slams

Kabila, accused of ‘treason’ and ‘war crimes’, denies government accusations of links to M23 rebel group.

Joseph Kabila, former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has attacked the country’s justice system after the Senate voted to lift his immunity, paving the way for him to be prosecuted for alleged treason and war crimes.

Kabila gave a livestreamed speech from an undisclosed location on Friday, a day after losing his immunity over alleged links to the M23 rebel group, saying that the justice system was “an instrument of oppression for a dictatorship desperately trying to survive”.

The 53-year-old, who denies supporting the Rwanda-backed rebels who have seized two major cities in the country’s conflict-battered east, has been in self-imposed exile since 2023.

The former president, who has repeatedly said he was returning from exile to help find a solution to the crisis, accused Kinshasa of taking “arbitrary decisions with disconcerting levity”.

Congo’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to grant the government’s request to lift the lifetime immunity Kabila – leader of the country from 2001 to 2019 – had enjoyed because of his honorific title as “senator for life”.

Justice Minister Constant Mutamba said Kabila’s alleged crimes included “treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity and participation in an insurrectional movement” in the country’s east.

On Friday, Kabila said the DRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were non-negotiable. “As a soldier, I swore to defend my country to the supreme sacrifice … I remain more faithful than ever to this oath,” he said.

Kabila’s return to the DRC could complicate the bid to end the rebellion in the east, which contains vast supplies of critical minerals that United States President Donald Trump’s administration is eager to access.

Washington is pushing for a peace agreement to be signed between the DRC and Rwanda this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, according to Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, cited by news agency Reuters.

At least 52 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as pressure mounts on Tel Aviv to allow significant humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave to avert a looming famine.

Israeli air strikes and tank fire continued to pound the besieged territory on Wednesday. Among those killed were at least eight people in Gaza City, two people in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp and two people in the Maghazi camp in central Gaza, according to Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza.

The attacks come after Israel began allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need.

Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, said no trucks were picked up from the Gaza side of Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis, in southern Gaza.

Israel announced that 93 aid trucks had entered Gaza from Israel following an 11-week blockade.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum explained that most of those trucks had only received military clearance to enter the Palestinian side of the crossing.

“They are still stuck at the border crossing. Only five trucks have made it in,” Abu Azzoum said, adding, “This could be another sign of the systematic obstruction of aid in Gaza.”

Aid groups have said that the amount of aid that Israel is allowing is not nearly enough, calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts a “smokescreen to pretend the siege is over”.

“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while, in fact, keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, the emergency coordinator in Khan Younis for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF.

The Israeli military body that oversees humanitarian aid to Gaza said trucks were entering Gaza on Wednesday morning, but it was unclear if that aid would be able to continue deeper into Gaza for distribution.

A few dozen Israeli activists opposed to Israel’s decision to allow aid into Gaza while Hamas still holds Israeli captives attempted to block the trucks carrying the aid on Wednesday morning, but were kept back by Israeli police.

Israel is facing growing international pressure over its renewed offensive on Gaza.

The United Kingdom has suspended talks with Israel on a free trade deal, and the European Union said it will review a pact on political and economic ties over the “catastrophic situation” in Gaza. Britain, France and Canada have threatened “concrete actions” if Israel continues its offensive.

Pope Leo on Wednesday also appealed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

“I renew my fervent appeal to allow for the entry of fair humanitarian help and to bring to an end the hostilities, the devastating price of which is paid by children, the elderly and the sick,” the pope said during his weekly general audience in Saint Peter’s Square.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged world leaders to take immediate action to end Israel’s siege on Gaza, issuing the appeal in a written statement during a visit to Beirut, where he is expected to discuss the disarmament of Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s refugee camps.

“I call on world leaders to take urgent and decisive measures to break the siege on our people in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said, demanding the immediate entry of aid, an end to the Israeli offensive, the release of detainees and a full withdrawal from Gaza.

“It is time to end the war of extermination against the Palestinian people. I reiterate that we will not leave, and we will remain here on the land of our homeland, Palestine,” Abbas said.

Since the war began in October 2023 following the Hamas attack that killed 1,139 people in southern Israel, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 53,573 people and wounded 121,688 others.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed the Israeli government for expanding its war on Gaza, calling comments made by its government as ‘repellent’ and ‘monstrous’. The UK also said it was pausing free trade negotiations with Israel.

