Will the US’s reputation as a research hub be weakened by the dual effects of repressing immigration and defunding research?
The United States is slowly losing its position as the world’s leader in terms of research and development, contends Holden Thorp, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and editor of Science journal.
According to officials, drone attacks on several Russian military bases are the start of peace talks with Ukraine, which are scheduled to begin in Istanbul on Monday.
On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that Ukraine had launched drone strikes against Russian military installations in five different regions, which set off fire on several aircraft.
The regions of Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur were the site of the attacks. According to the ministry, air defenses resisted the assaults in Murmansk and Irkutsk, but only two, respectively.
The ministry claimed that several aircraft caught fire when FPV drones launched from areas close to airfields in the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions.
No injuries were reported despite the fires being extinguished. According to the ministry, some of the attackers had been detained.
According to officials, attacks targeted Olenya airbase in south Murmansk and Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, which are located about 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) from Ukraine and about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away from Ukraine.
These drones were launched from locations close to the airbases, according to local officials and witnesses on the ground. That implies that there were a number of people inside Russia involved in an elaborate operation, which was most likely carried out by the Ukrainians, according to Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, who was based in Moscow.
According to Jabbari, this is the largest attack we’ve seen in one day at several Russian military airbases since the start of the war in February 2022, noting that Russia’s strategic air bombers have been launching attacks on Ukrainian targets over the past three years.
Meanwhile, a source from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was cited in a report from several local media outlets in Ukraine, including those obtained by state news agency Ukrinform, saying that the coordinated attacks inside Russia were “aimed at destroying enemy bombers far from the front.”
They claimed the SBU carried out the operation using smuggled drones hidden inside trucks and deep into Russia. According to the reports, at least 41 Russian heavy bombs were killed at four airbases, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had personally overseen the “Spiderweb” operation, which had been planned for more than a year and a half.
According to John Hendren, a reporter for Al Jazeera from Kyiv, the attack is “an audacious strike, one that Ukraine has been patiently and eagerly awaiting,” and it comes after Russian airstrikes into Ukraine have dramatically increased over the past few weeks.
A highway bridge in the neighboring Ukraine of Bryansk, Russia, was torpedoed while a passenger train traveling to Moscow was crossing it with 388 passengers and injured at least seven people.
No one has yet apologised. Russian authorities acknowledged calling the incident an “act of terrorism,” but they did not immediately accuse Ukraine.
Russia announced further expansion into the Sumy region of Ukraine in May, and open-source pro-Ukrainian maps revealed that it had taken 450 square kilometers (174 square miles) of Ukrainian land, its most rapid monthly advance in at least six months.
The nightly total of 472 drones launched at Ukraine by Moscow is the highest ever nightly total of the conflict, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. The Air Force reported that Russia had also launched seven missiles.
As Ukraine confirmed that it would send a delegation to Istanbul under the direction of its defense minister Rustem Umerov for talks with Russian officials on Monday, both parties sharply increased their attacks. The meeting, which was organized by US President Donald Trump, was fueled by his demand for a quick resolution of the three-year conflict.
Zelenskyy said he had defined the Ukrainian delegation’s position on the talks after previously expressing doubts about the seriousness of the Russian side’s participation in the meeting.
He claimed on social media that “a complete and unconditional ceasefire” and the return of prisoners and kidnapped children were top priorities.
Russia has stated in advance that it has come up with its own peace terms, but it has not. A Turkish suggestion for the leaders’ meeting to be held at the leaders’ level was also rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the battle for the world championship title, teammate Lando Norris and Formula One champion Oscar Piastri won the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position in a McLaren one-two.
His fifth victory of the season and McLaren’s seventh was his 2.4 seconds victory over Norris on Sunday.
Following a safety car period that triggered the main discussion point of the afternoon, when the champion was demoted from fifth to 10th place, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc came out on top on Sunday, passing Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
“It’s a nice way to get back from Monaco,” he said. A fantastic weekend, according to Piastri, who finished third last weekend in a Norris-held race from pole.
