Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported this morning that six people were killed and seven others injured after an Israeli attack on a house in Kfar Dounine last night. Since this report, the NNA said Israeli forces detonated a number of houses in a neighbourhood of the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.
It was a fairytale ending to the World Athletics Relays in Gaborone. In the final strait, Collen Kebinatshipi surged past South Africa’s Zakithi Nene to win the men’s 4x400m relay for Botswana. The home crowd, a sea of light blue, went wild. “It means so many things to us,” Letsile Tebogo, 22, the reigning 200m Olympic champion, who ran the second leg, told reporters afterwards. “Not just the team … but for the people that always cheer for us behind the TV. Now they had that experience to see first-hand how much effort, how much pressure, how much we give for them.” In an interview after the championships, the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, said: “I put that atmosphere in the top three that I’ve experienced live in athletics. The first was Cathy Freeman winning in Sydney. The second was Mo Farah hitting the front with a lap or so to go in the 10,000 in London, when the wall of noise was deafening … [This] comfortably sits in the top three for me.” Botswana, a country larger by area than Spain with a population of just 2.5 million, has had a meteoric rise to the top of men’s sprinting. Tebogo’s Olympic gold in Paris in 2024 was the country’s first, and only its fourth medal of any colour. The men’s 4x400m relay team took silver, improving on bronze from three years earlier. Then, at the world championships in Tokyo last year, Kebinatshipi won the 400m while the relay team he anchored also took home gold. The athletes are superstars in Botswana, their faces plastered on billboards advertising everything from mobile phone contracts to milk. “My life has changed a lot,” Kebinatshipi told a press conference before the relays. The 22-year-old, who started running at school, said he now allowed half an hour for photos with fans when he went out shopping. “At first I was a bit nervous, because I wasn’t used to it … Nowadays I’m used to it, so it’s cool with me,” he said. Years-long investment in young athletes is one of the biggest reasons for the southern African country’s recent success, sports officials said. The Botswana Athletics Association’s chief executive, Mabua Mabua, said: “I must thank the school sports programmes that we used to have, because basically all of the athletes that you are seeing, the youthful ones, are coming from that programme.” He also highlighted the country’s infrastructure. “All of the preparations for the team are done locally. Normally people say ‘no, they should go to Europe, USA, for preparations’. It’s local coaches, a local environment.” The Botswana National Sports Commission runs programmes for 15 sports to spot and nurture talent. Re Ba Bona Ha, meaning “We See Them Here” in Setswana, is a coaching initiative for children aged five to 13 that was launched for football in 2002, with athletics added in 2008. Up to 300 children attend athletics sessions every year, said Frederick Kebadiretse, the BNSC’s sports development manager. Then there are twice-yearly holiday camps to identify older students for eight centres of sports excellence, which were founded in 2011. The centres run weekday afternoon and weekend training sessions, with 30 to 40 students picked for athletics annually. Sports officials warned that without the school sports programme, which was suspended in 2019 due to a dispute between the government and teachers, Botswana’s recent athletics success was at risk. “The pipeline is not there,” said Martin Mokgwathi, who chaired the world relays organising committee. “[Performance] will dip unless something is done very, very quickly.” Botswana’s female athletes have not yet matched the men’s results. Oratile Nowe, the seventh fastest woman this year over 800m, is the current highest performer. The officials admitted more needed to be done to support women and girls. “We need to widen the pipeline so we can get more and more young women to join,” Mokgwathi said. “The other thing, of course, is to encourage more and more women to become coaches and technical officials … And we need to protect young women coming into the sport, so that they stay.” Isaac Makwala is trying to fill the pipelines. Makwala, whom numerous young athletes cite as an inspiration, was the first man to run 400m in under 44 seconds and 200m in under 20 seconds in the same day. The son of farmers from a village in northern Botswana, he started running at school, although he didn’t compete until he was 21. After retiring in 2024, Makwala founded the Isaac Makwala Athletics Academy, putting about 50 12- to 16-year-olds through sprinting drills five afternoons a week. “I have a daughter here, she drives me to be a coach,” he said. “I want to see how well she will run after. Did she take her talent from me?” Earlier this year his daughter, Resego Kelly Makwala, became Botswana’s under-18 girls champion in 400m, aged just 14. “I do really like it,” she said. “The times. When I make good times, PBs [personal bests].” Makwala’s centre relies on motivated parents who can afford the 100 pula (£5.50) registration and 500 pula monthly fees. Tuduetso Gaboutloeloe, a tax collector, is one. “I want to be honest with you, the way the economy is bad, I want to see her going places, maybe getting a scholarship so she can progress very well,” she said. “Because right now, it’s a struggle.” Her 13-year-old daughter, Leloba, who runs 800m and wants to try 400m too, dreams of Olympic success. “I do imagine myself winning medals,” she said.
