The publisher of the 170-year-old Daily Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom has agreed to pay about $674 million (500 million pounds) to a consortium led by US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners.
Redbird announced on Friday that it had reached a definitive agreement to become the Telegraph Media Group’s controlling shareholder, ending the conservative-leaning newspaper’s lengthy takeover saga.
The sale, according to Gerry Cardinale, the founder and managing partner of RedBird, “beginns a new era for The Telegraph as we look to grow the brand in the UK and internationally, invest in its technology, and expand its subscriber base.”
The Barclay family’s former home, The Telegraph Group, was sold two years ago to pay the family’s debts. The Spectator, a weekly newsmagazine and the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, are all closely related to the UK’s Conservative Party.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and vice president of the United Arab Emirates, was the recipient of an offer to purchase the publications in 2023.
The UK government, which introduced legislation to enact laws to restrict foreign government ownership of the British press, led to the consortium’s withdrawal last year.
IMI, an affiliate of Abu Dhabi, will become a consortium member with a minority stake of no more than 15% in the Telegraph. British authorities must approve the sale.
RedBird has invested in the football team AC Milan, the parent company of the Liverpool football team, and Skydance, a film production company.
“RedBird Capital Partners have exciting growth plans that build on our success,” according to Telegraph Media Group CEO Anna Jones, who also will unlock our full potential across the breadth of our business.
A Biden-era effort to stop Microsoft’s purchase of Call of Duty video game developer Activision Blizzard is being abandoned by the Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC stated in an order on Thursday that “the dismissal of the administrative litigation in this case is best served for the public interest.”
The FTC renounced its legal fight that began under former Democratic president Joe Biden for the second time in a single day. The Democratic-controlled FTC filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo  earlier on Thursday, and the FTC announced it would dismiss it.
In January 2022, Microsoft made the announcement that Activision would be acquired for $69 billion. One of the priciest tech purchases ever made, it was intended to boost sales of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, which has fallen behind Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo.
The FTC sued in December 2022 to stop the acquisition, contending that it would allow Microsoft to thwart rivals who want access to Xbox and its subscription content.
The FTC’s request to halt the acquisition was denied by the United States District Court in Northern California in July 2023, but the FTC appealed. A federal appeals court also rejected the FTC’s request earlier this month.
In the interim, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision in October 2023 following approval from the UK’s competition watchdog, which had also considered halting the merger.
Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, Brad Smith, stated in a statement on X on Thursday that the decision is a victory for video game players and for “common sense in Washington DC.”
Smith thanked the FTC for the announcement made today.
political deeds
When Donald Trump took office in January, Khan resigned from the FTC, along with Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, in March. The Trump administration is facing legal action against Bedoya and Slaughter, according to them.
Three Republican commissioners are currently in charge of the FTC, and it’s not known when the two Democratic commissioners will step down. The FTC sent a message asking for comment.
Andrew Ferguson, the head of the FTC, claimed that the Biden-era FTC was hurried to grant a case just three days before Trump’s inauguration in the PepsiCo case. He claimed on Thursday that the case, in which PepsiCo claimed that Walmart was getting unfair pricing advantages, was a “dubious political stunt.”
However, some policies from the Biden era haven’t been blocked by the FTC. A provision that the FTC announced in December required ticket sellers, hotels, vacation rental agencies, and other entities to make their fees clearer went into effect earlier this month.
A law approved by the Congress of El Salvador as a censorship tool intended to silence and criminalize opposition by nongovernmental organizations critical of President Nayib Bukele has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations, politicians, and experts.
Bukele’s proposal was drafted without standard legislative procedures, and it was approved by a Congress on Tuesday night under his strict control of his New Ideas party.
In 2021, Bukele first attempted to pass a similar law, but the full Congress never passed it due to strong international opposition.
According to Bukele, the law aims to combat corruption and foreign influence. Following the government’s series of actions that raised questions about whether the nation might be on the verge of a new wave of crackdowns, it comes at a time when. Critics warn that it is in line with the policies put forth by the governments of China, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, and Nicaragua.
More details about the critics’ sources can be found here:
What is stated in the law?
Anyone who uses or receives foreign funding to operate in El Salvador must register under the law, whether it be an individual or organization, whether local or foreign.
