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Iran accuses US of ‘barbaric’ strike near hospital as Kuwait says it is under attack – Middle East crisis live

Oil prices are up by about 1% amid growing US-Iran tensions over the strait of Hormuz and other key shipping channels in the Gulf. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, is up by 1% to $85.85 a barrel. It comes as Reuters reports that Iran has asked Yemen’s Houthi movement to stand ready to close a Red Sea oil route if ‌the US strikes Iranian power ‌infrastructure. The closure of the Bab ‌el-Mandeb strait, which leads to the Red Sea, could add further pressure to the global oil supply. For the latest economic and financial news, follow our business live blog here:

Outrage at sacking of Ukraine’s defence minister overshadows Starmer’s final visit as PM – Europe live

Ukraine’s army chief called for national focus on the war against Russia amid signs of a split in the military hierarchy over the dismissal of reformist defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov. “We need to focus on the war and on an effective strategy,” commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who clashed with Fedorov, said on social media. “And now in this city, briefings can be held, visions can be developed, and decisions can be made,” he said, appearing to mock Fedorov’s press conference hours earlier, Reuters said (13:32). But one of Ukraine’s top soldiers, Joint Forces Commander Mykhailo Drapaty said the army “needs change” in a rare public intervention, as he thanked Fedorov for “not being afraid to tackle issues,” AFP reported.

Mafia law gives Italian families right to break free from life of crime

Children and young adults raised in mafia families will be given a chance to break away from organised crime under new legislation in Italy that aims to stop the intergenerational recruitment of gangsters. In an unprecedented effort to sever the family chain, the Italian state will offer children aged under 25 and other close relatives of mafia bosses a chance to start over: a new home in another city, a new school and, if necessary, a new identity. On Wednesday, the “free to choose” bill won final approval in the senate. “Today, parliament is translating into law a dream that for years seemed impossible,” said Chiara Colosimo, the president of the parliamentary anti-mafia commission. About 400 children born into mafia families are expected to enter the programme each year, according to Colosimo. In many Italian mafia clans, power is passed from one generation to the next. While hereditary succession is not a fixed rule in Sicily’s Cosa Nostra or in the Neapolitan Camorra, it is deeply embedded in the culture of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, one of the world’s most powerful criminal organisations, where the son of a boss is often expected to inherit his father’s position as the head of the clan. These blood ties have long made the ’Ndrangheta exceptionally difficult to penetrate and largely resistant to the system of pentiti – former mafia members who choose to cooperate with the authorities. For many, confessing the crimes of their clan would mean betraying not only fellow gangsters, but their own fathers, grandfathers and uncles. Despite sweeping arrests and a succession of maxi trials involving hundreds of defendants, the organisation has proved remarkably resilient. As fathers and grandfathers serve life sentences, often in high-security prisons, sons and other younger relatives are increasingly taking their place, often while still in their teens. After becoming president of the youth court in Reggio Calabria in 2011, Roberto Di Bella launched an unprecedented probation scheme allowing authorities to remove children from the most dangerous ’Ndrangheta families and relocate them until they turned 18. Supported by educators, social workers and psychologists, they were helped to complete their education and build a life away from organised crime. Parents who continued to draw their children into criminal activity risked losing parental rights. Di Bella called the programme Liberi di Scegliere – meaning free to choose. The initiative provoked a backlash. Di Bella was accused of tearing families apart and denounced by politicians, commentators and parts of the church, who argued that removing children from their parents, regardless of the circumstances, amounted to an assault on the family. One jailed mafia boss sent the judge a thinly veiled threat, reminding him that everyone had children. Yet the programme received support from unexpected quarters. Di Bella said mothers from ’Ndrangheta families, including the wives of powerful bosses, had begun secretly asking him to remove their sons from Calabria, telling him they feared they would otherwise end up in prison or dead. The law prioritises keeping mothers and children together, provided the mother agrees to cut ties with the mafia. Families are relocated to a protected location outside their home region. If the mother remains involved with the clan, children are placed with vetted foster families or, where necessary, in protected care homes, where they receive education and psychological support. “Today, we don’t just celebrate the approval of a law; today, we celebrate the victory of freedom,” said Luigi Ciotti, an anti-mafia priest and campaigner who voiced “enormous joy for a law protecting those who leave mafia environments”. “It is the right law,” said Salvatore Vella, the chief prosecutor in Gela, Sicily, one of the island’s historic criminal strongholds. “It recognises that defeating the mafia is not just about policing, but also about culture and the social environment.” Of course, challenges remain. “I worry it risks remaining largely on paper,” Vella said, warning that the new law placed responsibility for providing safe housing, financial support and, where necessary, new identities on the state’s beleaguered central protection service. “Without additional funding, staff and specialist support, I fear it will struggle to deliver, especially when Italy’s local social services are already overstretched.”

