World News

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) – Rising inflation and a 30% jump in oil prices are dampening global growth, but leaders of the world’s top economies are unlikely to blame U.S. President Donald Trump for the war-driven slowdown when they meet in France to discuss the economy on Wednesday.

G7 leaders, already bruised by U.S. tariffs and conflicts over NATO and Greenland, have publicly criticized Trump’s decision not to consult them before the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran in late February, while they warned about the likely economic fallout.

The U.S. and Iran announced over the weekend that they had reached an agreement to stop the fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz, sending a jolt of optimism through global markets.

But the war’s impact on the global economy is already apparent: It has sent energy prices up sharply, renewed inflationary pressures and sparked concerns about a major food supply crisis in developing countries. Central bankers have tightened policy, with the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan raising interest rates in the last week to ward off a steeper inflation hit.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he is “fed up” with the conflict’s impact on energy bills and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned of the war’s economic and social consequences. Rising prices have also dented approval ratings for Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

But leaders have largely set aside arguments about the war’s economic impact during this week’s G7 gathering, given a desire to avoid a clash with Trump, whose cooperation they need on issues ranging from Ukraine and NATO to trade.

The result, analysts say, is that the G7 — born of the oil shock of 1973 to help manage economic crises — is now ducking the world’s top economic challenge, potentially eroding its own relevance.

“U.S. policymaking has been hurting world economic activity,” said Marcelo Estevao, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance.

“You have a country with the largest economy undermining what could have been a G7 agenda of collaboration,” he said, adding that the G7 leaders need to shore up the G7’s relevance at a time when emerging market economies — which are not part of the grouping — account for a bigger share of the global economy.

A FRICTION-FREE AGENDA?

France, keen as this year’s G7 president to avert conflict, preemptively nixed any push to issue a broad, final statement, or communique, and is focused instead on declarations on narrower issues such as global imbalances, critical mineral supply chains and shifting development aid to more investment-driven programs.

But the odds of a showdown have diminished given the interim deal clinched by U.S. and Iranian officials just before Trump left for France.

Economists say the deal spells good news for the global economy, but warn of huge risks if the deal falls through and the conflict intensifies. They add that getting trade flows back to normal will also take months, if not longer, while fuel sector analysts and maritime experts say it could take a year for bunker fuel supplies to return to normal.

International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva, who joined G7 leaders in France, shared a more upbeat view in a blog post on Monday after the deal was reached, rowing back her dire warnings from two months ago. She said the world economy was holding up so far, with no signs yet of a global slowdown despite significant impacts across various regions.

The IMF, whose largest shareholder is the U.S., will release an updated global forecast on July 8. Georgieva’s post, which came days after a gloomier forecast by the World Bank, suggested the IMF may settle on the least bad of three scenarios, one of which assumed a short-lived Iran war and projected growth of 3.1% in 2026, down from 3.4% in 2025. Its worst case showed growth slumping to just 2%, with inflation hitting 5.8%.

U.S. officials have noted that oil prices are off their peaks and the U.S. as a fuel exporter was shielded from worse price spikes, arguing that the war’s impact on the world economy should be mitigated quickly once the strait reopens. The U.S. believes that even Europe, a fuel importer, is likely to avert looming fuel shortages, according to sources familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking.

DOUBTS ABOUT THE G7’S RELEVANCE

The G7 — whose members include the major European economies plus the U.S., Canada and Japan — faces questions about its relevance as developing economies such as India, Brazil and China have grown.

The economic group now accounts for just 44.1% of global GDP, down from 60.5% when it started, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Still, participants say the G7 remains useful when crises arise, such as the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

“The G7 has always been able, if needed, to come up with some real decisions that still govern half the world economy,” said Martin Muehleisen, a former IMF strategy chief who took part in past summits, including some with Trump.

European leaders would be cautious during highly scripted proceedings, but fireworks were still possible during individual meetings and meals, he said.

Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a development group, said economic issues remained a top priority despite the peace deal and lower fuel prices. “The economy is in deep turmoil and you don’t have to be in a developing country to see it. You can just go to a grocery store and feel it,” he said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Maria Martinez in Evian-les-Bains; Editing by Don Durfee and Edmund Klamann)

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EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France, June 17 (Reuters) – The leaders of the G7 countries said on Wednesday they stand united to support Ukraine, including its territorial integrity, and agreed to increase the pressure on the Russian war economy.

“In this context, we will strengthen our sanctions (against Russia), including those on the oil and gas sectors,” the leaders said in a joint statement.

Separately, the leaders, who are meeting for a summit in the French town of Evian-les-Bains, have also welcomed the deal between the United States and Iran and said they are ready to contribute to its implementation.

They added they will make efforts to diversify energy supply routes and reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and increase energy stocks.

(Reporting by Michel Rose and Inti Landauro; Editing by Makini Brice)

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — At the start of this decade, Latin America was hurtling to the left. Progressives, seizing on public outrage over entrenched inequities exacerbated by the pandemic, swept to power in many of the region’s biggest economies, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

A political backlash is brewing, though. Although homicide rates have broadly declined across Latin America compared to a decade ago, spikes in some countries and a regionwide rise in other crimes, particularly extortion, have created the conditions for conservative populists to score votes by promising strong-arm tactics against crime and immigration.

Stump speeches casting migrants as criminals and pitching heavy-handed security strategies popularized by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, have won conservative candidates U.S. President Donald Trump’s backing and fired up their disaffected electorates despite concerns that such tactics could encourage human rights abuses or threaten democracy.

“You have an emergent right wing that is very much in collaboration across the region and with the U.S. through the MAGA movement, which has also used crime as a rallying cry for political mobilization,” said Enrique Roig, vice president of the nonprofit Human Rights First and a former State Department official. “It’s easier to sell locking people up than it is to deal with the reasons why mainly young men join gangs in countries like El Salvador.”

Although populist politics across the political spectrum have done well, only the right has offered short-term security solutions that will make voters “feel safer in six months” even if they have to “sacrifice democracy and human rights,” said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America organization.

Proposals offered by the left, such as community violence prevention programs, better police training, and judicial and prison reforms, take more time to bear fruit, he said.

“It’s absolutely what you’re supposed to be doing, but people’s patience runs out,” Isacson said of long-term proposals. “So, there come the Bukeles of the world saying, ‘You want to feel better? We got this.’”

In Colombia, where swaths of the countryside have fallen into renewed conflict, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has topped polls ahead of Sunday’s runoff election as he takes his cues from Bukele.

In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, Keiko Fujimori rocketed to a June 7 presidential runoff on a law-and-order platform, vowing to deploy the military in prisons and along borders as she leans on the authoritarian legacy of her disgraced late father, former President Alberto Fujimori.

Costa Ricans, rattled by record levels of drug-related killings, elected conservative populist Laura Fernández in February for her tough-on-crime platform. Honduran businessman Nasry Asfura swept December’s election after Trump endorsed him as a partner in the fight against “narco-communists.”

Latin America and the Caribbean last year saw their combined average homicide rate drop by more than 5% compared to 2024, with the median rate reaching about 17.6 per 100,000 people, according to InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas.

But there are a few key exceptions. Drug-fueled killings have increased in Peru and Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producers, as well as in neighboring Ecuador, whose major ports traffickers see as a gateway to European markets.

Last year, authorities tallied 2,400 homicides in Peru and 14,780 in Colombia, which were the most in each country since at least 2020. Killings rose a remarkable 31% in Ecuador year-on-year, to 9,216.

Gangs are blamed for much of the violence that began soaring in Ecuador during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans expanded their operations and hired locals, who set off a deadly fight over drug-trafficking routes. Their territorial disputes include prisons, where hundreds of inmates have been killed since 2021.

Ecuadorian authorities also recorded more than 16,100 cases of extortion last year, which was down from 23,000 in 2024, though experts say it’s an underreported crime.

