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Middle East crisis live: Trump claims Iran ‘begging to make a deal’ and has let some tankers through strait as a ‘present’

Doctors treating the casualties of Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have urged world leaders to take action against violations of international law – warning of the horrifying parallels between Israeli actions in Gaza and what it is now doing in Lebanon. British surgeon Dr Tom Potokar, who was inside Gaza’s European hospital near Khan Younis when it was bombed by Israel ten months ago, told Sky News on Thursday: The violation of international humanitarian laws has become normalised. Once again we’re seeing attacks on the medical infrastructure, just like we saw in Gaza, but this time in Lebanon. Once again, we’re seeing attacks on hospital staff, ambulance workers and first responders. He said there was the familiar “condemnation and words from political leaders, yet no action - nothing is done to stop these violations”. Hospitals should be places of refuge where you can receive treatment and are protected under international law. Yet they and first responders continue to be subject to attack. As my colleague William Christou reported earlier this week, Lebanese healthcare workers and officials have said that Israeli bombings have deliberately targeted medical workers and facilities in south Lebanon, including through the use of double-tap strikes, in what they describe as a systematic effort to make the area unliveable. (Indeed, Israel has since announced another occupation of southern Lebanon – describing a so-called “defensive buffer” running up to the Litani river). Since Israel renewed its offensive on Lebanon three weeks ago, it has struck at least 128 medical facilities and ambulances across south Lebanon, killing at least 42 healthcare workers and wounding at least 107, according to the country’s health ministry. Per William’s report, most of Israel’s strikes on medics happened while they were sitting in ambulances or at first aid centres, several of which have been destroyed in south Lebanon. Israel has also carried out at least five double-tap strikes, a tactic in which an initial strike is followed by a pause, allowing medical workers to arrive before the area is bombed for a second time. Medical workers and hospitals are protected under international law and deliberately targeting them could constitute a war crime. Amnesty International said on Thursday that, regardless of political affiliation, medical workers are considered civilians and targeting them is unlawful. As of Thursday, Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,116 Lebanese people, wounded at least 3,229 others, and displaced more than a million – nearly one in five of the population - since 2 March.

Hungary charges journalist following claims minister was in touch with Moscow

The Hungarian government has filed charges against one of the country’s most prominent investigative journalists, accusing him of spying for Ukraine, as officials grapple with the fallout of allegations that Budapest shared confidential EU information with Moscow. The claims of espionage cap off a tumultuous week in Hungarian politics, in which relations with the EU plummeted to new lows and polls suggested that Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party is still lagging behind in support before next month’s election. At the heart of the latest row were allegations that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had routinely dialled up his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to pass on the details of confidential EU meetings. Szijjártó first dismissed the allegation, but later acknowledged that he had conferred with Lavrov before and after EU foreign minister meetings about their agenda and decisions, describing such conversations as “diplomacy”. After the leading opposition candidate, Péter Magyar, said that, on the contrary, the allegations, could amount to treason if confirmed, Orbán ordered an investigation into what he called the “wire-tapping” of Szijjártó. The announcement came after a pro-government publication published an article claiming that foreign intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on Szijjártó with the help of a Hungarian journalist, Szabolcs Panyi. The report included an edited recording, made without Panyi’s knowledge, in which Panyi appeared to speak to a source about a phone number used by Szijjártó as part of an investigation into the Hungarian minister’s communications with his Russian counterpart. On Thursday, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said charges would be filed against Panyi, who he alleged had “spied against his own country in cooperation with a foreign state”. “More and more Ukrainian spies are being exposed in Hungary,” said Gulyás, echoing Orbán’s campaign strategy to convince voters that Hungary’s greatest threat lies in the war next door in