Read the daily news to learn English

Zelenskyy says EU unblocking of €90bn loan for Ukraine is ‘the right signal’ as Hungary drops opposition – Europe live

British holidaymakers face new rules when taking their pet into the EU involving paperwork costing up to £200. Brussels closed a loophole which saw some British pet owners travel on an EU pet passport, which is issued for the life of the animal. From 22 April, these EU passports will no longer be valid for owners who live full-time in the UK. Guidance on the UK government website say old EU passports “may no longer be valid” for entry to the continental EU. In future, they will need to get an animal health certificate for the cat, dog or ferret which can cost up to £200. To add to the cost for British travellers, the AHC is only valid for one trip, although it can be used for up to six months within the EU and for re-entering GB as long as rabies vaccinations remain valid. If someone else other than the owner is transporting the pet, extra paperwork is needed and the pet must travel within five days of the owner entering the EU. Labour sources said they hoped that the measures would fall away in July by which time the UK hopes to have signed its first “reset” deal with the EU. The pet rules will be part of the agriculture or sanitary and phytosanitary agreement currently under negotiation to reduce trade barriers for food and farm exports.

Middle East crisis live: Iran says it has seized two ships in strait of Hormuz after Trump extends ceasefire

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, said a second French peacekeeper who was “seriously wounded by Hezbollah fighters” in Lebanon has died of his injuries. Anicet Girardin was wounded in the attack on Saturday which killed another French peacekeeper, identified as Florian Montorio. In a post on X, Macron said: “Corporal Anicet Girardin of the 132nd Cynotechnical Infantry Regiment of Suippes, repatriated yesterday from Lebanon where he had been seriously wounded by Hezbollah fighters, died this morning from his injuries. “He died for France.” The French soldiers were killed when a patrol came under attack from “non-state actors”, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said.

