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Trump pledges to ‘take care of’ Houthis if group blocks Saudi ships and says US airlines can resume direct flights to Lebanon – live

‘The explosion is what I remember’: man nearly sucked out of Ryanair plane recounts ordeal

It is the explosion just before he was nearly sucked out of the aircraft that Ljubisa Karović remembers. The thunderous noise of the window shattering that roused him from slumber in 11F, his window seat on the early morning Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany. Eleven days and 11 nights later, it remains the prelude “to the chaos, the catastrophe” that keeps him awake at night. “The explosion is what I remember,” says the Serbian entrepreneur in an interview with the Guardian. His head supported by a neck brace, his eyes staring into the middle distance, he adds: “Its the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep.” Pain still haunts Ljubisa Karović, too, and it is easy to understand why. The burns and bruises livid on his right arm, ascending to his armpit and chest, are testimony to a fact that few will forget: that the 61-year-old is the only man to have been sucked out of an aircraft window – dislodged mid-flight in circumstances still under investigation – and to have survived. “I am lucky,” he says with some understatement as he swats a fly on the porch of the unassuming villa he has rented in Katerini, the booming coastal resort outside Thessaloniki. “I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt but I am still alive. It could have been the seatbelt, the fact that I was still strapped in. But maybe it is fate. I believe in God and I thank him every day.” Barely 100 hours have elapsed since Karović was discharged from hospital. The shock, he says, was overwhelming but the fact that he can tell the tale at all is nothing short of a miracle. His Greek lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, describes the wiry father of two as “being alive by mistake”. “Ljubisa dipped in and out of death,” he says. “When the cabin lost pressure he was hurled out of the window from his chest up and immediately lost consciousness. He was on that plane heading to Germany to celebrate his brother’s birthday. Instead, at 15,000ft he ended up with his head and right arm outside the aircraft as it moved at a speed of more than 600km/h. Imagine that! He looked at death, that other world, and came back.” Passengers on flight FR1879, including Karović’s wife, Svetlana, seated in 14C, three rows behind her husband, still have vivid recollections of the moment the window smashed, the oxygen masks coming down, the commotion that ensued as bottles and other objects flew through the air and fellow passengers grabbing Ljubisa, desperately trying to hold him in place. “I rushed over too. None of the cabin crew helped. It was the passengers,” she says. “One man, I think he was an Albanian, was incredible. He did all he could to bring him in and then tried to block the window, first with a bag that was immediately sucked out and then with a suitcase, which worked. We are eternally grateful to him.” The unbearable moments of seeing her husband “half in and out of the plane” are thought to have lasted between one-and-a-half and two minutes. “They tell me I fainted twice and again inside the plane and that my face was briefly swollen and deformed because of the pressure, the rush of air,” says the softly spoken Karović. “My wife reminds me about that.” Ryanair has defended the performance of its staff saying cabin crew did a “phenomenal job”. Tsiaras, the lawyer, takes issue with this. While Karović’s son, Danjell, who booked the flight, has been contacted by the company, neither Ljubisa nor Svetlana have been called or received any assistance or support, he says. “We have no complaint with the pilot, who followed the safety protocols and dealt with the situation very well,” adds Tsiaras referring to the rapid descent they are forced to make in the event of a plane losing cabin pressure. “My client fainted two or three times, once outside the aircraft when he was partially sucked out of the window, and twice inside when, again, he lost consciousness. At no point did the cabin crew offer to help.” Ryanair disputed that claim, saying that during the process of depressurisation and rapid decent to lower altitude, all passengers and cabin crew are required to fasten seatbelts and put on oxygen masks. “As soon as the aircraft descended to a safe altitude our cabin crew attended to and assisted Mr Karović, moving him to alternate seats (beside his wife) and arranged for a doctor onboard to sit with them until the aircraft landed safely back in Thessaloniki. They also arranged to have medical assistance standing by on landing in Thessaloniki,” the airline said in a statement to the Guardian. Citing witness testimony, Tsiaras claimed the cabin crew personnel were paralysed by fear, perhaps brought on by the belief that with the dramatic loss in altitude the aircraft was about to crash. “Everyone has agreed that the crew was in a state of shock, afraid that the plane was about to crash. It was the other passengers who rallied and gave Ljubisa water,” he says. The owner of an aluminium factory based in Serbia that for years has exported goods far and wide, Karović, long a frequent flyer, recoils at the thought of travelling by plane again. Doctors have warned that recovery will be slow, ordering him to wear the neck brace for at least six weeks when they will determine if surgery is necessary. “There are images that come back, the noise of the explosion, the chaos, but I want to recover,” he says. “And, yes, there should be compensation too. Not only emails that have focused on rebooking the flight.” Asked if there is a message he wants to convey, he allows himself to break into a smile. “Always make sure to wear your seatbelt. I don’t want anyone to suffer what happened to me.”

