Alan Dershowitz announced on Monday that he is leaving the Democratic Party after 67 years and registering as a Republican. The 87-year-old Harvard Law professor emeritus, who served on Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 defense team and helped negotiate the non-prosecution deal that kept Epstein out of federal court, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the switch was driven by the Democratic Party’s supposed hostility to Israel.

The party he is joining is the one currently withholding and redacting the Epstein files. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by President Trump on November 19, 2025, gave the Justice Department thirty days to release the full investigative record. That deadline was missed, and roughly 3.5 million pages have since been released, most heavily redacted, and an estimated 2.5 million pages remain unreleased. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has told Congress the Department is withholding attorney-client communications among other categories. Dershowitz was Epstein’s attorney, some of the withheld material is his, which may be a better explanation for his political party shift, especially as there is no evidence the Democrats are “anti-Israel” as he claims.

The reason Dershowitz gave for the switch does not line up with reality at all. The Senate vote he referenced, held on April 15, was not an arms embargo, it was a pair of resolutions introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders to block two specific sales to Israel: $295 million in military bulldozers and $151.8 million in 1,000-pound aerial bombs. Both failed, 40–59 and 36–63. Every Republican in the chamber voted to send the weapons. Neither party has introduced a general arms embargo. Both continue to fund Israel’s military at more than $3.3 billion a year through the State Department alone.

Beyond the votes in question, the idea of any “anti-Israel” party in the USA is an impossible one to allow to fester. Most outlets have repeated Dershowitz's assertion about the party he has just left, but the reality on the ground is that more than half of all U.S. senators take money from the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC, which continues to deliver millions in donations to Democratic lawmakers, not just Republicans. Senator Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democratic Party is one such recipient, taking over 6 million in donations from the Israeli lobbyists, and entirely dispelling the notion that the party he leads is against the genocidal state in some form.

There is absolutely no truth to the ideas presented by Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, so we must question what his real reasons are, the truth in which quite possibly lie in redacted files sat on by Trump’s FBI.

Israel and Lebanon have officially signed a ceasefire deal, which will last 10 days, however, this deal had already been agreed over a week ago. On April 7, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a US-Iran ceasefire he had brokered in Islamabad. He said it covered every front of the war, including Lebanon. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed Iran had agreed on that basis, Tehran had already made a Lebanon ceasefire a precondition of any deal with Washington. The removal of Lebanon from the agreement led to the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed until earlier today, Friday 17 April.

Pakistani and Iranian officials had announced the ceasefire, with a clear mention of Lebanon, a point that the USA did not immediately deny. Within hours, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the ceasefire did not include Lebanon. Suddenly, the USA voiced their denial, as Trump backed him the next day, on camera: “Yeah, they were not included in the deal. Because of Hezbollah. They were not included in the deal. That’ll get taken care of too.” Israel had granted the USA authority to negotiate for them during the talks, so there should have been no confusion about any terms agreed, but walking back on a deal is remarkably normal for Israel in the 2020s.

What Netanyahu and Trump stated publicly about Lebanon, Iran publicly called a lie. In events like this, we see why ceasefire agreements have mediators, someone to turn to when the opposing sides cannot agree on a point. Pakistan, as the mediator, oversaw the signing of the deal and confirmed Lebanon was a part of it.

Israel launched “Operation Eternal Darkness” the day the ceasefire was to go into effect, an operation that was the largest wave of airstrikes of the war, by Israel’s own admission, targeting command and control in southern Lebanon, Beirut, and the Beqaa Valley. At least 357 people were killed and more than 1,200 injured. In Beirut alone, 92 were killed and 742 wounded. Russia, China, and the EU-5 issued condemnations of the attack. Pakistan’s defence minister called Israel “evil” on the record, which is very strong language from a mediator of a ceasefire, perhaps understandable as his country oversaw a promise to end bombardment within the previous 24 hours.

Over the next week, Israeli strikes on Lebanese towns continued daily. Five IDF divisions remained deployed south. Villages near the border were detonated and filmed. On April 16, hours before the “new” ceasefire was announced, Israel bombed the last working bridge to southern Lebanon, infrastructure with no military function that mattered, but which made return for one million displaced Lebanese effectively impossible. Their ethnic cleansing campaign was assured before they would allow the bombs to stop falling.

Then, at midnight Beirut time, Trump announced a ten-day truce between Israel and Lebanon.

Read the terms carefully, this is not a new deal. It is substantially the agreement Sharif and Araghchi said was in force on April 7, with one material subtraction: Israeli troops do not withdraw. Israeli troops will remain in the territory that they have seized during their campaign. Israeli leaders have already stated that the country plans on annexing this territory, statements that have been largely ignored in English-speaking outlets.

Netanyahu announced that Israel will hold an “expanded security zone” in southern Lebanon, an enlargement, not a reduction, of the occupied area. “This is where we are located, we are not leaving,” he said. Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon put it more plainly still: “We are not going anywhere. We are holding our positions.” The IDF instructed residents of southern Lebanon not to cross north of the Litani, civilians forbidden from moving on their own land by the occupying force. Even if they do find a way to return, many of their villages have been entirely destroyed.