Four years ago, Chilean voters rejected ultra-conservative lawmaker José Antonio Kast in favor of ex-President Gabriel Boric, a young, tattooed former student protest leader seeking to address Chile’s endemic social inequities. Last year, though, fears over rising crime — and its frequent association in media with the country’s growing population of Venezuelan immigrants — played into Kast’s hands, returning him to power.

As Venezuelan crime syndicates like the Tren de Aragua gang seized on their country’s mass migration wave to infiltrate human trafficking networks following the pandemic, Chile, long one of Latin America’s safest countries, witnessed an unprecedented explosion of carjackings, kidnappings and shoot-outs.

Chile’s homicide rate rose by 30%, to a peak of 6.7 per 100,000 people from 2021 to 2022, according to the Interior Ministry. It has since dropped but has stayed above pre-2021 levels. Other types of violent crime are still rising, including kidnappings, which have increased by nearly 180% over the past four years.

Drawing inspiration from Bukele, whose mega-prisons in El Salvador he toured while campaigning, Kast handily beat his Communist opponent in December with pledges to build a massive border wall, toughen prison conditions for gang members and deport hundreds of thousands of migrants without legal status. For his promises of safety, voters shrugged off Kast’s opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage rights and his defense of Augusto Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship.

In Peru, despite the contentious legacy of the convicted Alberto Fujimori, his daughter’s candidacy has taken advantage of a surge in violent crime four years after she lost the election to schoolteacher Pedro Castillo.

Campaigning under the slogan “Peru with Order,” Keiko Fujimori won the largest vote share in April’s first round of voting. Results of the June 7 runoff still show her in a technical tie with the political heir of the imprisoned Castillo, nationalist Roberto Sánchez.

Experts say the public’s appetite for tough tactics — historically associated with the region’s right-wing 20th-century dictatorships — has grown alongside its shrinking confidence in state institutions and its deepening ambivalence about democracy.

“The thinking is often, ‘democracy hasn’t been able to keep me and my family safe, so maybe democracy is part of the problem,’” said Eduardo Moncada, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University.

That poses a major challenge to the Latin American left, which in many countries has presided over sluggish economies, grappled with corruption scandals and failed to fulfill promises of social reform in recent years.

Even progressives such as Jeannette Jara in Chile and Sánchez in Peru have shifted with the political tide. Uruguay’s president, Yamandú Orsi, called Bukele’s model an example worthy of further study. The center-left Guatemalan government declared a state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed the Trump administration’s help targeting drug traffickers.

Recently elected politicians’ hard-line ambitions, though, have collided with the practicalities of governing complex and cash-strapped democracies like Ecuador and Chile. They are nothing like tiny El Salvador, where Bukele’s party holds a legislative supermajority.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s promises in his 2023 campaign included locking up gang leaders on barges and building mega-prisons. He abandoned the floating prisons proposal after taking office, and it took his government until November to open the first mega-prison.

“Building mega-prisons hasn’t been that easy or that straightforward because the country is in a very bad state financially and because President Daniel Noboa still sees himself as a democrat,” said Beatriz García Nice, policy analyst for the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank.

Nearly three months into Kast’s tenure, pollsters say a skeptical public can’t tell the difference between his security crackdown and that of his left-wing predecessor. His government has organized only two deportation flights after promising to immediately round up and expel Chile’s more than 300,000 immigrants without legal status. A different, more sheepish tone has crept into his speeches. Last month, he came under fire for calling the mass deportation promise “a metaphor.”

Even as he pitched new security measures in a June 1 address, including banning those convicted of attacking police from receiving social benefits, he tried to whittle down his supporters’ outsize expectations.

“Governing, as many of you know, means taking responsibility for reality, especially when it’s difficult,” he said. “I’m proceeding step by step because this isn’t something that happens overnight.”

___

DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) – Shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, U.S. President Donald Trump laid out a host of objectives, from destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities to ensuring Tehran can never have a nuclear weapon.

More than three months later, with a preliminary peace deal in place, what has Trump achieved?