Houthis threaten to attack shipping tankers if they use Saudi Arabian ports on Red Sea

Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthis have warned shipping companies that their tankers risk being attacked if they use Saudi Arabian ports, as the militia moved quickly to enforce a blockade announced the previous day. The Houthi warning for the Red Sea, coming on top of Iran’s threat to shipping on the other side of the Arabian peninsular in the Gulf, could affect the substantial Saudi oil exports that have so far been unscathed by the months-long conflict and deepen the rapidly escalating crisis in the region. Underlining how seriously the Houthi threat is being taken, two oil tankers that had loaded Saudi crude ⁠this week for China and India made U-turns on Tuesday away from Houthi-controlled coast at the mouth of the Red Sea and headed towards the Suez canal. The Houthis claimed six ships had changed course. Donald Trump on Tuesday said the US would “just have to take ‌care of business” if the Houthis followed through on their threats. “You know, we’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally,” he said at White House meeting with the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun. The Houthi threat came as diplomats sought to salvage the collapsed interim deal between Iran and the US even as both countries continued to launch attacks in a 10th day of renewed fighting, including a visit to Pakistan by the Iranian interior minister, Eskandar Momeni, an important mediator in the conflict. Sources suggested that behind the scenes there were indications that both sides might be seeking a way out of the latest round of intensive strikes. The news site Axios suggested that the Trump administration was weighing whether to escalate the conflict further or to seek a 10-day ceasefire to create the space for a new round of talks. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Washington remained open to negotiating with Iran but that “it has to be real”. The Houthis control ⁠northern Yemen, including territory along the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. While the Houthis have not formally announced the closure of the waterway, as some had feared might happen, the militia group’s threat to vessels using Saudi ports has raised serious questions over the safety of navigating a channel used by 7% of global maritime traffic. Shipping companies were told in an email from the Houthis on Monday that they should not load or ⁠discharge cargo at Saudi Arabian ports and such ⁠activity may result in ⁠being targeted “in any location” within its reach. “We strongly recommend that your company exercise due diligence and the utmost care in all its dealings,” ‌the email said, which was sent to multiple companies shortly after the Houthis said Monday they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia. The significance of the move was underlined by Allison Minor, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council thinktank. “The Houthis have not yet clarified which ships they will target, but their intent to blockade Saudi ports implies that any ship visiting Saudi ports and carrying Saudi oil would be in the crosshairs,” she said. “The oil currently transiting the strait from the north is going primarily to Asian markets. During their earlier Red Sea campaign, the Houthis cut deals with Russia and China to permit their ships to pass – but the Houthis may be less willing to cut deals with Chinese ships carrying Saudi oil.” Between 2023 and 2025, the Houthis had used small boats, drones and missiles to attack more than 100 commercial ships and render “the waters of the 20-mile-wide strait too risky for most shippers,” she added. While the Houthis have their own agenda relating to their long-term hostilities with Riyadh, which has at times seen them target Saudi energy facilities with long range attacks, Iran has also been trying to drag Yemen into a wider conflict aimed at throttling global energy supplies. It has previously pressed the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb if the US continued to attack Iranian power infrastructure and Tehran has made clear it sees threats to maritime traffic around the Bab el-Mandeb as a counterweight to US efforts to block Iran in the strait of Hormuz, demonstrating Iran’s continued room for manoeuvre a week and a half into renewed full-scale hostilities. With 25% of oil and gas shipments passing through the strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb combined, any significant restrictions on traffic would have a major global economic impact. Heavy strikes have meanwhile continued on both sides of the conflict. US military’s central command said on Tuesday it had targeted “Iranian military command centres, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and air defence systems”. Iranian state media reported that explosions were heard in the provinces of Fars, Hormozgan, Ilam, Kerman, and Sistan and Baluchestan. Tehran also attacked US allies throughout the Middle East. Jordan’s military said Iran had targeted it with five drones and three missiles, all of which were shot down. The Kuwaiti government said Iran had struck desalination and power plants for a fourth straight day on Monday night. Authorities said the attacks sparked fires and caused damage. The US state department has also issued a warning to Americans that “Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world.”