Negotiations between Washington and Tehran looking shaky as Iran resists US negotiator Witkoff’s ‘red line’.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has derided demands from the United States that it halt nuclear enrichment as negotiations between the two countries hang in the balance.

“Saying things like ‘We will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is nonsense. No one [in Iran] is waiting for others’ permission,” said Khamenei in a speech reported by the country’s semi-official Mehr News Agency on Tuesday.

He added that he did not know whether talks would “bring results”.

Since mid-April, Washington and Tehran have held four rounds of Omani-mediated talks aimed at getting Iran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

However, repeated clashes between the pair have thrown the next round of negotiations, which the news agency Reuters said were expected to take place in Rome at the weekend, into doubt.

US President Donald Trump ditched the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by Iran and world powers during his last term in office. Intent on striking a new deal since his return to power in January, he has revived his “maximum pressure” approach against Iran, warning last week that talks needed to “move quickly or something bad is going to happen”.

Tehran confirmed on Tuesday that it has received and is reviewing a US proposal, but Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi had said the previous day that talks would fail if Washington insisted that Tehran refrained from domestic enrichment of uranium, which the US says is a possible pathway to developing nuclear bombs.

Iran currently enriches uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67-percent limit set in the 2015 deal but below the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead. It has repeatedly insisted its programme is for peaceful purposes and is “non-negotiable”.

However, US negotiator Steve Witkoff has dubbed the continuation of the programme a “red line”. On Sunday, he reiterated that the US “cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that a deal ensuring Iran would not have nuclear weapons was “within reach”.

However, he underlined, Iran would continue enriching uranium “with or without a deal”.

In addressing the talks regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, our U.S. interlocutors are naturally free to publicly state whatever they deem fit to ward off Special Interest groups; malign actors which set the agendas of at least previous Administrations.

Iran can only…

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) May 18, 2025

President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

Beyoncé, Springsteen and the other stars singled out by Trump each touted their support for Harris during various stops on her campaign trail. The “Alien Superstar” singer backed Harris when the candidate stopped by the pop star’s home state of Texas in late October. The Boss campaigned for Harris in Georgia that same week.

Trump shared his first post, which also accused Harris of artificially beefing up “her sparse crowds” and criticized “these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’” Sunday at around 10:30 p.m. Clearly, he could not shake off his gripes after a night’s rest because on Monday morning, he doubled down.

Monday at 6:11 a.m., Trump further slammed Beyoncé, citing unidentified “news reports” that alleged the Grammy winner was paid $11 million to endorse his opponent: “AN ILLEGAL ELECTION SCAM AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.” A representative for Beyoncé did not immediately respond on Monday to The Times’ request for comment.

He said the stars he named, “AND, PERHAPS, MANY OTHERS, HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO!!!”

Trump — who has the backing of musicians including Kid Rock and Billy Ray Cyrus — last week also aimed at Taylor Swift, suggesting in a Truth Social post on Friday that the “Cruel Summer” singer’s popularity has declined since he declared “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in September 2024. Swift publicly endorsed Harris for president.

The president railed against the music stars after his four-day visit to the Middle East. . When he returned to Washington on Friday, Trump also shared his opinions on “Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen,” who criticized the “incompetent and treasonous administration” during a May 14 concert in Manchester, England. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” he added.

The “Born in the USA” rocker fired back at Trump on Saturday. “In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said.

A transcript of Springsteen’s full monologue, an introduction to “My City of Ruins,” can be found on his website.

The Ibiza resident posted a video of unruly passengers aboard an easyJet flight from Luton to the Spanish island which ended with police meeting the plane on the runway

A woman has laid into English tourists after she was stuck on a flight to Ibiza with unruly passengers.

Posting online, the Ibiza resident shared footage of the boisterous Brits online, insisting that they shouldn’t have been allowed on the easyJet plane in the first place.

In a no-holds-barred message alongside a video of the packed plane where passengers could be seen banging on luggage compartments above them and yelling ‘Come on Ibiza’, the Spanish speaker said: “My flight from London to Ibiza was absolutely horrible. I was scared.”