A ceasefire originally framed as ending hostilities has been re-announced, eight days later, as a pause that codifies and expands the occupation it was once supposed to end. Hezbollah have paused their fighting for the second time in 10 days, having first held to the ceasefire agreement announced on April 7, until Israeli bullets and bombs continued to target Lebanon, triggering a return to fighting from the group.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the IDF has been preparing plans to continue ground operations in Lebanon even after the Iran war ends. The ten-day window is not a step toward withdrawal. It is a pause Israel has reserved the right to break, as it did on April 7, within hours, and as it has done after every Lebanon ceasefire.

The question a reader should leave with is not whether the April 16 ceasefire will hold. It is what was purchased with the eight days between April 7 and April 16.

Those eight days bought Israel Operation Eternal Darkness. They bought at least 357 Lebanese lives. They bought the destruction of the last bridge south. They bought the permanence of their ethnic cleansing campaign. They bought an “expanded security zone” inside Lebanese territory that Israel has openly announced it will not leave. They bought the collapse of the Islamabad talks, the US naval blockade of Iran, and a ten-day pause on a war every party to it expects to resume.

What they did not buy was a new agreement. The agreement was already on the table on April 7. It is no accident that the new deal ends on the same day as the April 7 agreement, that deal simply got in the way of a mass murder campaign they already had set in stone.

Today saw a tragic school shooting in Türkiye, the second in two days, this time killing 4 people and leaving 20 others injured. The unprecedented event has left a country reeling, while elsewhere, the U.S. ruling regime has ramped up their feud with the Pope, as the Vice President of the country joined in attacking the head of the Catholic church, despite the VP himself identifying as a Catholic. Italy has finally responded to Israeli attacks on UNIFIL peacekeepers by suspending their defence agreement with Israel, becoming just the latest European nation to cut some of their ties with the genocidal state. Meanwhile, in the USA, Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that may lead to a removal of the authoritarian Donald Trump using the 25th amendment.

Turkey rocked by two school shootings in two days

An 18-year-old former student opened fire at a vocational high school in Siverek, Şanlıurfa province in southeastern Turkey on Tuesday, wounding 16 people, 10 students, four teachers, a canteen employee and a police officer, before cornered by police and killing himself with the same shotgun. The motive remains unclear. The attacker had no criminal record. Five of the wounded were transferred to a hospital in the provincial capital due to the seriousness of their injuries.

School shootings are rare in Turkey, which makes two in consecutive days a significant shock. A second shooting occurred Wednesday in Maraş. Investigations are ongoing in both cases. No connection between the two incidents has been established.

Italy suspends defence agreement with Israel as European allies break ranks

Giorgia Meloni announced Tuesday that Italy has suspended the automatic renewal of its defence cooperation agreement with Israel, a significant break from a government that has been among Israel’s closest allies in Europe and one of Trump’s most reliable interlocutors on the continent. The agreement, signed in 2003 and renewed automatically every five years, covers military equipment exchange, arms import and export, joint research, and training of military personnel.

The decision followed two incidents in quick succession. On April 8, Israeli forces fired warning shots at a convoy of Italian UNIFIL peacekeepers travelling from Shama to Beirut, damaging at least one vehicle, which led to the government in Rome summoning Israel’s ambassador. On April 13, Israel summoned Italy’s ambassador in return, after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani visited Beirut and condemned what he called “unacceptable attacks” on Lebanese civilians. Italy has 754 troops in UNIFIL, the second-largest contingent after Indonesia, three of whose peacekeepers were killed by Israeli fire in late March.

JD Vance joins Trump’s feud with the Pope

The Trump-Pope Leo feud has entered a second day of escalation, with Vice President JD Vance now taking a position arguably more aggressive than his boss. Speaking Monday on Fox News, Vance told the Pope to “stick to matters of morality” and leave American public policy to the president. On Tuesday, at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia, he went further: “It’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.” He invoked just war theory, asking: “Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?”

Leo holds a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He served as Prior General of the Order of St Augustine for more than a decade. He is the first Augustinian pope in history. The just war tradition Vance invoked was developed in significant part by thinkers within the very order Leo once led.

Trump deleted an AI-generated image depicting himself with apparent divine healing powers after widespread condemnation from Christians, including members of his own coalition. He told reporters it depicted him “as a doctor” and had “to do with the Red Cross.” He refused to apologise to Leo. Bishop Robert Barron, a member of Trump’s own Religious Liberty Commission, posted that “the president owes the Pope an apology,” while Cardinal Tobin said Leo “will continue to speak clearly against war and other offences against human dignity.” Trump won 55% of the Catholic vote in 2024.

