Hundreds of masked rioters have attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Northern Ireland’s Ballymena in the second night of disorder described as “racially motivated” by police following a protest over an alleged sexual assault in the town.
Police said they were dealing with “serious disorder” on Tuesday night in the town, located about 45km (30 miles) from the capital Belfast, and urged people to avoid the area.
Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vehicles responded with water cannon and firing plastic baton rounds after being attacked with Molotov cocktails, steel scaffolding poles and rocks that rioters gathered by knocking down nearby walls, the Reuters news agency reports.
One house was burned out and rioters attempted to set a second home alight, according to reports, while several cars were set on fire.
The Belfast Telegraph newspaper said that some residents in Ballymena have started to mark their front doors to indicate their nationality to avoid attack, while Irish media outlets report that a call has gone out for protests to be held in other towns and cities in Northern Ireland, currently part of the United Kingdom.
Police vehicles are parked as flames rise during a second night of riots, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, on June 10, 2025 [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]
During earlier violence on Monday, four houses were damaged by fire and windows and doors were smashed in other homes and businesses, in what police said they are investigating as racially-motivated hate attacks.
“The terrible scenes of civil disorder we have witnessed in Ballymena again this evening have no place in Northern Ireland,” the UK’s Northern Ireland minister, Hilary Been, said in a post on social media.
“There is absolutely no justification for attacks on PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] officers or for vandalism directed at people’s homes or property,” he said.
Unrest first erupted on Monday night after a vigil in a neighbourhood of Ballymena where an alleged sexual assault occurred on Saturday. The trouble began when people in masks “broke away from the vigil and began to build barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties”, police said.
Two teenage boys, charged by police with the attempted rape of a teenage girl, had appeared in court earlier in the day, where they had asked for a Romanian interpreter, local media reports said.
Tensions in the town, which has a large migrant population, remained high throughout Tuesday, with residents describing the scenes as “terrifying” and telling reporters that those involved were targeting “foreigners”.
“This violence was clearly racially motivated and targeted at our minority ethnic community and police,” Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was investigating “hate attacks” on homes and businesses and that 15 officers were injured in the rioting on Monday, including some who required hospital treatment.
Cornelia Albu, 52, a Romanian migrant and mother-of-two who lives opposite a house targeted in the attacks, said her family has been “very scared”.
“Last night, it was crazy, because too many people came here and tried to put the house on fire,” Albu, who works in a factory, told the AFP news agency.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has announced a curfew for part of the United States’s second-largest city amid protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The curfew applies to 1 square mile (2.6sq km) of the downtown area, and will be in effect from 8pm on Tuesday to 6am on Wednesday (03:00 GMT to 13:00 GMT Wednesday), Bass said.
“Many businesses have now been affected or vandalised. Last night, there were 23 businesses that were looted, and I think if you drive through downtown LA, the graffiti is everywhere and has caused significant damages to businesses and a number of properties,” Bass told a news conference.
“So my message to you is: If you do not live or work in downtown LA, avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew and you will be prosecuted.”
Bass said she expected the curfew to remain in effect for several days, but stressed that the order only applied to a small portion of the city, which covers 502 square miles (1,300sq km).
“I think it is important to point this out, not to minimise the vandalism and violence that has taken place there – it has been significant – because it is extremely important to know that what is happening in this 1 square mile is not affecting the city,” Bass said.
“Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance that this is a city-wide crisis, and it is not.”
Bass’s order came as protests against the Trump administration’s raids on suspected undocumented migrants entered a fifth night in Los Angeles, and as demonstrations spread to dozens of other US cities, including New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
Trump’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard and Marines against protesters have drawn condemnation from California officials, who have accused the president of abusing his authority and fanning tensions.
In an address to Californians on Tuesday night, California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted Trump’s use of military force as a “brazen abuse of power”.
“That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder, and the president – he did it on purpose,” Newsom said.
Newsom, who has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s deployment of troops against his wishes, said the president had unleashed a “military dragnet” targeting “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” rather than violent criminals.
“That’s just weakness – weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities, they’re traumatising communities, and that seems to be the entire point,” Newsom said. “California will keep fighting.”
“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe,” he added.
“Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”
Reporting from a vigil against the raids in Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said that protesters are rejecting the Trump administration’s characterisation of the raids as being aimed at violent criminals.
“Many of the people we have spoken to here say that they are wrong – that they are working people who have come to this country to find a better life,” Bo said.
“That’s why most of the people who are here are extremely angry, and they are demanding an end to the raids.”