Ukraine. Writing on social media on Thursday, Panyi denied any wrongdoing. “Accusing investigative journalists of espionage is virtually unprecedented in the 21st century for a member state of the European Union,” he wrote. “This is really something more typical of Putin’s Russia, Belarus, and similar regimes.” He rejected the allegation that he had collaborated with any foreign intelligence service in the wiretapping or surveillance of Szijjártó. “On the contrary, I tried to collect and verify, after the fact, information and fragments of information that had emerged years earlier regarding the communication between Szijjártó and Lavrov,” he wrote. “Since 2023, I have been specifically investigating the suspicion that the relationship between Péter Szijjártó and Russian officials may have crossed legal boundaries.” The accusations of espionage come as Orbán and his Fidesz party, who have long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions, eroding media freedom and undermining the rule of law, face an unprecedented challenge from Magyar, a former top member of Fidesz. As Hungarians grapple with economic stagnation, the rising cost of living and fraying social services, polls have suggested that Orbán and his Fidesz party are trailing behind Magyar’s opposition Tisza party. The hard-fought campaign is being closely watched around the world, as it could have deep implications for Europe as well as rightwing political forces. Foreign interference has seemingly been rife. Several media outlets have alleged that Russian intelligence agencies as well as disinformation networks with links to Russia are seeking to sway the election in Orbán’s favour while, across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed Orbán and the US vice-president, JD Vance, is preparing to visit the country before the 12 April election. Earlier this week, as it became clear that the Hungarian government was targeting Panyi, one of the outlets that he works for, VSquare, said Hungary’s government was “resorting to authoritarian tactics to target a journalist whose reporting exposes truths inconvenient to the regime.” In a statement, it added: “This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi: a playbook straight out of Soviet manuals written at Lubyanka.” It was not the first time that Panyi, who also works for the Hungarian non-profit investigative outlet Direkt36, has ended up in the government’s sights. In 2021, an investigation found that Panyi’s phone had been infected with Pegasus spyware, along with at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and at least four other journalists. A senior government official in Orbán’s party later acknowledged that the Hungarian government had acquired the software.

Nicolás Maduro appears again in New York court on ‘narco-terrorism’ charges

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro again appeared in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday for his “narco-terrorism” case after his capture by US military forces earlier this year. The hearing opened with the defense and prosecution arguing over whether Maduro should be allowed to use Venezuelan government funds to pay for his defense. The defense has insisted that the US is violating the deposed leader’s constitutional rights by blocking government money from being used for his legal costs. US special forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on 3 January in a controversial pre-dawn raid during an assault on Caracas that reportedly killed 100 people. Flores was also in court. Charging papers allege that Maduro spearheaded a “corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking”. Their capture followed months of US pressure against Maduro, such as assaults on purported “narco boats”. These boat strikes resulted in more than 100 deaths and some legal experts have challenged not only the legality of these attacks, but whether they are equivalent to war crimes. Maduro and Flores both pleaded not guilty during their 5 January arraignment. Maduro’s politician son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, tried to put a brave face on his father’s plight this week. “He’s really well, [he’s] strong – he’s really, really well. His spirits are really high,” he told state-run media on Monday, claiming the former president was in “athletic” shape from exercising every day. Outside the court before the proceeding, demonstrators for and against Maduro’s arrest faced each other on opposite sides of metal barricades. The temporary steel fences were separated by a buffer of several feet. “Free President Maduro & Cilia Flores”, one banner read. “STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM”, was written in white text, over a red box. Other signs simply said: “FREE PRESIDENT MADURO.” One woman toted a display that featured a photo of Maduro and read: “The people’s president.” One man with a loudspeaker said: “This is not a trial! This is a judicial farce!” At