‘A well-known secret’: inside Toronto’s violent tow truck wars

When Cameron moved his family to a suburb north of Toronto last year, neighbours told him it one of the safest streets in the area. The roads were lined with cream-brick houses and manicured lawns. In summer, kids played between driveways; in winter, they dug tunnels through snowbanks. But any hope of a peaceful life on Allison Ann Way was shattered when a house across the street was shot at four times in five months. The most recent attack came in early February, as Cameron was leaving for work. Moments after his children had headed out for school, gunfire tore into the neighbour’s garage and a dark SUV sped off. “Whoever was doing this was trying to send us a message, and they did,” Cameron said, peering out from his garage. “This street is now empty, like a ghost town.” Police say that the daylight shooting was the latest in a string of violent incidents linked to Toronto’s towing industry, a sector which has long been dogged by allegations of links to organised crime and aggressive turf wars. This year alone, nearly two dozen vehicles have been set ablaze in attacks on tow truck repair sites. Last June, Toronto police investigating a towing network known as “The Union” laid more than 100 charges, including drug trafficking, extortion and 52 counts of conspiracy to commit murder. In the municipality of Peel, north-west of Toronto, investigators seized more than $4m in assets, including bulletproof vests, 586 rounds of ammunition and 18 tow trucks. A recent police corruption probe, Project South, has raised allegations of collusion between officers and organised crime figures linked to towing networks and drug trafficking. Investigators allege that serving officers leaked sensitive information to hitmen, and even assisted a plot to kill a corrections officer at a maximum-security jail. The investigation also offered an explanation for the shooting on Allison Ann Way: court records show that a civilian charged in the probe, Elwyn Satanowsky, is accused of arranging shootings on the street and discharging a firearm recklessly. Lead investigators have said that Satanowsky, who had ties to the towing industry, had obtained information from police officers to facilitate crimes. Sonya Shikhman, Satanowsky’s lawyer, declined to comment when asked about the charges her client faces, or his affiliation to the towing sector. On 6 March, a judge denied Satanowsky bail. None of the charges have been tested in court. Police said the house targeted in the Allison Ann Way attack was linked to Alexander Vinogradsky, a towing boss and alleged crime boss, who was shot dead in a North Toronto shopping plaza in 2024. Vinogradsky himself had been accused of ordering targeted assassinations of rivals. The flurry of allegations have renewed scrutiny of the rules governing accident towing, which experts say make the business particularly appealing to organised crime: what begins as a race to crash scenes has evolved into a sprawling pipeline of inflated repair contracts, insurance claims and extortion, which fuels violence that stretches far beyond the roadside. In much of the greater Toronto area, accident towing still operates on a “first on scene” basis; first access can generate thousands of dollars, fuelling fierce competition as rival organisations monitor emergency calls and dispatch “chasers” to collisions. Sometimes the race to an crash scene can cause secondary crashes, and fights at collision scenes are common. Doug Murray, a veteran tow operator, said a single call can be worth upwards of $10,000 once storage, repair work and insurance claims are secured. “The more money involved, the more aggressive the competition becomes,” he said. That aggression has taken the form of arson, assault and murder allegations. Investigators also allege that unscrupulous towers have defrauded insurers by staging crashes in partnership with complicit auto-body shops. According to the insurer Aviva, the number of staged crashes in Canada rose by nearly 400% in 2025 compared with the previous year. The initial tow is often the start of a chain of fees and kickbacks. An unwitting driver, still shaken from a crash, can be directed toward repair shops, car rental agencies, injury lawyers and even physiotherapists. Each recommendation can generate a lucrative referral fee for the operator, Murray said. Ultimately, motorists absorb the costs through inflated insurance premiums. Another company owner said that criminal groups operated with coordinated radio networks and ruthless internal hierarchies, outmatching legitimate providers. “As long as ‘first on scene’ remains the system, the violence will persist,” said Murray. Efforts to curb the violence have focused on reforming how towing jobs are assigned. On Ontario’s major controlled-access highways, however, business operates differently. Under new legislation, the province contracts accredited providers dispatched through a vetted system, limiting competition at collision points. Industry experts say that although these reforms have quelled the clashes on highways, the flare-ups have condensed to urban areas, where collision towing remains less regulated. Gary Vandenheuvel, head of the Professional Towing and Recovery Association of Ontario, said the highway model demonstrates how tighter oversight can help reduce criminal infiltration. “The current system clearly isn’t working. We need to make it safer for towers and members of the public,” he said. Vandenheuvel described the majority of the city’s towers as legitimate, saying the violence was driven by a small number of “bad actors”. Yvon Dandurand, a criminologist who specializes in international organised crime, said the dynamics observed in the greater Toronto area are “far from unique”, pointing to similar patterns in Melbourne, Johannesburg and Cape Town, where towing operators have been engulfed in shooting and intimidation campaigns. In the United States, cities including Detroit, Miami and New York have seen comparable turf wars. In a 2021 case, three former New York City police officers pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from towers and using a database to lead businesses to crash victims. But in Toronto, the consequences are not evenly distributed. Police and community advocates warn that young people are being ensnared into these networks. Among those arrested in Project South were two individuals under 18, while on 24 March a 21-year-old was arrested in connection with a separate turf war after nearly 10 months on the run following a mass shooting at a pub. All 10 suspects were aged between 15 and 22. For towing gangs, the roles of enforcers and “chasers” are often filled by teenagers serving at the lowest rung of the hierarchy. Marcell Wilson, a former gang member and founder of the One by One Movement, an organisation which works directly to support young people affected by street violence, said young people are treated as expendable labour within organised crime groups – and that Project South reflected a broader “well-known secret”. In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Toronto police service said: “It’s always a concern for police when young people become involved in criminal activity. “Organized crime groups often target young people because they are more vulnerable to manipulation, may be seeking money or belonging, and are sometimes perceived by offenders as less likely to attract the same level of scrutiny or consequences as adults.” Wilson said the links between corruption, organised crime and youth violence have long been visible. “Guns are not manufactured in the projects,” he said. “Follow the chain – how does it get there?”

