Israel deported two activists on Sunday after being detained near Greece for slightly over a week for leading an aid flotilla attempting to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The two, Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian citizen Thiago Ávila, were among dozens of activists intercepted by the Israeli navy off the coast of Crete. Both are members of the Global Sumud Flotilla’s steering committee, whose mission is to break Israel’s naval...

Tired of petrol shortages and skyrocketing prices, Simón Huanca took matters into his own hands. The 53-year-old Indigenous artisan imported a Chinese electric car to navigate El Alto, Bolivia’s highest city, using the vehicle to transport both his family and the alpaca wool for his weaving workshop. He also installed a dedicated charger in his own garage, mainly for convenience, but also because there are only three public charging stations serving the vast metropolitan area of El Alto and...

A Qatari natural gas tanker crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday for the first time since the start of the Iran war, heading for Pakistan, while Washington continued to wait for Tehran’s response to its latest proposals to begin peace talks. After some 48 hours of relative calm following sporadic clashes last week that have shaken a month-old ceasefire, Kuwait detected several hostile drones in its airspace early on Sunday, authorities said. But ‌the QatarEnergy-operated carrier Al Kharaitiyat...

More than 100 people aboard a cruise ship that departed from Fort Lauderdale in Florida last month have fallen ill from norovirus, according to the US Centres for Disease Control. The Caribbean Princess, a Princess Cruises ship, departed from Port Everglades on April 28 for an 11-day voyage, according to Cruise Mapper. But on Thursday, the CDC announced that 102 passengers and 13 crew members were sick and had been isolated. There are more than 4,000 people on board, according to the CDC. The...

Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began flying home from Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday in a complex repatriation operation. Three passengers from the MV Hondius – a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman – have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in...

Foreign affairs are not a series of disconnected episodes. They are a test of whether nations learn from history and act with foresight. The United States has often failed that test. It forgets that unchecked aggression leads to wider wars and that removing governments without building new authority invites chaos. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s destabilising role in the Middle East and the collapse of Libya and Afghanistan all testify to what happens when those lessons are ignored. China,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, remarks that came just hours after he had vowed victory in Ukraine at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. “I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. He also said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe ‌and that his preferred negotiating partner...

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, reeling from a crushing local election defeat, faced a new setback to his leadership on Saturday when a former minister said she would challenge him for the top job if no one else stepped forward. Starmer’s Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his ‌own lawmakers to call on him to quit. To try to shore up his position in the party earlier on Saturday, he named two influential...

UK health authorities are gearing up to receive about 24 people from a virus-hit cruise ship, who will be isolated in a hospital once used for Covid-19 patients, NHS officials said Saturday. They are currently on board the Dutch ship, the MV Hondius, due to anchor off Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday. Most of the nearly 150 people on board will be evacuated and flown home to their home countries after weeks at sea, in a carefully prepared repatriation effort. Among them are about 24 British...

A person who jumped a fence and was on a runway at Denver International Airport was struck and killed by a Frontier Airlines plane during take-off, airport authorities said. The collision sparked an engine fire and forced passengers to evacuate. The plane, en route from Denver to Los Angeles International Airport, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff at DEN at approximately 11:19 p.m. on Friday”, according to a post on the airport’s official social media account. A spokesman for the...

Hungary’s Peter Magyar took his oath of office on Saturday to become the country’s new prime minister, ending Viktor Orban’s 16 years of autocratic rule. Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party defeated Orban’s nationalist-populist Fidesz in a stunning blow last month, gaining more votes and seats in Parliament than any other party in Hungary’s post-Communist history. The win, which gave Tisza a two-thirds parliamentary majority, will allow it to roll back many of the policies that gave Orban a...

⁠The US and Iran appeared no closer on Saturday to finding an end to their war after the two sides traded fire in the Gulf amid a tenuous ceasefire, while a US intelligence analysis concluded Tehran could withstand a naval blockade for months. Recent days have seen the biggest flare-ups in fighting in and around the Strait of Hormuz since a ceasefire began a month ago, and the United Arab Emirates came under renewed ‌attack on Friday. Washington has been awaiting Tehran’s response to a US...