one point, many of the several dozen Maduro opponents present – some wearing Venezuela’s flag around their shoulders, some sporting caps with the Andean nation’s ensign – sang the Venezuelan national anthem. For a moment, the song Gloria al Bravo Pueblo drowned out pro-Maduro protesters’ call for his freedom. In Caracas on Thursday morning, a couple of hundred people gathered at a public plaza including ruling party supporters, state employees and civilian militia members. One of the attenders, retiree Eduardo Cubillan, said he was there to pray for Maduro and Flores and condemn the violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty during the 3 January operation. Experts say conditions inside the New York detention centre where Maduro is being held are dire. Meanwhile, back home in Venezuela, Maduro’s political legacy is rapidly being erased by his successor, the former vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, despite the presence of government propaganda billboards calling for the couple’s return. In less than three months as acting president, Rodríguez has removed nearly half of Maduro’s cabinet ministers, purging key allies including the defence minister of 11 years, Vladimir Padrino López, the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, and the industry minister, Alex Saab. Addressing a Saudi-funded business summit in Miami on Wednesday, Rodríguez made no mention of her incarcerated predecessor and claimed her oil-rich country was poised for a “tremendous [economic] takeoff” under her leadership. “In the short time since I have been acting president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, we have welcomed more than 120 energy companies, above all from the US but also from the Middle East, from Asia, Africa and from Europe,” Rodríguez told foreign investors. After ordering the abduction of Maduro, Donald Trump warned Rodríguez that unless she toed the US line, she could face an even more dramatic fate. Since then, the US embassy in Caracas has reopened for the first time since 2019 and senior officials including the energy minister and the head of the CIA have flown in to visit. Maduro’s court appearance comes several weeks after he pushed for dismissal of his case by alleging that US officials were violating the fallen head of state’s “constitutional right to counsel of his choice”. They claimed that authorities were unlawfully prohibiting the Venezuelan government from paying for his defense. The US treasury department’s office of foreign assets control (Ofac) on 9 January granted Maduro a waiver to accept money from Venezuela’s government – which is under sanction – for his legal fees. Just three hours later, however, Ofac “reversed course”, Maduro’s lawyers said. “As a result, Mr Maduro, who lacks his own funds to retain counsel, is being deprived of his constitutional right to counsel of his choice,” Maduro’s lawyers said in court papers filed on 26 February. “If Ofac’s interference with Mr Maduro’s ability to fund his defense persists, undersigned counsel cannot remain in the case, nor can Mr Maduro be represented by any other retained counsel,” his lawyers wrote. “Not only would the Court need to appoint counsel and foist the cost of Mr Maduro’s defense on the United States taxpayers, despite the willingness and obligation of the government of Venezuela to pay Mr Maduro’s defense costs, but also any verdict against Mr Maduro would be constitutionally suspect.” Ofac contends that it never meant to greenlight Venezuela’s funding of Maduro’s defense, saying in 13 March court papers: “The inclusion in these licenses of an authorization to use funds paid by the Government of Venezuela was an administrative error.” Manhattan federal prosecutors are fighting Maduro’s push for dismissal. They claimed in a 13 March filing that while Ofac would typically allow a defendant such as Maduro to use his own money for legal fees, it would be “highly unusual” for a sanctioned government to receive such a waiver. During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump accused Maduro of being a “major purveyor of drugs coming into our country”. Trump did not provide details, but suggested the current charges Maduro is facing might be “a fraction of the kind of things that he’s done”. During the court proceeding, both the defense and prosecution largely reiterated their positions in court papers. “They cannot afford counsel themselves,” Barry Pollack, Maduro’s attorney, told judge Alvin K Hellerstein. Pollack told Hellerstein that the government had not alleged that Venezuelan government funds were tainted by any purported illegal activity. He insisted that if they weren’t allowed access to these funds, whatever lawyer would be provided to Maduro and Flores would not have sufficient investigative capability. Prosecutor Kyle Adam Wirshba insisted the government had every right to prevent the use of Venezuelan money for Maduro’s defense per sanctions. “The government