Read the daily news to learn English

Scepticism and tight security as Trump is welcomed by Xi to Beijing

Yaoji Chaogan, a no-frills canteen next to Beijing’s historic Drum and Bell towers, once proudly displayed photographs of Joe Biden, who visited the restaurant when he was US vice-president in 2011. Biden’s visit went viral in China, with media praising his “noodle diplomacy” (one of the dishes that Biden ordered was zhajiang mian, a traditional style of Beijing noodles with bean paste). But evidence of Biden’s visit was removed when the restaurant was redecorated a few years ago. A visit from a US leader is no longer something to boast about. “If US politicians were really smart, they wouldn’t try to hold China back,” said Liu Cheng, 47, at the restaurant on Wednesday as he tucked into a lunch of steamed baozi and tofu skin salad. Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to a China that has grown in confidence in the nine years since his last state visit in 2017. Although the economy is struggling and wage growth has slowed – to less than 2% in real terms in Beijing last year – a bullish nationalism is on the rise. It is fanned by state propaganda and by the US’s apparent decline into chaos and dysfunction, including the fact that the country managed to elect a leader as unconventional and unpredictable as Trump. Trump’s recent foreign policy gambles, from kidnapping the president of Venezuela to launching a war with Iran, have only served to reinforce the view among ordinary Chinese people that the US is a troublemaker. The US president has lost his novelty value in China. Where he was once seen as an entertainer, he is now seen as a leader who could pose a real threat to Chinese interests, despite him having described Xi Jinping, China’s leader, as a “tremendous guy”. Liu said whoever was US president, “it’s more or less the same for ordinary people like us. Before they take office, US presidents may say very extreme things, but once they are in office, they have no choice but to face the reality of China’s existence.” He said the US was struggling to accept the fact of China’s rise. The US “sees China has a threat … I think it will probably take about 10 years for the US to accept it.” Liu Chunlei, a 36-year-old taxi driver, said the issue of Taiwanese independence was driving a wedge between the two superpowers. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and is expected to push the US to soften its support for the self-governing island when Xi and Trump meet this week. Still, Liu welcomed the fact Trump was willing to visit Beijing. “It will definitely help ease China-US relations a little … it shows that his attitude towards China is not hostile,” the driver said. On the streets of Beijing there is heightened security to ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. The Temple of Heaven, a religious complex dating from the Ming dynasty in the 15th century, has been closed to visitors since Tuesday before Trump’s planned tour on Thursday afternoon. The temple is a significant monument in the history of Beijing and Washington. Henry Kissinger visited it on a secret visit to China in 1971, a trip that paved the way for the US and China to establish formal diplomatic relations. On Thursday morning, Xi welcomed Trump outside the Great Hall of the People, an imposing building on Tiananmen Square that houses China’s legislature. Cannons boomed a welcome salute, and a band played the Star-Spangled Banner and China’s national anthem. Tiananmen Square was cleared for the ceremony with only officials and press present, as well as military personnel who paraded in after Trump arrived. The hall featured giant, red-carpeted steps and huge expanses of marble, where soldiers hung large American and Chinese flags. Hundreds of primary school children wearing bright colours offered a welcome routine, jumping up and down as the girls waved flowers and the boys hoisted American and Chinese flags as the two leaders walked past them. One Chinese scholar in Beijing said this week Trump wanted to be seen, like Kissinger, as a trailblazer in US-China relations. But some ordinary Chinese were sceptical. On the social media platform Weibo, one user wrote: “There’s no point discussing anything with Trump. He’ll change his mind once he gets back. What he says in the morning can also change by the afternoon.” Additional reporting by Associated Press and research by Yu-chen Li

Thursday briefing: Is this Starmer’s last stand?