A 30% tax will apply to all payments made to these groups, whether in the form of cash, goods, or services. The tax-related method of use is not specified in the final law passed.
Bukele’s law, which requires individuals working for foreign governments and entities to register, is much wider in scope and gives him greater authority. Since it is frequently challenging to raise money in their own countries, it is a recurring occurrence in the poorer nations of Latin America.
According to experts, the law could broadly define a “foreign agent” and include:
Human rights organizations
associations in the community
Independent media
Startups or businesses that have been funded by foreigners
Religious organizations
International organizations of assistance
New guidelines for NGOs
A new government body, the Registry of Foreign Agents, will be established under the law, known as the RAEX, which will have extensive authority, including establishing requirements for registration, approving or rejecting applications, revoking or declining to renew registrations, and demanding any kind of documentation or information at any time.
Some NGOs may request exceptions, but RAEX will decide which ones are allowed to operate there. Due to the country’s lack of funding, El Salvador’s approximately 8, 000 NGOs are frequently dependent on foreign donations.
Some of those organizations have long had a negative relationship with Bukele, including his decision to renounce important constitutional rights in order to crack down on gangs in the country and seek re-election despite clear constitutional prohibitions.
What guidelines must NGOs follow?
They must file a report on all donations’ sources and purposes with RAEX.
They must adhere to anti-money laundering laws, use the banks for transactions, and maintain accurate accounting records.
Without registering, they cannot operate.
They are not permitted to engage in political activities or behaviors that threaten the public or national security.
Without defining it as such, they cannot use foreign donations to carry out undeclared operations or share information with foreign donors.
The rules can be broken by violators, with fines ranging from $100 000 to $250 000, and possible closure.
Why now, exactly?
Because he now has authority spread across all levels of government, critics claim that Bukele resurrected the law. He is encouraged by his political ties to US President Donald Trump.
Shortly after a police crackdown that resulted in two arrests of people outside his home, Bukele made the law public.
Additionally, it comes in response to several Bukele-related pronouncements that have raised questions about the self-described “world’s coolest dictator”‘s crackdown on dissent.
One of Bukele’s most vocal critics, Cristosal, was detained by the government just two days before the law was passed on corruption charges.
Bukele’s social media posts caused the government to defy an order, which the head of the bus companies received.
After publishing reports on the president’s connections to gangs, journalists with the investigative news agency El Faro said they were forced to flee the country.
What are critics’ opinions?
The law, according to opposition lawmaker Claudia Ortiz, “gives the president excessive levels of control” and is “an authoritarian tool for censorship.” It is obvious that only groups that support the government will receive exemptions, and those who support corruption or abuse will be punished, she said.
The Foreign Agents Law, according to lawyer Roxana Cardona of the NGO Justicia Social y Controlara Ciudadana, seeks to halt organizations that support marginalized groups or promote civic participation.
This is a result of the government’s growing repression, according to Eduardo Escobar, Acción Ciudadana’s director. It has an impact on constitutional rights like the freedom of association and freedom of expression.
The objective is to regulate civil society’s funding, especially those that are opposed to the government, according to lawyer and analyst Bessy Ros.
In the first phase of a , a major exchange that was agreed during recent direct talks in Turkiye, Russia and Ukraine claim to have swapped hundreds of prisoners.
The first stage of a “1, 000-for-1, 000” swap was described as the release of 390 people by each side, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.
In a social media post, he wrote, “We are bringing our people home.”
“Today – 390 people. We anticipate that the exchange will continue on Saturday and Sunday. Thank you to everyone who works tirelessly to return Ukrainian men and women home. Everyone who has been imprisoned must be released. Every surname and every person’s detail are being checked, he continued.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, 270 military and 120 civilian detainees have been released, with additional exchanges planned “in the coming days.”
As they arrived at a hospital in the northern Chernihiv region of Ukraine, cheering relatives waved buses full of the detained Ukrainians.
Oleksandr Tarasov, 38, a Mykolaiv native who was captured a year and nine months ago on the Kherson front after being captured by Ukraine in 2022, said, “I didn’t believe it until this moment that it could happen.” He said, “I’m just happy I made it back. I just want to talk to my loved ones.”
On May 23, 2025, a Ukrainian serviceman, Alexander, 45, hugs his wife Elena, 39, in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine during a POWs exchange. [Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo]
Others continue to look for details about missing loved ones. One service member claimed he had shared a cell with one of the people depicted in a photo while others of the released men paused to look at pictures of their missing loved ones held by crowd members.