interest is one of national security and foreign policy,” Wirshba said. Hellerstein took issue with claims about national security, given that Maduro was in custody. He also noted that the US and Venezuela seemed to be cooperating in various ways. “We are doing business with Venezuela,” Hellerstein said at one point. “The defendant is here. Miss Flores is here. They present no further national security threat. I don’t see that.” Hellerstein asked both sides to present a possible solution to the Venezuelan money issue. Pollack again said that if Venezuela’s government couldn’t pay, “the only remedy is dismissal”. “I’m not going to dismiss the case,” Hellerstein quipped, prompting low laughter in the courtroom. While Hellerstein did not make any ruling on this issue, the judge told Pollack that if he found special permission had been “arbitrarily withheld”, the attorney could renew his argument about dismissal. The Associated press contributed to this report

The delusion of easy victory from the air may have seduced the US into another war

To explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugilistic rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare. Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the Great War. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics. “[It] is much more important to destroy a railroad station, a bakery, a war plant, or to machine-gun a supply column, moving trains, or any other behind-the-lines objective, than to strafe or bomb a trench.” “[It] is not enough to shoot down all birds in flight if you want to wipe out the species;” he wrote, with a grim metaphor. “The most effective method would be to destroy the eggs and the nests systematically.” Douhet’s theories, which emphasized “blows to the morale of civilian populations”, inspired Hitler’s deployment of airpower – and attacks such as that seen in Guernica and the sustained bombing of London. But likewise it attracted technologically bent American air strategists such as Gen Curtis LeMay, who oversaw the firebombing of dozens of Japanese cities, the aerial mining of Japan’s waterways called Operation Starvation, and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who later ran the US Air Force Strategic Air Command. It is unclear if Pete Hegseth has ever heard of the book Douhet wrote, but the threads of the long-dead Italian officer’s thinking appear woven through the secretary’s bombastic briefings about Epic Fury, the air war Trump is waging against Iran. In spite of Hegseth’s claims of a new type of American strategy, and his slap-down of the “foolish political leaders and foolish military leaders of the past”, his promise of “the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history” appears to be less an innovative approach to warfare than a recycled version of the same old thing. In the 1991 Desert Storm attacks on Iraq, the 1999 air war against Serbia and the 2003 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there’s a clear pattern where military leaders seem convinced that the increasing might and airpower and breakthroughs in technology have finally allowed them to revolutionize warfare, again and again. Douhet was obsessed with promoting a sheer volume of bombs from the sky, “to inflict the greatest damage in the shortest possible time”. Hegseth’s briefings are resonant with that theme of more and more and more. “Quantity has a quality all its own,” he said. “In fact, today will be yet again the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies … The number of sorties and number of bomber pulses, the highest yet, ramping up and only up.” And then there was Douhet’s focus on bombing civilian infrastructure – a practice he thought would cause the population to revolt against their leaders. “The time would soon come when, to put an end to horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war,” he wrote. Hegseth, too, dwells on that destruction of civilian morale, though he has not pushed for striking civilians themselves. “We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will … Speaking of people, we hope the Iranian people take advantage of this incredible opportunity. President Trump has been clear: now is your time.” One of the differences between the boasts of Hegseth and his predecessors was that they were more polite about it, said Winslow Wheeler, a former Government Accountability Office (GAO) official who later ran the Center for Defense Information. It’s style more than substance, he said. “What they don’t appreciate,” Wheeler said, “is that human nature is unchanging. The technology gets more and more sophisticated and they find that we’re capable of more and more precision but that doesn’t change human nature.” In other words, said Wheeler, people on the ground react in unpredictable ways. Bombing them often builds resistance and solidarity. “Think of the German attacks on the British, did that weaken the British resolve? No. It caused the