Japan’s biggest snack maker has been forced to use black-and-white packaging for some flagship products because of ink ingredient shortages caused by the strait of Hormuz blockade. Calbee, whose potato chip brands in particular are known for brightly coloured bag designs, said 14 of its products would switch to monochrome branding by the end of May. The move to black and white was forced on Calbee by disrupted supplies of naptha, an ink ingredient derived from petroleum. Calbee said it was reacting to an unstable supply of “certain raw materials” due to the war. Japanese companies have lately sought to minimise the impact of rising costs and material shortages even as the government seeks to reassure the public and businesses over supplies. Printing ink requires naphtha, an oil derivative for which Japan relies on imports from the Middle East for about 40% of its consumption. News of the company’s move made headlines across Japan. It followed a brief panic in March among fans of a different crisps brand that temporarily stopped producing a popular snack citing difficulties in procuring the heavy oil needed to run its factory. Asked about Calbee’s decision, a government spokesperson said domestic naphtha refining continued with the use of stockpiled crude oil, while imports from outside the Middle East have tripled in May compared with levels from before the Iran war broke out in late February. Kei Sato, a senior government spokesperson, assured the public that naptha shortages would not cause wider disruption. “Adequate supplies of the naptha ink ingredient have been secured for important functions in Japan. We are working with major corporations to ensure naptha is imported by routes other than through the strait of Hormuz,” Sato said in remarks broadcast as an emergency bulletin by some television networks. “We have not received any reports of immediate supply disruption for printing ink or naphtha and recognise that Japan as a whole has secured the quantities required.” Calbee was founded in Hiroshima in 1949 as the city was still recovering from the atomic bombing, and has grown into a snack giant with its products sold across Asia, Europe and the US. The company acquired the UK’s Seabrook Crisps in 2018. It recorded sales of 322.5bn yen ($2.04bn) in 2025. The company’s shares dipped more than 1% on the news, while the Nikkei 225 Index was up overall. The Guardian has contacted Calbee for comment. With Reuters
Good morning. Yesterday, Keir Starmer gave a speech which he hoped would draw a line under any potential moves within Labour to replace him, after the nation resoundingly punished his party at the ballot box. However his words were not enough to quell disquiet. Pressure on the prime minister is growing, with more than 70 Labour MPs publicly calling for him to stand down, and two senior cabinet ministers believed to be among those telling him he should oversee an orderly transition of power. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s policy editor, Kiran Stacey, about what Starmer set out, how it landed with the colleagues most likely to replace him, and what the possible pathways forward are. First, this morning’s headlines. Five big stories UK politics | A newly elected Reform UK councillor has resigned after he allegedly celebrated on social media the rape of a Sikh woman in the Midlands, declared white people the “master race” and called Muslim people “rats”. Iran conflict | Donald Trump has said the ceasefire with Iran is on “life support” and that he is considering restarting US navy military escorts of ships through the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to end the Iranian blockade. Cost of living | Households cut back on their spending in April at the fastest pace in 18 months, as the conflict in the Middle East provoked fears of another cost of living crisis, a report from one of the UK’s biggest banks has suggested. Hantavirus | A French woman who tested positive for hantavirus after she was evacuated from a cruise ship reported symptoms to doctors onboard but was told it was probably just anxiety, the Spanish health minister has said. Health | Singing, painting or visiting a gallery or museum helps people age more slowly, according to the latest study to link taking an active interest in art and culture with