new group of receivers.

“They’re all coachable,” Malau’ulu said.

Junior DJ Tubbs, one of the few returnees, remains a go-to target. “He may not be big but plays big,” Malau’ulu said.

St. John Bosco has six top defensive backs, giving the Braves options for the coming season.

One of the best players in California and the nation, Cathedral Catholic’s Honor Fa’alave-Johnson, a USC commit, got to show off his speed.

Corona Centennial, which doesn’t usually perform well in passing competitions (the Huskies like to let their running game set up the pass), started the morning 4-0 and didn’t lose until its final game. Making the final means the Huskies could be very good this fall. The only other times they reached the Edison final was in 2015 when they won the Division 1 title and 2008 when they were undefeated state champs.

New quarterback Jaden Jefferson has lots of weapons at the receiver position, including his former Cathedral teammate Quentin Hale. Sophomore defensive back Koti Fultz had a big day on defense.

Hayden Koo of Tustin makes catch between two St. John Bosco defenders.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

Palos Verdes has a four-year starter at quarterback, Ryan Rakowski, and he’s going to cause many problems for defenses this fall with his knowledge and accuracy.

Long Beach Poly, making its debut under first-year coach Travon Patterson, will have lots of options on defense because of its standout cornerbacks in Donte Wright and JuJu Johnson.

Tustin is loaded with skill-position players.

San Clemente won the Ocean View tournament. Culver City took its own tournament championship.

Syria regains voting rights in the OPCW as new leadership makes progress in addressing chemical weapons issues.

The global chemical weapons’ watchdog has announced it has handed voting rights back to Syria because “concrete steps” have been taken to address outstanding issues since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

In a statement published on Thursday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the decision follows a “significant change” in circumstances since Syria was suspended in 2021. That was due to the former government’s failure to declare the full scope of its chemical weapons programme and the repeated use of poison gas during the civil war.

Since a lightning offensive ousted long-time ruler al-Assad in 2024, “the new Syrian authorities committed to fulfilling Syria’s obligations under the Convention and have since taken concrete steps to cooperate with the Technical Secretariat to achieve this goal”, read the statement.

Actions taken by the new government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa include facilitating verification activities and taking initial steps in destroying identified remnants.

“These decisions reflect the tangible progress achieved through continued cooperation and constructive engagement between the Technical Secretariat and the Syrian Arab Republic, with the support of the wider community of States Parties,” said OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias.

In 2013, Syria joined the OPCW and agreed to the destruction of its weapons to be supervised by the watchdog. Back then, Syria was believed to possess about 1,000 tonnes of toxins and had agreed to destroy them under a joint Russian-US proposal designed to avert a US military strike on its territory.

Syria’s decision followed a global outcry over a suspected chemical attack that same year in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the capital Damascus.

US intelligence estimated that at least 1,400 people, including 426 children, were killed in that attack which it attributed with “high confidence” to the Syrian government. Al-Assad denied involvement and blamed rebels.

According to OPCW, while Syria submitted an initial declaration of its chemical weapons programme, the former government did not declare all its chemical weapons programme and attempted to mislead inspectors about its overall scope and scale.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reports three people have been killed in an Israeli attack on a car in Nabatieh.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued despite a ceasefire, with three people killed during a strike on a car in the south of the country, as senior Israeli and Lebanese officials meet for a final day of talks in Washington.

According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA), three people were killed on Thursday, and one was wounded after the Israeli attack hit a car on the road between Zawtar and Mayfadoun in Nabatieh Governorate.

NNA also reported that Israeli forces burned a number of houses in the town of Ain Arab, after issuing warnings forcing residents to evacuate the town before 5pm on Wednesday.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, since the conflict began on March 2, 4,230 people have been killed and 12,179 others have been wounded.

Reporting from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remains “fragile” as the Israeli army continues to target “anyone or anything in front-line villages”.

“[These are ] villages on the outskirts [of the] city of Nabatieh, which lie along the area which is under Israel’s occupation,” Khodr explained. “So the message is they don’t want people to approach that area, there’ve been drone strikes, they’ve dropped stun grenades … people killed.

“Those villages, the Israeli army was not able to occupy them during weeks of fighting and it wants to still be able to control them by fire because the more territory you control, the more leverage you have in negotiations,” she said, adding that officials from Lebanon and Israel are discussing the possible and gradual handover of territory.

Ceasefire talks

Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a United States-backed proposal for the past three days, with the talks wrapping up in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The negotiations have been focused on Israeli forces handing over some of the territory they occupied during the fighting with Hezbollah to Lebanon’s military.

