sanction

Oct. 14 (UPI) — Britain and the United States announced Tuesday that they have together sanctioned a transnational scam organization operating out of Cambodia.

The U.S. Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it has imposed sweeping sanctions on 146 targets within the Prince Group transnational criminal organization, a Cambodia-based network led by Cambodian national Chen Zhi that operates a global criminal empire through online investment scams.

It also announced that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has finalized a rule under the USA Patriot Act to sever the Cambodia-based financial services conglomerate Huione Group from the U.S. financial system. “For years, Huione Group has laundered proceeds of virtual currency scams and heists on behalf of malicious cyber actors,” the press release said.

Covered financial institutions are now banned from opening or maintaining accounts for Huione Group, the Treasury Department said.

“The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, with life savings wiped out in minutes,” said Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement. “Treasury is taking action to protect Americans by cracking down on foreign scammers. Working in close coordination with federal law enforcement and international partners like the United Kingdom, Treasury will continue to lead efforts to safeguard Americans from predatory criminals.”

In the U.K., a $16 million mansion owned by the Prince Group has been frozen by the government. Chen Zhi and his network have invested in the London property market, including the mansion, a $133 million office building and 17 apartments in the city. The freeze blocks them from profiting from these buildings.

The organization’s scam centers in Cambodia, Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia use fake job ads to lure foreign nationals to compounds or abandoned casinos where they are forced to carry out online fraud or face torture, the British press release said.

The scams often involve building online relationships to convince targets to invest increasingly large sums of money into fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes.

“These sanctions prove our determination to stop those who profit from this activity, hold offenders accountable, and keep dirty money out of the U.K.,” said Fraud Minister David Hanson in a statement. “Through our new, expanded fraud strategy and the upcoming Global Fraud Summit, we will go even further to disrupt corrupt networks and protect the public from shameless criminals.”

South Korea has faced a surge of kidnappings of its citizens in Cambodia. As of August, at least 330 cases were reported, according to data submitted to the National Assembly.

In June, Amnesty International said the Cambodian government has been “deliberately ignoring” human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture by gangs. It estimated that there were at least 53 scamming compounds in Cambodia.

In September, the Treasury Department sanctioned scam centers across Southeast Asia that the agency said stole $10 billion in 2024 from Americans via forced labor and violence.

TEHRAN, Iran — The United States will deport hundreds of Iranians back to Iran in the coming weeks, with the first 120 deportees being prepared for a flight in the next day or two, Iran said Tuesday.

The deportation of Iranians, not yet publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government, comes as tensions remain high between the two countries following the American bombings of Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Meanwhile, the United Nations reimposed sanctions on Iran this past week over its nuclear program, putting new pressure on the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy.

The deportations also represent a collision of a top priority of President Trump — targeting illegal immigration — against a decadeslong practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

As many as 400 Iranians would be returning to Iran as part of the deal with the U.S., Iranian state television said, citing Hossein Noushabadi, director-general for parliamentary affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry. He said the majority of those people had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally, while some faced other immigration issues.

Noushabadi said the first planeload of Iranians would arrive in a day or two, after stopping over in Qatar on the way. Authorities in Qatar have not confirmed that.

The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond. The New York Times first reported the deportations.

In the lead up to and after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the U.S. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency.

In the 2024 fiscal year, for instance, the U.S. deported only 20 Iranians, according to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past. U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Iran of hiring hitmen to target dissidents as well in America.

It’s unclear exactly what has changed now in American policy. However, since returning to the White House, Trump has cracked down on those living in the U.S. illegally.

Noushabadi said that American authorities unilaterally made the decision without consultations with Iran.

But The New York Times said Tuesday, citing anonymous Iranian officials, that the deportations were “the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as well as President Masoud Pezeshkian, both attended the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week as a last-ditch effort to stop the reimposed sanctions. However, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boxed in their efforts by describing diplomacy with the U.S. as a “sheer dead end.”

Speaking to state TV in footage aired Tuesday, Araghchi acknowledged that direct communication from Iran went to the U.S. government during the U.N. visit — something he had been careful not to highlight during five rounds of nuclear negotiations with the Americans earlier this year.

“With Americans, both directly and indirectly, messages were exchanged, and eventually, we are relieved that we did whatever it was necessary,” Araghchi said. “It was clear and evident to us after the interpretation the Supreme Leader made that negotiations with Americans is an obvious dead-end.”

Vahdat writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 16 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Treasury announced Tuesday that it’s sanctioning two Iranian financial facilitators and more than a dozen Hong Kong- and United Arab Emirates-based people and entities for “shadow banking” in support of Iran.

The Treasury Department alleged that these people helped coordinate funds transfers, including from the sale of Iranian oil, that benefited the IRGC-Qods Force and Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, a press release said.

“Iranian entities rely on shadow banking networks to evade sanctions and move millions through the international financial system,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John K. Hurley said in a statement. “Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we will continue to disrupt these key financial streams that fund Iran’s weapons programs and malign activities in the Middle East and beyond.”

The department said that between 2023 and 2025, Iranian nationals Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand worked to facilitate the purchase of over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency for oil sales for the Iranian government. Derakhshan and Alivand used a network of front companies in foreign jurisdictions to transfer the cryptocurrency funds, the release said.

The two are now considered “blocked,” meaning all their assets in the United States will be seized, and Americans and their companies can’t do business with them or their businesses.

Besides Derakhshan and Alivand, the department named several other people and businesses that are now blocked from American trade.

Shadow banking is credit intermediation by entities outside the regular banking system, performing bank-like functions, like maturity transformation and liquidity transformation, without the same strict regulatory oversight as traditional banks.

Britain, Germany and France sent a letter in late August to the United Nations Security Council saying they are starting the 30-day process of “snapback” of sanctions against Iran.

The snapback is used to re-impose sanctions on Iran in the event of “significant non-performance” of treaty commitments. The sanctions were suspended under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.