improved health. In depth: ‘This wasn’t a speech aimed at voters – it was aimed at Labour MPs’ The prime minister’s speech was “well put together, clear-eyed, and passionate”, says Kiran Stacey, but had one fundamental problem: “His policy solutions simply didn’t match the rhetoric.” “When a prime minister stands up and says there is something big going on and they are going to address it, you expect the solutions to be big.” That did not appear to be the case in his speech. *** What did Keir Starmer say? A mix of personal reflection on last week’s election setbacks, the prime minister’s speech came with a warning that the British people would never forgive Labour if it descended into the leadership merry-go-round that characterised the last few years of the Conservative government, which made its way through three prime ministers in its final four years. Starmer anchored the speech with three policy announcements. In a move to shore up his left flank, he announced legislation to bring British Steel into public ownership. In an appeal to those who resent Brexit, he promised a “big leap forward” in EU relations, including a youth experience scheme to restore a “sense of possibility”. And further, he pledged every young person struggling to find employment will get a guaranteed offer of a job, training or a work placement. However, Kiran says there were echoes of previous disclosures, saying: “Starmer spoke about a youth guarantee scheme which has already been announced, some extra details on European negotiations which are already happening, and the nationalisation of British Steel which is, in effect, already nationalised.” Starmer had a brief dig at the Green party leader Zack Polanski, but reserved his sharpest rhetoric for Reform UK’s Nigel Farage. He described the Clacton MP as “not just a grifter, he is a chancer”, and said Farage had “fled the scene” after Brexit had made Britain poorer. “It sounded a lot, structurally and tonally, like his last conference speech,” Kiran notes. “This wasn’t a speech aimed at voters – it was aimed at Labour MPs. But if I were a Labour MP listening, I’d just think: ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that speech before. Thanks, prime minister.’” *** How did key Labour leadership contenders react? Catherine West, the Labour MP who had surprised almost everyone by announcing a challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership on Saturday, has changed course. Instead of an immediate change, she wants the prime minister to set a September timetable for his departure. “She wants a confidence vote and is gathering names for an ‘orderly transition’ in September,” Kiran tells me. “That feels like the move the Andy Burnham camp has long wanted.” “The one we are all watching today is health secretary, Wes Streeting,” he says. “Andy Burnham isn’t in parliament, and Angela Rayner still has tax issues and doesn’t seem to have the parliamentary support needed to win a contest. It depends on whether Streeting believes now is his moment.” *** What lies ahead On Bluesky, the political analyst Sam Freedman wryly observed: “At least three and maybe four years of the past decade have been spent with a PM grimly hanging to power having lost authority with their party.” However, the Labour rulebook makes it difficult to unseat a party leader. Someone seeking to replace a sitting leader must secure the written support of 20% of the parliamentary party, which is 81 MPs. Alternate routes to replace him might include the notorious quiet word from the fabled “men and women in grey suits”, or a spate of cabinet resignations making governing publicly impossible, as happened to Boris Johnson in 2022. So far, four government aides have quit their posts, while the Guardian understands that Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, have told Starmer he should oversee an orderly transition of power. John Healey and David Lammy were also believed to have discussed the need for a “responsible, dignified, orderly” approach to what might follow. But several others have urged Starmer to fight on. Starmer was steadfast that he would fight any leadership challenge. “I think he is serious,” Kiran tells me. “His side has been doing the polling, and they think they would win an internal election against Streeting.” That