US gas prices edge up again as US-Iran tensions heighten over strait of Hormuz

The average price of diesel fuel in the US has increased again to more than $5 a gallon, according to the AAA, and the average price of gas is almost $4, returning to their highs before the June memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran. It’s a reminder to consumers and truckers of the costs of the Iran war and the unpredictable rhetoric from both Washington and Tehran. A year ago today, the AAA says, the average price for a gallon of diesel was $3.72, almost a dollar and a quarter less than it is now. Earlier this week, Iran declared the strait of Hormuz shut, after both Iran and the US claimed to be the guarantors of safe passage through the strategic waterway. Then the US announced it was imposing a blockade on all ship traffic to or from Iranian ports. Diesel price hikes, the AAA says, lead to rising costs across the board. “The impact is universal,” said AAA spokesman Robert Sinclair Jr. “Everything gets to the retail consumer by diesel-burning truck.” The renewed diplomatic uncertainty and new US and Iranian airstrikes are driving prices higher both at the pump and on the international wholesale markets. The price of a barrel of oil stands at about $81. That’s still down from the highs during the most intense part of Trump’s war in Iran but wholesale prices recently have been driven by erratic news from the White House. On Monday, the president suddenly announced the US would take over the strait and charge 20% of the value of any cargo going though the waterway, but then dropped the plan. The AAA’s Sinclair said price hikes are happening because of the reality of production declines and the public commentary by the White House as well. Trump, he said, “puts in on [the] 20% [transit fee] and then it’s gone. So much of this is happening on whim that’s its really impossible. The markets respond to whim. This is a market subject to rumors and other kinds of activities rumor or imagined.”

US intensifies attacks on Iran as Tehran hits back at Gulf states

The US has intensified its attacks on Iran, hitting targets near Tehran and striking a ship it accused of trying to break its blockade, while Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones at US allies in the region Six consecutive days of back-and-forth attacks threaten to pull the region back into a total war and cast serious doubt about an interim deal reached last month meant to achieve a permanent peace. The attacks have been accompanied by escalating rhetoric from both sides, as the US enforced its naval blockade and Iran said it had shut the strait of Hormuz, which before the conflict handled around a fifth of global oil and gas exports. The US launched its latest wave of strikes on Iran early on Thursday, hitting areas around Tehran for the first time in the current round of fighting, as well as striking other provinces, Iranian state media reported. The US also said it fired on a tanker sailing towards Kharg island, Iran’s biggest oil export terminal. US Central Command said it fired a Hellfire missile at the ship after it “ignored multiple warnings.” US attacks had killed more than 35 people and wounded more than 300 others in recent days, Iranian authorities said. Tehran accused the US of carrying out a “barbaric attack” after a cancer hospital in south-west Iran was evacuated because of strikes nearby. “This barbaric attack, reminiscent of Israel’s atrocities against healthcare facilities, caused severe suffering and anxiety upon the hospitalised children,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on X. Esmaeil Baghaei added that “211 patients undergoing chemotherapy” were evacuated. Iran responded on Thursday with missiles and drones targeting Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, which host US bases. Iraq’s prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, also said there was an overnight drone attack on the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The attack, which was intercepted, came as al-Zaidi pledged to disarm non-state armed groups during a trip to the US. Iraqi authorities also suspended crude oil loading at all Iraqi terminals on Thursday after a drone crashed into an oil tanker in Basra without causing damage, Reuters reported. Iran warned that it could expand its attacks in the region in response to comments from Donald Trump, the US president, that he could attack power plants, bridges and a nuclear facility. “All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Col Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesperson. “Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extra-regional country, to interfere in the strait. This is Iran’s inviolable red line.” Zolfaghari added that the only way to reopen the strait was for the US to follow the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed last month, as well to abide by “Iranian regulations” for transiting ships. Much of the latest fighting has focused on the strait, as Iran and the US fight for the future of the critical waterway. The MoU signed last month said the strait should remain open for the 60-day period of the interim deal. However, the two sides interpret the MoU differently, with both sides insisting that ships transit the strait via their own separately designated lanes. The strait was all but closed by Iran after the start of the war, sending global energy prices and inflation soaring. Trump is keen to have the strait reopened because higher energy prices could harm Republican candidates in autumn’s midterm elections. Fewer vessels went through the strait on Wednesday after the US blockade was reimposed and fighting continued, shipping data showed. Nine ships, mostly on the Iranian-provided route, not the US one, navigated the strait as opposed to 13 on Tuesday. India, one of the largest contributors of sailors to merchant vessels worldwide, told shipowners and recruitment companies not to send Indian sailors on ships heading for the strait. “There should be no deployment of Indian seafarers on vessels undertaking voyages involving passage through the strait of Hormuz until further orders,” India’s directorate general of maritime administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The price of oil has increased to about $85 a barrel – the highest price in a month, but still below the peak of $120 during the war. Analysts said that continued disruptions to shipping in the strait could see oil prices increase further, reaching as high as $100 a barrel. The US has threatened that it could open the strait by force, but experts have said that such an operation would need thousands of ground troops. Trump has continued to insist that Iran was ready to make a peace deal, though Iranian officials have said they will not bow to military pressure. “They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” Trump said on Wednesday during a speech at the US army’s war college. Trump’s statements conflicted with those of Iranian officials, with Iran’s top negotiator and speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, saying in a statement that “we are in an essential and existential war with America”.