A US State Department official told the Reuters news agency that Israel had taken a “concrete step” towards the proposal, which had been part of the latest round of talks, by pulling back from a part of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

However, a senior Israeli defence official denied that there had been any pullback, adding that Israel would not be withdrawing from its buffer zone.

Moreover, a senior Lebanese military official also told Reuters that developments on the ground in recent days had shown the “opposite of a pullback”.

Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon were making good progress towards a “commitment of intent”.

“I think we are very close in our hopes of getting a commitment of intent between the two countries,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Bahrain.

“It’ll be a process, it’ll take some time, it’ll take a lot of work, but I can tell you that for the first time in 30 years, the sovereign government of Lebanon is speaking to the government of Israel directly.”

Under US pressure, Lebanese officials began direct talks in April with Israel in Washington.

Hezbollah, however, has condemned the Lebanon-Israel talks, demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon first.

US Vice President JD Vance has touted significant progress in talks with Iran over its nuclear programme and Israel’s war on Lebanon, while refusing to commit to an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. He said Trump is trying to bring ‘permanent peace’ to a region that’s been ‘a basket case for a long time’.

Published on
22/06/2026 – 8:15 GMT+2

At the time of writing, Brent crude was down 0.91% at $79.12 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude had fallen 0.70% to $75.32 a barrel.

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Lower crude prices reflected broader investor sentiment in early trading after Qatari and Pakistani mediators said the first round of negotiations between the US and Iran aimed at securing a final agreement to end the conflict had concluded with “encouraging progress”.

A memorandum of understanding signed last week includes a commitment to reach a final agreement within 60 days, an end to fighting on “all fronts” – including in Lebanon – and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Markets mixed as analysts monitor US-Iran negotiations

Meanwhile, Asian stocks were mixed on Monday, with markets in Japan and South Korea trading higher, while US futures traded lower.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.6% to 72,364.82 after reaching a new all-time high of 72,831.73 during intraday trading, helped by technology stocks fuelled by enthusiasm over the global artificial intelligence boom.

Japan’s SoftBank Group, the multinational investment holding company with a strong AI focus, rose 2.4%, while chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron gained 2.3%.

South Korea’s Kospi added 0.4% to 9,084.37 and was trading near record highs, led by AI-related shares. Memory chip maker SK Hynix surged 4.7%.

“We’re seeing another strong market today,” Neil Newman, managing director and head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan, said. He cautioned that the Japanese market was “probably getting a little stretched” from an investor’s point of view, “especially with what’s going on in the Middle East”.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1% to 23,690.86, while the Shanghai Composite Index edged 0.2% higher to 4,098.01.

Additional sources • AP

The first round of US-Iran talks has ended with both sides agreeing on a roadmap towards a final deal to be reached ‘within 60 days’. Iran said the negotiations resulted in waivers for oil exports and the release of some frozen assets. The parties have also agreed to a ‘de-confliction cell’ to monitor the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Britain’s Emma Raducanu overcomes an injury scare to beat Uzbekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova 6-3, 7-5 and advance to the semi-finals of the Queen’s Club Championship.

READ MORE: Raducanu battles into Queen’s semis but Boulter goes out

Available to UK users only.

US Vice President JD Vance says Washington and Tehran have made “a lot of progress” towards a ceasefire extension agreement, including talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. However, he says disagreements remain over Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

A new opinion poll in the US suggests that 60 percent of Americans now oppose President Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans appeared increasingly unlikely to meet their self-imposed deadline for passing a roughly $70-billion immigration enforcement bill this week as disputes over security funding for the White House and the Trump administration’s $1.8-trillion settlement fund effectively derailed progress.

Republicans were already expected to abandon $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party. But then questions about the settlement fund added to some of the senator’s concerns. They are questioning who would get the money.

Republican senators met with acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Thursday as they worked to finalize the bill’s text and whether to put parameters on the settlement, which was designed to compensate Trump’s allies who believe they have been politically persecuted. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that senators had questions and wanted to know “how we might make sure that it’s fenced in appropriately.”

But senators who emerged from the meeting were tight-lipped and indicated that lawmakers would not hold a vote on the package before leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break, risking failure to meet Trump’s June 1 deadline.

Asked about a vote this week, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) responded, “I don’t even know.” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was more blunt: “We’re going home,” he said.

The last-minute scramble comes as Democrats have criticized Republicans for trying to fund Trump’s ballroom when voters are concerned about basic affordability issues — and as some GOP lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump. Several GOP senators have spoken out against the settlement, which was announced this week, and many were upset by the president’s endorsement Tuesday of Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton in the party primary runoff next week against Sen. John Cornyn.