US President Donald Trump has said he is ready to impose tougher sanctions on Russia, but only if Nato countries meet certain conditions which include stopping buying Russian oil.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said he was “ready to do major sanctions on Russia” once Nato nations had “agreed, and started, to do the same thing”.

Trump has repeatedly threatened tougher measures against Moscow, but has so far failed to take any action when the Kremlin ignored his deadlines and threats of sanctions.

He described the purchases of Russian oil as “shocking” and also suggested that Nato place 50 to 100% tariffs on China, claiming it would weaken its “strong control” over Russia.

In what he called a letter to Nato nations, Trump said: “I am ready to ‘go’ when you are. Just say when?”

He added “the purchase of Russian oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia”.

Trump also claimed the halt on Russian energy purchases, combined with heavy tariffs on China “to be fully withdrawn” after the war, would be of “great help” in ending the conflict.

Europe’s reliance on Russian energy has fallen dramatically since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, the EU got about 45% of its gas from Russia. That is expected to fall to about 13% this year, though Trump’s words suggest he feels that figure is not enough.

The US president’s message came during heightened tensions between Nato allies and Russia after more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace on Wednesday.

Warsaw said the incursion was deliberate, but Moscow downplayed the incident and said it had “no plans to target” facilities in Poland.

Denmark, France and Germany have joined a new Nato mission to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank, and will move military assets eastwards.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also made a demand to European nations over the purchase of Russian oil and gas.

In an interview with ABC News, he said: “We have to stop [buying] any kind of energy from Russia, and by the way, anything, any deals with Russia. We can’t have any deals if we want to stop them.”

Since 2022, European nations have spent around €210bn (£182bn) on Russian oil and gas, according to the think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, much of which will have funded the invasion of Ukraine.

The EU has previously committed to phasing out the purchases by 2028. The US want that to happen faster – partly by buying supplies from them instead.

Trump’s message was to Nato, not the EU, therefore including nations such as Turkey, a major buyer of Russian oil and a country that has maintained closer relations with Moscow that any other member of the alliance.

Persuading Ankara to cut off Russian supplies may be a far harder task.

Trump’s most recent threat of tougher sanctions on Russia came earlier in September after the Kremlin’s heaviest bombardment on Ukraine since the war began.

Asked by reporters if he was prepared to move to the “second phase” of punishing Moscow, Trump replied: “Yeah, I am,” though gave no details.

The US previously placed tariffs of 50% on goods from India – which included a 25% penalty for transactions with Russia that are a key source of funds for the war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin is on a roll the past few weeks. First President Trump invited him to Anchorage. Then he got a three-way hug with China’s President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a summit in China. And an invitation to a grand military parade in Beijing.

Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Putin had been shunted to the fringes of summit group photos. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he had been treated as a pariah by the United States and Europe. Indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, he could travel only to countries that wouldn’t arrest him. In short, Moscow was not being treated with the respect it believed it deserved.

Trump thought that by literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska — and clapping as the Russian loped down the red carpet — he could reset the bilateral relationship. And it did. But not the way Trump intended.

The Alaskan summit convinced the Russians that the current administration is willing to throw the sources of American global power out the window.

Trade partners, geopolitical allies and alliances — everything is on the table for Trump. The U.S. president believes this shows his power; the Russians see this as a low-cost opportunity to degrade American influence. Putin was trained by the KGB to recognize weakness and exploit it.

There is no evidence that being friendly to Putin and agreeing with Russian positions are going to make Moscow more willing to stop fighting in Ukraine. Overlooking Russia’s intensifying hybrid attacks on Europe, in February, Vice President JD Vance warned Europe that it should be focusing instead on the threat to democracy “from within.” This followed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth‘s assurances that Ukraine would never join NATO. Trump has suggested that U.S. support for NATO and Europe is contingent on those countries paying up. In an event that sent Moscow pundits to pop the Champagne, Trump told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office that he just didn’t “have the cards” and should stop trying to beat Russia.

Did any of this bring Putin to the negotiating table? No.

In fact, the Kremlin indicated a readiness to talk with Trump about the war only when Trump threatened “very, very powerful” sanctions in mid-July. This time, he seemed serious about it. The Alaska summit happened a month later. The tougher Trump is with Russia, the more likely he is to get any kind of traction in negotiations. It’s unfortunate that the president has now gone back to vague two-week deadlines for imposing sanctions that never materialize.

Russia believes it will win the war. China has been a steady friend, willing to sell Russia cars and dual-use technology that ends up in drones that are attacking Ukrainian cities. It has also become Russia’s largest buyer of crude oil and coal. Western sanctions have not been biting the Russian economy, though they have nibbled away at state revenues. Europe and the United States have not been willing to apply the kind of economic pressure that would seriously dent Russia’s ability to carry on the war.

Putin keeps saying that a resolution to the war requires that the West address the “root causes” of the war. These causes, for Russia, relate to the way it was treated after losing the Cold War. The three Baltic nations joined Europe as fast as they could. Central and Eastern European countries decided that they would rather be part of NATO than the Warsaw Pact. When Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine started asking for membership in the European Union and NATO, Russia realized it wouldn’t be able to convince them to stay with economic appeal or soft power. It had to use force. Unable to demonstrate the attraction of its suffocating embrace, or the value of its Eurasian Economic Union, Russia believed it had to use force to keep Ukraine by its side. It reminds one of a grotesque Russian expression: “If he beats you, it means he loves you.”

The real “root cause” of the war in Ukraine is Russia’s inability to accept that centuries of empire do not confer the right to dominate former colonies forever. Mongolia learned this. As did the British. And the French. And the Ottomans. The Austro-Hungarians.

Eventually this war will end. But not soon. Russia is insisting on maximalist demands that Ukraine cannot agree to, which include control over territory it hasn’t managed to occupy. Ukraine will not stop fighting until it is sure that Russia will not attack again. Achieving that degree of certainty with flimsy security guarantees is impossible.