Good morning. Going into yesterday, Keir Starmer’s to-do list might have looked rather simple: “Listen to king announce all my new policies. Draw a line under leadership nonsense. Keep calm, and carry on”. As-yet-still health secretary Wes Streeting appears to have had very different ideas, at least according to sources close to him. Streeting’s aides spent the day briefing that their man had the backing of enough MPs to launch a leadership bid, and that he was preparing his ministerial resignation. In the last couple of hours another plot twist emerged, as the Guardian revealed Angela Rayner has been cleared by HMRC over her tax affairs, clearing the way for a potential leadership bid. While it seems Starmer’s eventual departure from Downing Street is now all but certain, far less clear to most Westminster-watchers is by what mechanism the PM could actually be replaced. For today’s newsletter I asked Dr Richard Johnson, senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, about the constitutional nuts and bolts of what happens now, and the challenges this situation, unprecedented for Labour, creates. First though, the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Keir Starmer has laid out long-promised changes to education, health and the courts in the king’s speech, which maps out the government’s agenda for the next year. UK politics | Nigel Farage is facing a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog over a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. US news | Donald Trump has said the growing financial pressure inflicted on Americans by the war on Iran is “not even a little bit” motivating him to make a peace deal with Tehran. Ukraine | Russia targeted Ukraine with more than 200 drones in a large-scale daytime assault on Wednesday, hours after a previous barrage of civilian areas had killed at least eight people. Europe news | French authorities have confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew members to a cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after a suspected norovirus outbreak, officials have said. In depth: A constitutional conundrum with ‘very badly written rules’ The last time the parliamentary Labour party tried to remove a leader by force was in 2016, when Owen Smith challenged an incumbent Jeremy Corbyn. First came the flurry of ministerial resignations, then a vote of no confidence by Labour MPs, which Corbyn lost resoundingly. Eventually came a fully fledged leadership election contested by Owen Smith. The Labour membership backed Corbyn with a thumping majority. A decade on, a significant chunk of Labour’s current crop feel it’s Keir Starmer’s turn. Only there is one vital difference. Starmer is prime minister, which makes attempting to topple him a far more complex constitutional conundrum. A sitting Labour prime minister has never faced an official challenge of leadership from their MPs. And, as Johnson informs me, the rules governing any contest are “very badly written” and contain a lot of ambiguity. *** How do Labour leadership elections work? Here’s what we know: Labour’s leadership elections are governed by section 4 of the Labour party rulebook. Any attempt to oust Starmer will require a challenger to secure written public nominations from 20% of Labour MPs – that is currently a total of 81 backers. The prime minister would automatically qualify for the ballot, and would continue as PM throughout the election process. Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) holds all the cards on timing, with the final stage being a choice put to party members and affiliated union supporters who rank candidates via the alternative vote system. If nobody secures a majority upfront, the bottom candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to their supporters’ next preferences, until a winner emerges with more than 50% of the total. That much is clear. But if Starmer were to resign, the rules around the contest would become more complicated and create a more drawn-out process. When a Labour leader resigns, leaving a vacancy at the top, leadership candidates are expected to also gather the support of 5% of either constituency Labour parties (CLPs) or affiliated trade unions in order to reach the ballot. “The rules are the product of multiple attempts to tidy up past rules,” Johnson says, “in a way that has only added confusion.” “I’ve spoken to supporters of Streeting who believe he still needs to go and secure those union and CLP nominations.” Others are not convinced that’s the case. “If that is, it makes a truncated, high-speed election impossible. Every CLP in the country would need to have a meeting. The sheer infrastructure of the Labour party makes it very difficult to move at the speed a government in crisis requires.” *** Would it result in a general election? Like many of the British governmental customs, while what happens is understood, there is no formal written constitutional process. If Starmer were to resign, the cabinet and Labour’s NEC could simply consult to appoint a new leader from within their ranks and recommend them to the monarch as prime