MISSILES AND DRONES

Before the war, Iran held the largest ballistic stockpile in the Middle East, with between 2,500 and 6,000 missiles of different types. Some were capable of reaching Israel, with ranges of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), and some carried cluster munition warheads that are harder to defend against. 

Iran is also a major manufacturer of long-range drones – in particular, the one-way Shahed drone that has been used by Russia against Ukraine, as well as by Tehran.

Roughly one month into the war, U.S. sources told Reuters that one-third of that arsenal was destroyed, with another third likely damaged, destroyed or buried.

U.S. Admiral Brad Cooper told Congress on May 14 that Iran’s ability to build and stockpile missiles and long-range drones had been set back by years. He said more than 1,500 missiles and 6,000 drones had been intercepted by the U.S. and its allies during the conflict.

It is unclear how many missiles Iran has left, but the country still has the ability to reach U.S. allies –  most recently on June 6, when it launched salvos at Kuwait and Bahrain, and June 7, when it fired missiles at Israel. Those countries said the attacks did no significant damage. 

CONVENTIONAL MILITARY

The U.S. military says it has degraded Iran’s conventional military ability to project power in the region or threaten U.S. operations.

Cooper told Congress that the U.S. military had destroyed 161 Iranian naval ships and knocked out 82% of its air defense systems. He said the Iranian air force, which flew up to 100 sorties daily before the war, now does not fly any missions at all.

Despite this, Iran was still able to effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz through the duration of the conflict, bottling up merchant ships that transport one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supply through the use of speedboats, mines, drones and missile boats. 

NUCLEAR PROGRAM

Trump has repeatedly said that his main goal is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Tehran has consistently said it has no intention of building a bomb and its program is for peaceful purposes.

But the war has not significantly changed Iran’s nuclear capability. U.S. intelligence last month estimated that Iran would need less than a year to produce a nuclear weapon – the same timeline it laid out following the June 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran’s nuclear program will be a central issue for negotiators once the framework deal is formally signed on Friday. Trump has said Iran’s enriched uranium must be taken out of the country, while Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei says it must not be sent abroad, sources say.

IRANIAN PROXIES

Trump said on March 2 at the White House that Tehran cannot be allowed to continue to arm and fund the armed proxy groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen that Iran has relied on for decades to project power and harass enemies.

Iran has shown no willingness to halt its support for those groups since the start of the war, but U.S. military and independent assessments have found that Iran’s proxy network is much less effective than it used to be. 

Much of this was underway before the war began. Israel killed many of Hamas’ top leaders and thousands of its fighters in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attack on its territory and killed many of the Hezbollah militia’s leadership in Lebanon as well. Iran also lost an important conduit for resupplying Hezbollah with the collapse of former President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria in 2024. Sanctions and Iran’s economic woes also undercut its ability to fund these groups.

The groups have not played a major role in the war. Hamas has not attacked Israel from its Gaza enclave, while the Houthis have not significantly disrupted Red Sea shipping from Yemen.

Hezbollah joined the war on March 2 when it launched missiles and drones into Israel, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes and a ground invasion that have killed nearly 3,700 people and displaced 1.2 million in Lebanon. Some 28 Israeli soldiers and four civilians have died in the conflict so far.

Cooper told Congress in May that Iran no longer has the ability to reliably supply those groups with advanced weapons, though he did not specify what that meant. 

REGIME CHANGE

Trump encouraged Iranian protesters to overthrow their rulers before the war began and said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death on February 28 was their “single greatest chance” to seize the government. On March 6, he said the war would only end with “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” from Iran, paired with a new, “acceptable” leader.

Though the war has failed to dislodge Iran’s theocratic government, Trump has claimed that he has accomplished his goal because Khamenei has been replaced by his son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Trump characterized the new leadership as “a new, and more reasonable, regime” on March 29.

Trump in recent weeks has refrained from repeating his calls for the toppling of Iranian leaders.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Don Durfee and Nia Williams)

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CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) — Their red jerseys stood out against the green pitch. Most were teenage girls. Some had fled war. Others had never played in an organized soccer league or set foot in a major stadium before.

