Organisers shut down the four main Israeli defence company stands at the Paris Airshow. Organisers say the companies refused orders to remove bombs and other offensive weapons from their displays. The airshow organisers say they’re engaging in dialogue to resolve the dispute.
Police in the United States have captured Vance Boelter, accused of fatally shooting a Minnesota lawmaker and injuring another, after a two-day manhunt.
“The face of evil. After relentless and determined police work, the killer is now in custody,” the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post on Sunday.
Here is all we know about the 57-year-old suspect and the case that has rattled the Midwestern state and raised concerns about political violence in the US.
On Saturday, Boelter allegedly shot and wounded state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their home in Champlin city. The Champlin police said they responded to reports of gunfire at the Hoffmans’ house about 2:07am (07:07 GMT).
Boelter is accused of then heading to Brooklyn Park, where he allegedly fatally shot another Democratic lawmaker, Melissa Hortman, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark in their home, about 15km (9 miles) from the Hoffmans’ house.
Authorities said the suspect posed as a police officer and also modified his vehicle, a Ford SUV, to look like a police car.
Boelter, a self-described security professional, was a political appointee on a state workforce development board. Records show that Hoffman was on the same 60-member board, but it is unclear whether Boelter and Hoffman knew each other.
According to state records, Boelter was first appointed to the board in 2016 by then-Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and reappointed in 2019 by current Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, for a four-year term until 2023.
Boelter’s wife filed to create a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services LLC with the same address as the couple’s listed mailing address in Green Isle in Sibley County, according to corporate records. The company offers security services, including contract security guards for sites, including residential properties and schools.
Authorities identified Boelter as a suspect on Saturday, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Walz said Boelter was apprehended on Sunday. “One man’s unthinkable actions have altered the state of Minnesota,” Walz said after Boelter’s arrest.
Law enforcement agents found three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9-mm handgun, a list of names and addresses of other public officials, a mask and a police-style gold badge in Boelter’s SUV, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Sunday and shared by multiple news outlets.
According to the criminal complaint, Boelter is charged with four felony charges: two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder.
According to the complaint, three of these four charges can lead to maximum jail terms of 40 years. His bail is set at $5m.
Boelter is being held in the Hennepin County Jail in Minneapolis. He is scheduled to appear in court on Monday at 1:30pm (18:30 GMT).
CBS News, quoting unnamed law enforcement officials, reported that Boelter was arrested near his home in Green Isle. Sibley County is in the south-central part of Minnesota with a population of 14,836, according to the 2020 US Census.
The New York Times also reported that the police found what was believed to be Boelter’s vehicle in Green Isle, 10 minutes from Boelter’s listed address.
Both Hortman and Hoffman belonged to Minnesota’s Democratic Party-affiliated Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.
Hortman, 55, had been a Democratic leader in the House since 2017. She also served as the speaker of the House for six years until 2024 when Democrats lost their majority, making way for Republican Lisa Demuth. Hortman and her husband are survived by two adult children.
Initial autopsy reports from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office listed the causes of the Hortmans’ deaths as “multiple gunshot wounds”. The reports said Melissa Hortman died at the scene while her husband died in the hospital.
In 2023, Melissa Hortman helped pioneer protections for abortion rights, safeguarding the status of Minnesota as a refuge for people seeking abortions in the wake of the US Supreme Court ruling overturning the constitutional right to an abortion.
The Champlin police found the Hoffmans with “multiple gunshot wounds”. According to Walz, both underwent surgery. “We are cautiously optimistic they will survive this assassination attempt,” Walz said at a news conference, adding that Hoffman was hit by nine bullets.
John Hoffman, 60, was elected to the Minnesota Senate in 2012. The Hoffmans have an adult daughter.
The Minnesota State Patrol posted photos on its X account on Saturday of papers with “NO KINGS” handwritten on them. “The photo is of flyers inside the vehicle of the suspect in today’s shootings,” the agency posted.
Some No Kings protests, which were critical of President Donald Trump’s policies, were cancelled on Saturday in Minnesota as a result on the recommendation of Walz while other protests commenced as planned. Walz cancelled his scheduled appearance at a protest at the state capital, St Paul, where thousands of protesters gathered outside the State Capitol building, about 40km (25 miles) from where the shootings took place.
The No Kings protests were coordinated across the US on Saturday, Trump’s 79th birthday and the day he hosted a parade in Washington, DC, to mark the US army’s 250th anniversary.
Given the targeted shootings of state lawmakers overnight, we are asking the public to not attend today’s planned demonstrations across Minnesota out of an abundance of caution. pic.twitter.com/7hFccnrQUT
Walz said he considers the assassinations “politically motivated” during a news conference on Saturday, but the exact motive is unknown. Al Jazeera has not been able to independently clarify whether Boelter has voted Democrat or Republican recently.