would suit supporters of Burnham and Rayner, who would welcome a delay to any contest, rather than allow a swift Streeting coronation. “A lot of people who think Starmer should go might still back him if a leadership election comes very soon.” Maybe I will leave the last word to my colleague Jessica Elgot, who yesterday evening posted these thoughts she had received from an anonymous Labour MP: “We have to face up to the fact every single one of them is fucking useless. Andy’s strategy has been a disaster. Angela bottled it. Ed clearly a hiding to nothing. Wes AWOL. God knows what Catherine West is doing. Not quite sure how we ended up here.” And yet here we all are … What else we’ve been reading Crispin, the big-headed canary, is the latest in our The pet I’ll never forget series. He sounds as if he was a lovely creature. Patrick Here’s a stunning gallery of once-grand abandoned movie theatres in North America, now repurposed or left suspended as hybrid ruins since their 1920s heyday – including one acting as a school bus parking lot. Martin Amy Fleming has written a fascinating deep dive on the links between oral heath and the rest of the body. Patrick Paul Sinclair recounts a frankly hilarious encounter with a rude record shop owner in Berlin, which took me right back to my own 1990s days behind the counter, swearing miserably at hapless customers in Soho. Martin Do not miss the second episode of the Guardian’s series on the global dating crisis. This time, they are in the US. Patrick Sport Football | Spurs’ Mathys Tel scored the opener but conceded a penalty which allowed Dominic Calvert-Lewin to earn Leeds a 1-1 draw, leaving Spurs two points above the relegation zone. VAR | The Premier League is to reject widening the scope of VAR next season after talks with the refereeing body Professional Game Match Officials. Tennis | Iga Świątek produced a statement victory in a battle between two of the game’s best, mercilessly dismantling Naomi Osaka 6-2, 6-1 to return to the quarter-finals of the Italian Open. The front pages “Starmer’s survival on the line as cabinet ministers urge him to quit” is the Guardian’s front page today. The Times, in a similar vein, says “Cabinet turns on Starmer” while the Telegraph’s take is “Time to go, Cabinet tells Starmer”. The Daily Mail says “Starmer on the brink as Cabinet ministers tell him it’s time to go”. The i Paper has “Starmer mutiny grows with Labour Party in open revolt against PM”. The Mirror runs with “Rebels turn on Starmer” and the Sun says “Starmer’s on the brink”. The FT’s headline is “Starmer ‘reset’ speech met with rising tide of MPs urging him to move aside”. Metro has “Starmer eyes British Steel as plots thicken”. Today in Focus Why does everyone hate Keir Starmer? The Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty on the Labour leader’s predicament – and if he may be the last prime minister of the two-party system. Cartoon of the day | Pete Songi The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Many of us feel a lack of connection to those we live alongside. Annabel Lee once felt this way, estranged from the community in the Oxfordshire town where she lives. So, she started volunteering. From the parent-teacher association to the parkrun, Lee gave her time to those around her – and created the sense of community she had been looking for in the process. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
It looks like a typical teenager’s bedroom: football shirts on the wall, crumpled clothes on the floor, exercise books open on the desk. But it is a work of political art, intended to evoke the empty rooms of more than 20,500 Ukrainian children unlawfully taken to Russia. The work was on display on Monday at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, as delegates from 63 countries and international organisations gathered to discuss how to bring Ukraine’s children home. “It’s essentially a way for someone to step into Ukraine without having to actually travel there,” Isaac Yeung, a co-creator of the installation, said. Adding to the empty room’s unsettling vibe is a barely audible hum, punctuated by occasional explosions and the rattling wind. “It creates a tension in your head, in your chest,” said Yeung, co-founder of Bird of Light Ukraine, the NGO behind the installation. The