Yet when they took the field at Larbi Zaouli Stadium in Casablanca, Morocco, they marked Sudan’s first appearance in international women’s soccer since a civil war erupted in a country where women’s participation in sports has long been controversial.

“My goal is to lift up soccer in my country,” Nura Mohamed, the 17-year-old team captain, told The Associated Press.

“It’s a beautiful, unique feeling because, at the end of the day, I just love playing.”

Sudan’s under-17 women’s national team traveled to Morocco last week for qualifying matches on the road to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The inexperienced squad suffered heavy defeats against Comoros, conceding 30 goals in two matches. Many of the players broke down in tears after the final whistle in front of a dozen cheering fans.

They faced an older, fitter, and more experienced opponent. Unable to assemble a senior women’s squad in time, Sudan’s soccer federation entered a younger team to avoid forfeiting its place in the qualifiers. They only started training weeks ago.

“The difference between us and the others is huge. We cannot yet compete at the highest level,” Burhan Tia, a veteran Sudanese soccer coach who oversees all of Sudan’s women’s national teams, said after the first match, a 17–0 defeat.

“Comoros has many players competing in Europe, our team is mainly made up of schoolgirls.”

Sudan’s women’s soccer collapsed when civil war erupted in 2023. For federation officials, debuting this young squad in Casablanca after years of conflict marks an important step in keeping women’s soccer alive in Sudan.

“Some traveled long distances just to attend training. Many are separated from their families, yet they continue to work hard and pursue their dream,” Manal Ali Bushra, a businesswoman who heads the women’s soccer committee, told the AP.

To support that vision, Ali Bushra said the federation is working on infrastructure projects, including a planned sports city and the renovation of key stadiums in safer parts of the country. She declined to answer questions about the women’s program budget and funds.

Tia knew the magnitude of the challenge when he accepted the job of rebuilding a shattered team.

“First, I had to find girls who played soccer. Then, once I found girls who played, I had to make sure they were the right age,” he said. “Then I needed to convince their parents to let them miss classes for training.”

With the league suspended, his scouting trips took him to schools across Sudan and to neighboring Egypt, where many families had fled the war. He recruited 10 players from teams and academies in Cairo, with the rest drawn from Sudanese cities.

Tia would have liked to recruit from conflict-hit areas like Darfur or Kordofan, a region known for producing Sudan’s top athletes. But many girls had lost their identification documents, making it impossible to verify their ages under international regulations. The war has also shattered transportation, turning journeys between cities that once took hours into perilous trips lasting days.

On the field, the players’ lack of experience was evident. Several struggled with basic positioning, failing to hold the offside line or maintain tactical discipline. Throughout the matches, they repeatedly looked to the sidelines for instructions from the coach and his assistant.

The United Nations has described the war in Sudan as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It began in 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into fighting marked by mass killings, rape and ethnic violence. More than 40,000 people have been killed, according to U.N. figures, and over 14 million have been displaced, with famine and disease spreading across parts of the country.

The war halted every sports activity, including the women’s soccer league, which was officially established after the 2019 progressive revolution that ousted President Omar al-Bashir. His three-decade Islamist rule was marked by Public Order Laws that rights groups said restricted women’s freedoms. Even after the revolution, prominent Sudanese preacher Abdulhay Yousif said the establishment of a women’s football league was aimed at undermining religion.

“The idea of women running, jumping, sweating, and even something as simple as their bodies being visible in motion, was seen by Bashir’s Islamist regime as producing fitna, which in a Sudanese context was understood as sexual or moral chaos,” Liv Tønnessen, a political scientist researching gender politics in Sudan, told the AP.

“So when women step onto a soccer pitch, they are directly confronting that entire logic. They are not just present in a male-dominated sports arena, they are moving freely in it, on their own terms,” Tønnessen, a former guest researcher in a women-only university in Sudan, added.

Beyond institutional hurdles, players also faced a wave of sexist abuse online. On the national team’s social media accounts, many commenters mocked them for big defeats. Others posted the phrase “go back to the kitchen,” in multiple languages.

While Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s military government has allowed international soccer trips for teenage girls, the U.N. has documented sexual and gender-based violence by the Sudanese Armed Forces, which he commands.

Tønnessen sees the state backing as a calculated effort by the military to project legitimacy. By sponsoring the team, she said, the army attempts to signal that the state is functioning normally and to align itself with the spirit of the 2019 revolution.

Hala Al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese women’s rights activist, dismissed critics who say the team is being used to portray a more progressive image on women’s rights.

“The main challenge for me is a reform of the federation,” she told the AP, citing a lack of investment in and support for women’s soccer in Sudan.

Back on the field in Casablanca, the politics, war and debate faded away, leaving only a group of teenagers chasing a ball.

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By Renju Jose

SYDNEY, June 17 (Reuters) – Australia cannot be a multicultural society and immigration policies have put the country in crisis, Pauline Hanson said on Wednesday, as the right-wing leader enjoys a surge in support for her One Nation party.

Hanson, whose policies have drawn comparisons to those of U.S. President Donald Trump, blamed the centre-left Labor government for “this immigration catastrophe”, saying a recent influx of migrants had pushed up house prices, making it unaffordable for families.

“Undeniably, immigration or migration policy has our country in the state of crisis. At the centre of this crisis is the utterly flawed policy of multiculturalism,” Hanson told the National Press Club in Canberra, in one of the veteran lawmaker’s highest-profile speeches to date.

“We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society. But we must be monocultural,” she said, adding that she was gravely concerned about “radical Islam”.

Almost one-third of Australia’s 28 million population was born overseas, according to the Bureau of Statistics, double the proportion of the United States or France.

Hanson refused to start her speech with a customary acknowledgment of Australia’s Indigenous communities, a practice she called “divisive”.

A banner highlighting Hanson’s opposition to pay rises for workers was unfurled behind her as she was speaking and was quickly removed by organisers, while protesters gathered outside.

One Nation, which wants to emulate President Trump’s aggressive deportations in the U.S., proposes mandatory visa cancellation for criminal offenders, withdrawal from the U.N. Refugee Convention, tighter visa rules and a longer wait for Australian citizenship.

An opinion poll conducted for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Monday showed Hanson had overtaken Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as Australians’ first choice for the top role.

Founded in 1997, the party was long seen as fringe but Hanson’s headline-grabbing comments and hard line on immigration have drawn more support, recent polls show.

Australian media have also compared One Nation’s rise with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK amid gains for right-wing parties globally. One Nation has polled ahead of both Labor and the conservative coalition opposition in some recent surveys, a sharp shift in a system long dominated by the two major parties.

Despite the gains, Australia’s preferential voting still favours Labor, and some data suggest it would likely retain power if an election were held now. Under the system, votes are distributed until a winner is declared.

One Nation currently holds only one lower house seat, which it secured in a May by-election in the rural New South Wales seat of Farrer, defeating a conservative Liberal Party candidate in a historical stronghold for the coalition. The party has four of the 76 seats in the upper house Senate.    

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Alasdair Pal and Lincoln Feast.)

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Knesset House Committee Advances Immunity for Likud Lawmaker Tally Gotliv in Shin Bet Disclosure Case

The Knesset House Committee on Monday recommended granting procedural immunity to Likud lawmaker Tally Gotliv, giving the coalition a first victory in its effort to keep a criminal case against her out of court. The 11 to 3 vote does not settle the matter. The recommendation must still go to the full Knesset, where lawmakers will decide whether Gotliv should be protected from prosecution over allegations that she revealed classified information connected to a serving Shin Bet employee, a case that has become a wider fight over parliamentary privilege, security secrecy, and the attorney general’s authority.   

The case has drawn attention not only because of the allegation itself, but because of what it exposes about the limits of parliamentary immunity in Israel. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara approved an indictment against Gotliv in May over the alleged disclosure and publication of confidential information under the Shin Bet law. According to the indictment, the material published by Gotliv identified the partner of anti-government protest figure Shikma Bressler as a Shin Bet employee and linked him to claims surrounding the October 7 attacks. Israeli security officials have rejected those claims, and prosecutors argue that the publication was not a passing remark made in the heat of parliamentary debate, but a repeated and deliberate act.   