Asked Thursday at the White House if he was losing control of the Senate, Trump replied: “I don’t know, I really don’t know. I can tell you — I only do what’s right.”

Possible parameters on Trump’s settlement fund

The “anti-weaponization” fund, part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, unexpectedly became one of the main complications in the bill. Democrats said they would force votes to block it or place restrictions on it.

Democrats have an opening because Republicans are trying to pass the immigration enforcement bill through a complicated budget process that requires a long series of amendment votes. Democrats are considering multiple amendments, potentially to block that new fund outright or to ban any payments to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Presenting a united front, Democrats from both the House and Senate rallied on the Capitol steps Thursday to show their opposition. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the amendment process “will give Republicans countless chances to do the right thing.”

He added that if they declined to make changes, it would show voters that “Ballroom Republicans are not working for you, they are busy fighting for Trump.”

Those amendments, along with others, could pass as a growing number of Republicans have voiced reservations about the fund. So Republicans are now discussing their own last-minute additions to head that off, potentially placing some parameters on the settlement and who could receive compensation, according to two people with knowledge of the private discussions who requested anonymity to discuss them.

It was unclear how any Senate changes would be received in the House. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Wednesday that the House will pass the bill “whatever form it takes.”

Tensions rise between Senate and White House

As Republicans challenged the settlement and parts of his agenda, Trump unloaded on the Senate in a social media post on Wednesday.

He urged Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who said over the weekend that parts of the $1-billion security proposal cannot remain in the ICE and Border Patrol bill. Trump also renewed his long-standing calls for the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would require all voters to prove U.S. citizenship, and to end the Senate filibuster.

Republicans need to “get smart and tough,” Trump said, or “you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”

While they have been loyal to Trump on most issues, Senate Republicans have resisted his repeated calls — even in his first term — to kill the filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

Hanging over the growing GOP rift is Trump’s surprise endorsement of Paxton. That intervention has Republican senators privately fuming that it could cost them their majority in November as they view the incumbent, Cornyn, as the better candidate in the November general election.

Secret Service request falters

Under the Secret Service’s request, about $220 million would fund security improvements related to the ballroom. The rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the effort to add the security package to the bill was a “bad idea.” The bill should not have included the other security improvements, he said, “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion-dollar ballroom.’”

Several other Republicans in the House and Senate have questioned the request, and senators left a briefing with the director of the Secret Service last week saying they needed a lot more information.

People “can’t afford groceries and gasoline and healthcare, and we’re going to do a billion dollars for a ballroom?” asked Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost reelection in his GOP primary on Saturday after Trump endorsed one of his opponents.

Left in the bill is the money for ICE and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Democrats demanded changes for the agencies, but negotiations with the White House yielded little progress. So Republicans are using the complicated budget maneuver called reconciliation — the same process that allowed them to pass Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill last year — to fund the agencies through the end of Trump’s term with a simple majority and no Democratic votes.

Still, passage requires sign-off from the parliamentarian and unity from Republicans.

Jalonick, Freking and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writers Collin Binkley, Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

A third round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon has kicked off in Washington, DC, days before the expiration of a “ceasefire” that hardly halted Israeli attacks and Hezbollah’s response to them.

The talks, which began on Thursday, represent a step towards more serious negotiations, with higher-level envoys from Lebanon and Israel taking part after the initial preparatory sessions were headed by the ambassadors of the two countries to Washington.

Lebanese officials are hoping that the two-day negotiations will yield a new ceasefire deal and pave the way for tackling a series of thorny issues, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the first Israel-Lebanon meetings in Washington in April, was with US President Donald Trump on a visit to China and did not attend Thursday’s session.

Lebanon’s envoy heading up Thursday’s talks, Simon Karam, is an attorney and well-connected former Lebanese ambassador to the United States who recently represented Lebanon in indirect talks with Israel over implementation of the ceasefire that preceded the latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah.

On the Israeli side, Deputy National Security Adviser Yossi Draznin was set to attend.

“We do not want to downplay the significance of these talks, but they are ambassador-level talks, excluding top leadership from Israel, Lebanon and the US,” said Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo, reporting from Washington, DC, adding that there is no diplomatic relationship between Lebanon and Israel.

Trump has publicly called for a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Aoun has declined to meet or speak directly with Netanyahu at this stage – a move that would likely generate blowback in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, is not part of the talks and has been vocally opposed to Lebanon engaging in direct negotiations with Israel.

A lawmaker from the Iran-backed group, Ali Ammar, on Thursday reiterated his group’s rejection of the direct talks, saying they amounted to “free concessions” to Israel.

Still, “there is optimism”, said Al Jazeera’s Rapalo.