In the meantime, Ukrainian cities on the frontline will continue being wiped out, citizens in Kherson will continue being subjects of “human safari” for Russian drone operators, people across Ukraine will continue experiencing daily air raids that send them scurrying into shelters. Soldiers, volunteers, civilians and children will continue dying. Trump appears to care about the thousands of daily casualties. Most of these are Russian soldiers who have been sent to their death by a Russian state that doesn’t see their lives as worth preserving.

Trump is understandably frustrated with his inability to “stop the killing” because he has assumed that satisfying Russian demands is the answer. The opposite is true: Only by showing — proving — to Russia that its demands are unattainable will the U.S. persuade the Kremlin to consider meaningful negotiations. Countries at war come to the negotiating table not because they are convinced to abandon their objectives. They sit down when they realize their goals are unattainable.

Alexandra Vacroux is the vice president for strategic engagement at the Kyiv School of Economics.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda has agreed to a deal with the United States to take deported migrants as long as they don’t have criminal records and are not unaccompanied minors, the foreign ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said in a statement that the agreement had been concluded but that terms were still being worked out. It added that Uganda prefers that the migrants sent there be of African nationalities, but did not elaborate on what Uganda might get in return for accepting deportees.

The U.S. Embassy in Uganda declined to comment on what it called “diplomatic negotiations,” but said that diplomats were seeking to uphold President Trump’s “policy of keeping Americans safe.”

The Trump administration has been seeking ways to deter migrants from entering the country illegally and to deport those who already have done so, especially those with criminal records and including those who cannot easily be deported to their home country.

Human rights activists criticized the deportee deal as possibly going against international law.

Henry Okello Oryem, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs, on Wednesday had denied that any agreement on deportees had been reached, though he said his government was in discussions about “visas, tariffs, sanctions, and related issues.” He also suggested that his country would draw the line at accepting people associated with criminal groups.

“We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he said at the time.

Oryem and other Ugandan government officials declined to comment Thursday.

Opposition lawmaker Muwada Nkunyingi suggested that such a deal with the United States would give the Ugandan government legitimacy ahead of elections, and urged Washington not to turn a blind eye toward what he described as human rights and governance issues in Uganda.

Uganda’s leaders will rush into a deal to “clear their image now that we are heading into the 2026 elections,” Nkunyingi said.

Human rights lawyer Nicholas Opio likened a deportee deal to human trafficking, and said it would leave the status of the deportees unclear. “Are they refugees or prisoners?” he said.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law. We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency; in this case because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States,” he said. “That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me; how is that different from human trafficking?”

In July, the U.S. deported five men with criminal backgrounds to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini and sent eight more to South Sudan. The men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam sent to Eswatini are being held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year.

A legal challenge in the U.S had halted the deportation process of the eight men in South Sudan but a Supreme Court ruling eventually cleared the way for them to be sent to South Sudan.

Uganda has had challenges with the U.S. after lawmakers passed an anti-homosexuality bill in 2023 that punishes consensual same-sex conduct with penalties including life imprisonment. Washington threatened consequences and the World Bank withheld some funding.

In May 2024, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Uganda’s parliamentary speaker, her husband and several other officials over corruption and serious abuses of human rights.

By hosting an unprecedented short-notice summit with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and key European leaders on Monday, President Trump significantly raised the prospects for ending Russia’s three-and-a-half-year-long war against Ukraine. The vibe at the opening was affable and positive. The participants genuinely looked determined to work out compromises that only a few weeks ago appeared illusory. It was a good sign for long-term Euro-Atlantic security cooperation in the face of challenges that, in Trump’s words, we have not faced since World War II. Toward the end, Trump’s call to Moscow brought a follow-up U.S.-Ukraine-Russia summit within reach.

But the rising expectations also reveal formidable obstacles on the path to peace. As the world’s leaders were heading to Washington, Putin’s forces unleashed 182 infantry assaults, 152 massive glide bombs, more than 5,100 artillery rounds and 5,000 kamikaze drones on Ukraine’s defenses and 140 long-range drones and four Iskander ballistic missiles on Ukraine’s cities. The attacks claimed at least 10 civilian lives, including a small child. This is how Russia attacks Ukraine daily, signaling disrespect for Trump’s diplomacy.

The Monday summit also revealed that Putin’s ostensible concession at the Alaska summit to agree to international security guarantees for Ukraine is a poisoned chalice. On the surface, it seemed like a breakthrough toward compromise. The White House summit participants jumped on it and put the guarantees at the center of discussions.

And yet there has been no agreement, and the world has more questions than answers. How could the Ukrainian armed forces be strengthened to deter Russia? Who would pay? How could Russia be prevented from rebuilding its Black Sea Fleet and blocking Ukrainian grain exports? What troop deployments would be needed? Who would put boots on the ground in Ukraine? What kind of guarantees should match what kind of territorial concessions?

Such questions are fraught with complex debates. Between the U.S. and Europe. Within Europe. Within the Trump administration. Within Ukraine. And all of that even before having to negotiate the issue with the Kremlin. The net outcome of the past week’s diplomatic huddles will be Putin buying time for his aggression as Washington abstains from sanctions hoping for peace.

Disingenuously, in exchange for this poisoned chalice of a concession, Putin demanded that Ukraine should cede not only lands currently under Russia’s illegal military occupation but also a large piece of the Donetsk province still under Kyiv’s control. That area is home to 300,000 people and is a major defense stronghold. Controlling it would give Russia a springboard to deeper attacks targeting big cities and threatening to bring Ukraine to its knees.

