Seventy southern white rhinos have completed a journey of more than 3,400 kilometres (at least 2,112 miles) by truck and Boeing 747 from South Africa to Rwanda in what has been described as the largest translocation of its kind.
Part of a rewilding initiative, the rhinos were transported in two groups of 35 – first by airliner then by road – from South Africa’s Munywana Conservancy to the Akagera National Park in Rwanda, central Africa’s largest protected wetland, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) said on Tuesday.
“The final phase of the 3,400km journey involved the rhino being transported by truck in individual steel crates from Munywana to King Shaka International Airport in Durban,” the RDB said.
“They were then carefully loaded by cranes into a Boeing 747, flown to Kigali International Airport, and finally transported to Akagera National Park by road,” it said.
The development board said the aim was to eventually rewild more than 2,000 rhinos “to safe, well-managed protected areas across the continent”.
📹 70 southern white rhinos have found a new home in @AkageraPark! 🦏
In partnership with @AfricanParks, Rwanda is restoring the park’s ecosystem and protecting rhino populations for future generations. 🌿#VisitRwanda🇷🇼 pic.twitter.com/cWbGp45vu1
The rhinos were released into the Rwandan park after their two-day journey and a veterinary team will monitor their progress in order to “manage any stress associated with the move and to ensure each rhino adapts well to its new environment”.
Described as “the first rhino move by air of this scale”, the rewilding initiative aims to support population growth for white rhinos and “secure a new breeding stronghold in Rwanda”.
White rhinos were once abundant across sub-Saharan Africa but their numbers have dramatically fallen due to large-scale poaching and hunting during colonial times.
According to the International Rhino Foundation (IRF), rhino poaching in Africa rose by 4 percent from 2022 to 2023, with at least 586 rhinos poached in 2023.
The southern white rhino, one of two subspecies, is now listed as “near threatened”, with roughly 17,000 individuals remaining, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The northern white rhino is considered critically endangered, with the number of remaining mature adults listed by the IUCN as two at most.
70 southern white rhino completed a 3,400 km journey from South Africa to Rwanda’s Akagera National Park. The translocation was complex and was completed in two phases, each comprising 35 rhino, spaced three days apart. pic.twitter.com/dv3fLFpl03
The civil case of five Black women sets a legal precedent across the United States in the fight against organised hate.
A group of Black lawyers use a little-known law to win a case previously thought to have been lost. Their victory set a legal precedent still used in US courts today.
Five Black women from Chattanooga survived a shooting by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1980. While the criminal courts handed a light sentence to the shooter and allowed two of the men to walk free, the women were adamant about holding the white supremacist group accountable for their crimes. Using legal ingenuity, the lawyers and the group of women devised a plan to bankrupt the Klan and bring justice to the community.
Islamabad, Pakistan – When Indian Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh visited the Indian Navy’s aircraft carrier INS Vikrant on May 30, nearly three weeks after a ceasefire was announced with Pakistan after a four-day conflict, he had stern words for Islamabad.
Wearing an Indian Navy baseball cap, with his initial “R” emblazoned on it, Singh declared that Pakistan was fortunate the Indian Navy had not been called upon during the recent hostilities.
“Despite remaining silent, the Indian Navy succeeded in tying down the Pakistani Army. Just imagine what will happen when someone who can keep a country’s army locked in a bottle, even by remaining silent, speaks up?” Singh said, standing in front of a Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jet on the deck of the 262-metre-long (860 feet) ship.
Just two days later, on June 1, the Pakistan Navy issued a pointed response. In a message posted on X, it announced a two-day exercise, “focusing on countering sub-conventional and asymmetric threats across all major ports and harbours of Pakistan”.
PN conducted 2-day Ex focusing on countering sub-conventional & asymmetric threats across all major ports & harbours of Pak, aimed at validating & refining Tactics, Techniques & Procedures to ensure robust defence of critical maritime infrastructure against asymmetric threats.1/3 pic.twitter.com/R1IsajwyBB
These symbolic shows of strength followed India’s “Operation Sindoor” and Pakistan’s “Operation Bunyan Marsoos“, the countries’ respective codenames for the four-day conflict that ended in a ceasefire on May 10.
The standoff was triggered by an April 22 attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in which 26 civilians, almost all tourists, were killed. India blamed armed groups allegedly backed by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denied.
On May 7, India launched missile strikes at multiple sites in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children. Over the next three days, the two countries exchanged artillery and air power, hitting each other’s airbases.
The 96 hours of conflict brought 1.6 billion people to the brink of war. But while the navies largely remained passive observers, they monitored each other’s movements – and were ready for action.
Satellite imagery showed that the INS Vikrant moved towards Pakistan soon after the Pahalgam attack and remained deployed for four days in the Arabian Sea before returning to its base in Karnataka.