“The cessation of hostilities agreement is due to expire on Sunday, so there is an expectation that this will be front and centre in discussions,” he said.

“Of course, the immediate objective is to prevent the situation along the border from escalating into a broader regional conflict.”

Cautious optimism

The United Nations earlier on Thursday expressed hope for the new round of direct negotiations.

“We hope that the latest round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington, planned for today and tomorrow, will contribute to an effective and durable ceasefire and open a path towards lasting peace,” deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told the reporters.

Haq said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) continues to observe “significant” aerial and military activity across its area of operations, including multiple air strikes on Wednesday by Israel.

“We reiterate our call on all the parties to exercise maximum restraint, ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian personnel and fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law,” he added.

In Lebanon, people also hope for an end to violence as the diplomatic efforts continue.

“I think people here in southern Lebanon are cautiously optimistic about the possible results from these meetings,” said Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto, reporting from Tyre, Lebanon.

“Everyone understands that Lebanon is not ready for normalisation, legally speaking. There is a part of the constitution that prevents Lebanon from actually having normalisation with Israel. People realise this might be a huge obstacle to move forward and find a way to live in peace with Israel.”

Still, the Lebanese population wants the violence to stop, said Hitto.

“It’s been more than two months of ongoing Israeli strikes, artillery strikes, air strikes, drone strikes, coordinated, systematic demolitions of entire towns and villages,” he said.

The Israeli army continues daily strikes in Lebanon despite a ceasefire that was announced on April 17 and later extended until May 17.

Three people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday, Lebanese media reported.

Since March 2, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 2,896 people, injured over 8,824, and displaced more than 1.6 million, about one-fifth of the country’s population, according to Lebanese officials. In that time, at least 200 children in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

JERUSALEM — Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat overseeing the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, said Wednesday the truce hinged on Hamas’ disarmament, a sticking point that has stalled progress on other fronts, including rebuilding the mostly destroyed enclave.

The high representative for President Trump’s International Board of Peace in Gaza, Mladenov, said months without progress implementing the deal benefited neither Israel nor Palestinians. He said the phased deal was paralyzed over Hamas not yet disarming, calling it “not negotiable.”

International mediators have long said disarmament is core to the ceasefire, to which Hamas has agreed, but no significant progress has been made toward it. The Palestinian militant group has sought to link any demilitarization to Israeli troop pullbacks. Israel’s military remains in control of more than half of Gaza.

“The only way that we believe that we can ensure that Israeli withdrawal takes place to the perimeter is if we have the full element of the plan unfolding in Gaza,” Mladenov said at a rare press conference in Jerusalem.

Mladenov stated plainly that the plan envisioned in the ceasefire was off to a rocky start. He also said conditions remain dire and miserable for the more than 2 million people in Gaza. He accused both sides of violating the ceasefire but said it had mostly held and staved off the return of full-scale war.

Disarmament is among the most challenging elements of the ceasefire. Hamas, whose founding charter calls for armed resistance against Israel, has been reluctant to give up its arsenal, including rockets, anti-tank missiles, and explosives.

Mladenov did not answer questions about what could lie ahead for Gaza in the absence of disarmament. He criticized Hamas for consolidating power in parts of Gaza under its control, saying it hoped “to squeeze better terms of a negotiation.”

He also said that he could envision a role for Hamas in postwar Gaza if it disarms.

“We are not asking Hamas to disappear as a political movement,” Mladenov told reporters.

Israeli leaders have said they want to destroy the militant group that has governed Gaza for two decades and orchestrated the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages.

Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed over 72,724 Palestinians, including at least 846 since a ceasefire took hold last October.

Mladenov’s remarks came as the Board of Peace faces scrutiny, with efforts to advance the phased ceasefire stalled.

The truce envisioned Hamas handing over its weapons, Israeli forces withdrawing and rebuilding destroyed swaths of the coastal enclave after more than two years of war.

Instead, the seven months since the ceasefire have seen Israel and Hamas trade accusations of violations. Aid groups say Israel has not allowed the promised amount of aid in. Hamas has not disarmed and remains in control of roughly half the strip.

Trump’s 20-point plan says that all of Hamas’ “military, terror and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities” in Gaza must be destroyed. It also says that weapons must be placed “permanently beyond use.”

Israel and the U.S. say this language is clear and that Hamas must surrender all of its weapons.

Hamas has sought to differentiate between “heavy” weapons, such as rockets, and “light” weapons like rifles and pistols, Hamas officials and mediators say, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

Israel has stepped up its attacks in Gaza in recent days, since the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, and many Palestinians fear a return of more airstrikes and full-scale war may be imminent.

Frankel and Metz write for the Associated Press.