Gotliv has framed the case very differently. She has argued that she acted as an elected lawmaker engaged in a public fight over what she describes as unanswered questions from October 7 and the conduct of state institutions. Her request for immunity relies on the claim that her actions were connected to her role as a member of Knesset, and that a criminal proceeding against her would harm her ability to represent her voters. That position has turned the hearing into a test case for the coalition’s wider argument that lawmakers must be able to confront legal and security bodies without fear of prosecution.   

The legal framework, however, is narrower than the political debate around it. The immunity route available to Gotliv is limited. Israeli law allows a lawmaker who has received a draft indictment from the attorney general to ask the Knesset to block the case from being filed while the current parliament remains in office. It is a procedural protection, not a determination that the allegations are unfounded.   

Substantive immunity is broader in another sense, because it applies to acts or statements made in the course of parliamentary work and can survive the end of a lawmaker’s term. The question before the Knesset now is whether Gotliv’s case falls within those protections, or whether the indictment should proceed to court.   

A legal memorandum prepared for committee members emphasized that immunity hearings are quasi-judicial proceedings. Committee members are expected to hear both the lawmaker requesting immunity and the attorney general, consider the legal grounds set out in the statute, and decide on the merits rather than along ordinary party lines. In practice, Monday’s vote followed a sharply political pattern. Coalition lawmakers backed Gotliv, while opposition members voted against granting immunity.   

Critics of the committee decision argue that the case goes beyond political speech. The Shin Bet employee’s lawyer and the Movement for Quality Government both urged the committee to reject Gotliv’s request, arguing that the alleged publications were planned, repeated, and outside the natural risks of parliamentary activity.   

For opponents of the move, the concern is that the Knesset would set a precedent whereby political backing can stop a security-related indictment before it reaches a judge. The next vote will take place in the plenum, where the coalition must decide whether to complete the immunity process or leave Gotliv to contest the indictment in court.   

If the Knesset approves immunity, the indictment will not proceed during the current Knesset’s term unless circumstances change. If the plenum rejects it, the attorney general will be able to file the indictment in court, and Gotliv will face the case as a criminal defendant rather than only as a lawmaker fighting a political battle.   

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LONDON (AP) — The British military is investigating reports that a Russian warship fired warning shots at a U.K.-registered yacht in the English Channel on Tuesday.

The Defense Ministry said it was investigating an “incident” after the yacht said it was fired on by a Russian navy vessel about 500 yards (460 meters) away. It happened about 20 miles (about 30 kilometers) south of the Isle of Wight, outside U.K. territorial waters.

There were no reports of injuries or damage to the yacht.

The Russian government did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

British media reported that the Russian vessel is the frigate Admiral Grigorovich. Russian warships passing through the English Channel are routinely shadowed by the Royal Navy, and patrol vessel HMS Mersey was monitoring the Russian ship at the time of the reported incident.

The incident occurred two days after British commandos boarded and detained a sanctioned tanker in the Channel that is suspected of being part of the Russian “shadow fleet.” Officials are not linking the two events.

The tanker’s captain, an Indian national charged with shipping Russian oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, was ordered held in jail after appearing Tuesday in court.

The British military has had several close encounters with Russian vessels in the region and warned Moscow in November that it was ready to deal with any incursion into its territory after the spy ship Yantar was detected on the edge of U.K. waters north of Scotland.

In April, Britain and Norway said they had tracked a Russian attack sub and two spy submarines operating north of the U.K. for several weeks.

A Royal Navy frigate, aircraft and hundreds of personnel spent weeks following the Russian vessels and prevented them from carrying out “nefarious” activities against underwater infrastructure, then-Defense Secretary John Healey said.

He accused Moscow of using the distraction of the Iran war to ramp up malign activity against Europe.

Five years ago, Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the Black Sea to force the British destroyer HMS Defender out of an area near Crimea that Moscow claimed as its territorial waters.