minister. This scenario could play out if only one real contender emerged, removing the need for a contest. This would not be an “interim” or “caretaker” prime minister, but the real deal, as long as she or he retained the confidence of the Commons, a task (on paper, at least) made considerably easier by Labour’s large majority. There would be no need for a general election. But the Labour rulebook appears to make its own additional stipulations. “In opposition,” Johnson explains, “if a Labour leader resigns, the deputy automatically becomes acting leader. But in government, the rules say the cabinet – in consultation with the NEC – selects an acting leader from among their own ranks.” That last bit could prove important. It appears to open up the possibility of a scenario in which Streeting resigns from cabinet, Starmer immediately steps down as leader, and Streeting is at that point ineligible to become prime minister – because he is no longer at the top table. Again, there is little clarity. *** What precedents do we have? As the saying goes, “all political careers end in failure”, and we have plenty of precedent for that in living memory. In recent years, only Rishi Sunak, Gordon Brown and John Major have handed over the keys to Downing Street after losing an election. Everybody else since Margaret Thatcher has ceremonially fallen on their sword after being ousted from No 10 by their party. Johnson reminds me that when Tony Benn challenged Neil Kinnock’s leadership of Labour in 1988, Kinnock went out and collected nominations from his MPs, even though he didn’t need to. Starmer could well do the same. “It’s a way of pinning people down. You go to your ministers and say: ‘If you want to stay in this government, you sign this paper now.’ It stops people from peeling away.” Starmer, Johnson says, has one other potential route to garner support from Labour MPs and members who might be unenthused at the prospect of a Streeting premiership. “He could appeal to the soft left. He could frame himself as a proxy for Andy Burnham – promising the membership that he will create a path for Greater Manchester’s mayor to return to parliament in exchange for their support now in stopping Streeting.” *** How long can this go on for? How long is a piece of string? Even if Streeting’s challenge doesn’t materialise today, or in the next few days, the prime minister’s days are surely numbered. His authority has been severely eroded. If Streeting does decide to go for it, it isn’t entirely clear that he can win the support of the party at large, even if he convinces his Westminster colleagues. As Aletha Adu noted in this piece looking at his prospects, just before Labour’s 7 May election disaster, a Compass survey of more than 1,000 members found that given a free choice, 42% would pick Andy Burnham to succeed Starmer – with just 11% opting for Streeting. So far, Rayner – who had more favourable results than Streeting in that survey – has ruled out launching a coup, but has suggested she could enter any leadership contest, saying she wanted to “play my part”. “I don’t think it’s a case of each person for themselves, but I do think it’s a case of people seeing how they can pull the party together and have the vision to take us forward,” she told Pippa Crerar. In the meantime, the work of the government trudges on. Long-promised changes to education, health and the courts were mapped out in the king’s speech. Alexandra Topping sums up the key announcements here. There’s another oft-quoted political truism – “Events, dear boy, events” – attributed to Harold Macmillan. Starmer’s king’s speech, and his entire premiership, seem very like to survive or fall in the next few days on exactly that – events. We’ll be covering all of them. What else we’ve been reading Satirist Rosie Holt has written a play about Rachel Reeves’ ill-fated attempt to get the urinal removed from her office. She is very funny telling Brian Logan about the idea. Patrick We can all hang on to thinking too much about an ex, but photographer Diana Markosian has turned it into art – hiring an actor to replicate and document past intimate moments. Martin Stefanie O’Connell has written about the rise in home ownership among single women in the US – and how badly some men are reacting to it. Patrick Erasure have never been critical darlings, but this essay by John Freeman looking at their flawed but adorably awkward debut album sent me right back to buying their early 12” singles in the 80s. Martin Former supermarket worker Jools Lebron became a social media star after her posts when viral. She speaks to Kirsty Major about the challenges of online fame. Patrick Sport Scottish premiership | Hearts beat Falkirk 3-0 but were made to wait for their first Scottish league title since 1960 as Celtic’s late winner at Motherwell set up a last-day showdown. Football | EFL clubs will vote on Friday on significant changes to their financial regulations that would widen the gap in spending power between the Championship and League One. Cycling | Portugal’s Afonso Eulálio seized the overall lead in the Giro d’Italia despite having victory snatched away by Spain’s Igor Arrieta in the final metres of a rain-drenched stage five on Wednesday. The front pages “Streeting on manoeuvres ready to launch leadership challenge today” is the Guardian’s front page headline. The FT says “Starmer rallies Labour loyalists in move to see off Streeting challenge” and the Mail writes “Streeting to ignite day of Labour anarchy”. The Times leads with “Streeting prepares to quit ahead of No 10 challenge”; similarly the i Paper says “Streeting set to resign and will challenge PM”, while the Telegraph splashes “Miliband to fight Streeting for No 10”. The Sun goes with “Street fighter”. The Express leads with “Finally, a move to bring down zombie Keir?”