Svitlana Kuskova, 49, is holding a sign with a photo of her husband, Oleksandr Kuskov, who has been missing for the past year, and said it’s “extremely difficult to sleep every night without knowing what happened to him.”
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, civilians who were among the detainees taken to Belarus for medical treatment included those who had been detained by the Ukrainians during an invasion of Kursk.
Russian servicemen pos after leaving captivity after an altercation between Russia and Ukraine on May 23, 2025 in this image, which was taken from a video released by the Russian Defence Ministry press service.
In a social media post, US President Donald Trump expressed his gratitude for the exchange, adding that it might “lead to something significant.” He has urged each side to hold talks to end the war.
By the time the exchanges are finished, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later stated that the country will have a draft of the conditions needed for an agreement to end the conflict.
More than three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there is still uncertainty over the path to a negotiated resolution to put an end to the conflict, or even a stop to the fighting.
The first direct talks between the two parties since the start of the war took place last week in Istanbul, but the negotiations only lasted for two hours and did not lead to a resolution to end hostilities.
“One of the guards came up to me and asked if I was there to save Gaza’s children, then he punched me in the stomach”, Alon-Lee Green said, recounting his experience in an Israeli prison this week.
Green and eight others were arrested on Sunday for protesting with about 600 others along Israel’s border with Gaza, spending two nights and almost three days in prison before being placed under house arrest. Together, they represent part of a small but increasingly visible groundswell of resistance in Israel to a war that, for a variety of reasons, many Israelis are turning their backs on.
“Some people are protesting because they see it as a political war”, Green, who also serves as national co-director of the activist group Standing Together, said of the growing sense in Israel that the war on Gaza only serves to sustain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
“Some are tired of fighting, some want the hostages]to be released from Gaza], and some]are protesting against] what we’re doing to Palestinians. All are welcome”, he continued. “You want to resist the government? You’re welcome. You don’t want to enlist? You’re welcome. You supported the war until just recently? You’re welcome”.
Standing Together’s Alon-Lee Green is arrested while protesting near the Israeli-Gaza border]Courtesy of Standing Together]
Polls in Israel show that the majority now favour a deal that would secure the release of the captives held in Gaza, even if that means an end to the war on Gaza. Nevertheless, the war has continued.
“I don’t know if popular pressure’s going to ever stop the war”, said Green. “I mean, its supporters have been in a minority for a year. Refusing]to answer the call up] is our most powerful weapon: no soldiers, no occupation. We need more and more people to refuse”.
Escalation
All the antiwar activists Al Jazeera spoke to talked of an uptick in interest in their movement following the Israeli government’s unilateral decision in mid-March to collapse the ceasefire it had previously agreed to after months of negotiation.
Others spoke of a dramatic increase in support when, after 11 weeks of unremitting siege on Gaza, Israel announced its latest mass ground operation in the devastated Palestinian territory on May 17, intended, according to one Israeli official, to lead to “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.
Before its latest offensive, Israel called up what it said were “tens of thousands” of reservists to bolster its numbers in Gaza.
Palestinians make their way with belongings as they flee their homes after the Israeli military issued orders of evacuation from the northern Gaza Strip, May 22, 2025]Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]
Speaking after the announcement of the latest military attack on Gaza, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was clear in what he saw as the aims of the offensive, saying that, within months, Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and what remains of its pre-war population of more than two million would be exiled to a narrow strip of land along the Egyptian border.
Lone resistance
However, despite the new offensive to recapture ground already largely destroyed by the Israeli military, dissent is gaining ground.
Open letters protesting the war from military units and reservists publicly refusing to turn up for service are becoming more frequent. In April, more than a thousand of Israel’s current and former pilots, generally regarded as an elite unit, wrote an open letter protesting a war they said served the “political and personal interests” of Netanyahu, “and not security ones”.
There are no official numbers for how many reservists have not turned up for duty. But, according to Israeli media reports, the number may be as high as 100, 000. Those numbers are in addition to those refusing their initial period of mandatory military service.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has promised his supporters that Gaza will be ‘ totally destroyed ‘ and what remains of its pre-war population exiled to a narrow strip of land along the Egyptian border]Tomer Appelbaum/Reuters]
Most of those are “grey” refusals, activists say. That is, people who gave no political reason for refusing to serve, officially refusing for other reasons, such as declining on medical grounds.