After the safety car restart, Verstappen collided with Leclerc and twice with George Russell of Mercedes, making four stops total and ending up on the slower hard tyres against rivals on softs.
The Dutch driver’s second Russell collision, which was obviously his fault, resulted in a 10-second penalty, which was added to his overall time after the race.
He and Leclerc’s altercation also sparked a post-race investigation that could lead to additional sanctions.
I attempted to turn him to the left. Fortunately, there were no consequences for the little contact, Leclerc said. Verstappen claimed that the Monegasque had struck him and should have returned the area.
Verstappen eventually let Russell pass, but he reluctantly did as his team instructed him to. Verstappen eventually let him pass.
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who has seven-time world championships, passed Lewis Hulkenberg in the final lap to finish a surprising and upbeat fifth for the future Audi team.
Hamilton finished sixth for Renault-owned Alpine, Isack Hadjar came in seventh for Racing Bulls, and Pierre Gasly came in eighth for Renault-owned Alpine.
With only one car on the grid as a result of Lance Stroll’s injury-related withdrawal from Saturday’s qualifying, home hero Fernando Alonso scored his first points of the season with Aston Martin.
Verstappen took second place in the opener, while Hamilton and Leclerc moved up to fourth and fifth place to Russell’s place.
After the two Ferraris had veered off in the opposite direction, Hamilton let Leclerc pass on lap 10 of 66.
On lap 13, Norris made no attempt to challenge the quicker McLaren or pit for new tires on the following lap to regain second place from Verstappen.
After Piastri pitted, Verstappen regained control on lap 23. Norris made his first stop on lap 21 and came out ahead of the Red Bull, but Verstappen pitted him for the second time on lap 30.
On lap 47, Verstappen made a third stop, and Norris pitted for second place in the standings.
Kimi Antonelli, a rookie driver, beached his Mercedes in the gravel, bunching up the field, and causing a number of pit stops, prompting the deployment of a safety car on lap 55.
Verstappen questioned the switch to a set of hards, but was told that was the only option open, and the McLarens came in together for new tyres and double-stacking.
The Canadian Grand Prix will take place on June 15 in Montreal as the next round of the 2025 season.
General Anil Chauhan, India’s chief of defence staff, has admitted that an unspecified number of fighter jets were shot down during its conflict with Pakistan last month.
The acknowledgement of aerial losses by the country’s highest ranking general comes weeks after the two South Asian neighbours were engaged in their heaviest fighting in decades, which involved fighter jets and cruise missiles.
Indian officials had previously refused to confirm or deny Pakistani claims of downing Indian jets. The conflict was triggered after gunmen killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam town on April 22.
India’s first official admission of a loss of fighter jets came during Chauhan’s interviews on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.
India carried out strikes on what it called “terror infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. India blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan for the April 22 attack.
An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings. India accused the TRF of being an offshoot of the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan denied involvement, condemning the Pahalgam attack and calling for a neutral investigation.
India claimed to have targeted at least six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the first day of the conflict. Pakistan initially asserted that it had downed six Indian fighter jets in retaliation. But a senior Pakistan official told Al Jazeera five Indian aircraft were lost in the aerial battle.
India did not confirm or deny the Pakistani claims. “Losses are a part of combat,” Air Marshal AK Bharti, India’s director general of air operations, said at a news conference on May 11.
The Indian embassy in China called reports of the downing of jets “disinformation”.
After that, tit-for-tat cross-border attacks across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, rattled the region, renewing fears of a nuclear war.
On May 10, United States President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had reached a ceasefire, potentially averting a “nuclear disaster”. India and Pakistan have given competing claims on casualties in the fighting, but more than 70 people were killed on both sides.
Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but administer only parts of the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.
Here is what Chauhan said in recent interviews with the Reuters news agency and Bloomberg TV:
Chauhan admitted that India suffered air losses on the first day of fighting without giving details.
In an interview with Reuters, he said: “What was important is why did these losses occur and what we’ll do after that.”
The Indian general said that after the losses, the Indian army “rectified tactics” and then went back on May 7, 8 and 10 “in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes”. He added that the Indian air force “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances” on May 10.