Gaza’s yellow line creeps forward as Israeli forces expand zone of control

Israeli forces have been moving an agreed truce line in Gaza westwards over the six months since the ceasefire, expanding their zone of control and making the state of limbo ever more dangerous for Palestinians. The “yellow line” agreed in the US-brokered ceasefire in October was supposed to be temporary pending further Israeli withdrawals, but the partially observed truce has stalled after its first phase amid disagreements over the disarming of Hamas, and continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Since then, the yellow line has crept forward in several places, expanding the army-controlled area well beyond the 53% of Gaza territory implied in the original ceasefire maps. According to the research agency Forensic Architecture, by December Israel had taken 58% of the strip and continued to edge forwards. The line is marked in some places by yellow concrete blocks, many of which were moved in December and January as the army took more territory, particularly in urban areas. All over Gaza, residents awoke to find the line had moved overnight and they were suddenly in a free-fire zone. “The yellow line has advanced several times,” said Faiq al-Sakani, 37, in al-Tuffah. He said the line moved 100 metres in January, reaching al-Sanafour roundabout near the Salah al-Din road, the main route running north-south through the strip. “During these advances, displaced people who had been staying near Salah al-Din Street were targeted,” he said. In recent days, he added, there had been a significant uptick in demolitions, excavations and new buildings by the army, along with constant heavy gunfire in the area. The army has also extended a chain of earth berms – raised areas of land – along the line, dominating neighbourhoods and giving tank gunners and snipers a line of sight over large tracts of ruined Palestinian cities. More than 10 miles of berms have been erected already, according to Haaretz, mostly in the north, but bulldozers have started putting up new earthworks in Gaza City and Khan Younis. Adding to the growing sense of permanence around the yellow line, the military has been building an expanding array of fortified outposts. Seven new concrete forts have been built in recent months, bringing the total across the strip to 32. All of the new construction has been along the yellow line. As these physical markers have moved westwards, so too has an unmarked zone in which any Palestinian person or vehicle is considered a threat and a legitimate target. Aid organisations working in Gaza said they were told by Israeli liaison officers that the edge of this zone was the “orange line” and they had to coordinate their operations with the military if they crossed it. But the orange line existed only on maps. It was never marked and its distance from the yellow line appears to vary from 200 to 500 metres, according to the Israeli army unit deployed there. When the yellow line moves, many Palestinians find that rather than them crossing the orange line, the orange line has crossed them. The UN reported in March that it had been informed that the orange line had moved forward and 10 UN facilities were now on the wrong side of it, including emergency shelters for displaced people. Ahmad Ibsais, a Palestinian-American legal scholar and commentator, argued that the real motive lurking behind the yellow line and all associated security arrangements was to drive out the Palestinian population. Writing on the website of Al-Shabaka, a thinktank, Ibsais described it as “a method of annexation deliberately designed to evade legal consequences”. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have defended their actions along the yellow line by arguing that their soldiers have the right to protect themselves from perceived imminent threats in a tense environment. “The IDF is working to visually mark the yellow line, in accordance with terrain conditions and the continuously updated operational assessment,” an Israeli military spokesperson said. “As part of these efforts, the IDF informs the local population in Gaza of the line’s location and works to mark it on the ground in order to reduce friction and prevent misunderstandings. “The area adjacent to the yellow line is a sensitive and dangerous operational environment. Signs are posted in the area indicating that it is forbidden to approach it. It should be emphasised that the IDF does not operate against civilians and does not target civilians solely due to their proximity to the line.” The claim that civilians have been killed when they were perceived as a threat to Israeli positions along the line has been rejected as a legal defence by the UN human rights commissioner, Volker Türk, who said this month: “Targeting civilians not taking direct part in hostilities is a war crime, regardless of their proximity to deployment lines.” Of the more than 700 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire over the six months of the ceasefire, 269 were shot near the yellow line, according to UN data. Of these, more than 100 were children. Duaa Taima, 29, who lives in an abandoned UN clinic in Jabaliya refugee camp 200 metres from the yellow line, said: “We live under continuous threat even after the ceasefire. There is continual random gunfire from the Israeli army and I hide with my children behind the cracked walls, searching for any kind of protection.” When the ceasefire was initially declared, the demarcation line near Jabaliya and the neighbouring town of Beit Lahiya seemed distant, but Taima said in December it was much closer. “That day was extremely difficult,” she said. “A large truck carrying the yellow concrete blocks arrived, accompanied by a crane to lift them, while Israeli military vehicles advanced, and heavy and direct gunfire began towards us.” More recently, three connected berms have been erected along the yellow line by Beit Lahiya, forming a high barrier visible from miles around. All along the yellow line, residents reported being afraid to leave their homes, under the constant watch of surveillance drones and the unpredictability of the Israeli security zone. Rafiq Mustafa, 60, had thought his family home in Beit Lahiya was a safe distance from the yellow line until the yellow concrete markers appeared 200 metres away. “We would know the blocks were being moved by the sound of tank and bulldozer engines, accompanied by heavy and random gunfire,” Mustafa said. “We stayed inside the house, unable even to go up to the roof.” He said: “Approaching the yellow line has become extremely dangerous. Anyone who gets near it, or even looks in its direction, is pursued by quadcopter drones, shot at, or arrested and interrogated by [Israeli-backed] militia groups. “We only go out if it’s absolutely necessity now, and when we do, we go with extreme caution. We are afraid for ourselves and for our children. They no longer play in the streets.”