India’s Cockroach movement protesters show no sign of backing down

Taru had come to the protest prepared this time. In one hand was an anti-government poster and in the other was a bicycle helmet. “We need to have protection in case Delhi police beat us up again,” said the 25-year-old, who stood among her friends. “We are not scared of them and we won’t run away, no matter what they do. We’ll stay here till they listen.” On Tuesday, central Delhi still thronged with thousands of protesters, as an unprecedented expression of dissent against the powerful ruling Narendra Modi government showed no sign of abating. Just 24 hours earlier, more than 50,000 people took to the streets in protest, swathes of them in their late teens and early 20s, mobilised by a new youth-led political movement that calls itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP). Their rallying call was the resignation of the education minister and for reform of a corrupt and broken education system. But what began peacefully on Monday – people fanning each other in the gruelling humidity, sharing snacks and chanting slogans – turned into scenes of brutality by the afternoon. Delhi police denied the protesters the right to march on parliament and kettled the expanding crowd into a restricted area. The internet was shut down and barricades were erected across the capital. The came the police batons and the teargas. Police said they were responding to agitation but organisers and witnesses claimed the police carried out unprovoked attacks, including against women and children in the crowd. About 60 suffered injuries and at least one protester is on a ventilator in hospital intensive care. “The day was so wholesome to start with, there was so much love,” said Taru. “But after 3pm the police started attacking us. They were bashing us like anything. I saw them come up and hit people on the head as they were sitting down on the pavement doing nothing. And then as we were running, they opened up teargas on us.” Taru described the response by Delhi police – which are under central government control – as a “big mistake. Now we are more agitated than ever.” On Tuesday, the heavy hand of the Delhi police did little to keep supporters away from the historical site of Jantar Mantar in Delhi, which has become the focal point of the CJP protests over the past month. The crowds were thick and lively as they shouted slogans against the Modi government with abandon, calling for both the education minister and the prime minister to resign. Some had travelled hundreds of miles to be there and said they intended to camp out until the government responded to the demands of the country’s millions of young people. “The government needs to understand: we are not going anywhere,” said Ranjit Verma, 23. India’s main opposition Congress party had also seized upon the mood, calling for Modi to resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth” as it held its own protest in Delhi on Tuesday. While the CJP movement has primarily focused on accountability for devastating leaks of exam papers and calling for the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, the overriding feeling in the aftermath of Monday’s protest was that this was now so much bigger than one issue. For some, this was the moment India’s youth – totalling more than 600 million – had found its political voice. “The solidarity on the streets yesterday filled my heart,” said Kuhoo Kaushik, 26, a content creator from Delhi. “How the government responded was really sad, police beating up 14-year-olds is horrible. But personally, I feel like it’s really awoken something in me. “That’s why I’ve come back today: we won’t be moved until the government listens to us. It’s become about so much more than education – but one step at a time”’ Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke vowed that the protests would continue, though did not state what the next steps for the movement would be to capitalise on their momentum. Standing by the stage at the protest site, Ratna Singh, a CJP spokesperson, said the movement was very aware of ways in which the Modi government had successfully cracked down on previous movements and figures of dissent during its 12 years in power. “Anyone who has tried to speak up against this government has faced terrorism charges or tax raids or jail and there is so much fear,” she said. “But I am very proud at how many people have showed up and come out on the streets. The police showed us no mercy – but no matter what barbaric treatment they give us, we will not be silenced.” While a senior government minister met two CJP spokespeople on Monday to discuss their demands, Singh said the government had not responded to them on Tuesday and the “prime minister has remained silent about what happened”. It was not only young people who returned to the protest site on Tuesday. Shobha Varma, 80, was attending with her granddaughter. “Our education system has been failing young people for years,” she said. “But when I look out at everyone here, I really feel hope.”

Prosecutors in Hungary raid offices of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and seize databases, says party – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Hungary’s opposition ⁠Fidesz party, led by the former prime minister Viktor Orbán, ⁠said that prosecutors raided ‌its ‌servers to look at party’s “entire communications system and databases” (14:08). Prosecutors told the Guardian the searches were part of a broader investigation into the National Culture Fund (15:11), but declined to offer more details (16:14). Hungary’s prime minister Péter Magyar responded to raids by saying that “we await the information on what case they are investigating and what was seized” (14:08). The search was condemned by French far-right leader and leading presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (14:56). In other news, Italian police clashed ⁠with demonstrators in the northern city of Bologna on Monday night, ANSA news agency reported, during a protest over a man’s death after officers tried ⁠to arrest him (10:37). A strike on a ship in the Black Sea carrying propane to the Ukrainian port of Reni wounded three seafarers and forced the crew’s evacuation, Romania’s president Nicușor Dan said (10:17). The United Nations said that civilian casualties in the war sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine rose 37 percent in the first half of this year (11:28). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Abandoned monkey found in laundry bag on London bus