She added that people were “standing, screaming, guys hitting each other, drinking bottles of alcohol one after the other and stopping the flight attendants from doing their job. Real hell. This video is just the end because I couldn’t film what happened during the journey.

READ MORE: Spanish seaside city with ‘five-star’ attractions is one of the best for a holiday

“It was a really wild 2.5 hour flight. This shouldn’t be allowed.” Erika said that those who had drunk too much alcohol should not be allowed on flights.

“We don’t want this type of tourism in Ibiza, they should stay at home. I had a very bad time and the flight attendants unable to do anything,” she added.

The woman added in comments to a local Ibizan newspaper that she had complained to the flight attendants: “I’m not afraid of flying because I’ve flown around the world but I had a panic attack because it was like being in a pub, in a nightclub, but in the air,” she continued.

She claimed the two male air stewards and an air stewardess on board had asked some passengers for their documentation, but were met with shouts of ‘f** off.’

A spokesperson for easyJet said: “We can confirm that flight EZY2307 from Luton to Ibiza on 16 May was met by police on arrival due to a group of passengers behaving in a disruptive manner. The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet’s priority. Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate disruptive behaviour onboard.”

The footage was posted on Saturday, a day before thousands of people marched in the Canary Islands’ cities as part of a new anti-mass tourism protest. Locals in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, are due to stage their protest on June 15.

Over the weekend, fed-up locals made their frustrations clear in the Canary Islands as peak tourism season nears, with an estimated 7,000 people marching through the streets and promenades in Santa Cruz, the capital of Tenerife, alone. The massive protests have been echoed on each of the territory’s six other islands, including Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, with organisers saying the sun-kissed Spanish islands, which are extremely popular, especially with British tourists, “have a limit”.

There have been long-running tensions in holiday destinations across Spain due to the pressure large numbers of tourists put on local resources and property prices.

AN EASYJET passenger was left petrified after a group of rowdy “drunk” Brits turned her Ibiza flight into a “nightclub”.

Furious Spaniard Erika Barrachina claimed she suffered a “panic attack” after the mid-air raucous where she had to cope with “scum” passengers.

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The Ibiza resident blasted that these type of tourists should never have been allowed to board the plane in the first place.

Shocking footage showed a packed plane with passengers appearing to bang on luggage compartments and yell: “Come on Ibiza!”

Multiple travellers appeared to be waving their arms and legs around while sat during the loud journey.

And some who seemingly found the whole situation hilarious decided to record the noisy chanting.

The Spanish local said that her “flight from London to Ibiza was absolutely horrible“.

The passenger said she was “scared” while travelling on the jet “full of real English animals”.

“Everyone standing, screaming, guys hitting each other, drinking bottles of alcohol one after the other and stopping the flight attendants from doing their job,” she added.

The appalled passenger called her experience: “Real hell.”

She said of the footage which she managed to record: “This video is the just the end because I couldn’t film what happened during the journey.”

Barrachina also claimed that Brit passengers were drunk and high before boarding.

She continued: “Taking pills and drinking alcohol at the same time, which I saw with my own eyes.

“It was a really wild 2.5 hour flight.”

The Spanish passenger raged: “This shouldn’t be allowed. They shouldn’t let scum like this get on a plane or sell alcohol on board.

“We don’t want this type of tourism in Ibiza, they should stay at home.”

She branded the uncontrollable Brits “wild animals”.

The Ibiza resident also told a local Ibizan newspaper: “I’m not afraid of flying because I’ve flown around the world but I had a panic attack because it was like being in a pub, in a nightclub, but in the air.”

She claimed that multiple air stewards asked some of the passengers for their documentation, only to be told: “F**k off.”

The “wild” passengers were let off the plane after reaching Ibiza airport and identifying themselves.

EasyJet told The Sun: “We can confirm that flight EZY2307 from Luton to Ibiza on May 16 was met by police on arrival due to a group of passengers behaving in a disruptive manner.

“The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet’s priority.

“Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate disruptive behaviour onboard.”

Barrachina posted the footage on Saturday – one day before thousands of people marched in Canary Islands capitals as part of a new anti-mass tourism protest.

Locals in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, are due to stage their protest on June 15.