Putin’s offer also threatens to tear apart Ukraine’s society. In my tracking poll with Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology completed in early August, close to half of 567 respondents want Ukraine to reassert control over all of its internationally recognized territories, including the Crimean peninsula illegally annexed in 2014. Only 20% would be content with freezing the conflict along the current front lines. The option of ceding territories to Russia still under Kyiv control is so outrageous that it was not included in the survey. Eighty percent of Ukrainians continue to have faith in Ukraine’s victory and to see democracy and free speech — core values Putin would take away — as vital for Ukraine’s future.

Getting Ukrainian society right is important for Trump’s peace effort to succeed. Discounting Ukrainians’ commitment to freedom and independence has a lot to do with where we are now. Putin launched the all-out invasion in February 2022 expecting Ukrainians to embrace Russian rule. Then-President Biden assessed that Ukrainians would fold quickly and delayed major military assistance to Kyiv.

Misjudging Ukrainians now would most likely result in a rejection of peace proposals and possibly a political crisis there, inviting more aggression from Moscow while empowering more dogged resistance to the invasion, with a long, bloody war grinding on.

Thankfully, Trump has the capacity to keep the peace process on track. First, he can amplify two critically important messages he articulated at the Monday summit: U.S. willingness to back up Ukraine’s security guarantees and to continue to sell weapons to Ukraine if no peace deal is reached. Second, he can use his superb skills at strategic ambiguity and pivot back to threats of leveraging our submarine power and of imposing secondary sanctions on countries trading with Russia. Third, he can drop a hint he’d back up the Senate’s bipartisan Supporting Ukraine Act of 2025, which would provide military assistance to Ukraine over two years from confiscated Russian assets, the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal proceeds and investment in America’s military modernization.

The Monday summit makes the urgency of these and similar moves glaringly clear.

Mikhail Alexseev, a professor of international relations at San Diego State University, is the author of “Without Warning: Threat Assessment, Intelligence, and Global Struggle” and principal investigator of the multiyear “War, Democracy and Society” survey in Ukraine.

Two years after a sign-stealing scandal at the University of Michigan rocked college football, the NCAA on Friday increased sanctions the Wolverines had self-imposed but refrained from handing down the most severe punishments.

Michigan won’t be subject to a postseason ban and won’t be required to vacate victories — especially important because the Wolverines won the national championship in 2023, the last of three seasons they were accused of improperly stealing signals that opposing coaches used to communicate with players on the field.

However, they were fined approximately $30 million and the program was placed on four years of probation. Also, the suspension of head coach Sherrone Moore was increased from the self-imposed two games to three. In addition to the third and fourth games of the 2025 season, Moore also will miss the 2026 opener.

Jim Harbaugh, the Michigan head coach from 2015 to 2023 who now is coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, will have a 10-year show-cause penalty tacked onto the current four-year show cause that resulted from scouting and recruiting violations in 2021-2022.

Connor Stalions, the staff member who carried out the sign-stealing scheme, was handed an eight-year show-cause penalty and former assistant Denard Robinson was hit with a three-year show-cause sanction for recruiting violations and failing to attend an NCAA hearing on the matter.

As long as Harbaugh remains in the NFL, the penalty will have no real impact on him. However, the sanction could make him unwelcome in the college ranks for more than a decade.

The show-cause sanction effectively makes it difficult for the person to secure employment at an NCAA school because it requires a school attempting to make the hire to “show cause” to the NCAA why it shouldn’t also be penalized for giving the person a job.

The NCAA had charged Michigan with 11 rule violations, six of them the most serious Level 1 variety, after an investigation revealed that Stalions had carried out a scheme to shoot video of the signals opposing coaches used to communicate with players on the field.

Stalions, a retired captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was paid $55,000 a year as an off-field defensive analyst at Michigan. He is alleged to have arranged for people to attend the games of upcoming Michigan opponents and film the sideline signals from 2021 to 2023, when the scheme was uncovered and Stalions resigned.

The NCAA does not prohibit stealing signs during games, but since 1994 schools are not allowed to scout upcoming opponents in person. The rule was designed to prevent well-funded programs from gaining an advantage by sending scouts to opponents’ games when programs with smaller budgets couldn’t afford such scouting.

According to the NCAA notice of allegations, Stalions was accused of arranging the scouting of at least 13 future opponents on 58 occasions. He purchased tickets at nearly every Big Ten school.

The fine imposed by the NCAA Committee on Infractions includes a $50,000 initial fine, 10% of the football budget, 10% of the cost of football scholarships for the 2025 season and the loss of all postseason-competition revenue sharing for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Added up, it should exceed $30 million.

Moore improperly deleted a thread of 52 text messages with Stalions when the scandal became public. However, the NCAA was able to retrieve the texts, but Moore was not charged with having knowledge of the sign-stealing.

Harbaugh was suspended for the last three games of the 2023 regular season despite his adamant denial that he knew anything about the sign-stealing. Michigan won all three games anyway and went on to capture the national championship.

While preparing the Chargers for his first season at the helm in August 2024, Harbaugh reiterated that he was “not aware nor complicit” in the sign-stealing at Michigan. He felt compelled to address the situation because Moore — his replacement as head coach — was one of seven staffers from the 2023 championship Michigan team under investigation.

“Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal,” Harbaugh said in a statement in 2024. “I was raised with that lesson. I have raised my family on that lesson. I have preached that lesson to the teams that I’ve coached. No one’s perfect. If you stumble, you apologize and you make it right.

“Today, I do not apologize. I did not participate, was not aware nor complicit in those said allegations. So for me, it’s back to work and attacking with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti became an unlikely Michigan advocate in pushing the NCAA to keep sanctions to a minimum, suggesting to the NCAA Committee on Infractions that Michigan deserved no further punishment.

This was the same Petitti who suspended Harbaugh in a Nov. 10, 2023, letter to Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel that appeared to question the integrity of the Wolverines’ program.

The school sought an emergency temporary restraining order against the Big Ten to allow Harbaugh continue coaching, saying due process had not been followed and asserting that Harbaugh had no knowledge of Stalions’ sign-stealing.