population to unite,” he said. “Surrender was unthinkable.” North Vietnamese urine to outwit technology Delusions of omniscient control from the skies were a feature of the air war during Vietnam. In Kill Chain, the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, Andrew Cockburn describes how air power and technology advocates of that day thought they could shut down the Ho Chi Minh trail, the jungle supply line used to arm and equip the North Vietnamese army. The American plan: use arrays of remote ground sensors to detect trucks and soldiers. Once the detectors went off, bombers could wipe out the soldiers below. (One type of sensor “’sniffed’” the air for telltale traces of ammonia, denoting urine and therefore people.) The North Vietnamese caught on quickly with low-tech solutions – they even tricked the ammonia-sniffing sensors with bottles of animal urine. The Ho Chi Minh trail was never shut. The US war that introduced the now commonplace black and white videos of targets exploding, the same type of videos released now in Epic Fury, was Desert Storm in 1991, the effort to liberate Kuwait after Saddam Hussein invaded his small oil-rich neighbor. As Cockburn wrote, “For the first time, the public at home could watch and thrill at the air force’s ‘precision and lethality’ administered with cool professional efficiency.” The early US press accounts in the opening days of war were enthusiastic. “With a lethal air strike of historic accuracy and potency, the United States and allies rained death and devastation on Iraq Wednesday,” wrote USA Today. The technological hero of the show was the previously secret F-117A stealth attack aircraft, which dropped the very first bomb of the war, and the Pentagon shared the videos gladly. But the boasts at the air war turned out to be just shades of truth. In 1996 a GAO study found that the claimed success rate of 80% on bombing runs by the stealth F-117A was exaggerated: the true rate was between 41% and 60%. And claims about targeting were inflated too. “The claim by [the Department of Defense] and contractors,” wrote the GAO, “of a one-target, one-bomb capability for laser-guided munitions was not demonstrated in the air campaign where, on average, 11 tons of guided and 44 tons of unguided munitions were delivered on each successfully destroyed target.” In the end, after 43 days, Hussein withdrew from Kuwait, leaving tanks and soldiers and wreckage behind. But it also left Hussein firmly in charge, back in Iraq, his regime intact. In March 1999, the next big air war was under way: Operation Allied Force to end the Serb war crimes in Kosovo. This war had its own set of weapons system celebrities. The hi-tech B2 bomber was deployed, with two of the planes flying thousands of miles from the US and back to drop precision bombs. A report in the Los Angeles Times said: “Within the Air Force, there was nothing but elation.” But in the end, as the Guardian reported the next year, “Nato’s bombing campaign, with thousands of sorties and the dropping of tens of thousands of bombs, including sophisticated precision weapons, succeeded in damaging just 13 of the Serbs’ 300 battle tanks in Kosovo.” The most well-known exaggeration of US air power may well be the “shock and awe” campaign of 2003 under George Bush and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. In many ways the language used as the war started could have been used by Hegseth. Rumsfeld boasted that the airstrikes “will be of a force and scope and scale … beyond what has been seen before”. The Pentagon told reporters that it had planned a 48-hour campaign with 3,000 precision guided bombs to devastate Iraqi command and control and military infrastructure and sap morale. When the airstrikes failed to topple Hussein without ground troops, Rumsfeld denied he personally had promised the regime would fall quickly, though he allowed that some planners might have given that impression. As he put it, “is it possible that someone might have said something that led some person to believe that? I suppose so.” All the claims in Vietnam, Iraq and Kosovo of omniscient technology, precision bombing and air domination never actually won a war, the critics say. Hegseth and the other proponents of the current conflict are just the most recent to brag about US weaponry and all-knowing technology. “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes,” Hegseth said less than a week into the war, “intelligence more refined and better than ever.” The newest boasts about the latest whiz-bang ingredient in the US arsenal is the claim that AI is helping defeat Iran. “We’ve got a lot of autonomous systems,” Hegseth said, “incorporated with smart AI aspects to them.” But does that mean Hegseth has finally solved the very same problem in air superiority that the US has faced for decades? It may be that the delusion of easy victory – that same alluring 100-year-old theory of warfare – has sucked the US into its latest violent muddle.