World food systems ‘pushed to the brink’ by extreme heat, UN warns

Extreme heat is threatening the world’s food systems, with farmers unable to work outside, livestock experiencing stress and crop yields falling, putting the livelihoods of more than a billion people in peril, the UN has warned. Experts said food supply in some areas was being “pushed to the brink” by increasingly common and severe heatwaves, on land and at sea, in a major report written jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Farmers could find it impossible to work safely for as many as 250 days of the year – more than two-thirds of the time – in already hot regions including much of India and south Asia, tropical sub-Saharan Africa and swathes of Central and South America. Livestock are already experiencing an increase in mortality rates, as heat stress begins for common species at about 25C. Extreme heat reduces yields from dairy cows and cuts the fat and protein content of milk. Pigs and chickens are unable to sweat and, as temperatures rise, face digestive tract breakdowns, organ failure and cardiovascular shock. Yields begin to decline at temperatures above 30C for most agricultural crops, with damage including weakened cell walls and the production of toxins. The yields of maize in some areas have declined by about 10%. Wheat has fallen by nearly as much, and is projected to decline further as temperatures rise to more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Ocean heatwaves are also killing fish, as heat reduces the level of dissolved oxygen in the water, leading to mass decline in populations. Much more could be done to warn farmers, as heatwaves are often predictable, according to the report published on Wednesday. Weather forecasts and mobile phone communications could be used to alert farmers when extreme weather is expected. Richard Waite, the director of agriculture initiatives at the World Resources Institute thinktank, who was not involved in the report, said it was crucial to start adapting to rising temperatures now, by giving farmers the tools, knowhow and early warnings to help them anticipate and protect against extreme weather. “Without adaptation, extreme heat will cut crop and livestock yields, forcing more land into agriculture to maintain food production. That would drive even higher emissions from land use change, which in turn would make climate impacts on agriculture even worse,” he said. “What’s needed is the opposite: scaling solutions that help farmers maintain and sustainably increase productivity, even in a changing climate, so we can break that vicious cycle rather than reinforce it.” Morgan Ody, a small-scale farmer and the general coordinator of La Via Campesina, a global organisation of food and land workers and small farmers, said the lives of working people were increasingly at risk. “Farmers, agricultural workers and small-scale fisherfolk – especially women and elderly people among them – whose livelihoods depend on daily work in fields, rivers and oceans, are highly vulnerable to extreme heat, which also threatens their health and lives. These extreme weather events are driven in large part by industrial monocultures and livestock systems that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases,” he said. Ody called for compensation for such workers for the losses they experience from extreme weather, debt relief and public investment in adaptive measures, as well as rules on worker safety that would limit how long workers in fields and on boats could be exposed to high temperatures and force employers to provide shade, rest and water. In the longer term, he called for the replacement of intensive farming with more nature-friendly methods. Modern industrialised food systems rely on a narrow range of staple crops, and highly specialised systems that are dependent on inputs such as fertiliser. That makes them highly vulnerable and less able to cope with shocks, such as extreme heat, according to Molly Anderson, professor of food studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, who was not involved with the report. Anderson called for the development of a more diverse food system, better equipped to withstand shocks, and a reversal of trends in intensive agriculture that have robbed farms of trees, shade and mixtures of crops and livestock. She said: “The risk of simultaneous crop failures from extreme heat could ripple through food prices, supply chains and economies. Adaptation has limits – the only durable response is to tackle fossil fuels, accelerate the shift to renewable energy, and invest massively in adaptation.” Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at the University of London, said though the worst effects would be felt in already hot countries, temperate regions and developed countries could not ignore the impacts. “The acceleration of climate uncertainties poses dire challenges for food growers worldwide,” he said. “The British Isles are not immune to the effects. Places we’ve got food from will dry up. Land use here will be changed. Water dependencies are exposed. Crops that started off well will fail to thrive. Productivity will be disrupted. Regular patterns of growing and consuming will be forced to change. Anyone who thinks climate change won’t affect us should think again.”