Revealed: how Europe’s most powerful farming lobby killed EU’s pesticide law

Newly revealed documents from inside the most powerful farming lobby in Europe show how it delayed, gutted and overturned some of the most sweeping farming reforms in EU history, including a plan to cut pesticide use in half. Copa Cogeca describes itself as the voice of 22 million farmers across the continent, and enjoys unrivalled access to EU lawmakers. It has even been described as a “partner in policymaking”. So when the EU launched plans for radical farming reforms in 2020 in response to concerns about climate breakdown and the nature crisis, Copa Cogeca swung into action and in February 2021 set out its lobbying strategy. Dozens of documents recording internal Copa Cogeca meetings, obtained by Grilled – an investigative journalism project focused on food systems – and the Guardian give a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the lobbying firm. Controversial animal products – such as foie gras and fur – would be defended, Copa Cogeca’s then secretary general, Pekka Pesonen, told members, “in the same way as tobacco”. A key EU target was cutting pesticide use by half to protect biodiversity. Copa Cogeca’s response, the documents show, was to combine delay tactics with an intensified lobbying drive. “The European parliament elections are in 2024,” the note from September 2022 reads. “Perhaps it is worth delaying until then. We must force the [European] Commission to abandon its objectives.” That same meeting, the lobby group decided to demand a new impact assessment for the policy, which the commission undertook at the end of year, slowing the policymaking process by six months. The following spring, it rejected a European parliament report on the policy as “offensive” and its members presented privately commissioned research highlighting the economic impacts to EU ambassadors at a Copa Cogeca event. Member states, its minutes record, “showed understanding”. The documents also capture the organisation’s lobbying to protect the use of bee-harming pesticides and glyphosate, which the World Health Organization’s cancer body has classified as probably carcinogenic. “Pressurise permanent representations to support” glyphosate’s licence renewal, the secretariat told members. “Copa Cogeca will send a letter to permanent representations.” Thomas Waitz, a Green MEP from Austria who sits on the agriculture committee, said: “Copa Cogeca focused on sabotaging, delaying and ultimately killing the sustainable use of pesticides regulation. They are acting in the interest of large agrichemical multinationals and against the wellbeing of small and medium farmers.” The pesticide regulation was withdrawn in February 2024, just months before the elections Copa Cogeca had been deliberately stalling for. The EU is now debating a proposal that would remove the periodic safety reassessments required for pesticides already on the market. Cutting red meat consumption was also a prime focus. Every year, the EU spends hundreds of millions of euros promoting agricultural products, including “Become a Beefatarian”, a 2020 advertising push that led to outcry among campaigners. When the commission proposed restricting that money from red and processed meat as part of its cancer plan, Copa Cogeca viewed it as an existential threat. “We are not talking here only about promotion policy,” officials said at a meeting in January 2022. “If meat is treated in this way there, it will spread to other policies as well.” Copa Cogeca coordinated three named commissioners to challenge the new guidance, brought in the wine and alcohol lobbies as allies, and told its members to pressure their national governments to remove the restrictions. The next year the measures were weakened. The year after, the health criteria were quietly dropped. Copa Cogeca’s verdict: “Lobbying has borne fruit.” Copa Cogeca acted fast to have rules on factory farms weakened before the public had seen them. An internal memo from 2022 states that letters to senior commissioners resulted in the threshold for what counts as an industrial farm – based on the number of animals kept – being raised by 50% before the proposal was released. Analysis found that the change cost the public €1.8bn (£1.5bn) a year in lost health benefits. This was just the start of a years-long operation. Lawmakers were taken on organised farm visits in Belgium. Media campaigns were launched. Letters went to EU ambassadors before critical European Council votes. On the day of the final parliamentary vote, tractors and invited MEPs gathered outside the European parliament in Strasbourg as “a large screen showing the IED [industrial emissions directive] vote” streamed live. The final law was far weaker still, significantly raising the thresholds for poultry and pig farms and excluding cattle entirely. Only about 1% of Europe’s cattle farms would have been covered by the original proposal. Marco Contiero, the agriculture policy director at Greenpeace EU, said Copa Cogeca had “chosen to shield a small group of highly industrialised operators responsible for a disproportionate share of pollution” rather than defend the majority of Europe’s farmers. On animal welfare, Copa Cogeca’s private admissions and its public positions tell different stories. At an internal meeting in 2021, an official stated the industry could ditch caged farming immediately if financially supported. But Copa Cogeca’s lobbying position demanded a transition period of up to 15 years. The European Commission is expected to announce plans to phase out cages for laying hens by the end of 2026, years after its original commitment. On wolves, Copa Cogeca spent years trying to strip the animal’s protected status from EU nature law, a goal its own officials privately described as “probably naive” since the directive had remained untouched for 30 years. Yet, in September 2024, the presidium declared: “A major lobbying victory. The fight is over.” The habitats directive was amended in June 2025. Copa Cogeca’s documents show the organisation immediately began drawing up a list of other animals and birds it wanted targeted next. Despite multiple requests for comment, Copa Cogeca preferred not to respond. A spokesperson for the European Commission said its decisions were taken “on Europe’s terms, under Europe’s rules, and in the European interest”. “Big agri’s interest is not in simplifying the green deal,” said Delara Burkhardt, a German MEP on the environment committee. “It wants to dismantle it.” Read a longer report on this investigation at Grilled