A “stressed and dehydrated” monkey has been found in a laundry bag on a London bus in what animal welfare charities warn could be the “first of many” abandonments now owners must obtain primate licenses. The female common marmoset was discovered on a 302 bus waiting in Kensal Rise, north-west London, on Friday by a passenger whose buggy was obstructed by the bag containing the monkey in a cage. The monkey has since been named Oyster after the London transport payment system. The bus driver contacted the RSPCA, which handled 238 reports of primate neglect and cruelty between 2021 and 2025. New legislation passed in April mandated that all primates kept in England are licensed and microchipped. Owners who failed to obtain a license by 6 April risk an unlimited fine or jail. Alison Cronin, the director of Monkey World and a contributor to the new legislation, said over the past decade “a lot of well-meaning people … have fallen victim to people on social media promoting these wild animals as good domestic pets”. She said UK breeders were “making a killing” out of this misconception, though she welcomed the law change’s requirement for them to ensure they were only selling monkeys into homes with suitable environments. Although a Born Free survey in January suggested there had been limited uptake of the new licensing system, Cronin said she had observed that many owners have since obtained licenses. She said abandoned monkeys were “nothing new” and not necessarily a reflection of the law change. “These animals have been out there and subject to abuse and neglect for all of the years running up to this,” she said. The driver and Metroline staff are aiding RSPCA inquiries to trace the person responsible for dumping the marmoset, which had not been microchipped. Clare Dew, RSPCA London’s chief investigator, said Oyster’s abandonment “was clearly intentional”, and she suspected it was “a direct result of the new legislation”. The “frightened marmoset” was well concealed in the bag, Dew said. “She’d been left with some apple but was, understandably, very stressed and dehydrated.” Oyster is now healthy and living in a sanctuary with specialist primate facilities, where she “settled in really well over the weekend” and will be introduced to a male companion shortly. Evie Button, a RSPCA exotic animals expert, described primates as “highly intelligent and social wild animals who need a lot of space, mental stimulation and appropriate companions – needs that can’t be met by human company alone”. She added: “There is a real concern that keepers who cannot or do not want to license their pet may now instead abandon them.” The government estimates that 5,000 primates are kept as pets in England. Chris Lewis, the captivity research and policy manager at Born Free, called on local authorities and the government to raise greater awareness of the law change. “Primates are complex, intelligent animals whose needs cannot be met when kept as a pet,” he said. “Although not the complete ban which experts and primatologists advocated for, the introduction of the Animal Welfare (Primate Licences) (England) Regulations represented an important step towards protecting privately kept primates, but their success depends on effective implementation and strict enforcement.”

Stand still, make eye contact: Denmark tells tourists how to behave in a wolf encounter

Danish authorities have advised tourists to stand still, make eye contact and put up “maximum resistance” in the event of attack if they encounter a wolf while on holiday. After a 200-year absence, wolves started returning to Denmark in 2012. There are now estimated to be 49 wolves on the Danish peninsula of Jutland. Generally, it is rare for wolves to even approach humans, but in the area around the popular tourism destination of Oksbøl, young ones were spotted doing so earlier this year. The municipality of Varde and Visit Vesterhavet have distributed flyers containing the government advice around holiday homes, campsites and tourist offices in Danish, English and German. Tourists are told to keep calm and still in the presence of a wolf, hold eye contact, take a picture of the animal and, if it will not go away of its own accord, shout, clap hands and wave arms. They are advised not to follow or to turn their backs on an approaching wolf. The tip is to “stare directly at it” to “show dominance”. While there have been no wolf attacks on humans in Denmark, in the event of it happening, tourists are urged: “You must offer maximum resistance: hit and kick and use any blunt weapon.” The government advice also states that children under the age of 10 should be accompanied by an adult in the Oksbøl area. Wolves have long had a presence in Denmark – the oldest wolf bones in the country are 13,000 years old – but after the last wolf was shot in 1813 they only started to make a comeback in the last two decades. Their presence has received a mixed response, often dividing people along political lines. In April, two ponies were killed by wolves in a fortnight. Soon after, four MPs from the far-right Danish People’s party were reported to police for sharing a Facebook post calling on people to “Shoot the wolf”. Wolves are protected by EU law. The wolf expert Peter Sunde, a wildlife ecology professor at Aarhus University, said: “During the winter and spring of 2026, at least two young wolves were observed approaching humans and exhibiting markedly reduced flight distances in the area around Oksbøl that is a tourist hotspot. One of these wolves is still alive.” This type of behaviour, he said, usually happens when young wolves are repeatedly exposed to humans. “It has been discussed whether tourists, who may be unaware both of the presence of wolves in the area and of the basic recommendations regarding wolf encounters, may have contributed to the development of this behaviour,” he added. “To prevent similar behaviour from developing in future generations of young wolves, it is important that people who live in or visit wolf habitats – including tourists – understand that they should neither approach wolves nor leave food that may attract them.” Varde’s second deputy mayor, Sandie Eis Ravn, said the campaign was aimed at informing tourists at the request of local businesses. “If you are visiting somewhere and you know there is a wolf in the nearby forest, to make sure you have the right code of conduct when you meet this creature,” she said.