Gibraltar’s monkeys eat mud ‘to avoid upset stomachs from tourist junk food’

Troops of monkeys living on the Rock of Gibraltar have learned to eat soil in what scientists believe is an effort to settle their stomachs after all the junk food they receive – and sometimes steal – from crowds of tourists. Researchers spotted the intentional mud eating, known as geophagy, while observing groups of Barbary macaques in the territory. Monkeys that had the most contact with tourists ate the most soil and consumption peaked in the holiday season, they found. About 230 macaques live on Gibraltar in eight distinct groups, and while local authorities provide them with daily helpings of fruit, vegetables and seeds, tourists routinely feed them snacks ranging from bags of chips and chocolate bars to M&M’s and ice-creams. The observations don’t prove why the monkeys eat soil, but scientists suspect it has a protective effect on the digestive system. The only macaques on the rock that were not seen eating soil belonged to a group that is isolated from visitors and tourists. Dr Sylvain Lemoine, a primate behavioural ecologist at the University of Cambridge, said the monkeys may be eating the soil to rebalance their gut microbiomes, the populations of microbes that live in the digestive tract, which become disturbed by the fatty, salty and sugary snacks the monkeys binge on. “We think that eating this junk food disrupts the composition of the microbiome and we know that bacteria and minerals in soil can help recompose the microbiome and alleviate the negative effects,” Lemoine said. “We think there’s a protective effect of the soil.” Observations between summer 2022 and spring 2024 found that nearly a fifth of all food consumed by the macaques was junk food from tourists. Macaques that lived around the top of the rock, which is particularly popular with tourists, were more than twice as likely to eat junk food than others. They also consumed the most soil. Lemoine said the monkeys were fed junk food by locals as well as visiting tourists, who have offered salted peanuts, chocolate bars, crisps, dried pasta, bread, Coca-Cola, orange juice, M&M’s, ice-cream and more. “There’s a lot of ice-cream. They love Magnums and Cornettos. What they don’t like very much is sorbet.” In total, the researchers recorded 44 monkeys eating dirt on 46 occasions. In three instances, the macaques ate soil shortly after being fed ice-cream, biscuits or bread. When visitor numbers fell in the winter, the monkeys were 40% less likely to eat tourist food and more than 30% less likely to eat soil. Writing in Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how the monkeys appear to learn the habit from others, with macaques favouring different types of soil depending on their troop. Most monkeys search out the terra rossa, or red clay, found across Gibraltar, but the Ape’s Den troop, which occupies the lower western slopes, favours tar-clogged soil from potholes in asphalt roads. Humans around the world eat soil, particularly pregnant women in parts of Africa, Asia and South America, where it is consumed to help with nausea or to provide critical minerals. But the researchers saw no rise in soil-eating among pregnant or lactating monkeys, suggesting the behaviour is not driven by a need to supplement their diets. Instead, Lemoine said the macaques seemed to eat the soil to “buffer their digestive system” against high-energy, low-fibre snacks and junk foods that are known to cause stomach upsets in some primates. Tourists are told not to touch or feed the monkeys on Gibraltar, but the rule is not well enforced. While the junk food may be harmful to the macaques, so might the soil, as much of it is found close to busy roads on the rock. “There are a lot of vehicles passing every day, and most are not electric yet,” Lemoine said. “We want to analyse the soil. We’re very interested in seeing the levels of pollutants.” Dr Paula Pebsworth, a primatologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said geophagy served multiple purposes linked to detoxification and mineral supplementation. In her own work on chacma baboons in South Africa, monkeys consumed substantial amounts of soil, likely in response to plant toxins. “The idea that soil consumption may help monkeys cope with tourist provisioning is also plausible and has been documented at [Japan’s] Arashiyama Monkey Park. However, while geophagy may serve as a coping mechanism, a more effective management approach is to reduce or eliminate the provisioning of human foods,” she said.