. Metro says “Wes, prime minister?” And on a different note the Mirror leads with “Farage in £5m sleaze probe”. Today in Focus Trump, Hegseth, Musk: Maga lands in Beijing Senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins talks through the high-stakes meeting in Beijing between presidents Trump and Xi, including the likely trade-offs on tariffs, Taiwan and the war in Iran. Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad There are vanishingly few uncontacted tribes left on Earth. Those who remain often face persecution, particularly Indigenous groups who live in rainforests and other vital ecosystems. So, this week’s news that the territory of one of the Amazon’s most vulnerable nomadic hunter-gatherer communities has been demarcated is big news. The 410,000-hectare area in north-west Brazil has gained greater protection – and is on the path to national recognition that will keep the community safe. 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. Martin Belam’s Thursday news quiz Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Philippines authorities investigating reports lawmaker wanted by ICC has fled after taking refuge in senate

Philippine authorities are seeking to confirm reports that a lawmaker wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) secretly left the Senate premises where he had spent days evading arrest, an official said. Presidential communications undersecretary Clare Castro told a press conference that authorities were trying to confirm the whereabouts of senator Ronald dela Rosa, after reports suggested he had slipped out of the heavily guarded building undetected before dawn. “Several sources confirmed that the Senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting official confirmation,” she told media, adding there had been no operations launched so far to arrest him. Ronald dela Rosa, a senator who is wanted by the ICC for his role in overseeing former president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, avoided arrest earlier this week after he dramatically outran government agents and was offered protective custody by allies in the senate chamber. Further chaos erupted in the senate on Wednesday night when gunshots were fired, forcing journalists to scramble for cover. Dela Rosa had earlier said his arrest was imminent and called for supporters to gather outside the senate to protect him. Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos later said no government personnel had been involved in the shooting incident in the senate and there were no instructions to arrest dela Rosa. He questioned whether the event was an attempt to “destabilise the government or trigger chaos”. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing. Police said on Thursday they had detained a person in connection with the incident. Philippine police spokesperson Brigadier-General Randulf Tuano said the man was apprehended on the second floor of the senate building. Interior secretary Juanito Victor Remulla had said senate security fired “warning shots” at several unknown armed men who had gone up the senate stairway. Dela Rosa was head of the Philippine national police during Duterte’s administration and was a chief enforcer of anti-drugs crackdowns in which thousands of people were killed. He is one of eight co-perpetrators named by the ICC in their case against Duterte, who is now detained at The Hague. An arrest warrant accuses him of “authorising, condoning and promoting” drug war killings, providing weapons, promising impunity and rewarding perpetrators, according to an ICC arrest warrant that was unsealed on Monday. He did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied wrongdoing. Earlier on Thursday, while entering the senate, dela Rosa’s lawyer Jimmy Bondoc said he spoke to him during the night and believed he was inside. “I asked him if you have plans to leave, he said none,” Bondoc told reporters. With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Australians from hantavirus cruise ship to fly out of Netherlands in full PPE after plane and crew secured