MEPs back plans for ‘return hubs’, raising fears of ‘human rights black holes’

People with no right to stay in the EU could be detained for up to two years or sent to offshore centres described by experts as possible “human rights black holes” under plans voted for by the European parliament on Thursday. An alliance of mostly centre-right and far-right lawmakers voted for a proposal to increase returns of undocumented migrants to their home countries, in a further sign of strain on the grand coalition of centrist political forces that has traditionally driven EU lawmaking. The draft law, outlined in March last year, seeks to create “a credible forced return policy” to ensure that people denied asylum or who have overstayed their visa can be removed from the EU. Brussels officials say only about one in five people under a return order are deported to their country of origin. Under the plans, people could be detained for up to two years if they are deemed a security risk or likely to abscond, or they are seen as hindering their removal. The current law allows for a maximum detention period of 18 months. The European parliament beefed up the plans, proposing that people could face criminal sanctions for obstructing a return decision, as well as making it easier for authorities to impose lifetime entry bans on people. National authorities would have broader powers to do age checks to assess whether someone is under 18. The vote paves the way for EU member states to strike deals with other countries to create “return hubs”, offshore centres where deported people would be held while awaiting return to their home country. The commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe recently warned governments against creating “human rights black holes” at offshore return hubs. Opponents fear it would be impossible to monitor human rights standards at the non-EU sites and that people could be subject to prolonged detention and left in legal limbo. Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece and Denmark are working together to establish return hubs outside Europe. Unlike the UK’s abandoned deal with Rwanda, the concept would apply to people denied asylum, rather than those who wish to make a claim. The vote is a further sign of the rightward drift of the European parliament since the election of record numbers of nationalist and far-right MEPs in 2024. It also spells the end of the parliament’s traditional role in acting as a brake on hardline instincts of EU governments on migration. The vote – adopted with 389 votes in favour, 206 against and 32 abstentions – opens the way for negotiations with the EU council of ministers to agree the final law. Charlie Weimers, an MEP from the far-right Sweden Democrats, who was involved in negotiating the text, proclaimed: “The era of deportations has begun.” He said the vote “confirms a growing and stable majority” in the parliament for more effective returns, adding: “A functioning migration system must ensure that those who [have] no legal right to stay are effectively returned.” Mélissa Camara, a French Green MEP who voted against the proposal, said it was “a vote of shame” that gave the green light to the detention of children “sometimes without real legal grounds” and the establishment of return hubs outside the EU. She criticised the decision of the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) to vote with the parliament’s far-right forces. “History will remember that the so-called moderate rightwing group sounded the death knell of what remained of the cordon sanitaire,” Camara said. Barely concealed tensions burst into the open this month after the German press agency DPA reported that the EPP and three nationalist and far-right groups used a WhatsApp group and in-person meetings to negotiate the returns law. The group included representatives from the EPP and Alternative für Deutschland, despite a prohibition by Friedrich Merz, the centre-right German chancellor, on working with the far right. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) described the vote as “a historic setback for refugee rights”. Marta Welander, the IRC’s EU advocacy director, said: “It will strip people of rights and protections based solely on their migration status in Europe and pave the way towards a new punitive EU asylum and migration regime, designed to deter, detain and deport people seeking safety.” Medical professionals fear the law could make them “instruments of immigration enforcement” because of a vaguely defined requirement to identify undocumented people. Before the vote, more than 1,100 healthcare professionals urged MEPs to reject the measures, saying they could threaten public health.