Tehran’s embattled Jewish community endures despite Israeli bombing of synagogue

On the evening of 6 April, Asef, 65, and other members of Tehran’s Jewish community braved the US-Israeli bombing campaign to celebrate an evening Passover service at the Rafi’ Nia synagogue in the centre of the Iranian capital. Inside the dim hall, lined with Persian carpets and mint green curtains, Torah verses were recited and prayers murmured under the breath. Asef, his shirt neatly tucked into his trousers and a kippah on his head, sat among the men, while the women sat separately on the other side. The atmosphere was reverent but subdued. “We didn’t let the conflict stop us from celebrating,” he said, adding that the community had made an effort to hold on to their Passover traditions even amid the difficulties of war. It was already dark when he headed home that night; the streets were quiet, with only a few people out. By the time he got up the next morning to get ready for work, an Israeli airstrike had completely destroyed the synagogue. The Israeli army described the destruction as “collateral damage” from a strike targeting a commander, but members of the Jewish community expressed anger and outrage. Nobody was injured, although a staff member had been in the synagogue’s office at the time. The morning after the bombing, synagogue members sifted through rubble and debris, trying to recover what they could: a handful of religious books and three Torah scrolls were pulled from the shatter brick and rebar, but much was lost. “It’s all under the rubble, including some of our historical volumes,” said Homayoun Sameh, a member of parliament and the head of the Jewish Association of Iran, who visited the site. “We condemn this attack. It disrespects our faith. Iran’s Jewish community doesn’t have good relations with the Zionist Israeli government,” he said. Iran’s Jewish community is the largest and oldest in the Middle East outside Israel, dating back about 2,500 years to when Jews were exiled eastwards by Assyrian and Babylonian rulers. Iranian officials have long used antisemitic language to express their hostility to Israel – former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once described the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis as “myth” – but the government maintains that its stance is directed at Israel as a state, not Jews as people. The US-Israeli war on Iran has highlighted the unique dual identity of a community that has itself become collateral damage in a conflict that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserts has been fought to protect Jews. Until 1979, Iran – under the pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – was Israel’s closest ally in the region. After the Islamic revolution, the country’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, severed diplomatic ties and the two countries have been locked in confrontation ever since. “Some speak of a so-called golden era before the 1979 revolution, when Tehran and Tel Aviv were close friends, but this was also a period when Israel backed, armed and trained the brutal shah regime,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has spent time with the Jewish community in Tehran. After the revolution, emigration meant the country’s Jewish population dropped from about 100,000 to 10,000-15,000, mostly focused in the bigger cities of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. “In the early years after the revolution, society was in turmoil and many people confused us with Zionists. Jewish properties were confiscated, and many Jews were afraid and sought refuge [in Israel],” said Sameh. Others decided to stay, such as the family of the community’s chief rabbi, Younes Hamami Lalehzar, 61, an internal medicine doctor who has long worked at Tehran’s Jewish hospital. His family, merchants originally from the city of Yazd in central Iran, had always been proudly both Iranian and Jewish. Today, the vibrant community maintains about 30 synagogues, as well as schools, kosher restaurants and supermarkets. Judaism is constitutionally recognised and protected in Iran, although Jews are barred from holding certain high government or military positions. It is a community that defies easy categorisation. “Many in the Jewish community are understandably cautious of outsiders, self-censorship is common, some are what I’d call quiet Zionists while others are fiercely critical of Israeli crimes against Palestinians and opposed to Zionism,” said Loewenstein. “Many are deeply opposed to the Trump administration and Israeli destruction of Iranian infrastructure during the recent war. The Israeli airstrike that destroyed a prominent synagogue in Tehran confirmed the fears of many Iranian Jews that Israel and Netanyahu don’t really care about their fate.” About two decades ago, Israel encouraged Iranian Jews to emigrate, offering cash incentives in an attempt to prompt a mass migration. At the time, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed the offer as “immature political enticements” and said their national identity was not for sale. At a service at Sukkat Shalom synagogue before Shabbat last week, members of the community echoed this sentiment, expressing pride in their community’s long history. Setareh, a 60-year-old woman and “proud Iranian”, said synagogues in Tehran were left without guards and “remain open throughout the day”, even during war. “Muslim and Jewish communities live here together, we’re not separated. We all live together in peace,” said another man, Ayman, 35. “We are all Iranians and this is our home.” • This article was amended on 22 April 2026. An earlier version said that Iran’s Jewish community was the largest and oldest outside Israel; that should have said outside Israel in the Middle East.

Wednesday briefing: Can Keir Starmer’s premiership survive more revelations about his handling of diplomatic posts?