room belongs to Artem, a 13-year-old character, whose story is a composite of real testimonies of children who cannot be named. With its heavy Soviet furnishings and early 2000s shiny wallpaper, the room is immediately recognisable to anyone who grew up in Ukraine, said co-creator and co-founder of Bird of Light Ukraine Zhanna Galeyeva. Artem lived with his widowed single mother in Ukraine’s occupied territories, enduring months of shelling, until Russian soldiers told her to send him to a “health camp” in Crimea. It is a painful and grim reality for thousands of children and their families. Ukrainian authorities have identified more than 20,570 children who have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia. Only 2,133 have returned. The rest have been stripped of their identities, indoctrinated in military camps or put into forced adoption or institutions across 210 locations in Russia and Belarus. Researchers fear this is an underestimate, as Russian authorities falsify identities and erase records. Ahead of the meeting, Ukraine’s western allies announced new sanctions – asset freezes and travel bans – on people and entities involved in the policy: EU foreign ministers agreed 23 listings, and the UK confirmed 29. One common target is the so-called warrior centre, the state-led Centre for Military Sports Training and Patriotic Education of Youth, which, according to the EU listing, involves cadet-style military instruction and weapons. The UK also sanctioned Yulia Velichko, minister for youth in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in occupied Ukraine for her role in deporting Ukrainian children, including programmes exposing them to Russian ideology and issuing passports. She was put under EU sanctions in October 2025, as were others on the longer UK list. Western allies also announced funding to help trace stolen Ukrainian children. Stephen Doughty, the UK’s Europe minister, told the Guardian this was “the first crucial task, because we need to understand where these children are, where they’ve been taken”. He announced a further £1.2m to help Ukraine trace children and verify identities, adding to the £2.8m pledged by the UK last December. Doughty said: “This is one of the most heinous and horrendous aspects of Russia’s war against Ukraine, not just what it’s doing to these children and their families today, but also because it’s an attempt to erase the future of Ukraine and a Ukrainian language, identity, culture in its young people and its future.” The UK separately announced sanctions on 56 people and agencies involved in Russian disinformation and influence operations. EU officials hope more non-European countries will join the coalition to increase pressure on Russia and play a role in mediating returns. The group meeting for discussions at the European Commission, formally known as the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, is co-chaired by Ukraine and Canada and has 49 members, mostly in Europe. Out of the spotlight, Turkey, Qatar and other neutral states have been involved in mediating around 100 returns. EU officials would like to increase mediated returns, because they are safer. For now, the vast majority of returns are undertaken by parents and other family members at great personal risk to themselves and those helping them. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said getting the children back was hard: “With the prisoners of war, you can exchange them. But because Ukraine hasn’t deported any Russian children, you can’t really exchange children to children. So that’s why it’s much more difficult … We need to use all the international support, also those countries who are dealing with Russia more closely.” Attendees at the conference were expected to discuss reintegrating Ukrainian children back into families, after the trauma of prolonged separation. The installation is due to appear in other public venues, including the Italian parliament and the European parliament in Strasbourg. “It is a really, really traumatic experience when you suddenly are told to believe something opposite to what you knew,” Galeyeva said. “This is why we brought this here, so that the policymakers wake up their own father and mother inside, and their own child inside, and remember that this cannot wait.”