Demise of Timmy the whale inspires satirical play exploring German identity

When people in Germany organised a daring rescue mission for a humpback whale stranded on the Baltic coast in April, it briefly looked like a country stricken with political division and economic anxiety was rallying around a common cause. A new satirical play inspired by the episode, however, suggests the spectators, social media influencers, politicians and millionaires who flocked to the seaside in support never just wanted to rescue the cetacean that came to be nicknamed Timmy, but for Timmy to rescue them. Timmy: Hope Dies Last, which premiered at Hamburg’s Ernst Deutsch theatre last Saturday, reimagines the media spectacle as a passion play in which the leviathan is worshipped, crucified and eventually cut up into sacramental blubber bites. “In his immeasurable kindness he became a vehicle to us” is a line from the actor Noah Tomiak in the play, dressed in liturgical robes and stood behind an altar laden with a blow-up replica of the sea creature. “And we placed everything inside: our fears, our guilt, our desires, our loneliness. And while we said: ‘We have to save him,’ it was maybe already the other way around: maybe he came to save us.” The elevation of Timmy into a Jesus figure has drawn criticism from Catholic theologians, but found praise on the pages of the news weekly Der Spiegel. The play, it wrote, revealed “how willing a secularised public seeks refuge in quasi-religious structure as a vehicle for hope”. The humpback whale was first spotted in German waters in March, stranded at the Timmendorfer resort – inspiring the nickname that, it would later turn out, misgendered an animal that was in fact female. An earlier nickname, Hope, better conveyed the emotional pull of the whale’s tragic fate on the national consciousness. Throughout the play, its director, Alexander Klessinger, plays audio snippets from interviews with people who descended on Timmendorfer to seek a connection with the ailing mammal. Raw and unfiltered, these confessionals show the extent that people believed the whale was speaking directly to them. “I felt like he was waiting for me, I can’t explain it but he wanted me,” says one woman. Over the course of the one-hour show, the adoration of the whale takes on a cultish fervour, as actors declare their love via songs and placards. In one recording, a woman explains why she travelled to the Baltic Sea to help the whale with an Aboriginal chant that would “plug energetic holes”. “Timmy brought out the best in people,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung after the premiere of the play. “But also the worst.” As well as triggering a reported boom in whale and sealife-themed book sales, the Timmy saga inspired several songs, some sentimental, others satirical. At the end of the Hamburg premiere, the rock band Tulpe performed their hit Sprengt den Wal! (“Blow up the whale!”), with its chorus of “Let it rain whale salami and cutlets”. An AI-generated song that went viral on social media at the height of Timmy mania – performed by the actors as a rock number in the play – mixes in populist resentment against cruel-hearted “experts”. “While he is still breathing,” it says, “they are already talking of what happens afterwards / of tests and numbers / as if he was only an empty body without a heart.” Eventually, a complex and risky attempt to transport the whale back to the open sea on a water-filled barge was privately funded by two millionaires and cleared by authorities, against the advice of experts who said the animal was hurt and unlikely to survive. The play restages a press conference at which biologists who proposed leaving the whale to die in peace were criticised by some hangers-on as wanting to “murder” the animal. For the whale to die in a bay rather than out on the open sea, said one woman, was “undignified”. In the end, far from healing the political fractures running through Germany, the effort to save Timmy seemed in part to be driven by populist resentment against “elites” that is driving the rise of the nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). As an actor in a wetsuit rails against officials for letting Timmy die and callls for ordinary people to “wake up”, a large German flag is raised behind her back. Nearly two weeks after Timmy’s release, on 14 May, the whale was found dead near the small ⁠island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden. The fallout over the cost of the rescue mission – estimated to be about €2m – continues to this day.

