Israel’s priority is a ‘wider colonial expansion’, the committee on Israeli practices in occupied territories said. The world could be witnessing “another Nakba”, or the expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations special committee has warned. The committee sounded the alarm on Friday, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and saying it was inflicting “unimaginable suffering” on Palestinians. The comments come after Israel announced a plan earlier this week to expel hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians from the north of Gaza and confine them in six encampments. For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba“, or catastrophe – the mass displacement that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948. “Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations,” said the UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights. “What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba,” the committee added, after concluding an annual mission to Amman. “The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of the government of Israel,” its report stated. “Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.” The committee also noted Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians. “According to testimonies, it is evident that the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including sexual violence, is a systematic practice of the Israeli army and security forces, and is widespread in Israeli prisons and military detention camps,” it said. “The methods read as a playbook of how to try to humiliate, derogate, and strike fear into the hearts of individuals.” The committee’s mission took place as Israel’s weeks-long total blockade of aid to Gaza continues. “It is hard to imagine a world in which a government would implement such depraved policies to starve a population to death, whilst trucks of food are sitting only a few kilometres away,” the committee said. “Yet, this is the sick reality for those in Gaza.” The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968. During the formation of Israel in 1948, approximately 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba”. The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make up about 20 percent of its population. The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

Statistics Canada showed an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent, with most cuts in the manufacturing sector. Canada’s unemployment jumped to its highest level since November as United States President Donald Trump’s imposed tariffs affect the export-dependent economy. Statistics Canada showed a 0.2 percent increase for the month of April, bringing the country’s unemployment rate to 6.9 percent, according to its report released on Friday. The 6.9 figure matched November unemployment, which was an eight-year high outside of the pandemic era. The agency pointed to the effect tariffs imposed by the US had on the country’s manufacturing sector, which lost 31,000 jobs on a monthly basis. The wholesale, retail and trade sector saw 27,000 jobs cut. Employment in the public sector increased by 23,000 or up 0.5 percent in April, following three months of little change, especially due to increased temporary hiring for the federal election that took place on April 28. The average hourly wage growth of permanent employees, a metric closely watched by the Canadian central bank to gauge inflationary trends, was at 3.5 percent in April, unchanged since March. Overall, the employment number was largely flat with minimal gains of net 7,400 jobs in April, it said – slightly higher than analyst expectations at 6.8 percent. This was in contrast to a loss of 32,600 jobs the prior month. The employment rate, or the proportion of the working-age population that is employed, was at 60.8 percent in April, following a decline of 0.2 percentage points in March. This was a six-month low, the statistics agency said. The employment rate had been depressed for most of 2023 and 2024 as population growth outpaced employment gains. However, since February, population growth has not been very high but employment gains have slowed. “People who were unemployed continued to face more difficulties finding work in April than a year earlier,” StatsCan said, adding that among those who were unemployed in March, 61 percent remained unemployed in April – almost four percentage points higher than the same period last year. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium in March and automobiles in April, along with import duties on a broad range of products with various reductions and exemptions, have affected businesses and households. The Bank of Canada has warned that growth would take a major hit in the coming months as exports fall, prices increase, hiring drops and layoffs accelerate. It has said it will act decisively if the economy needs urgent support. “Overall, we are seeing a job market that was weak heading into the trade war, now looking like it could soon buckle. Today’s report supports the case for a Bank of Canada cut in June,” Ali Jaffery, senior economist at CIBC Capital Markets, told the Reuters news agency. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