IAEA: North Korea is rapidly expanding nuclear weapons production

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told reporters in Seoul on Wednesday that North Korea has made a “very serious increase” in its ability to produce nuclear weapons. Grossi confirmed a rapid rise in operations at Yongbyon’s five-megawatt reactor, its reprocessing unit, its light water reactor, and other facilities. The IAEA has also identified what appears to be a new uranium enrichment facility — a likely addition to the existing site at Yongbyon and the separate Kangson complex near Pyongyang. Satellite imagery from April, analysed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, indicated completion of a suspected plant capable of producing weapons-grade material.

The day before Grossi’s statement, Kim Jong Un oversaw tests of strategic cruise missiles and anti-warship missiles launched from a naval destroyer, and was briefed on two more destroyers under construction. He reiterated that nuclear deterrence remained the “most important priority task.” North Korea’s ninth party congress is expected in the coming weeks, where Kim has said he will “clarify the next-stage plans for further bolstering up the country’s nuclear war deterrent.”

The IAEA announcement lands in a week when the Iran nuclear question has consumed global diplomatic bandwidth.

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon shows no signs of ending

Israel’s campaign in southern Lebanon is not being characterised as ethnic cleansing despite that fact being stated in explicit terms by Israeli officials. Defence Minister Israel Katz declared that Shiite residents who have evacuated “will not return to their homes south of the Litani area.” Finance Minister Smotrich has threatened to apply the “Rafah and Khan Younis model” to Lebanon. Israeli military officials have privately pressed Christian and Druze communities in southern Lebanon to force out Shiite Muslim residents sheltering among them — a plan the New York Times reported and human rights groups immediately identified as ethnic cleansing.

Mass evacuation orders covering roughly one-fifth of Lebanese territory, systematic destruction of Shiite towns, and an explicit statement from the defence minister that displaced people will not be allowed to return. Under international humanitarian law, displacement is only lawful if temporary and imperative for military reasons, and people must be allowed to return when hostilities end. Israeli officials have stated publicly that return will not be permitted. HRW also documented that the same pattern was applied in Gaza, and in the West Bank, where Operation Iron Wall in early 2025 displaced 32,000 Palestinians from three refugee camps, the largest displacement since 1967, who remain barred from returning.

Israel’s finance and defence ministers have separately called for annexing southern Lebanon. Israel has cut all main roads into Bint Jbeil, struck the city with airstrikes, artillery, and white phosphorus, and maintains a ground invasion. Since March 2, over 2,055 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 252 women and 165 children. More than one million people have been displaced, roughly one in five of the population.

Democrats introduce 25th Amendment bill as Trump jokes about it himself

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin introduced legislation Tuesday to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, backed by 50 Democratic co-sponsors. The commission would consist of 17 members, including physicians, psychiatrists, and former statespersons, and would be authorised to determine whether the president is unable to discharge the duties of office. Congress has never actually established this body in the 59 years since the amendment was ratified.

Raskin cited a cascade of recent events: Trump’s “a whole civilization will die tonight” post, the AI Jesus image, the public attack on the Pope, the Iran blockade announcement without congressional authorisation, and the conduct of the war. “Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations,” he said. More than 85 House and Senate Democrats had already called for impeachment or the 25th Amendment in the days before the bill was filed.

The bill will not pass. Republicans control Congress, Trump could veto it, and removal under Section 4 would require Vance and a Cabinet majority to sign off — then two-thirds of both chambers to sustain it against a presidential challenge. The bar is higher than impeachment. What Democrats are doing is political: building a record, keeping the question of Trump’s fitness in circulation, and putting the onus on the Cabinet publicly. Trump himself made the joke at a March Cabinet meeting: “I can’t say what we’re going to do because if I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here for long. They’d probably institute the 25th Amendment.”

The attacker, identified as a 16-year-old former student, reportedly fired into the air outside the school before entering the building and continuing to shoot. He died by suicide at the scene.

Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced an investigation and imposed a broadcast ban on images from the scene.

The attack came less than 24 hours after a shooting at a vocational high school in Siverek, Şanlıurfa province on Tuesday morning. An 18-year-old former student opened fire with a shotgun, wounding 16 people, including ten students, four teachers, a canteen worker, and a police officer, before killing himself as police cornered him inside the building. Governor Hasan Sildak said the attacker had no criminal record and described the incident as an “isolated event.”

No motive has been confirmed in either case.

Both attacks unfolded rapidly, with students seen fleeing and in some instances jumping from windows at the Siverek school. Emergency services transferred the most seriously injured to hospitals in provincial capitals in both incidents.

Turkish officials and educators have faced immediate scrutiny over school security protocols. The Siverek governor acknowledged that no permanent police officer had been assigned to protect the school prior to the attack.

Turkish authorities have not publicly suggested any connection between the two shootings.

A federal judge has dismissed President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a disgusting birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

US District Judge Darrin P. Gayles ruled that Trump failed to plausibly allege the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper acted with “actual malice” when it reported the story. The dismissal came without prejudice, Trump’s legal team now has until April 27 to file an amended complaint addressing the judge’s concerns.

In order to proceed, Gayles wrote, Trump must adequately allege that the Journal knowingly published false information or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The original complaint instead relied on “formulaic” claims about malice — coming “nowhere close” to the court’s standards.