Michigan eventually withdrew the restraining order request, but the relationship between the school and the commissioner remained contentious as Harbaugh served the suspension and the Wolverines turned the episode into a rallying cry.

This season, Michigan will visit USC on Oct. 11 but does not play UCLA.

RIO DE JANEIRO — The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over alleged suppression of freedom of expression and the ongoing trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

De Moraes oversees the criminal case against Bolsonaro, who is accused of masterminding a plot to stay in power despite his 2022 election loss to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions — including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

The Treasury cited the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which targets perpetrators of human rights abuse and corrupt officials, as its authority to issue the sanctions.

The decision orders the freezing of any assets or property De Moraes may have in the U.S.

Brazil’s Supreme Court and the presidential palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday’s announcement follows the U.S. State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials, including De Moraes, on July 18.

It also comes after President Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian imported goods that is set to take effect Friday. In a letter announcing the tariff, Trump explicitly linked the import tax to what he called the “witch hunt” trial of Bolsonaro that is underway in Brazil.

Days later, Bolsonaro was ordered to wear an ankle monitor after being deemed a flight risk.

Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo celebrated the Treasury’s announcement on X, calling it a “historic milestone” and a warning that “abuses of authority now have global consequences.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro relocated to the U.S. in March and is under investigation for allegedly working with U.S. authorities to impose sanctions against Brazilian officials.

Hughes writes for the Associated Press.

Washington, DC – A spokesperson for the State Department in the United States has been questioned about the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly at the hands of an Israeli settler previously sanctioned by the US government.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce demurred when asked whether the suspect in Hathaleen’s death, Yinon Levi, would be held accountable.

“Israel has investigations that it’s implementing regarding situations of this sort,” Bruce said. “I don’t know the end result of what that’s going to be, nor will I comment or speculate on what should happen.”

Bruce’s tense exchange with reporters came one day after video circulated showing Levi opening fire on Hathaleen in the village of Umm al-Kheir in the occupied West Bank.

The 31-year-old Palestinian activist later died from a gunshot wound to his chest.

Levi is among several Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank who were previously sanctioned under the former administration of US President Joe Biden for perpetrating violence against Palestinians.

But President Donald Trump reversed those sanctions in an executive order shortly after taking office for a second term in January. The United Kingdom and the European Union, however, maintain sanctions against Levi.

Hathaleen, a resident of Masafer Yatta, had helped create the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, which captured the effects of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

In Tuesday’s news briefing, Bruce appeared to suggest that Hathaleen’s shooting happened in the “war zone” of Gaza, before being corrected.

Still, she maintained that the Trump administration sought to address violence wherever it occurred.

“It’s the same argument. We see this in the West Bank. We know when there’s violence in general. We saw something unfold in New York City as well, with a shooting in New York City yesterday,” she said, in an apparent reference to an unrelated shooting in a Manhattan skyscraper.

The State Department did not respond to a subsequent request from Al Jazeera about whether the Trump administration would revisit its sanctions policy in light of the killing.

On Tuesday, Israeli media reported that Levi had been placed on house arrest after being charged with manslaughter and unlawful firearm use.

Illegal settlements and Trump

Hathaleen was a father of three who coordinated with several influential advocacy and lobbying groups in the US, and his death has renewed scrutiny of Trump’s policies towards illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territories like the West Bank.

During his first term, Trump reversed a longstanding policy recognising such settlements as illegal. Such settlements are in violation of international law and widely seen as a means of displacing Palestinians and seizing their lands.

But Israeli settlements have continued to spread rapidly in recent years and are seen as a major roadblock to future peace agreements with Palestinian leaders.

Upon taking office earlier this year, Trump revoked many Biden-era executive orders, including the sanctions against Israeli settlers. The move reportedly came amid pressure from the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

During his term, Biden had been criticised for continuing to funnel aid to Israel amid its war in Gaza, but his administration showed a willingness to take a harder line when it came to settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“The situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels,” Biden’s executive order, dated February 2024, said.

It added that Israeli actions in the West Bank constitute “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region”.

Violence on the part of Israeli settlers and military forces has surged since Israel’s war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, with at least 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank.

Rights observers say violent settlers are often protected by the military as they attack Palestinians.

Those killed have included US citizens, most recently Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old resident of Florida, beaten to death while visiting his family’s land in the village of Sinjil.

In a rare statement condemning Musallet’s killing, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a vocal supporter of Israeli settlements, called on the country to “aggressively investigate” what he called a “criminal and terrorist act”.

To date, no one has been arrested or charged in the killing.

In a statement following Monday’s attack, J Street, a left-leaning pro-Israel lobbying group, called on US lawmakers to support legislation that would codify the Biden-era sanctions against settlers like Levi.

The group explained that its members had “deep, personal ties” to Hathaleen, and said they were “heartbroken and horrified” by his killing.

In a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday, Congress member Delia Ramirez called Hathaleen’s killing “a painful reminder that our government and Israel continue to enable and condone violence in the West Bank”.

“We must reinstate the sanctions on West Bank settlers perpetrating violence and hold accountable all those whose extreme and escalating violence continues to rob us of our neighbors — including Trump and Netanyahu,” she wrote.

Broad economic sanctions, most of which are imposed by the U.S. government, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people each year — disproportionately children. This week the Lancet Global Health journal published an article that estimated that number at about 564,000 annually over a decade. This is comparable to the annual deaths around the world from armed conflict.

Sanctions are becoming the preferred weapon of the United States and some allies — not because they are less destructive than military action, but more likely because the toll is less visible. They can devastate food systems and hospitals and silently kill people without the gruesome videos of body parts in tent camps and cafes bombed from the air. They offer policymakers something that can deliver the deadly impact of war, even against civilians, without the political cost.