Finnish MP convicted for saying homosexuality is ‘developmental disorder’

A Finnish member of parliament has been found guilty by the country’s supreme court of inciting hatred after claiming that homosexuality was a “developmental disorder”, in a conviction that prompted criticism from far-right government ministers. Päivi Räsänen, of the Christian Democrats, made the claims in a pamphlet first published in 2004 and reproduced on the website of the Luther Foundation Finland and the Finnish Evangelical Mission Diocese in 2007. In a 3-2 vote, the supreme court on Thursday found Räsänen guilty of a crime when she republished the pamphlet on Facebook in 2019 and on her website the following year. She was fined €1,800. The court ruled her claim that homosexuality was a disorder of psychosexual development was incorrect. Räsänen was supported in her case by the US-based conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has tried to use her case as an example of censorship in Europe. The group has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns after successfully overturning Roe v Wade, which protected the right to abortion, in the US. Räsänen said the outcome was “a shock” and that she would consider appealing against the ruling at the European court of human rights. Lower courts had acquitted her of all charges. Finnish government ministers from Räsänen’s party and the nationalist Finns party immediately called for freedom of speech and legislative changes. The verdict has elicited strong reactions from Räsänen’s party and top politicians including the minister of justice, Leena Meri, who called for a change in the law. The Finns party had, she said, long believed that the law was “not sufficiently precise and especially not predictable as required by the principle of legality in the criminal code”, she said. “It is very difficult for people to know what is prohibited and what is permitted.” The deputy prime minister and minister of finance, Riikka Purra, also from the Finns party, also called for a change in the law. “Freedom of speech took another serious hit today through the supreme court’s voting decision,” she said on social media. The prosecutor general, Ari-Pekka Koivisto, told Finnish broadcaster Yle: “We have not had a preliminary decision of this kind related to the crime of incitement before.” Koivisto added: “It is significant because the supreme court went through the fundamental rights assessment in detail.” But the prime minister, Petteri Orpo, of the National Coalition party, declined to take a position on the supreme court’s decision, saying politicians should not comment on court decisions.

‘Tehran’s tollbooth’: a visual guide to how a trickle of ships still passes through strait of Hormuz

Threats to shipping have effectively closed the strait of Hormuz since the US-Israel war on Iran began four weeks ago – upending global oil and gas supplies and sending energy prices soaring. In normal times, tankers carry about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies through the narrow channel and on to the rest of the world, while about a third of the global fertilisers necessary for half of the world’s food production pass through in dry bulk vessels. Before the conflict, 138 ships a day were transiting the waterway on average, according to the Joint Maritime Information Center. That is about the number estimated to have made the journey in the whole month of March, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, after 100 exited the Gulf and 40 entered. More than 20 ships have been attacked across the region during the conflict, according to analysts from Lloyd’s List, including near-misses and those that have sustained minor damage, leading to the deaths of several crew members. The first oil tanker to be hit was the Palau-flagged Skylight, which was struck off the coast of Oman at the start of the month. Its captain and a crew member, who were both Indian nationals, died following the attack. While no vessels have been damaged since 22 March, according to Lloyd’s List, analysts are working on the assumption that it will take months for a “normal” shipping trading pattern to return even once the fighting stops. Given this uncertainty, an estimated 1,000 vessels and their crews – mainly gas and oil tankers but also container ships – have opted to remain at anchor or in port, with few willing to take the risk of moving. The UN’s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), has sounded the alarm over the 20,000 seafarers stranded in the Gulf in stressful conditions and facing dwindling supplies. Yet the data shows a trickle of vessels are still willing to make the crossing, with many taking an alternative route through Iranian waters. On Tuesday Tehran told the IMO and the UN that it would permit “non-hostile vessels” – which it determines as those not taking part in or supporting “acts of aggression” against it nor those belonging to the US or Israel – to pass through the strait. Iran has been keen to divert vessels from the standard commercial shipping lane through the middle of the strait to what it calls a “safe corridor”, located in Iranian territorial waters. This is a more northerly route, close to the Iranian coastline, and takes vessels between Larak island and the mainland. This corridor gives Iranian authorities, including