Four Australian citizens who were aboard the MV Hondius, the cruise ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, will soon be home after the government secured a suitable aircraft and crew for the journey. The health minister, Mark Butler, said the citizens, along with a permanent resident and a New Zealand citizen, were due to take off from the Netherlands on Thursday evening local time and would land in Perth on Friday afternoon. “Six passengers are still in good health, they have all tested negative for hantavirus and are showing no symptoms as well,” Butler said. “Passengers and crew members will travel this flight for its duration in full PPE. There are very strict conditions about the flight, the landing, and the quarantine arrangements.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The passengers will be subject to a quarantine order, remaining at Western Australia’s Bullsbrook quarantine facility for at least three weeks. The flight crew bringing them home will also be required to quarantine, either in Australia or in another country. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had scrambled to find an aircraft and crew who were able to complete quarantine, after a 48-hour deadline was imposed on their international transfer through the Netherlands by Dutch authorities. The outbreak now includes 11 reported cases, with nine officially confirmed. Three people have died. The MV Hondius, which is registered in the Netherlands, is on its way to Rotterdam, with 25 crew members and two medical staff on board. It is expected to arrive on Monday. After disembarking, the crew will enter quarantine and the ship will undergo what its operator calls a “thorough cleaning and disinfection process”. “The operation to bring all those on board home in the safest possible way was highly complex. It required intensive cooperation with national and international partners,” the Dutch government said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Dutch government thanks all those involved, including the shipping company, and expresses its gratitude and appreciation for the cooperation with Spain.” The Australian government has been working around the clock to bring the group home. “This is a difficult arrangement to make,” Butler told ABC News on Tuesday, adding the travellers were in “good health and relatively good spirits” at the time. “You’ve got to have crew that are willing to isolate at the end of the flight, you’ve got to have a flight that has some refuelling arrangements put in place between the Netherlands and Australia,” Butler said. “And it’s important that we’ve put those quarantine arrangements in place, ready to go when they do land in Australia.” Butler said the hantavirus had been listed under Australia’s Biosecurity Act, which allows the government to make quarantine orders. Hantavirus, a group of viruses found around the world, is generally spread via infected rodents to humans through faeces, urine or saliva. Human-to-human transmission is very uncommon, but can occur through close and prolonged contact, the Australian Centre for Disease Control says. Still, infection can be serious, resulting in critical illness or death. Three people have died from the outbreak, and a French woman is currently being treated after falling critically ill, with life-threatening heart and lung problems. The World Health Organization maintains that the threat to the general public remains low, but officials have urged caution. “At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, told reporters on Tuesday. “But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.” Butler said this week Australia’s quarantine protocols would be among the most stringent in the world.

Wife of Briton pleads for Saudi Arabia to release him from ‘arbitrary detention’

The wife of a British national who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since 2024 for social media posts, has pleaded for his release as his wellbeing declines. In November, the UN working group on arbitrary detention found Ahmed al-Doush was being detained arbitrarily under international law and recommended his immediate release, as well as the payment of compensation. The findings followed its eight-month inquiry The plea for clemency by his wife, Amaher Nour, which is backed by Amnesty International, is less focused on the nature of the trial or the quality of Saudi justice, and is more a personal humanitarian appeal to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Nour said: “One year and eight months have passed – long enough for us all to feel the weight of absence and the pain of separation. His return to his children has become a hope we hold on to every day. His return would restore stability to his family and give his children the chance to grow up in the care and embrace of their father, instead of living with this painful emptiness during their young years.” The UK Foreign Office told the Guardian: “We are supporting a British man who is detained in Saudi Arabia and in contact with his family and local authorities.” Officials said the Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, has raised the case multiple times with his Saudi counterparts. The UK has sent military assets to Saudi Arabia to help protect the country from Iranian attacks and is promising to send more to help open the strait. Al-Doush, a British citizen born in Sudan, has four children, the youngest of whom is a