Bo said the activists she spoke to also stressed the need to keep the demonstrations peaceful.
“This is something that we’ve been hearing over and over,” she said.
“They say that the main reason they need to be peaceful is because violence gives Donald Trump an excuse to use the military, to the use National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his decision to mobilise troops against protesters amid growing condemnation.
“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California,” Trump told US Army soldiers during a visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
“As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen. It’s never going to happen.”
Bangkok, Thailand – A brief text message informed Chonlada Siangkong that she had lost her job at a solar cell factory in Rayong, eastern Thailand.
The factory operated by Standard Energy Co, a subsidiary of Singaporean solar cell giant GSTAR, shut its doors last month in anticipation of United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs on solar panel exports from Southeast Asia.
From Monday, US Customs and Border Protection will begin imposing tariffs ranging from 375 percent to more than 3,500 percent on imports from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia.
The punishing duties, introduced in response to alleged unfair trade practices by Chinese-owned factories in the region, have raised questions about the continuing viability of Southeast Asia’s solar export trade, the source of about 80 percent of solar products sold in the US.
Like thousands of other workers in Thailand and across the region, Chonlada, a 33-year-old mother of one, is suddenly facing a more precarious future amid the trade crackdown.
“We were all shocked. The next day, they told us not to come to work and would not pay for compensation,” Chonlada told Al Jazeera.
US officials say Chinese producers have used Southeast Asian countries to skirt tariffs on China and “dump” cheap solar panels in the US market, harming their businesses.
US trade officials have named Jinko Solar, Trina Solar, Taihua New Energy Hounen, Sunshine Electrical Energy, Runergy and Boviet – all of which have major operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia or Vietnam – as the worst offenders.
Solar panels are pictured on the roof of a building in Bangkok, Thailand, on August 9, 2017 [Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
Thai solar exports to the US were worth more than $3.7bn in 2023, just behind Vietnam at $3.9bn, according to the latest US trade data.
Standard Energy Co’s $300m facility in Rayong had been in operation for less than a year, producing its first solar cell to great fanfare in August.
“I’m baffled by what’s just happened,” Kanyawee, a production line manager at Standard Energy who asked to be referred to by his first name only, told Al Jazeera.
“New machines have just landed and we barely used them, they’re very costly too – a few million baht for each machine. They’ve also ordered tonnes of raw materials waiting to be produced.”
Ben McCarron, managing director of the risk consultancy Asia Research & Engagement, said Southeast Asian manufacturers are facing a serious hit from the US turn towards protectionism.
“There are suggestions that manufacturing might exit Southeast Asia entirely if tariffs are introduced either in a blanket way, or that specifically address Chinese-owned manufacturing capacity in the region,” McCarron told Al Jazeera.
“The implications are significant for these countries; Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia accounted for about 80 percent of the US’s solar imports in 2024,” McCarron said, adding that “some manufacturers have already begun shutting down and moving out of the region”.
Unfair advantage
US officials and businesses have accused China of giving its solar firms an unfair market advantage with subsidies.
China was the largest funder of clean energy in Southeast Asia between 2013 and 2023, pouring $2.7bn into projects in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to Zero Carbon Analytics.
The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, a coalition of seven industry players, was among the loudest voices to lobby for a sharp rise in levies on Chinese imports.
Without a reprieve from the notoriously unpredictable Trump, companies affected by the tariffs have little recourse apart from the ability to file an appeal once a year, or after five years, once a “sunset review” clause takes effect.
Some observers believe the sector may never recover.
“It’s not just the low-skilled labour that was affected by the trade war; many workers in the solar cell supply chain are technicians, skilled labourers,” Tara Buakamsri, an adviser to environmental organisation Greenpeace, told Al Jazeera.
“Even if you make a lot of savings, solar cell exporters would still need to cut down on these skilled workers.”
Others take a more bullish view, arguing that, once the dust has settled, Chinese solar firms will drive the supply of products needed to meet regional emissions targets.
While Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam welcomed Chinese solar companies in part due to the large sums of up-front investment on offer, they are all also seeking to meet more of their energy needs with cleaner sources.
Before Trump entered office with his tariff agenda, Thailand had announced plans to become carbon neutral by 2050 and produce net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2065.
Employees of a solar farm company take notes in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, on October 3, 2013 [Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
“A slowdown [or halt] in solar exports as a result of US tariffs may supercharge efforts in Southeast Asian markets by Chinese solar companies, which see the region as a critical and well-aligned destination for green technologies,” McCarron said.