Good morning. On Monday, Keir Starmer told MPs that officials had failed to inform him Peter Mandelson had been refused security vetting before being appointed ambassador to Washington. Yesterday, the ousted Foreign Office permanent secretary Olly Robbins gave his own account in parliament. Not only did Robbins’s retelling differ from the prime minister’s version, it also included further damaging claims about the pressure his department had been under from the Downing Street operation to confirm the New Labour grandee in the role. Robbins, who gave two and a half hours of evidence to the foreign affairs select committee, also revealed he had been under pressure to appoint another Starmer aide to a senior diplomatic role – while keeping the foreign secretary firmly out of the loop. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Guardian policy editor Kiran Stacey about the gaps between the two accounts, the questions that remain unanswered and where Starmer goes from here. First though, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Olly Robbins, the former top official at the Foreign Office, said No 10 took a “dismissive” attitude to vetting, and Peter Mandelson was given access to the Foreign Office building and to “higher-classification briefings” before he was granted security clearance. Middle East crisis | Donald Trump unilaterally announced an extension of the two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday amid frantic efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. Labour | The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told “white liberal” hecklers to “fuck right off” after being accused at an on-stage event of copying the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. US politics | Tucker Carlson has said he is “tormented” by his support of Donald Trump, issuing an extraordinary mea culpa that called for “a moment to wrestle with our own consciences”. UK news | Seven more people have been arrested after a series of arson attacks on Jewish sites in London. In depth: ‘He said he’d been made a scapegoat’ Opening yesterday’s session, the foreign affairs committee chair Emily Thornberry was withering about how candid Olly Robbins had been to the same committee previously. “You clearly told us the truth,” she said, “but you only told us part of the truth. It’s a little bit like saying ‘I had to run to work today’, but not saying you were chased by a bear.” Robbins was, Kiran Stacey says, clearly aggrieved at how he has been treated. “He said he’d been made a scapegoat and insisted he’d done everything by the book.” *** What did Robbins tell the committee? Robbins’s argument boiled down to this: by the time he took up his role, Mandelson’s appointment had already been announced, approved by King Charles and accepted by the US – and the Foreign Office was under “constant pressure” from No 10 Downing Street to get him to Washington as quickly as possible. He insisted this pressure bore no part in his decision-making. However, on our live blog coverage of the hearing yesterday, my colleague Andrew Sparrow had more than a little suspicion on this score, writing: “You can choose to believe that if you want.” Kiran says that Robbins’s message here was “the appointment had effectively already been made – agreed, announced and tied up. If I’d refused clearance, I’d have killed the appointment after it had already been announced. I would have been reversing the prime minister’s decision.” Crucially, Robbins maintained that the vetting outcome had been presented to him as “borderline” and manageable – despite reports that officials had in fact recommended clearance be denied – and he also claimed not to have been presented with any of the documentary evidence around the vetting process. *** A new line of attack against Starmer One new piece of information that came out of Robbins’s session was his suggestion that the No 10 operation had been seeking a diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle, who was then the prime minister’s director of communications. This line, Kiran says, “came out of nowhere”. “He was obviously prepared for it and just waiting for the right moment to drop it in,” Kiran says. “I don’t know whether he’d briefed the committee in advance, but it was completely out of the blue – not directly related to what he was talking about, but a pretty amazing revelation.” Robbins then told the committee he had been told not to inform the then-foreign secretary David Lammy about this – which seems quite extraordinary. In the Commons, the current foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she was “extremely concerned” about the suggestion a permanent secretary was being ordered to keep a minister in the dark. Doyle, who was made a Labour peer, was suspended from the House of Lords in February after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children. Doyle said later on Tuesday that he “never sought” a post as an ambassdor and that he was “never aware of anyone speaking to the FCDO about such a role for me”. Kiran tells me that given the overall tenor of Robbins’s testimony – that Starmer desperately wanted Mandelson in place, come what may – “to then add: ‘Oh, and by the way, he also wanted another mate, someone who’s been tarred by association with a paedophile, to take on a diplomatic role’. Well, that adds to a growing feeling among Labour MPs that Starmer’s political judgment is all over the place.” *** A story Robbins wanted to bury Robbins also confirmed the Guardian’s story that senior government officials had considered