year old and the others are aged 10 or younger. Al-Doush was arrested on a family holiday while his wife was pregnant with their fourth child. Amnesty said: “Ahmed’s physical and mental health have sharply declined. Chronic restrictions on communication with his family have left him profoundly isolated and vulnerable. He has undertaken multiple hunger strikes in protest at the continued denial of contact with his wife and young children. “Most recently, his condition has deteriorated to a level that has prompted serious fears of self-harm amounting to a risk to life. His family, his legal team and human rights advocates are united in their alarm: without urgent intervention, the consequences could be irreversible.” The UN working group report on al-Doush was published in March 2026, but Saudi Arabia, instead of complying with the recommendation, confirmed in April that he had been found guilty and it had reduced his sentence to five years. Saudi Arabia has said the trial and detention was in line with domestic and international law. According to the UN working group, al-Doush, who was based in Manchester, had been sentenced in March last year to 10 years in prison by a specialised criminal court because of social media posts that were more than five years old and an association with a critic of the Saudi government. The judgment has not been made available to his family. His lawyers said: “The weight of a lengthy prison sentence in a country he does not know for social media posts has been difficult for both Ahmed and his family to grasp.” The UN working group found al-Doush’s detention arbitrary because he had been held incommunicado and not been informed promptly of the reasons for his arrest. It also found he was not brought before a judge for five months after his arrest and was denied access to his family for two and a half months. He was not granted a consular visit or a call to his family until November. The working group concluded that he had been arrested purely because of a social media post and perceived association with a Saudi critic in exile. Al-Doush’s lawyers have said he is socially acquainted with the individual, but nothing more. During his interrogation he was asked about his social media activity. His lawyers said his account had 37 followers and a history of only four posts in total, including one about a third country, believed to be Sudan, posted in 2018. Saudi Arabia told the UN that al-Doush had committed terrorist crimes, including his support for terrorist ideology, his meeting with supporters and followers of terrorist ideology, and his use of the information network to commit terrorist crimes and to promote terrorist ideology. It said all proper procedures were followed, including consular access and the appointment of a lawyer of his choosing, and that the trial was heard in public and was fair. Haydee Dijkstal, al-Doush’s barrister at 33 Bedford Row chambers, said the UK government “must use the UN decision to help one of its citizens resolve an unjust nightmare”. The UN said the Foreign Officehad refused to share any information about al-Doush with his family for a two and a half months, citing data protection laws, a practice that has been repeatedly criticised by the families of other current and former detainees.

The secret mission to rescue the UN’s vital Palestinian refugee archive

East Jerusalem to Amman should have been an easy trip: a short drive down to the Dead Sea, across the border checkpoint and swiftly on to the Jordanian capital. But in the early summer of 2024, the distance appeared an almost insurmountable obstacle to humanitarian workers from Unrwa (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), as they sought to safeguard huge quantities of archival documents vitally important to decades of recent Palestinian history. A 10-month operation to save the archives kept by Unrwa in Gaza and East Jerusalem was reaching its final stages. The effort had been highly sensitive and sometimes dangerous. It had already involved dozens of Unrwa staff in at least four different countries, risky trips to rescue documents under bombardment, officials carefully carrying unmarked envelopes into Egypt, and precious boxes airlifted to safety in military planes. But now time was running out. Unrwa’s sprawling compound in East Jerusalem had become the focus of a concerted Israeli effort to expel the agency, and a target of rightwing groups. The significance of the Unrwa archives, much of which detailed Palestinians’ experiences as they fled or were forced from their homes during the wars that led to the foundation of Israel in 1948, was clear. “Their destruction would have been catastrophic … If there is ever a just and durable solution to this conflict, then this is the only evidence people can use to show there were once Palestinians living in a particular place,” said Roger Hearn, a senior Unrwa official who oversaw the operation. Such clandestine efforts were never supposed to be the task of Unrwa, which was founded in 1949 to provide healthcare, food and education to about 750,000 Palestinian refugees. At the start of the war in Gaza, which followed the surprise Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, the organisation’s archives were spread across the countries where it works in the Middle East. In dusty boxes in the Unrwa compound in Gaza City were the original registration cards of Palestinian refugees who had sought safety in Gaza in 1948, as well as birth, marriage and death certificates dating back generations. These might allow Palestinians whose ancestors had been forced to leave their homes to trace family origins in what became Israel. Despite previous efforts to scan the documents, hundreds of thousands of historical records remained only in paper form in 2023, vulnerable to fire, flood or deliberate destruction. Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, who visited Gaza during the war, described the documents as “crucial to the Palestinian experience”. “There are testimonies of how people were forced to flee in 1948, where they came from, where their property was, what was destroyed. Two hundred thousand came to Gaza in between 1948 and 1949, from all over Palestine,” Filiu said. For decades, Israel has been hostile to Unrwa, blaming the agency for keeping alive Palestinian hopes of a return to their original homes by granting refugee status to the descendants of those originally displaced. Israel has also frequently accused Unrwa of using text books in its schools that promote anti-Israel and antisemitic views. After the 2023 Hamas raid, Israel alleged that Unrwa staff in Gaza had taken part in the attack. The agency later fired nine of its employees after an investigation. The first stage of the document rescue operation was dramatic – and risky. Days after its forces invaded Gaza, Israel ordered the evacuation of Unrwa’s offices in Gaza City. International staff left within hours, unable to take the vital archives with them. “There was a real risk that the Israelis would move in and destroy them, or they would just be destroyed in a fire or an explosion or whatever,” said Sam Rose, the acting director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza. Just months earlier, Unrwa’s digital registration system had to be temporarily shutdown after being hacked, and there was widespread anxiety too that another cyber-attack could wipe servers of the records that had already been scanned. “There was this very dangerous period where we were getting many, many [cyber]attacks every day and genuinely thought we could see both the originals destroyed and any digital copies we had made. Then everything would have been gone for good,” Hearn said. Despite continuing airstrikes and shelling in some of the most deadly attacks of Israel’s relentless offensive, which killed more than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, a small team of Unrwa officials drove rented pickup trucks back to the organisation’s sprawling compound in Gaza City. They made three trips to bring the documents south to a food warehouse in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. But Cairo would not allow the archives out of Gaza unless Israel was consulted. Unrwa officials were certain that Israeli officials, who had imposed an almost total blockade on Gaza, would immediately understand the significance of the documents, and seize them or refuse to let them through. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, its military removed the archives of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation from offices in Beirut. Instead, Unrwa officials with international passports were tasked with getting the archives out unobserved. “If anyone was stopped at the border, they just said they were carrying paperwork. There was mountains [of documents] to take out. Everyone was carrying stuff with them,” said Rose. Over the next six months, the documents were collated in Egypt and then transported by a Jordanian charity using the kingdom’s military planes as they returned to Amman after delivering aid for Gaza. The final cargo was on its way just two weeks before Israeli tanks moved to seize Rafah in May 2024, definitively blocking the way out. But this still left another set of equally significant documents in Unrwa’s East Jerusalem compound that also needed urgent rescue. Within weeks of the beginning of the two-year war, Israel had intensified its accusations that Unrwa was collaborating with Hamas, and launched a campaign of obstruction and harassment of the agency. By early 2024, the East Jerusalem compound was the target of protests and a series of arson attacks that caused extensive damage. Moves to expel Unrwa were gathering pace. “In East Jerusalem, we had months of warnings that we would lose access [to our offices],” Rose said. Efforts to persuade friendly diplomatic missions to store the archives were unsuccessful. So, with time running out, these too were removed by staff members and secretly transferred over several months, eventually reaching Unrwa offices in Jordan. In January 2025, new Israeli laws barred the agency from Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. In Amman, a new and extensive effort was launched