“Leftover supply from slowing exports could be absorbed by domestic markets in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, particularly if governments use the situation as a cost-effective opportunity to rapidly accelerate policy initiatives that stimulate domestic solar.”
For Southeast Asia’s solar companies, survival is also likely to depend on governments cutting red tape and loosening the control of oil and gas monopolies over the energy mix.
At the same time, the US’s exclusion of Southeast Asian solar imports could hamper the shift towards greener energy in the world’s top economy.
“Thailand’s solar cell production is heavily export-driven and the US has historically been a major export destination,” Pavida Pananond, a professor of international business at Thammasat Business School in Bangkok, told Al Jazeera.
Russia launched a large-scale drone-and-missile assault on Ukraine, killing one person in Kyiv and two in the southern port city of Odesa. At least 13 people were injured.
A Ukrainian drone attack on a petrol station in the Russian city of Belgorod killed one person and injured four others, the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s attack on Kyiv was “one of the biggest” in the three-year-old war. It caused several fires and damaged buildings, including St Sophia Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage landmark.
In northeastern Ukraine, the governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Syniehubov, said the region’s defence council decided to order the mandatory evacuation of seven villages.
The Ukrainian military said that Russia launched 315 drones and seven missiles at Ukrainian cities in total. Ukrainian air defenders shot down 213 drones, two ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles, the military said.
Ukrainian forces also engaged in 167 firefights with Russian troops across multiple fronts on Tuesday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said that air defence units shot down 109 Ukrainian drones from Monday night into Tuesday.
Prisoner exchange
The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed a “second group of Russian servicemen was returned from the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime” after a prisoner exchange took place on Monday. They will now undergo “treatment and rehabilitation”, the ministry said.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine also received prisoners in the “first stage of the return of our injured and severely wounded warriors from Russian captivity”.
“The exchanges are to continue,” Zelenskyy added. Both sides are expected to release more than 1,000 prisoners each, under an agreement struck at talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, last week.
Ukrainian families of missing soldiers said they are anxiously awaiting information as the exchanges continue.
Politics and diplomacy
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz denounced Russian “terror against the civilian population” of Ukraine after Moscow’s heavy drone and missile strikes.
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that the US will reduce military aid to Ukraine in the upcoming defence budget.
“This administration takes a very different view of that conflict. We believe that a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation’s interests, especially with all the competing interests around the globe,” Hegseth said.
The European Commission proposed an 18th package of sanctions against Russia, targeting its oil revenues, banks and weapons industry.
Russian authorities have arrested opposition politician Lev Shlosberg, and charged him with discrediting the Russian army after he called the war on Ukraine a game of “bloody chess”.
Finnish Minister of Defence Antti Hakkanen alleged that a Russian military aircraft violated Finland’s airspace, prompting an investigation by the Finnish Border Guard.
The Sudanese army has accused the forces of eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar of attacking Sudanese border posts, the first time it has accused its northwestern neighbour of direct involvement in the country’s civil war, now in its third year.
The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whom the military also accused of joint involvement in the recent attack, has drawn in multiple countries, while international attempts at bringing about peace have so far failed.
Early in the war, Sudan had accused Haftar of supporting the RSF via weapons deliveries. It has long accused Haftar’s ally the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF as well, including via direct drone strikes last month. The UAE denies those allegations.
Egypt, which has also backed Haftar, has long supported the Sudanese army.
In a statement, Sudanese army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said the attack took place in the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border triangle, an area to the north of one of the war’s main front lines, el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
He said the attack constitutes “a blatant aggression against Sudan”.
“We will defend our country and our national sovereignty, and will prevail, regardless of the extent of the conspiracy and aggression supported by the United Arab Emirates and its militias in the region,” Abdallah added.
Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the UAE of backing the assault, describing it as a “dangerous escalation” and a “flagrant violation of international law”.
“Sudan’s border with Libya has long served as a major corridor for weapons and mercenaries supporting the terrorist militia, funded by the UAE and coordinated by Haftar’s forces and affiliated terrorist groups,” it said in a statement.
There was no immediate response from Haftar’s forces.
Thousands of activists from across the globe are marching to the Gaza Strip to try to break Israel’s suffocating siege and draw international attention to the genocide it is perpetrating there.
Approximately 1,000 people participating in the Tunisian-led stretch of the Global March to Gaza, known as the Sumud Convoy, arrived in Libya on Tuesday morning, a day after they departed the Tunisian capital, Tunis. They are now resting in Libya after a full day of travel, but do not yet have permission to cross the eastern part of the North African country.