The case stems from a July 2025 Journal investigation. Reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo described the contents of a book of compiled letters from Epstein’s friends for his 50th birthday in 2003, highlighting a letter allegedly from Trump which included a drawing of a naked woman and a “Donald” signature. Trump sued one day after publication, seeking not less than $10 billion on two counts of defamation.

In its motion to dismiss, the Journal argued the first reason the suit should be thrown out was simple: “the article is true.” Two weeks after publication, in response to a congressional subpoena, Epstein’s estate produced the birthday book, which contained the letter exactly as the Journal had reported.

The Journal also argued that even if Trump had written the letter, it wouldn’t constitute defamation. Its attorneys challenged the notion that the article could have damaged Trump’s reputation, noting that he had “publicly admitted to ‘locker room talk’ and has made numerous bawdy public statements,” as well as to his relationship with Epstein.

The ruling arrives amid a broader pattern of Trump legal action against major media. The WSJ’s motion to dismiss came days after a federal judge tossed Trump’s $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times, calling it “tedious and burdensome” and saying that a complaint is not “a protected platform to rage against an adversary.”

The WSJ case had also taken a personal dimension, with Trump publicly accusing Murdoch of failing to stop the story’s publication despite a direct warning. Trump posted that Murdoch “stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so.” The court had assigned the case to Judge Gayles, the same judge who presided over Trump’s prior breach-of-contract suit against his former lawyer Michael Cohen, which Trump dropped shortly after Gayles scheduled a deposition requiring Trump to answer questions under oath.

This morning, we wake up to rejoice to a fallen autocrat in Hungary, where citizens have celebrated throughout the night and into the morning. The USA’s blockade of Iran looks set to begin, with no one able to explain how the move will help anything, Israel’s brutal attacks on Lebanon and Gaza have taken more victims, while the Pope and Donald Trump’s feud intensified as the U.S. president made some absolutely crazy accusations.

US blockade of Iranian ports to take effect

The United States Naval blockade of Iranian ports is set to come into force at 10am ET today, roughly around the time this piece is published, following the collapse of peace talks in Islamabad. US Central Command confirmed the blockade will target all vessel traffic entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas across the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite Trump's sweeping language, CENTCOM said vessels transiting the Strait to and from non-Iranian ports will not be impeded.

Iran’s army called the action piracy and warned that if the security of its ports is threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea will be safe.” Oil crossed $100 a barrel again this morning, up nearly 8%, as markets react to Trump’s escalation. The Wall Street Journal reported overnight, citing officials, that Trump is also weighing a resumption of limited military strikes on Iran, which would constitute a violation of the two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan less than a week ago.

Trump has promised a coalition of countries to help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, that coalition does not exist. On Fox Sunday, Trump claimed “the UK and a couple of other countries are sending minesweepers” and that NATO allies “now want to help with the strait.” However, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told BBC radio this morning: “We are not supporting the blockade. The UK is not getting dragged in.” British minesweepers and anti-drone systems already deployed to the region will continue operations, but will not participate in the blockade of Iranian ports. It is still unclear how adding an extra roadblock would help open the Strait to traffic, but Donald Trump is not known for leadership that makes sense.

Israel prepares to return to Iran attacks

The two-week US-Iran ceasefire, announced April 8, has never applied to Lebanon, that is the historical rewrite that Israel and the USA demand, despite Pakistan, the mediator, saying explicitly that it did. Netanyahu rejected the interpretation from the first hours of the agreement, and hours after the ceasefire was declared, Israel launched its largest single-day bombing campaign of the war on Lebanon, killing more than 350 people. That bombing has not stopped, with attacks this morning killing at least another 6 people.

Last night, a seemingly coordinated leak was sent to all Israeli news outlets, outlining that their army has made the preparations to return to fighting with Iran, following the collapse of the talks with the USA. This news comes despite the fact that Pakistan insist a new round of talks may be imminent.

Israel-Lebanon talks are scheduled at the US State Department next week, with the tentative promise of delivering the ceasefire already agreed in Islamabad. Israel has already ruled out any discussion of a ceasefire with Hezbollah, and they insist that even if peace is reached with Lebanon, attacks on “Hezbollah” targets would continue. Israeli attacks have almost exclusively targeted civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of entire towns and villages, the narrative of attacks on Hezbollah outposts doesn’t match with the reality seen on the ground.

Trump attacks Pope Leo, the Pope responds

In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump called Pope Leo XIV “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy,” told him to “stop catering to the Radical Left,” and claimed credit for his election, writing that “if I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn afterward, Trump said he is “not a fan” of Leo, adding: “He likes crime, I guess. He’s a very liberal person.” Trump claimed Leo “says it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon”, Pope Leo has said no such thing. He has been a consistent opponent of nuclear proliferation.