Kyiv came under drone attack on Tuesday after the expiration of a three-day truce with Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities. “Enemy UAVs are currently over Kyiv. Please stay safe until the alert is cleared,” the head of the capital’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, posted on Telegram. The alert siren was the first in the capital since Friday, before the ceasefire came into force. A three-day truce was announced on Friday by Donald Trump, just hours before Russia’s second world war victory celebrations, with the US president saying he hoped the ceasefire would mark “the beginning of the end” of the conflict. Zelenskyy said earlier on Monday that fighting with Russia was ongoing despite the ceasefire, accusing Russia of not wanting to end the four-year war. “Today there was no silence at the front, there was fighting. We have recorded all of this,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address. “We also see that Russia has no intention of ending this war; unfortunately, it is preparing new attacks,” he added. The EU on Monday imposed sanctions on 16 officials accused of helping Russia to abduct tens of thousands of children from Ukraine and force many to change their identities or be put up for adoption. Sanctions were also slapped on seven centres suspected of indoctrinating the children or training them to serve in the armed forces, either for Russia or pro-Russian militias inside Ukraine. More than 130 people and “entities” are now under EU travel bans and asset freezes over the abductions. EU headquarters said the measures target “those responsible for the systematic unlawful deportation, forced transfer, forced assimilation, including indoctrination and militarised education, of Ukrainian minors, as well as their unlawful adoption and removal to the Russian Federation and within temporarily occupied territories.” Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, about 20,500 children have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-held territories in eastern Ukraine. EU officials say many of the children are stripped of their Ukrainian identity and culture, given Russian passports and put up for adoption. Some are forced into schools for indoctrination or into military camps. “Russia is trying to erase their identity,” Latvian foreign minister Baiba Braže said Monday at a meeting with EU counterparts in Brussels. “When you look at the Genocide Convention, it’s one of the features of the genocide crime. So, it’s very serious.” Ukrainian authorities served president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful former chief of staff with an official notice of suspicion as part of a major corruption investigation, Kyiv’s anti-corruption agencies said on Monday. The agencies did not name the official, in line with Ukrainian law, but local media widely identified him as Andriy Yermak, who resigned late last year amid a corruption scandal. Yermak was Zelenskyy’s closest aide and one of Ukraine’s most powerful men, before he resigned in November 2025 after his home was raided by anti-corruption officers. He had served as Zelenskyy’s right-hand man throughout much of the Russian invasion. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Monday the “dynamics” of the Ukraine war were changing in Kyiv’s favour as Russia suffers record casualties and strikes on key oil facilities. “Moscow’s record battlefield losses, Ukraine deep strikes into Russia, and Moscow’s shrinking military parade, these things all show that the dynamics of the war are changing,” Kallas said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers. “Ukraine is in a much better position than a year ago,” she said. “But of course, there is no time for complacency.” European governments on Monday rejected a suggestion by Russian president Vladimir Putin that former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could represent them in possible future talks with Moscow. They dismissed any role for Schröder, who has worked for Russian state companies and cultivated a close relationship with Putin. “It’s clear why Putin wants him to be the person – so that actually … he would be sitting on both sides of the table,” Kallas told reporters. “If we give the right to Russia to appoint a negotiator on our behalf … that would not be very wise,” she said. Russia has cut its economic growth forecast for 2026 and the following three years but left unchanged the projected oil price despite the spike in global prices driven by the war in the Middle East, deputy prime minister Alexander Novak told Vedomosti daily in an interview on Tuesday. Russia’s $3tn economy, hit by the war in Ukraine, western sanctions, and high interest rates, contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter, marking its first quarterly decline since early 2023.
A French-African summit held every few years since 1973 is taking place in a non-francophone country for the first time on Tuesday as Emmanuel Macron tries to rebuild France’s role on the continent after setbacks in its former colonies. More than 30 heads of state and government are meeting in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, for this year’s iteration of the summit. Named Africa Forward, it is being seen by analysts as an attempt by France to court new allies. The leaders are joining representatives of the African Union, financial institutions and the development sector to discuss themes including energy transition, peace and security and reform of the international financial architecture. The summit was preceded on Monday by networking, matchmaking and workshop events on youth, creative and cultural industries and sport. Organisers say the event represents “a paradigm shift” in the relationship between Africa and France. The Kenyan president, William Ruto, said in a welcome message: “This high-level gathering