The group, which mostly comprises citizens of the Maghreb, the Northwest African region, is expected to grow as people join from countries it passes through as it makes its way towards the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.
(Al Jazeera)
How will they do it? When will they get there? What is this all about?
Here’s all you need to know:
Who’s involved?
The Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine is leading the Sumud Convoy, which is tied to the Global March for Palestine.
In total, there are about 1,000 people, travelling on a nine-bus convoy, with the aim of pressurising world leaders to take action on Gaza.
Sumud is supported by the Tunisian General Labour Union, the National Bar Association, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.
It is coordinating with activists and individuals from 50 countries who are flying into the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on June 12, so that they can all march to Rafah together.
Some of those activists are affiliated with an umbrella of grassroots organisations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Codepink Women for Peace in the United States and Jewish Voice for Labour in the United Kingdom.
How will they reach the Rafah crossing?
The convoy of cars and buses has reached Libya. After taking a brief rest, the plan is for it to continue towards Cairo.
“Most people around me are feeling courage and anger [about what’s happening in Gaza],” said Ghaya Ben Mbarek, an independent Tunisian journalist who joined the march just before the convoy crossed into Libya.
Ben Mbarek is driven by the belief that, as a journalist, she has to “stand on the right side of history by stopping a genocide and stopping people from dying from hunger”.
Once Sumud links up with fellow activists in Cairo, they will head to El Arish in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and then embark on a three-day march to the Rafah crossing to Gaza.
Tunisians wave the Palestinian flag as they gather in Tunis early on June 9, 2025, before the departure of the Global March to Gaza to break the siege on the Strip [AFP]
Will the activists face obstacles?
The convoy has yet to receive permission to pass through eastern Libya from authorities in the region. Libya has two rival administrations, and while the convoy has been welcomed in the west, discussions are still ongoing with authorities in the east, an official from the convoy told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
The activists had previously told The Associated Press news agency they do not expect to be allowed into Gaza, yet they hope their journey will pressure world leaders to force Israel to end its genocidal war.
Another concern lies in Egypt, which classifies the stretch between El Arish and the Rafah border crossing as a military zone and does not allow anyone to enter unless they live there.
The Egyptian government has not issued a statement on whether it will allow the Global March to Gaza to pass through its territory.
“I doubt they would be allowed to march towards Rafah,” a longtime Egyptian activist, whose name is being withheld for their safety, said.
“It’s always national security first,” they told Al Jazeera.
If the convoy makes it to Rafah, it will have to face the Israeli army at the crossing.
Why did the activists choose this approach?
Palestine supporters have tried everything over the years as Gaza suffered.
Since Israel’s genocidal war began 20 months ago, civilians have protested in major capitals and taken legal action against elected officials for abetting Israel’s mass killing campaign in Gaza.
Activists have sailed on several humanitarian aid boats towards Gaza, trying to break a stifling blockade that Israel has imposed since 2007; all were attacked or intercepted by Israel.
In 2010, in international waters, Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, one of the six boats in the Freedom Flotilla sailing for Gaza. They killed nine people, and one more person died of their wounds later.
The Freedom Flotilla kept trying as Gaza suffered one Israeli assault after another.
Israel’s current war on Gaza prompted 12 activists from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to set sail on board the Madleen from Italy on June 1, hoping to pressure world governments to stop Israel’s genocide.
However, the activists were abducted by Israeli forces in international waters on June 9.
From left: Suayb Ordu, Baptiste Andre, Greta Thunberg, Thiago Avila, Marco Rennes, and Yasemine Acar, six of the Madleen activists, before departure from Catania, Italy, on June 1, 2025 [Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images]
Will the Global March to Gaza succeed?
The activists will try, even if they are pretty sure they will not get into Gaza.
They say standing idle will only enable Israel to continue its genocide until the people of Gaza are all dead or ethnically cleansed.
“The message people here want to send to the world is that even if you stop us by sea, or air, then we will come, by the thousands, by land,” said Ben Mbarek.
“We will literally cross deserts … to stop people from dying from hunger,” she told Al Jazeera.
How bad are things in Gaza?
Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has strangled the food and supplies entering the Palestinian enclave, engineering a famine that has likely killed thousands and could kill hundreds of thousands more.
Israel has carpet-bombed Gaza, killing at least 54,927 people and injuring more than 126,000.
Legal scholars previously told Al Jazeera the suffering in Gaza suggests Israel is deliberately inflicting conditions to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part – the precise definition of genocide.
Global outrage has grown as Israel continues to kill civilians in thousands, including children, aid workers, medics and journalists.