Leo responded this morning aboard the papal plane en route to Algeria, where he is beginning an eleven-day tour of Africa: “I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel. We are not politicians, we don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it. But I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.” Vatican official Fr Antonio Spadaro offered a sharper assessment on X: “Trump doesn’t debate Leo: he begs him to retreat into a language that he can dominate. The attack is a declaration of impotence. If Leo were irrelevant, he wouldn’t merit a word.”

Iran took advantage of the feud between the U.S. President and the leader of the Catholic Church, with their President Masoud Pezeshkian tweeting a condemnation of Trump’s attacks this morning. The Iranian President said such attacks were “not acceptable to any free person”.

Israeli strikes continue overnight in Lebanon and Gaza as death tolls mount

Israeli forces carried out further strikes across southern Lebanon and Gaza overnight as the regional death tolls continued to rise. Just yesterday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported 35 people killed and 152 wounded in Israeli strikes in the 24 hours to Sunday, bringing the Lebanese war death toll since March 2 to 2,055, including 252 women and 165 children. Strikes hit locations across southern Lebanon and continued in the Bint Jbeil area, where Israeli forces have cut all main access roads and are conducting a ground assault the IDF chief of staff has described as a state of war.

In Gaza, overnight Israeli strikes killed at least four people in central Gaza, with families gathering outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital to receive the bodies. Israel has now killed more than 738 Palestinians in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire, a ceasefire under which, according to documented Government Media Office figures, more than 2,073 violations have been recorded with no enforcement mechanism in place.

The strikes in both theatres occurred as US and allied attention remained fixed on the collapsed talks and the blockade announcement. No statement was issued by Washington on either overnight attack, which are also not mentioned in much of the English speaking media sphere.

Hungary celebrates an end to Orbán

Celebrations ran through the night in Budapest. Car horns, dancing, chants of “Europe” and “Russians go home” filled squares and metro stations into the early hours. The Chain Bridge was lit in Hungary’s national colours. Tisza won 138 seats a constitutional supermajority, enough to amend the constitution, dismantle Fidesz control over the judiciary, state enterprises and media, and restructure the institutions Orbán spent sixteen years capturing.

In his victory speech, Magyar declared: “Our victory may not be visible from the moon, but it is visible everywhere in Hungary”, a direct swipe at Orbán’s 2022 speech. He called on Hungary’s chief prosecutor, the head of the constitutional court, the head of the media authority and the country’s president to resign. “Those who betrayed the country must take responsibility,” he said. He has pledged to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, restore judicial independence, and end Hungary’s obstruction of EU decisions on Ukraine, including unblocking the frozen €90 billion loan.

It’s been a rather busy day in the world of geopolitics. We have seen the USA return to their illegal attacks on ships in the Pacific Ocean, a major political overturn in Hungary, a blockade of Iran has been announced, and more. The bulk of our highlights today are centred on the ongoing activities of the Israeli military, as their invasion of Lebanon and attacks on Palestinians continue to bring terror to all citizens that find themselves within reach of the military behind the genocide in Gaza.

Hungary’s Orbán defeated after 16 years

Viktor Orbán has conceded defeat in Hungary’s parliamentary election, ending 16 years as prime minister after opposition leader Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won a landslide victory. With just over half of precincts counted, Tisza stood at 52.49% against Fidesz’s 38.83%. Orbán called the result “painful” but “clear,” telling supporters he had congratulated the victorious party and would serve the Hungarian nation from opposition.

The result is a direct political embarrassment for the Trump regime. JD Vance visited Budapest days before polling to campaign alongside Orbán, attacking alleged interference from “Brussels bureaucrats,” while Trump promised to bring US “economic might” to Hungary if Fidesz won. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted that “Hungary has chosen Europe.”

US-Iran talks collapse in Islamabad; Trump orders Hormuz blockade

The United States and Iran failed to reach an agreement after 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan, the highest-level face-to-face meeting between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Trump responded on Truth Social by ordering the US Navy to immediately begin blockading ships entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz.

Some 230 loaded oil tankers were waiting inside the Gulf as of April 9, with shipments restricted by more than 90%. Russia and China blocked a UN Security Council resolution on April 7 aimed at protecting commercial shipping in the strait. It is unclear how the USA’s blockade will help reopen the Strait, and oil prices are surging right now as a result.

US military kills five in two Eastern Pacific strikes under Operation Southern Spear

The US military conducted two lethal strikes on separate vessels in the Eastern Pacific on April 11, killing five people, US Southern Command confirmed early Monday in a post on X accompanied by a video of the strikes. The first strike killed two and left one survivor, for whom the Coast Guard activated a search and rescue mission. The second killed three. Both vessels were described as “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations” on known trafficking routes. No evidence was provided, which has been the case with each such strike.

The strikes are the 48th and 49th confirmed attacks under “Operation Southern Spear”, bringing the campaign’s total death toll to at least 168 since September 2025. The regime has not publicly identified any of those killed across 49 strikes, nor produced evidence in any case that targeted vessels were carrying drugs. SOUTHCOM’s own commander, General Francis Donovan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in late March that “boat strikes aren’t the answer.” They have continued regardless.