The above estimate of 564,000 annual deaths from sanctions is based on an analysis of data from 152 countries over 10 years. The study was by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón and myself.

It’s a horrifying finding, but not surprising to economists, statisticians and other researchers who have investigated these impacts of economic sanctions. These are measures that target the entire economy, or a part of it that most of the rest of the economy depends on, such as the financial sector or a predominant export, for example in oil-exporting economies.

The sanctions can block access to essential imports such as medicine and food and the necessary infrastructure and spare parts to maintain drinkable water, including electrical systems.

Damage to the economy can sometimes be even more deadly than just the blocking of critical, life-sustaining imports. Venezuela is an example of a country that suffered all of these impacts, and the case is far more well-documented than for most of the now 25% of countries under sanctions (up from 8% in the 1960s). In Venezuela, the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives. Then things got even worse, as the U.S. cut off the country from the international financial system and oil exports, froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed “secondary sanctions” on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela.

Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% — more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.

Our study found that a majority of people who died as a result of sanctions in all countries were children under 5. This atrocity is consistent with prior research. Medical studies have found that children in this age group become much more susceptible to death from childhood diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia and measles when they become malnourished.

These results are also consistent with statistical studies by the Bank of International Settlements and other statisticians and economists who find that recessions in developing countries substantially increase death rates. Of course, the destruction caused by sanctions, as above, can be many times worse than the average recession.

In 2021, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to then-President Biden, asking him to “lift all secondary and sectoral sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Trump Administration.” The impact of these sanctions, he said, “is indiscriminate, and purposely so. … Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work. But it is not Venezuelan officials who suffer the costs. It is the Venezuelan people.”

This is why U.S. sanctions are illegal under treaties the United States has signed, including the Charter of the Organization of American States. They are also prohibited during wartime under the Geneva and Hague conventions, as collective punishment of civilians. U.N. experts have argued, quite persuasively, that something that is a war crime when people are bombing and shooting each other should also be a crime when there is no such war.

These sanctions also violate U.S. law. In ordering the sanctions, the president is required by U.S. law to declare that the sanctioned country is causing a “national emergency” for the United States and poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security. But this has almost never been true.

Given the deterioration of the rule of law in the United States, and the lack of regard for human rights in America’s foreign policy — and increasingly at home — it’s easy to be pessimistic about the prospects for ending this economic violence. But it will end.

We have seen victories against much more formidable adversaries and entrenched policies, including wars — most recently against the U.S. participation in the war in Yemen. Organized opposition got Congress to pass a related war powers resolution in 2019. This forced an end to at least some of the U.S. military support and blockade that had put millions of people at emergency levels of hunger, thereby saving thousands of lives.

The CIA’s formal post-9/11 torture program, which included waterboarding, was ended by executive order in 2009, after public exposure and considerable opposition.

The biggest advantage of sanctions, for the policymakers who use them, is the invisibility of their toll. But that is also their Achilles’ heel. When the economic violence of broad sanctions becomes widely known, they will be indefensible and no longer politically sustainable.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy.”

UNITED NATIONS — The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it is issuing sanctions against an independent investigator tasked with probing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, the latest effort by the United States to punish critics of Israel’s 21-month war in Gaza.

The State Department’s decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, follows an unsuccessful U.S. pressure campaign to force the international body to remove her from her post. It also comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington this week to meet with President Trump and other officials about the war in Gaza and more.

It’s unclear what the practical impact the sanctions will have and whether the independent investigator will be able to travel to the U.S. with diplomatic paperwork.

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has been vocal about what she has described as the “genocide” by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the U.S., which provides military support to its close ally, have strongly denied that accusation.

The U.S. had not previously addressed concerns with Albanese head-on because it has not participated in either of the two Human Rights Council sessions this year, including the summer session that ended Tuesday. This is because the Trump administration withdrew the U.S. earlier this year.

Albanese has urged countries to pressure Israel

In recent weeks, Albanese has issued a series of letters urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

She has also been a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, for allegations of war crimes. She most recently issued a report naming several large U.S. companies as among those aiding what she described as Israel’s occupation and war on Gaza.

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”

Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the U.S. government’s decision to sanction Albanese for seeking justice through the ICC “is actually all about silencing a U.N. expert for doing her job — speaking truth about Israeli violations against Palestinians and calling on governments and corporations not to be complicit.”

“The United States is working to dismantle the norms and institutions on which survivors of grave abuses rely,” Evenson said in a statement. “U.N. and ICC member countries should strongly resist the U.S. government’s shameless efforts to block justice for the world’s worst crimes and condemn the outrageous sanctions on Albanese.”

Albanese’s July 1 report focuses on Western defense companies that have provided weapons used by Israel’s military, as well as manufacturers of earth-moving equipment that have bulldozed Palestinian homes and property.

It cites activities by companies in the shipping, real estate, technology, banking and finance and online travel industries, as well as academia.

“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many,” her report said.

A request for comment from the U.N.’s top human rights body was not immediately returned.

Israel strongly refutes Albanese’s allegations

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the 47-member Human Rights Council is based, called Albanese’s report “legally groundless, defamatory, and a flagrant abuse of her office” and having “whitewashed Hamas atrocities.”

Outside experts, such as Albanese, do not represent the United Nations and have no formal authority. However, they report to the council as a means of monitoring countries’ human rights records.

Albanese has faced criticism from pro-Israel officials and groups in the U.S. and in the Middle East. The U.S. mission to the U.N. issued a scathing statement last week, calling for her removal for “a years-long pattern of virulent anti-Semitism and unrelenting anti-Israel bias.”

The statement said Albanese’s allegations of Israel committing genocide or apartheid are “false and offensive.”

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, celebrated the U.S. action, saying in a statement Wednesday that Albanese’s “relentless and biased campaign against Israel and the United States has long crossed the line from human rights advocacy into political warfare.”