In Minnesota, voters are not required to declare their political affiliations when registering to vote. A report linked to the workforce boards in 2016 and 2020 listed Boelter as having “none or other” affiliation and “no party preference” respectively, The New York Times reported.
However, a man named David Carlson, who identified himself as Boelter’s current roommate, told the Minnesota-based television channel KARE-TV that Boelter voted for Trump in the 2024 election. Carlson said Boelter had not discussed politics recently.
The Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper reported that the police found a list purportedly written by Boelter containing the names of “prominent pro-choice individuals in Minnesota, including many Democratic lawmakers”. The Tribune also quoted Carlson saying that Boelter “really hated abortion” through the 1990s.
The AP reported that Carlson also read texts to reporters that Boelter had sent to friends: “I’m going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way. … I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the attack “appears to be a targeted attack against State Lawmakers”.
Trump added: “Our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the FBI, are investigating the situation, and they will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law. Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!”
Minnesota’s House speaker said in a statement: “I am devastated by the loss of Speaker-Emerita Melissa Hortman. She was respected by everyone at the Capitol as a formidable advocate for her values and her caucus. She battled fiercely, but never let it impact the personal bond that we developed serving as caucus leaders. Few legislators have had as large an impact on the State of Minnesota, and she was a nationally-recognized leader in energy policy.”
As Israel and Iran exchange deadly salvoes for a fourth day, there are growing concerns that the conflict will spread across one of the world’s key oil- and gas-producing regions. Equity markets initially were roiled after Israel’s surprise attack on Friday but have since stabilised.
A day after Israel killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists and damaged some of its nuclear sites, Israel then hit Iran’s fossil fuel sector on Saturday with Iranian state media reporting a blaze at the South Pars gasfield. More than 220 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks, including at least 70 women and children, according to Iranian authorities.
Iran responded with a barrage of ballistic missile and drone strikes, a small percentage of which succeeded in penetrating Israeli defences, killing at least 24 people.
On his Truth Social platform, United States President Donald Trump warned Tehran that the next “already planned attacks” would be “even more brutal”, adding: “Iran must make a deal [on its nuclear programme] before nothing is left.”
As the conflict between the Middle East’s two most powerful militaries spirals towards a full-fledged war, financial markets and the aviation sector are taking a hit. Analysts are watching oil prices, and investors are turning to safe havens like gold.
And a full-blown war could make things even worse – much worse, experts warned.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, rallied to $74.60 per barrel early on Monday.
That marked an almost 7 percent increase from Thursday, the day before Israel launched its surprise attack.
Much of the world’s oil and other key commodities such as natural gas pass through busy sea lanes in the Middle East, including the Strait of Hormuz.
The strait, a narrow waterway separating Iran from the Gulf states, links the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean.
It is a conduit for one-third of the world’s seaborne oil supplies, channelling roughly 21 million barrels every day.
At its narrowest point, it is 33km (21 miles) wide. Shipping lanes in the waterway are even narrower, making them vulnerable to attack.
The conflict between Israel and Iran has revived a decades-old question of whether Tehran will close the maritime chokepoint, triggering an oil price rally.
Quoting key conservative lawmaker Esmail Kosari, the Iranian news agency IRINN reported that Tehran is considering closing the strait as the conflict with Israel intensifies.
According to Goldman Sachs, a worst-case scenario involving blockades in the Strait of Hormuz could push oil prices above $100 per barrel.
Still, during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, in which both countries targeted commercial vessels in the Gulf, Hormuz was never completely closed.
What’s more, attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz would likely disrupt Tehran’s own exports, especially to China, cutting off valuable revenue.
According to Hamzeh Al Gaaod, an economic analyst at TS Lombard, a strategy and political research firm, “the repercussions to closing off the strait would be severe for Tehran itself.”
When oil prices rise, the cost of production also goes up. This is eventually passed on to consumers, especially for energy-intensive goods like food, clothing and chemicals.
Oil-importing countries around the world could experience higher inflation and slower economic growth if the conflict persists.
Looking ahead, analysts warned that central banks would face reduced policy flexibility in trying to control rising prices.
“Central bankers from the G7 are currently on an [interest rate] cutting cycle, and so will be worried about a potential energy price shock,” Al Gaaod told Al Jazeera.
The Bank of England has recently slashed the United Kingdom’s base interest rate to 4.25 percent although the US Federal Reserve has held off on cutting rates in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, imposed on almost all countries since he returned to power in January.
Wall Street has taken a hit. On Friday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indices shed 1.1 and 1.3 percent, respectively. In the Middle East, Egypt’s benchmark EGX 30 index fell 7.7 percent on Sunday while the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange 35 Index dropped 1.5 percent.