Germany warns US against election interference with Maga-aligned grants scheme

Friedrich Merz has warned Donald Trump’s administration against interfering in German elections after the US state department announced a scheme to fund Maga-aligned causes in Europe. The German chancellor was responding to a US initiative offering grants of up to $3m (£2.2m) for European charities, thinktanks and individuals. The funding will be for those seeking to “address national sovereignty, migration, censorship and lawfare challenges in line with shared political philosophy, law and our common western civilizational heritage”. Amid growing concerns that the US is seeking to directly influence European politics, Merz said he did not want the US to interfere in German state elections in September. “For ‌our ‌part, we do ‌not interfere in American elections,” he told a press conference on Wednesday. “Conversely, I do not ‌want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German ⁠elections.” Former US officials say the grant scheme is part of a months-long effort by the state department to repurpose US government funds to support far-right groups and potentially political parties in Europe. The language around who might be eligible to receive the money is ambiguous, one former state department official said. The announcement of the grants specifies that “individuals” and “governmental institution” (sic) can apply, without further detail as to whom or what these categories might include. Previous reporting has suggested that the state department under Trump is interested in funding political parties in Europe, but that it could be hampered by US laws around foreign assistance. On Wednesday, Merz highlighted that it was illegal to finance ‌political parties in Germany from abroad. The former state department official said: “There seems to be an effort by the state department to put the thumb on the scale of elections in Europe, giving an unfair advantage to rightwing parties with resources that they would ordinarily not get.” The initiative follows high-profile attacks on traditional allies in western European countries by US figures including the vice-president, JD Vance, on issues including migration, abortion and online safety initiatives. State department officials have also been busy forging links with European social conservative groups as well as far-right parties. In December, a new US national security strategy claimed Europe faced “civilisational erasure” and – in an apparent reference to populist movements – hailed the growing influence of “patriotic European parties”. And last month, the UK government rejected claims made by a senior US state department official at a rightwing conference in London that British police were making thousands of “freedom of speech” arrests. The allegation was made by Sarah B Rogers, who has become the public face of the US state department’s hostility to European liberal democracies and has previously been a guest of groups such as Britain’s Prosperity Institute, a thinktank that campaigns from an economically libertarian and socially conservative perspective. Earlier this year, Rogers pledged $500,000 in US funding to “promote digital freedom” during a visit to Ireland. The Guardian has asked the Prosperity Institute if it is likely to apply for one of the state department’s “Developing Civilizational Bonds, Democratic Resilience and Rule of Law in Europe” grants. The awards are being administered by a branch of the state department called the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Though originally set up under President Jimmy Carter as an instrument of US policy during the cold war to challenge Soviet and rightwing authoritarian regimes, it has been repurposed under the Trump administration. Other groups in Europe that could stand to gain from the grants include Britain’s Free Speech Union, which has campaigned on issues that have become conservative causes célèbres, and organisations that have lost out on financial support as a result of Viktor Orbán’s loss of power in Hungary. A state department spokesperson said: “The Trump administration remains committed to defending democracy and human rights around the world, including in Europe. Our programming in Europe aims to support our European allies in defending those rights and principles, along with their civilizational self-confidence and sovereignty from those who seek to undermine them. “As we have repeatedly stated, our programs in Europe are solely meant to support human rights. These funds are not available to political parties.”