Trump administration’s campaign to quiet criticism of Israel

It is a culmination of a nearly six-month campaign by the Trump administration to quell criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza. Earlier this year, the administration began arresting and trying to deport faculty and students of U.S. universities who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other political activities.

The war between Israel and Hamas began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians.

Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, it is nearly impossible for the critically wounded to get the care they need, doctors and aid workers say.

“We must stop this genocide, whose short-term goal is completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, while also profiteering from the killing machine devised to perform it,” Albanese said in a recent post on X. “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

Amiri writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is revoking the terrorism designation of a group led by Syria’s new president as part of a broader U.S. engagement with the transitional government since the ouster of former leader Bashar Assad late last year.

In a statement released on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move, which will take effect on Tuesday, “recognizes the positive actions taken by the new Syrian government” under President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Earlier Monday, the Federal Register published an advance notice, which said Rubio made the decision on June 23 in consultation with the attorney general and Treasury secretary.

The decision had not been previously announced, although it was made as the Trump administration has been moving to ease or end many U.S. sanctions that had been imposed during Assad’s rule.

The step looks to further end Syria’s isolation since a lightning rebel offensive ousted the Assad family from decades of rule and gives the new government a boost as it tries to rebuild a country shattered by 13 years of civil war.

The brief notice offered no details about the revocation of the foreign terrorist organization designation for the al-Nusrah Front, also known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Al-Nusrah was originally designated a foreign terrorist organization for its previous affiliation with Al Qaeda. In 2017, it split and changed its name to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the first Trump administration added to the initial designation.

Syria has been improving relations with the United States and other Western countries following the fall of Assad in December in an offensive led by Al-Sharaa ’s group.

On June 30, seven days after Rubio signed the revocation, President Trump signed an executive order ending many U.S. economic sanctions on Syria, following through on a promise he made to Al-Sharaa when the two met in Saudi Arabia in May.

“This FTO revocation is an important step in fulfilling President Trump’s vision of a stable, unified, and peaceful Syria,” Rubio said in his statement.

Trump’s executive order did not rescind sanctions imposed on Assad, his top aides, family members and officials who had been determined to have committed human rights abuses or been involved in drug trafficking or part of Syria’s chemical weapons program.

It also leaves intact a major set of sanctions passed by Congress targeting anyone doing business with or offering support to Syria’s military, intelligence or other suspect institutions.

While the Trump administration has passed temporary waivers on those sanctions, known as the Caesar Act, they can only be permanently repealed by law.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is slapping sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court over the tribunal’s investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and in the West Bank.

The State Department said Thursday that it would freeze any assets that the ICC judges, who come from Benin, Peru, Slovenia and Uganda, have in U.S. jurisdictions. The move is just the latest step that the administration has taken to punish the ICC and its officials for investigations undertaken against Israel and the United States.

“As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

“The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,” Rubio said. “This dangerous assertion and abuse of power infringes upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel.”

In February, The Hague-based court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was placed on Washington’s list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons,” barring him from doing business with Americans and placing restrictions on his entry into the U.S. Khan stepped aside last month pending an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.

Within minutes of the administration’s announcement, the court condemned its actions. “These measures are a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution,” ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah said in a statement.

The new sanctions target ICC Judge Reine Alapini-Gansou, who is from the West African country of Benin and was part of the pretrial chamber of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year. She also served on the bench that originally greenlighted the investigation into alleged Israeli crimes in the Palestinian territories in 2021.

The 69-year-old was also part of the panel of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023. Last year, a court in Moscow issued a warrant for her arrest.

From Slovenia, Beti Hohler was elected as a judge in 2023. She previously worked in the prosecutor’s office at the court, leading Israel to object to her participation in the proceedings involving Israeli officials. Hohler said in a statement last year that she had never worked on the Palestinian territories investigation during her eight years as a prosecutor.

Bouth Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, from Peru, and Solomy Balungi Bossa, from Uganda, are appeals judges at the ICC. Each woman has worked on cases involving Israel.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a member of and neither recognizes the legitimacy of the court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes over his military response in Gaza after the Hamas attack against Israel in October 2023. Israel strongly denies the allegations.

Lee and Quell write for the Associated Press. Quell reported from The Hague.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia  — President Trump’s four-day visit to the Middle East was marked by a flurry of activity: Billion-dollar trade deals, a meeting with Syria’s new president and diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran.

But the fate of Palestinian people and the war in Gaza, where the dead are piling up in recent days under an Israeli onslaught, appears to have received short shrift.

Trump finished his visit to the Persian Gulf on Friday, touting his abilities as a deal maker while he forged trade agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars — his administration says trillions — from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

But despite his repeated insistence that only he could bring a peaceful end to the world’s intractable problems — and saying Friday that “we have to help” Palestinians — there were no breakthroughs on the Israel-Hamas war, and the president repeated his suggestion of U.S. involvement in the Gaza Strip.

Noting the widespread destruction in the territory, Trump said, “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good — make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.”

President Trump walks down the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Friday.

(Luis M. Alvarez / Associated Press)

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1. Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press) 2. Islam Hajjaj holds her 6-year-old daughter Najwa, who suffers from malnutrition, at a shelter in central Gaza City, on May 11, 2025. Amnesty International accuses Israel on April 29 of committing a ‘’live-streamed genocide’’ against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Gazans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims Israel dismisses as ‘’blatant lies’’. (Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Trump’s comments Friday came as the Israel military began the first stages of a ground offensive it called “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” — an apparent fulfillment of a threat by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month that he would launch an attack on Gaza to destroy Hamas and liberate detainees if there wasn’t a ceasefire or a hostage deal by the time Trump finished his time in the Middle East.

Trump’s concerns “are deals that benefit the U.S. economy and enhance the U.S.’ global economic positions,” or preventing costly military entanglements in Iran or Yemen, said Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, based in Qatar.