to digitise the documents. Funded primarily by Luxembourg, more than 50 Unrwa staff worked in a crowded, cramped basement to scan by hand large numbers of postcard-sized original refugee registration documents as well as millions of other items. “Now [the archives] are out of Palestine, but at least they are protected,” Filiu said. With almost 30m documents now digitised, Unrwa aims to be able to provide every Palestinian refugee with their family tree and all supporting documents, as well as to build maps showing patterns of displacement in 1948. The archives will also provide a better understanding of the much-disputed events around the expulsion and flight of about 750,000 Palestinians at that time. Officials estimate the task could take another two years. Dr Anne Irfan, a historian of the modern Middle East at University College London and author of the recently published A Short History of the Gaza Strip, said the documents provided a vital record of Palestinian national history. “The Palestinians are a stateless people and without a fully unified national archive … so the Unrwa archive has a particular significance for them,” Irfan said. The digitised archives open up multiple avenues of inquiry into the experience of Palestinian refugees, the role of the UN and international community, and core elements of Middle Eastern politics over the last 80 years, Irfan told the Guardian. “It is highly contested history, and history that has potentially very real ramifications for the present.”

Canada court quashes bid by Alberta separatists for independence referendum

A Canadian judge has quashed a petition for an independence referendum in Alberta after finding First Nations were not consulted, dealing a blow to separatist hopes in the country’s western province. Justice Shaina Leonard of the Court of King’s Bench on Wednesday shut down the effort by a separatist group to hold a referendum on secession from Canada. Leonard said Alberta’s provincial government had an obligation to consult with First Nations before allowing organizers to collect signatures. Two First Nations groups argued that any referendum would violate their treaties with the Crown, which predate the creation of Alberta. “As a matter of logic and common sense, there can be no doubt that Alberta’s secession from Canada will have an impact on Treaties 7 and 8,” the judge wrote in her decision. The decision also looked at legislation passed by the Alberta government that removed the requirement that referendum questions be constitutional, and the right of the chief electoral officer to refer proposals to the courts for review. Leonard said the separatists should not have been allowed to reapply because the chief electoral officer denied their first proposal. Two weeks ago, separatists had triumphantly delivered boxes with more than 300,000 signatures in favour of the proposed referendum. But days later, the effort was rocked by revelations that a separatist-linked group had illegally gained access to private elections data, prompting investigations from both elections officials and police. The leader of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which joined others in challenging the legitimacy of the separatist petition, said Wednesday’s ruling “reinforces the importance of treaty rights, meaningful consultation, and the recognition of the serious impacts decisions like these” would have on First Nations communities. “This decision should close the chapter on the suggestion of an independence referendum. The court has spoken – and so have the First Nations,” chief Allan Adam said. Alberta’s premier, who says her government is pro-Canada but has taken steps to aid separatists, vowed to challenge the ruling. “This is a decision by one judge,” said Danielle Smith. “We think that this decision is incorrect in law and anti-democratic, and we will be appealing it as a result.” Earlier in the day, Smith said the citizen-led petitions were an “important” democratic tool. “Whether the government likes the citizen initiative petition questions that are put forward or whether we don’t like them, we believe the process should allow all voices of Albertans to be heard,” she said. Separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre, who led the effort to collect more than 300,000 signatures, said he would lobby Smith to use government’s powers to put the question on the October referendum. While the government could add a question on separation, skirting the petition process, such a move would probably face the same challenge from First Nations. Shortly after learning of the judge’s decision, Jeffery Rath, a lawyer who represents the separatists, said the decision featured “numerous errors in law throughout” and “breaches of the rules of natural justice”. Both Rath and the provincial government suggested there was not a duty to consult with First Nations. “The law requires consultation in the context of amendments to the Canadian constitution that involves the devolution of federal power to the provinces that affects First Nations,” Rath said. “From our perspective no rules were broken.”