Pakistan also mobilised its fleet, which was bolstered by the docking of a Turkish naval ship in Karachi on May 2. According to the Pakistani Navy, Turkish personnel engaged in “a series of professional interactions” with their counterparts.
Now, even amid the current pause in military tensions, analysts say Singh’s remarks and Pakistan’s naval drills highlight the growing part that maritime forces could play in the next chapter of their conflict. This is a role the Indian and Pakistani navies are well-versed in.
Ships take part in the Pakistan Navy’s multinational exercise AMAN-19, in Karachi, Pakistan, Monday, February 11, 2019 [Fareed Khan/Ap Photo]
Early naval conflicts
After independence from Britain in August 1947, India inherited two-thirds of British India’s naval assets.
These saw no use during the first India-Pakistan war in 1947, over the contested Himalayan region of Kashmir. India and Pakistan both administer parts of Kashmir, along with China, which governs two thin strips. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims all the parts not controlled by China, its ally.
By the 1965 war, also over Kashmir, Pakistan had expanded its fleet with aid from the United States and United Kingdom, its Cold War allies. It had acquired Ghazi, a long-range submarine, giving it an edge over India, which lacked a submarine at the time, though it owned an aircraft carrier. Pakistan, to date, does not have an aircraft carrier.
While the land war started on September 6, the Pakistan Navy joined the conflict on the night of September 7-8. A fleet of seven warships and submarine PNS Ghazi left Karachi harbour and made their way towards the Indian naval base of Dwarka in the western state of Gujarat, roughly 350km (217 miles) away.
They were tasked with carrying out the “bombardment of Dwarka about midnight using 50 rounds per ship”, according to the Pakistan Navy’s official account, targeting the base’s radar and other installations.
The selection of Dwarka was significant from a historical and strategic perspective. The city is home to one of the most sacred sites for Hindus, the Somnath Temple, on which the Pakistan Navy named its operation.
Militarily, the radar installations in Dwarka were used to provide guidance to the Indian Air Force. Knocking them out would have made it harder for India to launch aerial attacks against Pakistani cities, especially Karachi. That, in turn, would have forced India to send out its warships from the nearby port of Bombay (now Mumbai) – and PNS Ghazi, the submarine, could have ambushed them.
But the Pakistani plan only partly worked. Many Indian warships were under maintenance, and so the Indian Navy did not send them out to chase the Pakistani fleet.
According to the Pakistan Navy’s accounts, after firing about 350 rounds, the operation ended in “four minutes” and all its ships returned safely.
Syed Muhammad Obaidullah, a former commodore in the Pakistan Navy, recalled the attack.
“We were able to send eight vessels, seven ships and a submarine – that surprised the Indians, as our ships targeted the radar station used to assist Indian planes,” Obaidullah told Al Jazeera.
Muhammad Shareh Qazi, a Lahore-based maritime security expert, added that the operation was a tactical surprise, but did not lead to any gains in territory or of the maritime continental shelf.
“All our ships returned safely, without resistance, but it was only an operational-level success for the PN, not a strategic one,” he said, referring to the Pakistan Navy.
Official Indian Navy records claim that most of the shells fired by Pakistani ships caused no damage and remained unexploded.
Anjali Ghosh, a professor of international relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in her book India’s Foreign Policy, described the attack as “daring” but symbolic rather than strategically meaningful.
Decisive turn in 1971
The 1971 war, fought over East Pakistan’s secession to become Bangladesh, saw more substantial naval engagements.
India launched two operations – Trident and Python – which dealt major blows to Pakistan’s Navy, sinking several ships, including the destroyer PNS Khaibar and minesweeper PNS Muhafiz, and destroying fuel tanks at Karachi Harbour.
Uday Bhaskar, a former commodore in the Indian Navy, said the navy played a pivotal role in India’s 1971 victory.
“The naval role enabled the final outcome on land,” Bhaskar, the current director of the Society for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan also suffered the loss of its prized submarine Ghazi, which sank while laying mines near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, home to India’s Eastern Naval Command.
The one major victory for the Pakistani Navy was its torpedoing of the Indian frigate INS Khukri using its submarine Hangor, which killed more than 170 Indian sailors.
Qazi, who is also an assistant professor at Lahore’s Punjab University, said that the Indian Navy replicated the Pakistani playbook from the 1965 war in the way it surprised the Pakistan Navy.
“India caused a heavy blow to Pakistan and our naval capabilities were severely dented,” he said.
Pakistan’s Navy conducts a demo during the recently held multinational maritime exercise in February 2025 in the Arabian Sea near Karachi, Pakistan [Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]
Diverging strategies
Since the 1971 war, India and Pakistan have approached different naval strategies.
Obaidullah, who retired from the Pakistan Navy in 2008, said that India has tried to build a “blue water navy” capable of projecting power across oceans. The idea: “To assert its dominance in [the] Indian Ocean,” he said.