Islamabad acknowledged that its airbases suffered some minimal losses but denied that it lost any planes.
When a Bloomberg reporter asked Chauhan about Pakistan’s claims that six Indian jets were downed, Chauhan responded that this information was incorrect.
He went on to say: “What is important is … not the jets being downed but why they were downed.” Some media outlets inferred that his statement appeared to imply that a number of jets were lost in the aerial battle.
The general did not provide details about the number of jets downed or specifics about what these rectified tactics were.
The Pakistani military said India did not fly its fighter jets in the conflict again after suffering the air losses.
Media reports suggested that some attacks were near Pakistan’s nuclear sites but the nuclear infrastructure itself was not a target.
“Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre [3.3ft] to whatever was our selected mean point of impact,” Chauhan said in the interview with Reuters.
Chauhan had previously provided assurances that India was not considering using nuclear weapons during the conflict. The chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, has done the same for his country.
“I think there’s a lot of space before that nuclear threshold is crossed, a lot of signalling before that. I think nothing like that happened. There’s a lot of space for conventional operations which has been created, and this will be the new norm,” Chauhan said.
The Indian general added that on both sides, the most “rational people are in uniform” during conflict because they understand the consequences of “this kind of conflict”.
“I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So why should we assume that in the nuclear domain there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?”
The Indian chief of defence staff said that while Pakistan enjoys a close alliance with China, there was no sign that Beijing helped Islamabad during the conflict.
China sits on India’s northern and eastern borders and controls a barely inhabited northeastern zone in Kashmir called Aksai Chin.
“We didn’t find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,” Chauhan said.
When Chauhan was asked whether China provided Pakistan with intelligence information such as satellite imagery, the Indian general responded by saying that such information is commercially available and Pakistan could have obtained it from China or other sources.
However, Chauhan said “almost 80 percent of the equipment” in Pakistan has been procured from China in the past few years.
From 2020 to 2025, China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Chinese jets got a boost after media reports said Pakistan used Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets in the air battle. The Chinese government did not officially confirm that the J-10C jets were used to down Indian jets, but China Central Television, a state broadcaster, posted on social media on May 17 that the jets achieved actual combat results for the first time.
Chauhan said that while hostilities have ceased, India would “respond precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan”. He added that this will be a new normal for India.
“So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7.”
The president of the main opposition Indian National Congress party said Chauhan’s admission warrants a review of India’s defence preparedness.
“There are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,” Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post on Saturday.
Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added: “The Modi Govt has misled the nation. The fog of war is now clearing.”
“We salute [the Indian military’s] resolute courage and bravery,” Kharge said. “However, a comprehensive strategic review is the need of the hour.”
After blocking an Arab foreign ministers’ planned visit to the occupied West Bank, Saudi Arabia has accused Israel of “extremism and rejection of peace.”
Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, the head of Saudi Arabia, made the remarks along with counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain at a joint press conference in Amman on Sunday.
The committee’s visit to the West Bank is embodied and confirmed by Israel’s refusal to support any serious efforts to [a]peer the path of peace,” according to Prince Faisal.
His remarks came after Israel blocked the Arab delegation’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. In response to Israel’s ongoing conflict with Gaza, the ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had planned the trip.
The West Bank’s airspace and borders are controlled by Israel, which announced on Friday that it would not grant visitor permission.
An Israeli official had stated that the Palestinian Authority intended to hold a provocative meeting of foreign ministers from Arab nations in Ramallah to discuss the promotion of the establishment of a Palestinian state, adding that Israel would “not cooperate” with the visit.
Prince Faisal’s visit to the West Bank would have been the first time a senior Saudi official had visited in recent memory.
Ayman Safadi, the country’s foreign minister, cited as another illustration of how Israel was “killing any chance of a just and comprehensive” Arab-Israeli settlement.
The issue of Palestinian statehood will be the subject of a global conference that France and Saudi Arabia will co-chair in New York on June 17 through June 20.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty stated that the conference would discuss security arrangements following the ceasefire in Gaza and reconstruction plans to prevent any Israeli moves to evict Palestinians.