US claims of Cuba’s ‘unique threat’ jar with reality of hunger and blackouts

The US government’s latest allegations that Cuba is behind “many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history” and that its leaders pose “a unique threat to American homeland security” have come as startling revelations to those living under the six-month-long US oil blockade in Havana, where desperate people search through piles of uncollected rubbish for food, or else swelter at home in 24-hour-plus blackouts. The unsigned 100-page report, Cuba: Capital of 21st-Century Communism, published by the US state department on Monday, blames Havana for everything from “the George Floyd riots to the rise of antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses”. It is the latest push in a maximum-pressure campaign to bring down the island’s government that began with the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Cuba’s ally Venezuela, on 3 January. Since then, Cuba has been brought to a standstill by the oil blockade, sanctions on foreign businesses and threats of a military intervention. It also seems to be an attempt to “other” those on the US left before November’s midterm elections. “Cuba’s assault on the United States was never, at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory,” the report reads. “It was a revolution against western civilisation itself – waged, in part, via the novel and insidious method of persuading the children of the west to turn against their own inheritance.” “Fidel would have been quite proud of this,” said one amused Cuban as he read it. The US state department, run by the Cuban-American Marco Rubio, refused to name the author, but it is clearly someone who knows their history. “Almost immediately after taking Havana in January 1959, Castro began plotting armed assaults against neighbouring governments – launching expeditions against Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Panama in just that year alone,” it reads. What it fails to mention is that Haiti was then run by François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who killed an estimated 60,000 of his own people; the Dominican Republic by Rafael Trujillo, who launched the “parsley massacre”, killing between 20,000 to 35,000 Haitians; and Nicaragua by the Somoza family, who are credited with the murder of up to 50,000 Nicaraguans. Although the report provides no new evidence, there is a suspicious emphasis on race. The supposedly remarkable success of Cuban intelligence at infiltrating US institutions was due to a soft spot for “glamorous Latins”, it quotes an intelligence officer saying to the Miami Herald in 2002: “‘We’re much more open to Latins than we are to people with steel teeth and a Slavic accent.’” It also bemoans the ideological commitment of the spies Cuba recruited, while failing to mention either that several were inspired by the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Castro, or the shelter the US offered to the exiles Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who organised the bombing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976, killing 73 people. Most jarringly, the report groups together the US’s long internal struggle around civil rights and social reform and reframes it as a battle between the forces of foreign actors and “western civilisation”, lingering over groups such as the Black Panthers, which it credits to Cuba. While several black revolutionaries found sanctuary on the island, most famously Assata Shakur, who had a $2m price on her head for the killing of a New Jersey state trooper, the experience was not perhaps as conspiratorial as the author suggests. In interviews, Nehanda Abiodun, one of the mentioned fugitives, said her politics and revolutionary rage came from her experience growing up in 1970s New York, not out of any love for Cuba, whose government she came to resent for muzzling her in return for refuge. She used to say that the first thing that happened on landing was being racially profiled by the Cuban police. If she was part of a well-oiled international conspiracy, it didn’t show. For five years the Cuban government has not even been able to afford to feed its 9.5 million people, who mostly blame it for the crisis. But the report is ready for this: “To mistake Cuba’s poverty for harmlessness is to misunderstand the threat entirely. Its material weakness was never the measure of its danger.” It concludes: “Today, Cuban agents and operatives maintain a foothold in hundreds of front groups, activist organisations, solidarity centres, and ideological NGO and nonprofit networks. These groups collectively represent one of the single largest, most sophisticated and dangerous vectors for hostile foreign influence in modern American history.” In the run-up to the report’s release, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s president, said the US had fallen prey to a “new and more dangerous version of McCarthyism”. But perhaps the more damning criticism came from a Cuban academic who preferred to remain nameless: “It reads just like a report Cuba’s state media might write about the United States.”