Qazi, the maritime expert, agreed, saying that the Indian Navy has focused not just on building a numerical advantage in its naval assets but also on partnerships with nations such as Russia, which have helped it develop a powerful fleet.
“The Indian Navy now has the ability to conduct missions that can cover long distances, all the way down to Mauritius near southern Africa, or even some adventures in [the] Pacific Ocean as well,” he said.
As the world’s fifth-largest economy, India has invested heavily in naval development.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based research institute focusing on defence and security issues, India has 29 principal surface combat vessels, including two aircraft carriers, 12 destroyers, 15 frigates and 18 submarines, of which two are nuclear-powered.
Pakistan, by contrast, has prioritised its land and air forces. Its navy has grown more slowly, mainly through cooperation with China and Turkiye. It regularly holds major naval exercises with its allies, with the last one taking place in February this year.
IISS data shows that Pakistan’s navy lacks aircraft carriers and destroyers but includes 11 frigates, eight submarines and at least 21 patrol vessels.
Obaidullah explained that Pakistan’s naval ambitions and objectives are very different from those of India.
“India aims to project global power. We have a defensive navy to secure our sea lines of communication and deter aggression,” the former naval officer said. With more than 95 percent of Pakistan’s trade sea-based, protecting maritime routes is its top priority.
Maritime expert Qazi also said that the Pakistani Navy is focused on defending its “littoral zones”. From a naval perspective, a “littoral zone” is a critically important area close to coastlines, unlike the open ocean’s “blue water” expanse. It is within this space that countries engage in coastal defence.
“Pakistan has a small economy, and we do not have blue water ambitions. We do not have the capacity to build a fleet, nor [do] we need one,” Qazi said. “Our defence paradigm is about defending our coastlines, and for that, we have our submarines, which carry cruise missiles.”
The INS Vikrant aircraft carrier in Mumbai, India, Friday, March 10, 2023 [Rajanish Kakade/AP Photo]
Naval engagements in future conflicts?
The latest conflict saw both conventional and modern warfare, including drones used to strike deep inside each other’s territory. But Singh’s May 30 remarks suggest a more assertive naval posture in future conflicts, say analysts.
“If Pakistan does any unholy act this time, it is possible that the opening will be done by our navy,” Singh said during his speech on May 30.
Bhaskar, the Indian commodore who retired in 2007, agreed that future conflicts could see naval escalation.
“If another military conflict escalates, the probability of navies being actively involved is high,” he said.
Bashir Ali Abbas, a New Delhi-based maritime affairs expert and former fellow at the Stimson Center, in Washington, DC, said that naval platforms inherently serve multiple roles.
Abbas said that warships and submarines can switch from patrolling missions or exercises to operational missions on short notice. But that would carry risks of its own.
“Should the Indian Navy play a substantial role in operations against Pakistan following the next crisis, then the element of escalation control practically disappears. Any ship-on-ship, or ship-on-land engagement will imply that India and Pakistan are at war,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation is also potentially highest in the nuclear domain.
Qazi, however, said that Singh’s statement was ambiguous about whether the Indian Navy would engage in surveillance or aggression.
Any attack on Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub, would provoke a strong response, the Lahore-based analyst said.
A 15-year-old boy accused of trying to assassinate Colombian Senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has pleaded “not guilty”, the prosecutor’s office said.
The teen was formally charged on Tuesday with the attempted murder of 39-year-old conservative presidential candidate Uribe, who was shot in the head on Saturday and is fighting for his life in critical condition in hospital.
The teenager – who police believe was a “sicario” or hitman working for money – was also charged with carrying a firearm.
“No family in Colombia should be going through this,” Uribe’s wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, told reporters outside the hospital where her husband is being treated.
“There is no name for this – it’s not pain, it’s not horror, it’s not sadness,” she said.
The senator’s father, Miguel Uribe Londono, thanked the “millions of Colombians and people around the world for their prayers”.
“Miguel, amidst the pain and dismay that overwhelms us, has managed to unite this country in a single voice that rejects violence,” his father added.
It is not known why Senator Uribe, who was vying for the candidacy of his party, was attacked. He was polling well behind other party candidates at the time of the shooting.
Footage from the scene of the shooting showed Uribe addressing supporters in the west of the capital Bogota when a youth rushed towards him firing at least eight shots. Uribe was hit twice in the head and once in the leg.
The alleged attacker was apprehended by security guards and a Glock 9mm pistol was recovered.
In a video of the teen’s capture, independently verified by the Reuters news agency, the suspect can be heard shouting that he had been hired by a local drug dealer.
An earlier video showed that as the suspect, who was wounded, attempted to escape the scene, a voice could be heard shouting, “I did it for the money, for my family.”