“Unlike Syria or Iran,” Rabbani said, “ending the Gaza war provides no economic benefit to the U.S., and doesn’t risk American troops getting involved in a new war.”

Ahead of Trump’s four-day trip, there were moves that had buoyed hopes of a ceasefire or allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Israel has blocked for more than two months as aid groups warn of impending famine. On May 12, Hamas released Edan Alexander, a soldier with Israeli and U.S. citizenship and the last American detainee in its hands, as a goodwill gesture to Trump, and there were rumors of a meeting between Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But that meeting never took place, and instead of a ceasefire, Israel launched strikes that health authorities in the enclave say have killed at least 250 people in the last few days, 45 of them children, according to UNICEF.

A man looks at burned vehicles in the Barkan Industrial area, near Salfit in the occupied West Bank, on Friday, after more than 17 Palestinian workers’ cars were reportedly set on fire by Israeli settlers the night before. Since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, violence has soared in the West Bank where Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

(John Wessels / AFP via Getty Images)

Netanyahu insists his aim is to destroy Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing roughly 250 hostages. Israel’s military campaign has so far killed at least 53,000 people in Gaza — including combatants and civilians, but mostly women and children, according to health authorities there — and many believe that toll to be an undercount.

A ceasefire that Trump’s incoming administration brokered in January broke down in mid-March after Israel refused to continue second-stage negotiations.

“We expect the U.S. administration to exert further pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid, food, medicine and fuel to hospitals in the Gaza Strip,” said Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media advisor, in an interview with Agence France-Presse on Friday.

He added that such moves were part of the understandings reached with U.S. envoys during the latest meetings, under which Hamas released Alexander.

Yet there has been little sign of that pressure, despite fears in Israeli circles that Trump’s actions before and during his Middle East trip — which skipped Israel, saw Trump broker a deal with Yemen’s Houthis and lift sanctions on Syria without Israeli input — was a snub to Netanyahu.

President Trump speaks on Air Force One at Abu Dhabi International Airport before departing on Friday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he left the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, on Friday, Trump sidestepped questions about the renewed Israeli offensive, saying, “I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month, and we’re going to see.”

“We have to help also out the Palestinians,” he said. “You know, a lot of people are starving in Gaza, so we have to look at both sides.”

On the first day of Trump’s Mideast trip, in Saudi Arabia, he announced that the U.S. was ending sanctions on Syria, now headed by an Islamist government that overthrew longtime dictator Bashar Assad in December. He met Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and praised him as a “tough guy” and a “fighter.”

Israel views Al-Sharaa’s government as a threat and has made incursions into its territory since Assad’s fall, and launched a withering airstrike campaign to defang the fledgling government’s forces.

When asked whether he knew Israel opposed the lifting of sanctions, Trump said, “I don’t know, I didn’t ask them about that.”

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, on Friday.

(Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press)

Commentators say that although Washington’s leverage over Israel should make a Gaza ceasefire easier for a Trump administration seeking to project itself as an effective peacemaker, the conflict there remains a low priority for Trump.

“Gaza may seem like low hanging fruit on the surface, but it’s also low political yield — how does acting decisively on Gaza benefit Trump? It doesn’t,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

He added that going along with Netanyahu would be more in line with Trump’s vision for owning and remaking Gaza, while on Iran, Syria and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, it makes sense to separate U.S. interests from Israel’s.

“Palestinians have nothing to offer Trump. And the Gulf states offered their investments for free, with no conditions on Gaza. Gaza is a moral imperative, not a strategic one, and Trump is not known for acting on moral grounds.”

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump met Wednesday with Syria’s new leader, praising him as a “young, attractive guy” and urging him to rid his country of “Palestinian terrorists.”

Trump also urged Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to sign onto the historic Abraham Accords brokered during Trump’s first term.

The meeting in Riyadh came as Trump concluded the Saudi Arabian leg of his Middle Eastern trip and headed to Qatar, the second destination of what has so far been an opulence-heavy tour of the region.

The meeting with Al-Sharaa, which lasted roughly half an hour and was the first time in a quarter of a century that the leaders of the two nations have met, marks a significant victory for Al-Sharaa’s fledgling government, coming one day after Trump’s decision to lift long-standing sanctions from the war-ravaged country.

It also lends legitimacy to a leader whose past as an Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi leader — Al-Sharaa severed ties with the group in 2016 — had made Western nations keep him at arm’s length.

The sanctions were imposed on Syria in 2011, when the now-deposed President Bashar Assad began a brutal crackdown to quell anti-government uprisings.

Al-Sharaa headed an Islamist rebel coalition that toppled Assad in December, but the Trump administration and other Western governments conditioned the lifting of sanctions on his government fulfilling certain conditions.

Yet as is his custom, Trump cut through protocol and relied on personal relations, lifting the sanctions at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a long-time supporter of Syria’s rebellion, who joined the meeting via phone.

Speaking on Air Force One en route to Qatar, Trump described Al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

“He’s got a real shot at holding it together,” Trump added. “I spoke with President Erdogan, who is very friendly with him. He feels he’s got a shot of doing a good job. It’s a torn-up country.”

According to a readout shared by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X, Trump urged Al-Sharaa to sign onto the Abraham Accords, tell “foreign terrorists” to leave Syria and deport “Palestinian terrorists,” help the U.S. in preventing Islamic State’s resurgence and assume responsibility for detention centers in northeast Syria housing thousands of people affiliated with Islamic State.

The Abraham Accords were the centerpiece of Trump’s foreign policy achievements in his first term. Brokered in 2020, they established diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — without conditioning them on Palestinian statehood or Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Under Assad, Syria maintained a decades-old truce with Israel, despite hosting several Palestinian factions and allowing Iran and affiliated groups to operate in the country.

Syrians celebrated throughout the night after US President Donald Trump announced he would lift US sanctions on Syria during his visit to Saudi Arabia. Imran Khan breaks down what this means for the Syrian people.