European equities also drifted down on the news of Israel’s attacks. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 fell a little more than 1.1 percent at the end of last week while the UK’s FTSE 100 ended 0.5 percent lower on Friday.
Still, some UK companies rallied. BAE Systems, a defence contractor, was up almost 3 percent on Friday, reflecting concerns that tensions could escalate.
In the US, share prices of military suppliers, including Lockheed, Northrop Grumman and RTX, also rose.
Elsewhere, oil companies BP and Shell gained in value with the former closing nearly 2 percent higher and the latter closing at just more than 1 percent higher.
The price of gold was also trading about 1 percent higher on Friday at $3,426 an ounce, close to the record high of $3,500 it hit in April.
On Monday, investors tempered some of their risk-off positioning with oil and gold prices falling and stock prices rising.
“It seems that markets are anticipating the conflict will remain relatively contained. Crucially, Iran has not attacked any US military assets in the region,” Al Gaaod said.
Several airlines have suspended or cancelled flights in the Middle East, and some countries have shut their airspace.
Here is a list of some suspended and rerouted flights:
Elsewhere, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that aviation authorities have shut down the country’s airspace until further notice.
On Friday, Iraq also closed its airspace and suspended all traffic at its airports, Iraqi state media reported. Eastern Iraq is home to one of the world’s busiest air corridors. Dozens of flights cross there at any one moment, flying between Europe and the Gulf – many on routes from Asia to Europe.
Jordan’s civil aviation authority said it had “temporarily” closed Jordanian airspace “in anticipation of any dangers resulting from the escalation happening in the region”.
For Al Gaaod, “there may be short-term disruption for Middle East tourism but only for a month or so. I suspect tourism will bounce back.”
A German court has handed down a life sentence to a Syrian doctor convicted of committing acts of torture as part of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court imposed the sentence on Alaa Mousa on Monday, ruling that the doctor’s actions formed part of the Assad regime’s “inhumane and repressive” campaign against opposition figures.
The court had found the 40-year-old guilty of crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, in connection with acts committed during Syria’s civil war between 2011 and 2012.
Presiding judge Christoph Koller said the verdict underscored the “brutality of Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime”.
The trial, which ran for more than three years, was one of the most significant cases brought under Germany’s principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows serious crimes committed abroad to be prosecuted domestically.
Mousa was accused of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs, where political prisoners were regularly brought for supposed treatment, on 18 occasions.
He had denied the charges during the trial, which came to a close months after al-Assad was deposed in December 2024.
Prosecutors said rather than receiving medical treatment, detainees were instead subjected to horrific abuse, with some dying as a result.
Witnesses described numerous acts of severe cruelty, including Mousa pouring flammable liquid on a prisoner’s wounds before setting them alight and kicking the man in the face, shattering his teeth.
In another incident, the doctor was accused of injecting a detainee with a fatal substance for refusing to be beaten.
One former prisoner described the Damascus hospital where he was held as a “slaughterhouse”.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 on a skilled-worker visa and continued practising medicine as an orthopaedic doctor until his arrest in 2020. Colleagues reportedly said they had no knowledge of his past, with one describing him as “unremarkable”.
During the trial, which opened in 2022, Mousa denied personally harming patients but admitted witnessing abuse.
Israel and Iran have been exchanging air attacks as the open hostilities between the old foes extended into a fourth day.
Israeli attacks across Iran, stretching from the western border with Iraq to the capital, Tehran, and as far east as Mashhad, were followed by an Iranian barrage on Israeli cities in retaliation.
The death toll from Israel’s attacks on Iran has risen to more than 220, including 70 women and children, according to reports. The intelligence chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and two other generals were killed on Sunday.
The death toll in Israel rose by 11 on Monday, the prime minister’s office said, bringing the total since Friday, when Iran fired missiles following Israel’s attacks on its nuclear and military facilities, to 24.
Residential areas in both countries have suffered numerous hits since the hostilities erupted.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of deliberately targeting civilians.
The world is becoming more unstable, and the likelihood that nuclear weapons may one day be used is increasing, despite the wishes of humanity.
That is the broad conclusion of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Yearbook, published on Monday.
It is a compilation of SIPRI’s recent research into conflicts, arms transfers and military expenditure, but it places particular emphasis on what SIPRI sees as a dawning new arms race among the nine nuclear-armed states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
Although the number of nuclear warheads in the world is declining as the US and Russia gradually dismantle 1,000 retired warheads, new warheads are entering stockpiles and will eventually outpace these in the absence of any treaties reducing or limiting stockpiles, said SIPRI.
Improvements in potency, delivery and accuracy are also bringing about a new nuclear era, it said.
“We are at a step change, which has been going on since just before the pandemic,” SIPRI director Dan Smith told Al Jazeera.