But in court, the teenager rejected charges of attempted murder and illegal possession of a firearm, the attorney general’s office said. If convicted, he faces up to eight years in a rehabilitation centre, not prison, as he is a minor.
Also on Tuesday, Colombia was rocked by bomb and gun attacks in the country’s southwest where at least seven people were killed in a wave of violence that echoed earlier decades when attacks by armed fighters, paramilitary groups and drug traffickers were common.
Bystanders look at the wreckage of a car after it exploded in front of the City Hall in Corinto, Cauca department, Colombia, on June 10, 2025 [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP]
The bomb and gun attacks were likely caused by an armed group that splintered from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, according to the army and police.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, has broadly pointed the finger at an international crime ring as being behind the attack on Uribe, without providing details or evidence.
Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti suggested there may be a link with the assassination attempt as rebels have increasingly turned to drug trafficking to finance their activities, though he did not provide evidence.
President Petro has ordered beefed-up security for government officials and opposition leaders in response to the attacks.
Uribe had been a staunch critic of Petro’s security strategy, aimed at ending six decades of armed conflict, arguing that Petro’s approach of pausing offensives on armed groups despite the failure of peace talks only backfired.
The senator had two government-provided bodyguards protecting him at the time of the shooting, the head of the National Protection Unit said.
The United States and China have agreed on a “framework” on trade after two days of talks in London aimed at deescalating tensions between the sides.
While the specifics of the framework announced on Tuesday were unclear, the apparent breakthrough comes a month after Washington and Beijing announced a 90-day pause on most of their tariffs following talks in Geneva.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the sides would work to implement the “Geneva consensus” and had “pounded through” all the issues dividing the world’s two largest economies.
Lutnick said the sides would move forward with the framework pending its approval by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who held a 90-minute phone call on trade last week.
“Once the presidents approve it, we will then seek to implement it,” Lutnick told reporters outside Lancaster House.
Lutnick indicated that US measures imposed in response to a slowdown in Chinese exports of rare earths, a key issue dividing the sides, would likely be eased once supplies of the critical minerals ticked up.
Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang called the talks “professional, rational, in-depth and candid”.
“The two sides will bring back and report to our respective leaders the talks in the meeting as well as the framework that was reached in principle,” Li told reporters.
“We hope that the progress we made in this London meeting is conducive to increasing trust between China and the United States.”
Asian stock markets rose on hopes of a de-escalation in the trade tensions, which have cast a shadow over the global economy.
The World Bank on Tuesday lowered its forecast for global growth from 2.7 percent to 2.3 percent, pointing to the ongoing uncertainty around trade.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up almost 0.5 percent as of 03:30 GMT, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong and CSI 300 in mainland China were about 1 percent and 0.8 higher, respectively.
“I would say that meeting a 90-day deadline for complex discussions was always going to be challenging,” Deborah Elms, the head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.
Veteran journalist Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC News after he was suspended by the broadcaster for a social media post that called United States President Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller “world-class haters”.
In a statement, the US network said on Tuesday that Moran’s quickly-deleted post on X was “a clear violation of ABC News policies”, the Associated Press news agency reports.
It added that Moran’s contract was ending, and “based on his recent post… we have made the decision not to renew”.
The post on Sunday night was primarily directed at Miller, whom Moran described as “the brains behind Trumpism”.
“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran had said on X.
Moran, who had recently interviewed Trump in his role as Senior National Correspondent for ABC News, also described the US President as a “world-class hater”, but said that in Trump’s case, it was only a “means to an end” of “his own glorification”.
In Miller’s case, however, Moran said, “his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate”.
The Trump administration quickly condemned Moran’s post, with Vice President JD Vance describing it as an “absolutely vile smear of Stephen Miller”.
Moran, 65, had worked at ABC News since 1997. He was a longtime co-anchor of “Nightline”, and covered the Supreme Court and national politics.
During an interview with Trump that was broadcast a month ago, the president told Moran, “You’re not being very nice” in the midst of a contentious exchange about deportations.
Trump aide Steven Cheung responded to Moran’s exit on Tuesday with a post on X, simply saying: “Talk s***, get hit.”
Miller, meanwhile, has been focused on the Trump administration’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard soldiers and a Marine battalion to Los Angeles, amid anti-immigration enforcement protests in California’s capital city.
In one post on X on Tuesday, Miller said that California has become a “criminal sanctuary for millions of illegal alien invaders” and that “huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations.”
The AP news agency reported that Moran’s contract with ABC had been due to expire on Friday, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Moran’s post also comes at what was already a sensitive time for ABC News. The network agreed to pay $15m towards Trump’s presidential library in December to settle a defamation lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate claim that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E Jean Carroll.
Moran leaves ABC as major television networks in the US struggle to retain audiences amid the soaring popularity of some podcasters and subscription-based newsletters.