The U.K. denied that account and insisted its ship wasn’t fired upon. It was the first time since the Cold War that Moscow acknowledged using live ammunition to deter a NATO warship, reflecting the growing risk of military incidents amid soaring tensions between Russia and the West. The incident occurred about six months before Russia invaded Ukraine.

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PARIS (AP) — For weeks, a black mountain loomed over the Seine where Paris’ oldest bridge should have been. On Monday evening, its doors finally opened.

Inside, Paris smells different. The air carries the scent of earth after rain — damp ancient stone, cellar walls, perhaps a trace of smoke.

Visitors step from the bright riverfront into a dark passage lined with glowing photographs of caves, as a low electronic pulse seems to breathe through the walls.

Beneath it all, the old cobblestones of the Pont Neuf rise and fall underfoot.

The Pont Neuf Cavern, a monumental installation by French street artist JR — also known as the French Banksy — is free to enter around the clock through June 28.

Made largely from printed fabric and air, it transforms the 17th-century bridge into an artificial cavern rising 18 meters (59 feet) above the Seine.

“It feels like the city has disappeared,” said Léa Martin, a 22-year-old art student from Lyon on Tuesday. “You know the river is right outside, but for a moment you’re somewhere ancient.”

The smell is central to the illusion.

Olfactory expert Sarah Bouasse created two shifting scents: drawing on geosmin and isoborneol, compounds associated with the aroma released when rain strikes dry earth.

It changes along the crossing: first wet earth and mineral dampness, then something warmer, smokier and faintly animal.

“Usually I cross here without looking up once,” said Michel Dupré, a 67-year-old retiree, blinking as he emerged into daylight. “Today I felt the stones under my feet. And smelled them too. It makes you walk like a child again.”

A sound installation by Thomas Bangalter, formerly of the French electronic duo Daft Punk, accompanies the work, filling the cavern with low rumbles, echoes and pulses.

Completed in 1607, the Pont Neuf — despite its name, “New Bridge” — is the oldest bridge still standing in Paris.

JR’s installation asks people to experience the familiar crossing through their noses, ears and feet.

It also pays tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose 1985 wrapping of the bridge in pale golden fabric drew an estimated 3 million visitors.

Their work covered the Pont Neuf in light.

JR sends visitors into darkness.

“You enter into the darkness,” he has said, “and emerge into the light on the other side.”

Visitors can also raise their phones to activate an augmented-reality experience developed with tech company Snap.

Digital bats trail light through the cave, passing bodies leave ghostly traces and a dancer materializes in space.

JR has linked the work to Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which prisoners mistake shadows for reality. Today’s cave walls, he argues, are screens and the algorithms that shape what people see. Yet the installation’s strongest effects require no phone.

“It’s completely strange,” said Nadia Benali, 34, smiling beside the artificial cliffs. “Paris needs things that make people stop.”

When the cave closes, its fabric will be reused or recycled.

The mountain will vanish, traffic will return and the Pont Neuf — older than the French Revolution — will emerge into the light once more.

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DAKAR, June 16 (Reuters) – Equatorial Guinea’s government resigned on Tuesday after failing to meet its objectives, the West African oil-producing country’s Vice President Teodoro Obiang Mangue said.

• President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mbasogo appointed Manuel Osa Nsue Nsua as prime minister in 2024.

• The president’s son and the country’s vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, said on X that the prime minister had presented the resignation of all members of the government because it had barely reached 10% of its targets.

• He didn’t specify which targets the government was expected to achieve.

• A statement from the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) said that during its time in power the government had implemented various initiatives in areas such as public administration, infrastructure, public services, and economic development.

• “The government’s collective resignation is part of the institutional reorganization processes that are periodically carried out in the country with the aim of adapting the government structure to the state’s new priorities,” the party said in its statement on Facebook.

• President Obiang has been in power in Equatorial Guinea since 1979, making him the world’s longest-serving president.

(Reporting by Clement Bonnerot and Anait MiridzhanianEditing by Gareth Jones)

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