“It’s not just little bits and pieces here and there. It’s everybody moving in that direction of upgrading, including the new nuclear weapon state of North Korea and the relatively new ones of Pakistan and India, who went nuclear in the 90s.”
China is building 350 new launch silos in its northern deserts and mountains. It has assembled 100 new warheads in the past year to reach 600 and is likely to continue expanding at that pace. Although China has a no-first-use policy, it may be developing a launch-on-warning capability – a sort of reflexive counterstrike.
China and India may both now be deploying warheads on missiles during peacetime, changing a longstanding policy of keeping warheads and missiles unmated.
India may be developing longer-range missiles as it broadens its traditional focus on Pakistan to include China.
North Korea is estimated to have refined enough fissile material to build 40 bombs in addition to the 50 it possesses, and has said it is about to launch tactical nuclear weapons.
Pakistan, too, is stockpiling fissile material and its “nuclear weapon arsenal … [is] likely to continue to expand over the next decade”, wrote SIPRI.
The UK is raising its stockpile from 225 warheads to 260 and building a new Dreadnought class of nuclear-capable submarines. France, too, is building a third-generation submarine and designing an air-launched cruise missile, both nuclear-capable.
Israel is thought to be able to launch nuclear missiles from torpedo tubes in its existing submarines, but its latest, the Drakon, is believed to have a vertical launch system as well.
All these nations, however, represent just 10 percent of the nuclear arsenal.
The remaining 90 percent belongs to Russia and the US, with more than 1,700 deployed warheads each, and 4,521 in storage between them.
In addition to being in the process of upgrading its nuclear-capable missiles, submarines and bombers, the US last year took delivery of 200 “modernised” nuclear warheads, the most in one year since the end of the Cold War.
Russia, too, is modernising its air- and sea-based delivery systems, and may have placed nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. Last year, it expanded its nuclear doctrine.
Previously, the use of nuclear weapons was authorised when the very existence of the state was in jeopardy. Now it is authorised when there is a “critical threat” against Russia’s sovereignty or territorial integrity, or if there is a “massive launch of air and space attack means” crossing the state border. Those means include unmanned aerial vehicles, which Ukraine often launches in dozens into Russia at a time.
Russia’s new doctrine “could be interpreted to mean that Russia has lowered the threshold for the use of its nuclear weapons”, wrote SIPRI. “The mixed performance of Russia’s conventional weapons in its war against Ukraine could reaffirm, and potentially even deepen, Russia’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its national security strategy.”
These changes are happening against a backdrop of intensifying conventional armed conflict in the world.
“The estimated overall number of fatalities rose from 188,000 in 2023 to 239,000 in 2024,” said SIPRI, citing five major conflicts: Israel’s war on Gaza, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan, and “subnational armed conflicts” in Ethiopia.
World military spending rose by 37 percent in the past decade, and by 9.4 percent last year alone, to $2.7 trillion, said SIPRI.
The combination of greater nuclear range, firepower, accuracy and survivability and intensifying conventional conflict feeds a desire for proliferation, said Minna Alander, a fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security programme at the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
“The situation has triggered a nuclear debate even in unlikely parts of Europe: the idea of a ‘Nordic bomb’ has become a morning radio topic in Sweden and Denmark’s ex-Foreign Minister, Jeppe Kofod, recently described a Nordic defence union with own nuclear weapons as ‘not only a dream but a strategic necessity’,” she said.
“This is a remarkable and indicative development, given that Denmark and Norway have had limitations on NATO’s nuclear presence on their territories and Finland and Sweden have a history of nonproliferation advocacy.”
Finland and Sweden have signed bilateral military agreements with the US that came into force last year, allowing the US to place troops and weapons, including nuclear weapons, on their soil. Poland has also signalled it is open to US nuclear weapons sharing.
Now the US security guarantee has been weakened, said Smith, by US President Donald Trump, making NATO’s mutual defence clause conditional on an arbitrary level of defence spending.
“It’s very muddy now what the response is, because on the one hand, there’s a quite clear line of ‘the USA is no longer a reliable ally’. So that is the new reality as far as the security planners and strategists are concerned,” he said.
“Once you introduce one condition, any amount of further conditions is thinkable, and soon the deterrent has lost its credibility,” said Alander.
The French and UK independent deterrents came out of doubt whether a US president would “sacrifice New York or even Akron, Ohio, for Berlin”, he said, but the US stance vindicates France’s choice of complete autonomy.
Of the world’s 193 UN members, 178 have now ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), said SIPRI. Last year, four countries ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which aims to ban all nuclear weapons, bringing the total to 73. Another 25 have signed the TPNW, but have not ratified it.
These efforts at curtailment and elimination stem from the argument that nobody can win a nuclear war, said SIPRI’s Smith.