the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the option of visually “verifying” vessels and giving approval to proceed. This has been called “Tehran’s tollbooth” by shipping analysts at Lloyd’s List, who see it as Iran’s way to exert control over traffic in the strait. It is unclear at this stage whether Iran is requiring payment for safe passage; at least two vessels have paid to transit the strait, according to Lloyd’s List analysts, with one of the payments reportedly as high as $2m (£1.5m) for a VLCC (very large crude carrier). These payments were reported as having been made in Chinese yuan, probably owing to the fact that the IRGC is sanctioned by several western governments, including the US, EU and UK. Iranian approval to transit the strait does not guarantee vessel safety, the analysts warn, as the IRGC does not act as a single organisation, meaning factions could still delay or even seize vessels, despite official clearance. A handful of vessels have transited Hormuz in recent days, with a slight uptick in transits registered on Thursday, although normal commercial navigation has not resumed. That day, Israel announced it had killed the head of the IRGC navy, Alireza Tangsiri, who it said had been responsible for the de facto closure of the strait. On Tuesday, four vessels were observed to have crossed the strait with their transmitters on, according to data from the marine intelligence platform Windward. Three vessels transmitting their position using their automatic identification system exited the Gulf through the strait, while one other entered. The inbound traffic included one Panama-flagged tanker and two cargo vessels, while the outbound vessel was a Panama-flagged liquefied petroleum gas tanker. However, it is unclear how many other ships may have crossed with their transmitters off, and Windward logged two cargo ships entering the Gulf on 24 March hugging the Oman coastline and sailing without reporting their position. On the same day, no maritime traffic was recorded in the standard commercial shipping lanes in the strait, while at least 10 large vessels were observed north of Larak island, potentially preparing to transit. This suggests that vessels are being held or sequenced through the new shipping corridor and “controlled access mechanisms”, according to analysts at Windward, showing the impact of Iran’s move to coordinate and approve vessel movements. International efforts are concentrated on reopening the key maritime channel. More than 30 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, the UK, France, Germany, Canada and Australia, have signed a joint statement agreeing to work on “appropriate efforts” to safeguard the waterway. On Tuesday, Britain offered to host an international security summit to draw up a “viable, collective plan” to reopen the strait. The maritime insurance industry has insisted that cover has remained available throughout the conflict, albeit at higher prices than usual, and brokers have conceded that there has been little recent demand for the strait of Hormuz. A lack of insurance does not appear to be the reason for lack of sailings in the region; rather the difficulty for shipowners is in ensuring the safety of their crew and vessel if they move.

War in Iran ‘not a Nato matter’, Finland president says in defence of alliance - as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Finland’s president Alexander Stubb insisted the war in Iran “is not a Nato matter” (16:03) after US president Donald Trump lashed out against allies and said the US would “never forget” their unwillingness to get involved in the conflict (11:19). His comments come as a number of countries rush to pass emergency packages to soften the impact of the war on their economies, including Poland (14:27) and Spain (17:35). Meanwhile, Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte and EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas against losing focus on Ukraine as a result of the war in the Middle East, stressing the two conflicts are interlinked and calling for continued support for Ukraine (13:09, 13:27, 13:35, 14:50). Presenting Nato’s 2025 annual report, Rutte also said that European allies have increased their defence spending by 20% over the last year (13:08), repeatedly praising Trump for putting more pressure on leaders to act after years of warnings (13:14). Separately, The European parliament has voted to advance the EU-US trade deal but with conditions aimed at preventing Donald Trump’s administration from riding roughshod over Europe (11:53). The European Commission has accused four pornographic platforms of allowing children to access adult content in breach of digital rules, putting the companies at risk of large fines (12:29). It also opened a separate probe into Snapchat (16:38). Denmark’s acting prime minister Mette Frederiksen is about to begin the exploratory talks on forming the next Danish government tomorrow, meeting with a broad group of parties that could be interested in forming the next administration (15:39). The Hungarian government has said it would file charges against Hungary’s leading investigative journalist, Szabolcs Panyi, for alleged espionage amid the fallout from media reports claiming Hungary’s foreign minister regularly consulted with Russia (13:30). 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.