But Sofia Orr, a 19-year-old from Pardes Hannah in northern Israel, is one of a growing number of conscripts refusing their mandatory service and making that refusal as public as possible.
Orr refused to serve three times after first being called up on February 24, 2024. Her first and second refusals each netted her 20 days in military prison. Her third cost her 45 days.
“I’d already decided to refuse when I was 15”, Orr told Al Jazeera. “I asked myself, ‘ If I go and serve in the military, what cause am I serving, does it align with my values, who am I actually helping? ‘” she said.
“If I enlist, am I just entering the cycle of bloodshed that occupies and bloodily oppresses Palestinians daily”? she said of defying what she described as hardwired societal expectations of Israeli life.
“I wanted to challenge that, so it wasn’t just about refusing, but doing so as publicly and loudly as possible. I needed people to see it and know that we exist, that they could do the same, to bring Palestinian suffering into Israeli society and for Palestinians to see it and know they were not alone”, she said.
Organised political resistance
Orr is a member of “Mesarvot”, an Israeli organisation that has been supporting conscientious objectors in the face of calls from prominent politicians for refusers to be arrested and prosecuted, including from cabinet member and former Israeli military spokesperson Miri Regev.
“There’s been a steady growth of refusers since October 7”, Nimrod Flaschenberg, a political analyst and spokesperson for Mesarvot said, referring to the 2023 attack on southern Israel that led to Israel’s war on Gaza. “But we’ve been seeing an exponential increase of 16-, 17-year-olds refusing to serve recently. There are around a hundred circulating an open letter, all refusing service and explaining why”.
Of the wider movement, Flaschenberg said, some refused to serve in a war they had come to regard as political, others because they felt it risked the lives of the captives and a minority out of revulsion for the mass killing in Gaza and the West Bank that they were being asked to participate in.
Leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, takes part in a protest against the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,]Oren Ben Hakoon/Reuters]
“There’s still an Israeli public taboo over showing any public sympathy for Palestinians”, Flaschenberg said of the low prominence given to Gaza in the reasons given by most refusers, contrasting that with the widespread outrage that greeted ex-General and leader of Israel’s Democrats party, Yair Golan, because he warned that Israel risked becoming regarded as a “pariah state” that killed Palestinian babies “as a hobby” if it didn’t “return to sanity”.
“That really demonstrates the level of ignorance we’re talking about”, Flaschenberg said. “Of course, Israel is killing babies, but Israelis just can’t accept that”.
A hard sell
However, while growing international condemnation of Israel concentrates on vilifying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Orr, it risks overlooking a harsher reality.
“For many people here, it’s Israelis who are the real victims, the first, the last and only victims in all of this”, she said. “They don’t even see Palestinians as people, just as a threat”.
Green, who immediately rejoined the protest on the Gaza border after his overnight release from house arrest was over, was equally fatalistic.
Standing Together’s Alon-Lee Green takes a selfie from the back of the police wagon following his arrest]Courtesy of Alon-Lee Green]
“I’m not confident we’ll succeed. The government has represented a minority of Israelis for around a year, and the war’s continued”, he said.
But, despite that, he was not ready to give up on calling for Israelis to wake up.
“Things are already bad enough”, Green added. “We’ve destroyed nearly every building in Gaza, we’ve killed 18, 000 babies, and about 53, 000 people. This is something we’re going to have to live with”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres says Gazans are enduring “the cruelest phase” of the war. He denounced Israel’s blockade, calling the 400 trucks cleared to enter Gaza so far “a teaspoon of aid” when “a flood of assistance is required”.
![Leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, takes part in a protest against the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding the release of all captives from Gaza, near the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem [Oren Ben Hakoon/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-03-20T154151Z_1276375528_RC22HDABF859_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-PROTESTS-1742488806.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
![Standing Together's Alon-Lee Green takes a selfie from the back of the police wagon following his arrest [Courtesy of Alon-Lee Green]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Standing-Togethers-Alon-Lee-Green-takes-a-selfie-from-the-back-of-the-police-wagon-following-his-arrest-1747911712.jpeg?w=696&ssl=1)
