World News

Two violent Israeli settlers on whom sanctions were imposed by the UK government this week have joined a campaign to drive Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank village of Mughayyir al-Deir.

Neria Ben Pazi’s organisation, Neria’s Farm, had sanctions imposed by London on Tuesday, as the UK suspended negotiations on a new free-trade deal with Israel over its refusal to allow aid into Gaza and cabinet ministers’ calls to “purify Gaza” by expelling Palestinians.

Senate Republicans are vowing they will make changes to President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after it passed the House early Thursday morning.

While the end product is likely to contain sweeping areas of overlap with the proposal negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson, GOP senators made clear Thursday that the House bill can’t pass without major changes. Some of the member demands are contradictory, with some fiscal hawks demanding beefed-up spending reductions while others want softening of the House’s Medicaid language and to preserve more green-energy incentives.

“A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement,” Yair Golan, a left-wing opposition voice and the former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, said in a charged interview with local radio station Reshet Bet.

Comparing Israel's actions to those of South Africa during the decades of apartheid, Golan, the leader of the small Democrats party and a longtime critic of Netanyahu, added, “The Jewish people, who have endured persecution, pogroms, and genocides throughout our history ... are the ones now taking actions that are utterly unconscionable.”

Hundreds of tiles have fallen from the roof of a centuries old tower in China's Anhui province, smashing to the ground near visitors to the site.

Eyewitness footage showed sections of the roof collapsing, narrowly missing a number of people.

As a crowd waved Lithuanian, German and Ukrainian flags, Friedrich Merz and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, attended a ceremony launching the official formation of an armoured brigade aimed at protecting Nato’s eastern flank.

PARIS — Academics and representatives from France’s Muslim community are denouncing a leaked government report on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country and across Europe.

The report, commissioned the French government last year, alleges that the Egypt-based Islamist organization is attempting to influence policymakers as part of the group’s long-held goal of establishing a state governed by Islamic law.

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The Brazilian government believes it has sufficient room to increase import tariffs instead of resorting to more aggressive measures like quotas, should a wave of industrialized goods from China flood the local market. The risk of such a redirection to Brazil has grown in the wake of the global tariff escalation set off by U.S. President Donald Trump.

[...]

Since the beginning of the trade tensions, Brazil has been closely monitoring any potential uptick in the flow of Chinese-made goods to its domestic market, in an effort to “separate the wheat from the chaff.”

“It’s crucial that we base our actions on clear data: to determine whether there is indeed a flood of products or not,” said a Brazilian government official, who noted that so far, no significant increase has been observed.

[...]

If Chinese products do end up being rerouted to Brazil in large volumes, authorities see an increase in import duties as a more straightforward tool to deploy. The government source emphasized that there is legal leeway under both World Trade Organization (WTO) and Mercosur rules to implement such measures.

[...]

The Kuibyshevsky District Court in St. Petersburg found the Podpisniye Izdaniya bookstore guilty of violating Russia’s harsh anti-LGBT laws for selling works by authors such as Susan Sontag and Olivia Laing, media reports said.

The writers’ works explore themes related to identity and sexuality.

Accepting the plane, Pence said in an interview with Meet the Press, “is inconsistent with our security, with our intelligence needs. And my hope is the president reconsiders it.”

Satellite images, published in the New York Times, appear to show an expansion of military infrastructure near the Finnish border, including rows of tents, military vehicles, renovations to fighter jet shelters and construction on a previously unused helicopter base.

Nurmi said: “They are changing structures and we are seeing moderate preparations when it comes to building infrastructure close to our borders, meaning that they will, once the war in Ukraine hopefully ends, start to bring back the forces that have been fighting in Ukraine, especially land forces.”