whether to withhold from parliament sensitive documents about the vetting process, which was denied last week by Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary. In fact, the former senior civil servant seemed regretful the episode had come into the public domain at all, saying the leak to the Guardian of details of Mandelson’s vetting was “a grievous breach of national security”. He implied it would only be helpful to “hostile powers”, and that anything that undermined the integrity of the security vetting process could pose a risk to people working in embassies in Moscow or Beijing. “It’s important to stress that he confirmed our reporting that they were considering covering the whole thing up,” Kiran says. “In fact, he said he would have preferred that.” Kiran points out that even once it became clear during the process in the Commons that forced the government to release documents pertaining to Mandelson’s appointment, Robbins’ preference was still not to publish it. “He was at loggerheads with others,” Kiran says, “and who knows how it would have played out. But if we hadn’t published our story, the public might never have known about any of this.” *** Where do we go from here? Robbins stuck to his insistence – however much Thornberry suggested surely he must have picked up the phone to someone senior at some point after the decision was reached – that he did not tell anyone in No 10 about the vetting recommendation. That will bolster the prime minister’s claims in the House of Commons that neither he nor any of his aides knew about the debate around Mandelson’s vetting status, describing the decision to keep the information from him as “frankly staggering”. “Starmer said due process was followed,” Kiran reminds me. “He can still say that was true – it’s just that he wasn’t told the full detail of the process.” What does this mean for Starmer’s already frail position? An expected mauling in May’s local elections is “baked in” says, says Kiran, but there is a danger that the Mandelson story will continue to haunt what remains of Starmer’s premiership. “It’s one of those stories that gets reignited by fresh information – another transcript, more documents, perhaps the vetting recommendation, if that’s published.” Thornberry referenced being chased by a bear this morning. It isn’t clear that Starmer is out of the woods yet. What else we’ve been reading The Guardian has relaunched its Cotton Capital series as part of the next phase of its 10-year plan to address and atone for the organisation’s historical links to transatlantic enslavement. Our Legacies of Enslavement programme director Ebony Riddell Bamber reopens the series with this remarkable piece asking: what would repairing the harm of enslavement actually look like? Patrick Tom Vanderbilt is wistfully – and slightly oddly – nostalgic about old-school street scams, which he says he much prefers to the faceless phone-snatchers of today. Martin This time in April is traditionally understood to have been the week of William Shakespeare’s birth. To celebrate, the Guardian’s former theatre critic Michael Billington ranks all 35 of the plays. Patrick Daniel Lavelle explains how, after the release of various snippets of evidence from US intelligence, he dropped everything and went UFO-chasing in the US. Martin Zoe Williams is funny (as always) on the unspoken social rules of dropping off her niece at university. Patrick Sport Football | Ferdi Kadıoglu, Jack Hinshelwood and Danny Welbeck were all on target as Brighton moved above Chelsea into sixth place with an emphatic 3-0 win. Football | Karren Brady made a shock announcement that she has stepped down as West Ham’s vice-chair after 16 years. Boxing | The world heavyweight title contender Lawrence Okolie has pledged to clear his name after a failed a drugs test before his bout against Tony Yoka this weekend. The front pages Our Guardian print edition opens the day with “Robbins accuses No 10 of applying huge pressure over Mandelson job”. Similarly the Financial Times reports “Robbins tells of No 10 pressure to approve role for Mandelson”. The Times splashes on “Starmer on the ropes over Mandelson vetting fiasco” while the Telegraph has “Labour MPs vent fury at ‘toxic’ No10”. Gleefully the Mail reports “Starmer’s support starts to crack” while the Mirror goes a bit Metro with “Eye of the Starm”. Speaking of the Metro its headline is “Peers pressure” as it focuses on claims of a bid to get Lord (Matthew) Doyle a diplomatic job. The i paper runs with “Wounded Starmer given public dressing down by his cabinet”. Something else entirely in the Express: “Hero manager Sean must get his job back!”. He “tackled” a shoplifter in Morrisons. Today in Focus The security report the UK government doesn’t want you to see – podcast Fiona Harvey tells Nosheen Iqbal why the climate crisis is a threat to national security Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In many UK cities, we have to learn to live alongside foxes. In some cities in Germany, racoons are the main wild companion. But in Nepal, the recovery of wildlife populations near Chitwan national park has been so dramatic that some megafauna walk down the street in the middle of the day. This photo essay by James Whitlow Delano has extraordinary photos of a wild rhinoceros in the middle of nearby cities. Human-wildlife conflict has become a problem as populations of rhinos, tigers and other species have recovered, but James also profiles some of the extraordinary conservationists keeping the peace. 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