Trump has approved a $310m sale of F-16 parts and support, and told Russia and Ukraine to sort out their own ceasefire. The Donald Trump administration last week approved its first sale of weapons to Ukraine after signing a memorandum of intent to exploit Ukrainian mineral wealth, suggesting that US foreign and defence policy under its current president will be driven by economic policy. The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced on May 2 that the Trump administration had approved the sale of parts, maintenance and training for F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine worth $310m. Defence newspaper The War Zone had previously said decommissioned F-16s were being shipped from a US Air Force graveyard in Arizona to Ukraine for spare parts, and published photos of partially dismantled F-16 fuselages being loaded onto a Ukrainian Antonov-124 transport plane at Tucson International Airport on May 1. The US sale announcement did not include operational F-16 aircraft or missiles, but European allies of Ukraine have reportedly promised a total of 85 working F-16s. This sale represented the first military aid from the Trump administration to Ukraine, and the first aid Ukraine would be paying for. The previous administration of President Joe Biden provided $130bn in financial and military grants to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first publicly offered to buy US weapons systems on April 15, specifically asking for Patriot air defence systems. The US sale followed the April 30 signing of a memorandum by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko to jointly exploit new mineral deposits in Ukraine, including metals, oil and gas. “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” said Bessent. The memorandum said half of the proceeds from royalties and licensing fees payable to the government of Ukraine will be put into an investment fund for reconstruction purposes. It did not stipulate whether US investors would similarly invest any proportion of their proceeds, or if the US government would facilitate investment. Nor did the memorandum specify a timeframe for investment. Svyrydenko said the US government would contribute to the reconstruction fund, without specifying how much. Zelenskyy called it “now truly an equal partnership” in his Mayday evening address and said it would allow the US and Ukraine “to make money in partnership”. “This partnership sends a strong message to Russia – the United States has skin in the game and is committed to Ukraine’s long-term success,” said a White House statement. A day after signing the minerals deal, the Trump administration began to distance itself from the prospect of peace in Ukraine, despite Trump’s promise to deliver it quickly after his inauguration. The administration delivered a ceasefire offer to Russia and Ukraine on April 17, calling it “final”. “It’s going to be up to them to come to an agreement and stop this brutal, brutal conflict,” US Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on May 1. “We’re not going to fly around the world organising mediation meetings. Now it’s up to the two sides,” said State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce. US Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio told Fox News on the same day, “We’ve got so many, I would argue even more important, issues going on around the world,” referencing “what’s happening in China” and “Iran’s nuclear ambition”. Whereas Ukraine has agreed to a US 30-day ceasefire proposal, Russia has not, proposing instead a three-day ceasefire to protect 29 international leaders attending a May 9 victory parade in Moscow to mark the end of the Second World War. Zelenskyy has dismissed that request. On May 9, he called on Putin again to “a 30-day silence. But it must be real. No missile or drone strikes, no hundreds of assaults on the front… The Russians… must prove their willingness to end the war.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded by saying Zelenskyy “unambiguously threatened world leaders”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the point of the three-day truce was “to test Kyiv’s readiness to find ways for a long-term sustainable peace”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, “The ball is not in our court. [Kyiv] has not shown readiness for negotiations so far.” Russia has prosecuted its war against Ukraine to the fullest, launching 1,300 assaults since the beginning of May. Russia suffered 35,000 casualties in April, and just less than 126,000 in the first four months of 2025, said Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence – the equivalent of three rifle divisions. During that time, Russia occupied 1,627 sq km (628 square miles), a figure that included the recapture of its own Kursk region in March, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify casualty tolls. However, the ISW said Russian gains had “slowed as Russian forces come up against more well-defended Ukrainian positions in and around larger towns such as Kupiansk, Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, and Pokrovsk over the last four months”. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said the main threats were in “primarily Sumy and Kursk, Pokrovsky, Novopavlovsk”. Russia has been intensifying its use of controlled air bombs (CABs) this year, said Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, dropping 5,000 in April versus 4,800 in March, 3,370 in February and 1,830 in January. Ukraine considers these 1.5-tonne bombs one of its biggest difficulties on the front lines. Neutralising Russia’s ability to launch them from planes deep inside Russia was its main reason for requesting long-range strike capability from the former administration of President Joe Biden. Russia also stepped up long-range strikes against Ukraine’s cities. Overnight on May 1, Russia fired five Iskander ballistic missiles and 170 drones and decoys. Two more Iskanders and 183 drones were launched on May 2. The northern city of Kharkiv, just 30km (19 miles) from the Russian border, was particularly hard-hit, with 10 fires recorded in various districts of the city, said the State Emergency Service. Some 44 people were injured. Russia struck Kharkiv again days later, engulfing its commercial market in flames. Russia launched 165 drones on May 3 and 116 drones along with 2 Iskander missiles the following day. On Wednesday, a ballistic missile and drones struck Kyiv, killing a mother and son. “The Russians are asking for silence on May 9, but they themselves strike Ukraine every day,” wrote Zelenskyy on Telegram. The ISW said “the Kremlin is attempting to prolong negotiations to extract additional concessions from the United States and Ukraine.” Ukraine held its front line against an escalating Russian onslaught and struck targeted blows against Russia’s military machine. Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, told The War Zone that Ukrainian Magura-7 unmanned surface drones had successfully downed two Russian Sukhoi-30 fighter jets using AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles originally designed for air-to-air use. The pilot of the first Russian Su-30 was rescued by a civilian ship near the port of Novorossiysk in the Black Sea. The second Su-30 fell over Crimea. The crew did not survive, said Budanov. The downing of a Sukhoi by a surface drone was unprecedented, he added. Ukrainian military intelligence pioneered the use of surface kamikaze drones to strike Russian Black Sea Fleet ships, and on December 31 used them to launch rockets, downing two Russian helicopters. It was the first time surface drones had been used against air targets – another Ukrainian innovation. Since late 2022, Ukraine has also pioneered the use of light, first-person-view drones to perform targeted munitions drops on enemy armour and personnel. “Over the past two months – March and April – our drones have hit and destroyed over 160 thousand enemy targets,” wrote Syrskii on Telegram. In April, drones destroyed more than 83,000 targets, 8 percent more than in March, he claimed, lauding the “effectiveness of Ukrainian unmanned systems”. In addition, he said deep-strike weapons had hit 62 targets on Russian territory in April. In the past week, Ukrainian drones torched the Fiber Optic Systems plant in Saransk, Republic of Mordovia, for the second time in a month, Russia’s only plant manufacturing fibre-optic cable used in unmanned aerial vehicles. They seemed to have also struck the nearby Saranskkabel machine-building plant. Ukraine also struck the Instrument-Making Design Bureau in Tula, which produces antitank systems and small arms, as well as the Scientific-Production Association (SPLAV), which produces multiple-launch rocket systems. Further, Ukraine claimed to have struck airbases in the Moscow and Kaluga regions, housing cruise missiles, Tupolev-22M3 strategic bombers and Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter jets. “You are writing the history of the modern Ukrainian statehood,” Syrskii wrote on Telegram on Tuesday. “You are the modern history of Ukraine.” Follow Al Jazeera English:...

US small businesses try to find ways to survive the financial stress tariffs put on them amid already slim margins After working in the outdoor industry for three years at Smith, which makes helmets and goggles, Cassie Abel realised there were not many brands built exclusively with women in mind. In 2016, she founded Wild Rye, a rural Idaho-based outdoor apparel brand for women. Building her business was a labour of passion and included big risks, such as leveraging her house for capital. It was not until 2021 that she became profitable. Now, her business faces yet another existential threat: High tariffs will drive up her costs, and she’s unsure how long she can keep her business alive. Abel is expecting $700,000 worth of purchase orders arriving in July, which encompasses the brand’s full fall lineup, which she ordered in December from suppliers in China. She says Wild Rye, which imports twice a year, will now be subject to $1.2m in tariffs for its upcoming shipment. “I don’t have the cash to pay for these tariffs. These tariffs are due upon entering the country. I won’t have time to sell this product before the tariffs are done. We could be out of business in the next four months,” Abel said. Since taking office, United States President Donald Trump has imposed a 145-percent tariff on China and 10 percent on all other countries. The president has claimed the tariffs incentivise businesses to bring manufacturing back stateside. But that has left hundreds of small businesses like Abel’s scrambling to find ways to manage the hefty fee.   US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a group of reporters at a White House briefing last week, “The goal here is to bring back the high-quality industrial jobs to the US. President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past. You know, we don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back.” His comments put additional pressure on employers like Wild Rye. To weather the storm caused by the Trump administration’s tariffs, Abel has frozen hiring, paused salary increases for her 11 full-time employees, and stalled new product development. She said she will need to raise prices on her products for the fall, ranging from 10 to 20 percent. On April 29, she and hundreds of members of the outdoor apparel community met leaders in Washington to push for assistance. Abel said Democrats were unsure what they could do amid Republican control of the House of Representatives and Senate, while Republican leadership feared retribution if they went against the president. “I was hearing it [concern] from both sides of the aisle. There’s frustration, it’s like it’s hard to find a path forward. Everyone understands that small businesses are going to crumble, and everyone feels like there’s no playbook for this,” Abel told Al Jazeera. The US Chamber of Commerce has also pushed the White House to carve out exceptions for small businesses like Wild Rye, which the Trump administration quickly dismissed. Abel says she started as a made-in-USA brand, but that was not financially sustainable. “That almost tanked the business before we launched because the US simply doesn’t have the capability or capacity