Israeli forces ram UNIFIL vehicles with Merkava tank in southern Lebanon

Israeli forces rammed United Nations peacekeeping vehicles with a Merkava tank on two separate occasions near Bayada in southern Lebanon on Sunday, UNIFIL confirmed, causing significant damage in one incident. Israeli troops had also blocked a road used to access UNIFIL positions in the area. Over the previous week, warning shots had been fired at clearly marked UN vehicles, with one round landing approximately one metre from a peacekeeper who had exited his vehicle. UNIFIL called both incidents violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

The rammings follow a pattern of escalating interference. On April 11, the day before, Israeli soldiers spray-painted the windows of a pedestrian access gate at UNIFIL’s headquarters in southern Lebanon, obstructing visibility. Surveillance cameras at the Naqoura headquarters and other positions have also been destroyed by Israeli forces in recent days. Taken together, the incidents describe a deliberate campaign to degrade UNIFIL’s monitoring capacity rather than a series of isolated events.

The March record is more severe. On March 6, two Israeli missile strikes hit a UNIFIL battalion headquarters in Al-Qaouzah, injuring three Ghanaian peacekeepers, two critically. The IDF later admitted to the strike, attributing it to error. UNIFIL condemned it as “unacceptable,” noting that attacking peacekeepers performing Security Council-mandated tasks could amount to a war crime. In late March, three Indonesian peacekeepers were killed in two separate incidents; a UN investigation determined that one died when Israeli tank fire struck a UNIFIL position. UNIFIL peacekeepers have been fired upon approximately 20 times since the renewed fighting began in early March.

Six months into Gaza’s “ceasefire,” over 700 Palestinians have been killed

Six months after a ceasefire agreement was signed in October 2025, conditions in Gaza remain largely unchanged. Gaza’s Government Media Office has documented more than 2,073 ceasefire violations between October and March, resulting in over 700 Palestinian deaths, with no effective enforcement or monitoring mechanism in place and no guarantor capable of ensuring compliance on the ground.

Israel has not withdrawn to pre-war lines. It maintains effective control over roughly 50 to 55 percent of the Gaza Strip, including large areas of Rafah, Khan Younis, and northern Gaza, according to estimates based on military mapping and UN-linked analyses. The “Yellow Line” dividing Palestinian and Israeli-controlled zones is not a fixed border but a shifting buffer, unclear on the ground and dangerous for civilians attempting to return to homes or farmland. Israel attacked Gaza on 36 out of the past 40 days, according to Al Jazeera, despite the ceasefire. The Gaza Health Ministry reports more than 700 Palestinians killed since the agreement took effect.

Media scholars have noted that the Iran war has diverted global coverage from Gaza even as conditions on the ground remain unchanged. The Palestinian death toll from the original conflict now exceeds 72,000, with researchers estimating the true figure substantially higher when indirect deaths are accounted for.

Apple Maps removes Lebanese town names from southern Lebanon

Apple Maps has removed the names of towns and villages across Lebanon, retaining labels only for a small number of major cities including Beirut and Sidon. OpenStreetMap continues to display Lebanese localities normally, isolating the removal as an Apple-specific decision. The change comes as Israel conducts an active ground invasion of southern Lebanon in which villages are being destroyed and residents barred from returning. Apple does not maintain a public press contact, so we cannot request comment from the company.

Users and journalists observing the change note that towns in Israel and Syria remain clearly marked on the platform. Apple has not responded to requests for comment from others reporting the story, however, it is unclear whether any have a direct line of contact to the company. Whether the change reflects a deliberate policy decision, a technical error, or a request from a government is unknown at time of publication.

Viktor Orbán conceded defeat on Sunday night after what he called a “painful” but “clear” result, ending 16 years as Hungary’s prime minister following a parliamentary election that delivered a landslide to opposition leader Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.

With just over half of precincts counted, Tisza stood at 52.49 percent against Fidesz’s 38.83 percent. Tisza was projected to win more than 130 seats in the 199-seat parliament, ahead in 95 of Hungary’s 106 constituencies, putting it on course for the two-thirds supermajority that would allow Magyar’s government to begin unwinding Orbán’s constitutional rewrites.

Turnout reached its highest level since the end of Communist rule, a fact that underscored the depth of voter fatigue with Orbán. Magyar built his support base from disillusioned conservatives as well as traditional opposition voters, on the back of years of corruption allegations, economic strain, and deteriorating relations with the European Union.

Magyar, a 45-year-old former Fidesz insider, broke with the party in 2024 and quickly formed Tisza, campaigning relentlessly across Hungary on kitchen-table issues, the collapse of public healthcare, a failing transport network, and what he describes as systemic government corruption. In a victory speech to tens of thousands gathered along the Danube, Magyar told supporters that “tonight, truth prevailed over lies.”

The result carries consequences that reach well beyond Budapest.