reflects a renewed and forward-looking partnership between Africa and France, grounded in mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a clear commitment to delivering tangible outcomes.” Macron, his French counterpart, said: “We wish to build partnerships on an equal footing, founded on shared interests and tangible results. The Africa Forward summit will be a significant milestone in that endeavour.” France had for decades used a policy called Françafrique in its former colonies to maintain political, economic, and military influence. But it has faced repeated setbacks in francophone countries in west and central Africa, where its relations with its former colonies have deteriorated. Coups in the region have been underpinned by anti-France sentiment, with Paris being accused of neocolonialism and of trying to influence military and other affairs. Since 2022, France has been forced to withdraw its troops from countries including Mali, Niger and Chad. Some terminated their defence agreements with Paris and others requested a military withdrawal. Mikhail Nyamweya, an international relations analyst, said holding the summit in a non-francophone country signalled France was trying to move “beyond its old francophone comfort zone … after losing ground in its traditional sphere of influence”. He added: “France is trying to repackage its Africa policy through an anglophone diplomatic hub, and to present the relationship as broader, more economic, and less tied to its colonial past.” The summit also fits in with Ruto’s quest to position Kenya as a reliable international partner and a convening hub. During his term, Kenya has led a security mission in Haiti and hosted the inaugural Africa Climate Summit. Macharia Munene, a history and international relations scholar, said Macron has been trying to establish himself in a global leadership role and was looking for companions in Africa. “There was a convergence of interests,” he said of Macron and Ruto. France and Kenya entered a defence agreement last year that opposition and civil society groups in the east African country have criticised, saying it compromised sovereignty and gave French soldiers legal immunity. In March, 800 French military personnel arrived in Kenya for training and security exercises. At a joint press briefing with Ruto in Nairobi on Sunday, Macron remarked on the changing dynamics for his country in west Africa, downplaying the absence from the event of leaders from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and highlighting the number of academics, artists and entrepreneurs in attendance from those countries. “We can disagree with some of these governments, but we never disagree with people. We love these people,” he said.
We’re shutting this live coverage now but you can read a full report here, and below a recap of the latest key developments. Thanks for joining us. Donald Trump said Iran’s response to the US peace plan was a “stupid proposal” and “a piece of garbage” that he didn’t finish reading it. He still believed a diplomatic solution was possible, he said, but the ceasefire with Iran was “on massive life support”. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said his country’s “armed forces are ready to deliver a well-deserved response to any aggression” and that adversaries “will be surprised”. Iran is ready to support Xi Jinping’s four-point plan for the Gulf region, Tehran’s ambassador to Beijing said, ahead of Trump’s visit to China this week for talks with the Chinese leader. Will the US president seek Xi’s help in ending the war with Iran? See analysis here. The EU has adopted sanctions on Israeli settlers, with the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas saying: “Extremisms and violence carry consequences.” Israel has condemned the move. The UK sanctioned 12 individuals and entities linked to Iran, accusing them of involvement in hostile activity including plotting attacks and providing financial services to groups seeking to destabilise the UK and other countries. The Lebanese health ministry updated its death toll to 2,869 people killed in Israeli attacks that began on 2 March, Lebanese state-run media said. UN humanitarian agency chief Tom Fletcher called for a “genuine ceasefire” as Israel continues its relentless assault on Lebanon. Israeli lawmakers approved a bill setting up a special tribunal that would try and have the authority to sentence to death Palestinians convicted of taking part in the 2023 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war in Gaza. Two soldiers photographed desecrating a Christian statue in southern Lebanon were sentenced to military prison, the IDF said. The soldier who stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of Mary received 21 days while the photographer got 14 days. Iranian authorities on Monday hanged a postgraduate student from a Tehran university on charges of espionage, with the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website accusing him of collaborating with the CIA and the Mossad. Before his execution Erfan Shakourzadeh, 29, rejected the charges as fabricated, a rights group said. The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran, the Wall Street Journal has reported sources as saying, “casting the Gulf monarchy as an active combatant in a war in which it has been Iran’s biggest target”. The UK and France will host a multinational meeting of defence ministers on Tuesday to discuss plans to restore trade flows through the strait of Hormuz, the British defence ministry said. The meeting will involve 40 countries and comes a day after Iran threatened to strike British and French warships if they tried to help reopen the waterway. Trump’s rejection of Iran’s response to the US peace proposal caused a jump in Brent crude oil by as much as 4% on Monday to $105.50 a barrel, before easing back slightly.