to produce technical apparel,” Abel said. Most textile products like clothes and shoes that Americans buy are not made in the US. The US imports about 97 percent of clothes, mostly from Asian countries including China, which has been hit hard by the 145-percent tariffs, but also from Vietnam and Bangladesh. But it’s not just the apparel industry facing this challenge. It’s the entire small business community – defined as a business with 500 employees or less – a portion of the economy that employs roughly 61.7 million Americans, representing 45.9 percent of the US workforce and accounts for 43.5 percent of the US gross domestic product (GDP). The broader economy has also already felt shockwaves from the tariffs that will impact small businesses. The US GDP fell in the first quarter, per the US Commerce Department, by 0.3 percent after a 2.4 percent increase in the fourth quarter of 2024. According to ADP, job growth stumbled to 62,000—a more immediate metric than the US Labor Department’s jobs report, which lags by a month and shows 177,000 jobs added. Consumer confidence hit a 13-year low, and consumers are pulling back spending amid fears of further rising costs — which, in turn, means fewer people could buy products ranging from outdoor apparel to single-origin teas and spices. In 2014, Chitra Agrawal founded Brooklyn Delhi, an Indian cuisine-inspired food brand in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband Ben Garthus. Over the last decade, they have created a range of products, including 14 different condiments and simmer sauces, that started as handmade and have since grown into a large-scale business distributing to major retailers like Whole Foods and Kroger, as well as meal kit services like HelloFresh and Blue Apron. Because hers is a specialty brand, sourcing certain ingredients from other parts of the world is not just part of the brand’s allure, it is also a necessity. “We are making these authentic Indian products that require ingredients that are just not grown or available at scale in the US. It kind of puts us in a tough place,” Agrawal told Al Jazeera. Agrawal said 65 percent to 70 percent of the ingredients she uses come from outside of the US, primarily from India, and a handful from Mexico and Sri Lanka, as well as glass from China. Like Agrawal, Anjali Bhargava faces a similar challenge. The founder of Anjali’s Cup, a brand that makes single-origin spices and teas from around the world, sources ginger from Vietnam, turmeric from Thailand, and tea from India, ingredients that, in her view, make the brand so special. In 2024, the United States was the largest importer of both ginger and several different varieties of tea, including black and green, according to Tridge, a global food sourcing data analytics firm. “I am going to have to pay the tariffs on those things if it comes down to it, if I want to continue making those products. [Not being able to make these products] is not negotiable for me,” Bhargava said. She says that in order to cut costs, she is trying to find domestic alternatives for aspects of her production, like packaging, a big expense. Pre-tariffs, she imported tins from China. Once her stock runs out, she may have to discontinue four to six of the 11 products she offers because she cannot afford the extra cost for imports. “Basically, to keep the business moving, I’m being forced to undertake a complete overhaul of my retail packaging [which can be produced stateside], which means redesigning, re-photographing, and that comes with a cost,” Bhargava added. She says she will need to move away from tins, which she imports from China and explore other kinds of packaging options like pouches. The unexpected one-time costs of $10,000 to $20,000 will eat into her already slim margins, Bhargava says. She is the only full-time employee, but hires freelancers and outsources to other businesses for tasks ranging from packaging to delivery. Unlike larger companies, it’s much harder for small businesses to absorb the tariffs. “We’ve seen that it’s hard for small businesses to balance those costs as they have very small margins. They are the ones who are going to get hit hardest,” said Alexis D’Amato, director of government affairs for Small Business Majority, an advocacy group for small businesses. “They’re bracing for impact on how they’re going to either eat these costs or pass them on to the consumer, which nobody wants to do,” D’Amato added. Raising prices in response to market pressures does not guarantee they will fall when costs decline. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions forced producers to increase prices. But even after costs eased, grocers kept prices high because consumers continued paying them — and no policy or market force compelled reductions. That burden weighs on Agrawal. “Once you make that change and say at one point, I want to roll back those price increases, there’s no guarantee that on the shelf, the prices will decrease. It’s very difficult when you’re working with grocery stores to get your prices to be lowered again. We have to really be very careful about this move. We’re still contemplating it,” said Brooklyn Delhi’s Agrawal. But these looming concerns have led consumers and businesses to import goods before tariffs kick in, to stock up on key items that may help them avoid raising prices, at least for some time. In the first quarter, US imports surged by 41.3 percent, including by entrepreneurs like Sean Mackowski, owner of Tallon Electric, a company that makes guitar pedals in Columbus, Ohio. “We did stock up a lot. I think everybody did their best to scramble, hoping that that will bridge the gap to this going away. But if we get to the end of that bridge, we’ll either need to find a different way or we’re going to start running out of stuff,” Mackowski told Al Jazeera. Follow Al Jazeera English:...