Orbán had repeatedly blocked or delayed EU aid to Ukraine and opposed deeper military support, while maintaining warm ties with Vladimir Putin and refusing to end Hungary’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Recent revelations showed a senior government official regularly sharing the contents of EU deliberations with Moscow. His removal strips the Kremlin of its most reliable voice inside the bloc. It could also unblock a €90 billion EU loan to war-battered Ukraine that Orbán had vetoed.

For Trump’s MAGA movement, the loss is a symbolic blow. U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Budapest just days before the election to rally with Orbán, calling him “wise and smart” and saying his leadership “can provide a model to the Continent.” Trump personally called into a Fidesz campaign event and promised to deploy U.S. economic power to Hungary’s benefit if Orbán won. Neither intervention moved the vote.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded to the result by posting: “Europe’s heart is beating stronger in Hungary tonight.” Leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron offered congratulations to Magyar within hours of the result.

Magyar has said his first foreign visits as prime minister will be to Poland, Vienna, and Brussels. “Hungary has been in Europe for 1,000 years and is going to stay there,” he told the crowd Sunday night.

Orbán told his supporters he would serve Hungary “from opposition.” The scale of the defeat makes a return to power a distant prospect.

Apple Maps no longer displays the names of towns and villages across Lebanon. The removal is not limited to the area of the country facing Israeli invasion and attacks, it applies nationwide. Only a handful of larger cities remain labeled: Beirut, Tyre, Sidon, and a small number of others. Everywhere else, the map is blank.

Apple sources their maps in the area from TomTom, OpenStreetMap and others. OpenStreetMap and TomTom continue to label Lebanese towns and villages normally. This means that the removal of these place names happened after the information arrived in the hands of the U.S. tech giant. It is unclear why Apple removed these town names, and if there was a political motivation behind the decision, but we cannot request comment, as Apple does not maintain a public press contact.

The removal comes as Israel conducts an ongoing ground invasion of southern Lebanon, now in its second month. Israeli forces have been advancing along three axes, western, central, and eastern, with fighting concentrated around the south’s major towns and the coastal approaches to Tyre. Entire villages have been destroyed in the process. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has stated publicly that homes in border villages will be demolished and that more than 600,000 displaced Lebanese residents will not be permitted to return. Israel’s publicly stated objective is control of territory up to the Litani River, with several Israeli leaders highlighting that they will annex the region, amounting to more than a third of the country of Lebanon.

The scale of the humanitarian crisis is enormous, and promises to increase. Lebanese health authorities have recorded thousands of deaths since the escalation began in March, including hundreds in a single 10 minute window. Nearly one in five Lebanese citizens has been displaced.

Against that context, Apple’s decision to scrub Lebanese place names from its maps, while continuing to display Israeli and Syrian localities in the same region normally is highly suspicious, especially as the source of the data shows these names. The practical effect is a map that renders Lebanese geography largely nameless at a moment when the physical existence of Lebanese villages is itself in question.

The question of who made the decision, when, and on what basis has not been answered, Apple have not addressed this matter publicly, and at this time, we are unable to find or request an answer from the company.

This story will be updated as information becomes available.

On Tuesday, March 24, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that the Israeli military will occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litanci River. Israeli troops have been instructed to target houses and bridges, and while the president has warned that a repeat of the crimes committed in Gaza may be on the calendar for the genocidal army.

It was not the first time an Israeli official has clearly spelled out the intent to seize what amounts to nearly a tenth of Lebanon’s landmass, where there have been multiple Israeli demands to evacuate and make way for the Israeli military. The day before, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had also said it on Israeli radio: “The new Israeli border must be the Litani.”

Two senior cabinet ministers expressed a desire to take foreign territory in just two days, so we are forced to assume this is the policy going forward, and likely was the policy from the start.

They’re already taking Southern Lebanon

Lebanon’s south is being emptied. Since early March, the Israeli military has issued a series of forced displacement orders covering all of southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. The UN confirmed on Monday that more than 1.2 million people have been displaced, roughly one in five people across the entire country. Over 130,000 of them, including 46,000 children, are sheltering in more than 600 collective sites. Most are already at full capacity.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry puts the death toll at over 1,000 since the assault intensified at the start of the month. On Monday alone, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential apartment building in Beirut, killing at least three people, including a three-year-old girl.

The infrastructure enabling return is being systematically destroyed. Israel has ordered its military to demolish all crossings over the Litani River. Bridges that would take displaced people back to their towns and villages. Fuel stations and health centres have been hit. Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the ground described what she called a strategy to depopulate the entire southern region.

Senior Israeli officials have stated explicitly that this is the Gaza model. “We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” a senior Israeli official told Axios. Defence Minister Katz used the same comparison twice in a week. In Gaza, that model produced what the International Court of Justice has been asked to rule constitutes genocide. The genocidal military has already released footage of attacks that have flattened entire villages in Lebanon, showing their Gaza model is already being used.

International Law as absent as ever

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed in 2006 to end the last major Israel-Lebanon war, requires Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and places explicit limits on Hezbollah’s military presence south of the Litani. It is the cornerstone of whatever international legal architecture governs this border.

Israel is now tearing it up in public, and arguably, has never followed the resolution at all.