Hamas claims that the recent ceasefire agreement reached by American special envoy Steve Witkoff differs from the one they had previously agreed to.
Even though the organization offered “no guarantees to end the war,” according to Naim, a senior Hamas official, Basem Naim, said on Saturday that the organization “reacted positively” to Witkoff’s most recent proposal.
More than 54, 000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October 2023, and Gaza, where 2.3 million people live, have been subjected to starvation and a famine-like situation, has been the subject of its total aid blockade since March.
Israeli aid has flown into Gaza, which humanitarian organizations have described as a “drop in an ocean,” under the influence of international pressure.
What information about the ceasefire proposal is essential?
No, according to the group.
It claims to have provided a positive response but also included some crucial provisions.
A few of them exist.
Hamas has reacted to the most recent US-proposed ceasefire by demanding a way to end the conflict before starting it over from scratch, as it did in March.
Additionally, they demanded that Israeli forces completely leave the Gaza Strip and that aid and assistance be flown back to the besieged area.
A 60-day pause in hostilities was suggested by Witkoff. After that, Israel and Hamas would come to terms with extending the pause.
The issue with this is that Israel unilaterally stopped providing aid to Gaza and began bombing it the last time it occurred. Hamas has attempted to negotiate the release date of the captives, with 10 of them still alive and 18 of the dead’s bodies, to prevent a situation like this. Within a week of the 60-day pause, Wittkoff’s suggestion was to have the information released.
Hamas has called for stabbing the captives’ release throughout the pause because it fears that Israel will resume its bombing campaign upon their return.
In an effort to derail talks and prolong the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added provisions in what critics say were an attempt to derail negotiations and prolong the war, it has called for a list of negotiation topics.
Hamas also reinserted a provision from the May 25 agreement that Israel had withdrawn, according to the website Drop Site News.
Hamas would have the authority to “an independent technocratic committee” over Gaza’s administration.
Witkoff criticized Hamas’ response as “totally unacceptable” and claimed that it “only leads us backward.”
He wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity discussions that can begin immediately this week.”
“That is the only way to conclude a 60-day ceasefire agreement,” according to the statement from the statement. “We can engage in serious negotiations in good faith at the proximity talks to try to reach a permanent ceasefire.”
The United States’ proposal was proposed by Hamas, which I received. It only leads us in the wrong direction and is completely unacceptable.
We can begin our proximity talks right away this week, and Hamas should accept the framework proposal we have put forward.
That is the only…
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, previously claimed that negotiations were close to a resolution.
The terms appear to be in agreement between the US and Israel.
Israel claims that Israel’s officials approved of the US’s request for a 60-day ceasefire.
Israel “backed and supported” the new proposal, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Netanyahu criticized Hamas’ response, parroting Witkoff, and blaming the Palestinian organization for rejecting the proposal.
“Hamas’s response is unacceptable and sets the scene back,” Witkoff said. Netanyahu stated that Israel will continue to work to free up our hostages and stop Hamas.
Hamas is skeptical of previous instances in which Israel unilaterally revokes a ceasefire. When Netanyahu decided to restart the war by preventing all aid from entering Gaza in March.
The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies associate professor Tamer Qarmout described the Hamas-Israel negotiations as being conducted in “no good faith whatsoever.”
Hamas’ capitulation and surrender, as they say, and their disappearance from the scene are their main priorities, Qarmout told Al Jazeera.
“Hamas is attempting to reduce the horrors of the war, to allow some humanitarian aid to enter, and to look for a dignified exit,” said Hamas. Nobody wants to see themselves giving in this manner in Hamas.
Israel is still attacking Gaza in the interim.
Palestinians who had gathered at aid distribution centers run by a US-backed organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, were shot on Sunday by Israeli forces in southern and central Gaza. In Rafah and another area close to the Netzarim Corridor, at least 31 people died.
Meanwhile, residential areas in Gaza continue to be bombarded relentlessly.
