Gaza cease-fire tension. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel will resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas does not release Israeli hostages by Saturday. Hamas had said Monday it would delay Saturday’s incremental release due to alleged Israeli violations of the truce. Separately, Trump met yesterday with Jordan’s king, who said he rejected the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Jordan agreed to accept two thousand sick children from the territory, and Trump suggested he was backing off a previous threat to withhold aid from Jordan.
Responses to steel, aluminum tariffs. South Korea’s acting president said he would seek talks with Washington over 25 percent steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump announced Monday, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke about trade in what she called a “good discussion” yesterday with U.S. Vice President JD Vance. Traders began marking up U.S. metals prices after Trump’s announcement. Some U.S. industry groups, such as the American Primary Aluminum Association, praised the tariffs. But the head of the Washington-based Aluminum Association said the United States lacks domestic smelting capacity to fully supply the industry with input materials.
Sudan rejects truce overture. Sudan’s army dismissed a call from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Sudan, as well as UN experts, say that the UAE arms the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the country’s civil war. In recent days, the RSF has staged attacks on El Fasher, the last major army-held city in the Darfur region.
China’s space programs in Africa. Beijing can access data and images collected from its previously announced space investments in Africa, and Chinese personnel stay long-term at those space facilities, Reuters reported. Such partnerships are a boon for Beijing’s global surveillance and space power ambitions. Asked if China was using equipment in Africa for surveillance, a Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington said the U.S. “is not in a position to smear or defame China.” Last year, NASA started building its first ground station on the continent, in South Africa.
Italy’s mafia crackdown. Italian police arrested more than one hundred people in a sting operation against the Cosa Nostra mafia syndicate yesterday. Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta crime group has today become more powerful than Cosa Nostra, which carried out large-scale attacks in the 1980s and 1990s. But Italian authorities said the scale of yesterday’s operation shows how Cosa Nostra, which is based in Sicily, was able to regenerate.
Tesla in China. Tesla opened a $200 million large-scale battery factory in Shanghai yesterday, its first such factory outside the United States. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is also a special government employee in the Trump administration, could play a role if Trump negotiates with Chinese President Xi Jinping to lower trade tensions, analysts said.
Iranian journalists pardoned. Iran’s judiciary pardoned two journalists who had been charged after they reported on the 2022 death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in state custody. News of Amini’s death sparked mass antigovernment protests. The journalists were temporarily released from prison last year and partially acquitted; now, they are fully cleared of charges.
Canada’s fentanyl czar. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has named a head of Canada’s anti-fentanyl trafficking efforts. While U.S. government data says less than 1 percent of fentanyl seized crossing U.S. borders comes from Canada, “any amount of fentanyl is too much,” the Canadian prime minister’s office said. The move follows a border security pledge Trudeau made last week in an effort to delay threatened tariffs from Trump.