Katz’s announcement that the IDF will “control the remaining bridges and the security zone up to the Litani” and establish a “defensive buffer” is not consistent with Resolution 1701. It is the explicit repudiation of it. This is not a reading of the resolution that Israel can paper over with legal argument. The text requires withdrawal, Israel announcing permanent occupation is a direct refusal to follow the resolution.

The UN human rights chief has criticised Israel’s actions and threats in Lebanon. International law generally prohibits militaries from attacking civilian infrastructure. Multiple Security Council members have noted the violations, but we are not seeing any move to push Israel towards following the law, and if history tells us anything, we won’t see such a move before it is too late

So, who will stop this?

This is the question that dictates the future for millions of Lebanese citizens, and the honest answer requires going through every actor with theoretical leverage and assessing what they are actually doing, or what they are not doing.

The United States

The Trump administration has full situational awareness of Israeli intentions. According to reporting by Axios, US and Israeli officials confirmed the plan to seize the entire area south of the Litani River. The US response was to simply ask Israel not to bomb Beirut’s international airport, and refrain from targeting UN peacekeepers, both demands have been ignored at this point. The USA have not retracted support after Israel failed to keep to their demands, and therefore we can assume support is not dependent on those demands.

The US holds a veto on the UN Security Council, and it has used that veto consistently to block resolutions that would place binding constraints on Israeli military conduct. The USA will not stand up to prevent the annexation of Southern Lebanon, it is far more likely to enable the move.

The United Nations Security Council

The UN can’t step in, as a result of the aforementioned U.S. veto. In an ideal world, the UN would be able to simply operate on issues that a majority of members oppose, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson confirmed millions have been displaced, the UN human rights chief issued criticism of Israel’s actions and plans, and that’s about all we can expect to happen. The UN can only act with the support of others, and a silly old rule prevents that support if one of five countries declare a veto.

UNIFIL

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has been on the ground in the south since 1978. Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, has warned the Security Council since October that the safety and security of peacekeepers is “now increasingly in jeopardy,” with southern Lebanon now largely uninhabited and “increasingly uninhabitable.”

UNIFIL has no mandate to physically prevent Israeli military operations. It observes, reports, and is increasingly endangered by the very conflict it was sent to monitor. Israel fired on UNIFIL positions in the last round of fighting in 2024, and again just last week, and there’s little the peacekeepers can do to protect themselves, or the citizens in the area.

Lebanon

The Lebanese government has done everything that was asked of it. It banned Hezbollah’s military activities in March, they offered direct talks with Israel, President Joseph Aoun repeatedly condemned Israeli strikes as violations of sovereignty and international law. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described Hezbollah’s rocket fire as “irresponsible” and ordered arrests. None of it stopped the bombs, and nothing was enough for Israel, who legally has no say in the political arrangements in Lebanon.

Lebanon is now “counting on foreign powers to put enough pressure on Israel,” according to a Lebanese official cited by Reuters. That is not a strategy, it’s simply an acknowledgment of helplessness in the face of a military and diplomatic reality that has left Lebanon with no effective protection.

Europe

Spain has strongly condemned the Israeli attacks and called for full compliance with Resolution 1701. France and other nations have called for a halt to the war, while a number of other European governments have issued statements of concern.

No European state has imposed sanctions, no European state has suspended arms transfers, of those that were supplying Israel and no European state has recalled its ambassador. With declarations already stated publicly, and intentions known to anyone following the topic, we can assume the lack of action from European nations will only continue, should the move to annex go forward.

We’re used to this

This isn’t unprecedented, Israel occupied a strip of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, illegally occupying the area for 18 years before withdrawing under sustained guerrilla pressure from Hezbollah. The occupation was internationally condemned, but it did not end because of international law or diplomatic pressure, but because the military and political cost of staying became untenable.

The leadership in Israel is all too aware of this history, which is why they beg for the international community to help them remove the group from existence. The call for the Litani as Israel’s new northern border is not improvised, it’s a long term outcome to a long term plan. An editorial in the Jerusalem Post recently cited David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, identifying that river as a natural border for the Jewish state. These ideas have circulated in Israeli strategic culture for decades. What has changed is that the political conditions to act on them now exist.

The sad reality

Israel is operating inside a diplomatic architecture that was never designed to constrain a state with unconditional great power backing. The veto structure of the Security Council means that the one country capable of compelling Israeli compliance is also the country guaranteeing Israeli impunity, and currently, is walking in lockstep into the ongoing war crimes.

The depopulation of southern Lebanon is being carried out with deliberate speed, and much of the country’s southern region is already beginning to look like Gaza following years of bombardment. It seems the forces have been instructed to annex the territory faster than the world can react to, and it looks like they may get away with doing so.

The Litani River is 30 kilometres from the Israeli border. It cuts across nearly the full width of Lebanon. Everything south of it, villages, farmland, towns, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, is now designated, by members of the Israeli cabinet, as Israeli territory. If no one is willing to stand up and stop it, it will be Israeli territory.

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