BIG Wrap

(Al Jazeera Media Network) The Houthis have launched a hypersonic missile at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, days after the Israeli army broke a ceasefire in Gaza, the Yemeni group said. “The Yemeni armed forces carried out a qualitative military operation targeting Ben Gurion airport in the occupied Jaffa region with a Palestine-2 hypersonic ballistic missile,” Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said on Thursday. He said the operation “successfully achieved its objective,” without elaborating. It was the second such attack...

(BBC News) Four Canadians were executed in China on drug-related charges earlier this year, Canadian authorities have confirmed. All of them were dual citizens and their identities have been withheld, Canada's foreign minister Mélanie Joly said. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Canada reportedly urged Ottawa to "stop making irresponsible remarks", as pundits feared a further downturn in relations between the countries after years of strain. China's foreign ministry said on Thursday that it had acted...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) A federal court in the United States has dismissed an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismiss Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil’s legal challenge against his detention and deportation. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, has been held by the government since March 8 in a push to deport him over his participation in campus protests for Gaza last year. On Wednesday, Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Khalil’s...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) The leading authority on the United States Supreme Court has issued a rare statement rebuking US President Donald Trump for calling for a federal judge’s impeachment. On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts released two short lines, neither of which mention Trump by name. But his message was clear: Threatening a federal judge with impeachment is not acceptable. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response...

(BBC News) Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine energy targets for 30 days, after a lengthy phone call with Donald Trump. Volodymyr Zelensky says he supports the energy truce but says Russia isn't "ready" to end the war, in his first response to the call. The Russian president set out several conditions for a fuller ceasefire during the 90-minute call, including that any settlement should "eliminate the root causes of the crisis", the Kremlin says. ...

A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency – the strip's main emergency response service – told the BBC that at least 34 Palestinians have been killed and 70 others injured. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was targeting what it called "terror targets" belonging to Hamas. This is the largest wave of airstrikes in Gaza since the ceasefire began on January 19. Talks to extend the Gaza ceasefire have failed to reach an agreement. Three...

(BBC News) After an epic nine months in space, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are finally getting ready to head home. Their stay on the International Space Station (ISS) was supposed to last eight days, but their mission was dramatically extended after the spacecraft on which they arrived suffered technical problems. The pair are travelling back to Earth in a SpaceX capsule along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. They are expected to...

(Al Jazeera Media Network) Cuba’s national power grid has collapsed once again, leaving millions of people without electricity. The grid failed on Friday evening about 8:15 pm (00:15 GMT) after a breakdown at Diezmero substation in the capital, Havana, kicked off a chain reaction that shut down power generation across the island, according to officials at operator Union Electrica (UNE). At sunrise on Saturday, UNE said it was generating only a trickle of electricity – about 225...

(BBC News) At least 59 people have been killed and more than 155 injured in a nightclub fire in North Macedonia, officials say. The blaze broke out around 02:30 (01:30 GMT) at the Pulse club in Kocani, a town around 100 km east of the capital Skopje, where 500 people were thought to be attending a concert by DNK, a popular hip-hop duo in the country. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski called it a "difficult and very sad...

(BBC News) The US has launched a "decisive and powerful" wave of airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, President Donald Trump has said, citing the armed group's attacks on shipping in the Red Sea as the reason. "Funded by Iran, the Houthi thugs have fired missiles at US aircraft, and targeted our Troops and Allies," Trump wrote on his Truth social platform, adding that their "piracy, violence, and terrorism" had cost "billions of dollars" and put...