Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has warned that if Hezbollah is not disarmed, there will be “no calm in Beirut” and “no order or stability in Lebanon” unless Israel’s security is assured.
In a statement released on Friday, the Israeli minister said, “Agreements must be honored, and if you do not do what is required, we will continue to act, and with great force.”
On Thursday night, Israel’s military launched a string of strikes against Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting a large flurry of residents to flee their homes on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. They were then forced to comply with a forced evacuation order.
Israel claimed that its most recent attack targeted Hezbollah “drone factories” in the Lebanese capital without providing any supporting proof.
In “blatant violation” of the terms of the ceasefire, the Israeli military claimed that Hezbollah and Israel were “operating to increase production of UAVs [drones] for the next war.”
Israeli fighter jets carried out about a dozen strikes in the attack, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. A Hezbollah statement claimed that dozens of buildings had been damaged while nine buildings had already been destroyed following a preliminary assessment.
Hezbollah denied that the locations targeted by the drone production facilities were there.
Since the ceasefire ended on November 27, Israel has launched its fourth, and fourth, heaviest attack against Beirut’s southern suburbs, which Hezbollah controls.
Late in April, Israel launched its most recent attack on the Lebanese capital, claiming to destroy “infrastructure where precision missiles” were being kept by Hezbollah.
Flagrant violation of a global agreement
According to the Lebanese government under President Joseph Aoun, Arab nations, and human rights organizations, Israel has violated the ceasefire almost daily throughout Lebanon.
Aoun has urged the United States and France to halt Israel’s attacks, both of which were guaranteeers of the November ceasefire.
Aoun criticized the Israeli aggression in a statement released late on Thursday, calling the attacks a “flagrant violation of an international agreement” on the eve of a holy religious festival.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar urged “all Lebanese political forces to put their condemnations into concrete actions,” including diplomatic pressure, on Friday.
At least 190 people have been killed and nearly 500 have been injured in Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the ceasefire, according to the Lebanese government’s April statement.
Hezbollah, a political party and paramilitary group once thought to be more heavily armed than the state, has been given the Lebanese military as a result of the ceasefire agreement.
However, the army of Lebanon issued a warning about how the attacks are weakened by the ceasefire. In order to stop an air strike, Israel also objected to its request to inspect the alleged drone production sites in southern Beirut.
The Israeli military’s role is being diminished by the Israeli government’s repeated violations of the agreement and its refusal to respond to the committee, according to a statement from the military.
Furthering Israeli attacks, the army might decide to freeze cooperation with the monitoring committee when “when it comes to searching posts” and destroying Hezbollah infrastructure close to the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.
In response to Israel’s occupation of Gaza in October 2023, the Lebanese organization launched cross-border attacks against northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas. This renewed the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Tian Win Nang, from Southern Shan State, Myanmar, squats on the hard-packed earth while balancing a kilogram (2. 2 pounds) of chocolate-colored raw opium in each hand like a human weighs the scales.
“Each kilogramme is worth around $250”, said Tian Win Nang, wearing worn white flip-flops and a black T-shirt.
Tian Win Nang, the son of poppy farmers, appears to be just about to enter adulthood.
He said, “Chinese traders pay us in advance for the harvest,” while displaying three dinner-plate-sized opium mounds to Al Jazeera.
“We don’t know what happens after”, he says of the journey that will see the opium go “north to the labs” where it will be processed into morphine and eventually refined into heroin.
He continues, “We do this to survive.”
In southern Shan State, a single day of opium resin extraction [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
The sun is high and the air is still in the poppy fields blanketing the hills in this part of southern Shan State in eastern Myanmar.
As hands work quickly to score green poppy pods, both young and old, before silently moving on to another plant, their faces are shielded by scarves and straw hats.
The wound that was inflicted on the pod gradually releases milky fluid. When it has dried to the consistency of gum, the same hands will scrape off the sticky substance, gather it together and leave it to dry in the sun until it reaches the toffee-like consistency of raw opium.
Many farmers in this area of Shan State, where drug shipments have been flogging along these mountain roads for decades, practice this daily. The routes lead to China, Laos, and Thailand, respectively.
Armed conflict between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed organisations in these regions has fuelled opium farming and drug production for generations, but the trade has surged in step with the country’s intensifying civil war.
In the southern Shan State of Myanmar, in the form of [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera], a poppy field crosses the hills.
According to experts, there have long been alliances between senior Myanmar military officers, ethnic armed groups, local criminal organizations, and transnational syndicates that deal with the logistics, refining, and distribution of drugs.
“Drug trafficking in Myanmar has been facilitated by the military since the 1990s”, said Mark Farmaner, director of the London-based Advance Myanmar charity and an expert on Southeast Asia. He claimed that “many officers profit personally, and the institution as a whole reaps political benefits.”
Sam Gor, a sprawling network of rival Chinese triad gangs that are active in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and other regions, is one of the region’s most powerful syndicates.
Despite the 2021 arrest and extradition to Australia of Tse Chi Lop – a Canadian national of Chinese origin widely believed to be the leader of Sam Gor – the network remains largely intact.
The Sam Gor syndicate, which controlled between 40 and 70% of the Asia Pacific region’s wholesale methamphetamine market in 2018, is thought to have generated at least $ 8 billion in revenue in 2018, and possibly as much as $ 17.7 billion, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In southern Shan State, one of Myanmar’s main opium-producing regions, local women cultivate poppies in the shade of the midday sun.
Despite the high-profile arrest of Tse Chi Lop, the regional drug trade is flourishing with more than 1.1 billion methamphetamine pills seized across Southeast Asia in 2023 – a historic record, according to UNODC.
We oppose the use, production, and distribution of narcotics.
The “Golden Triangle,” or “lawless territory encompassing the shared borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos, is where the majority of the methamphetamine comes from laboratories hidden in the mountains of northern Shan State and other areas on Myanmar’s eastern borders, which have become the region’s epicenter of synthetic drug production.
But before the explosion in methamphetamine production, the Golden Triangle was infamous for its opium crops and the heroin it produced while under the rule of the self-styled drug lord Khun Sa – the undisputed drug kingpin of the 1980s and 1990s regional drug trade.
According to legend, Khun Sa commanded a personal army of about 15, 000 men, and that region became the world’s heroin producing hub. He died in Yangon in 2007 while being guarded by the same generals who had provided him with security for years after giving in to the military government of Myanmar in 1996.
A farmer scores a poppy pod to collect its sap]Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
After Khun Sa’s passing, Australian lecturer Kelvin Rowley wrote in response to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s estimate that the US drug enforcement agency made up 70% of the heroin produced in the US.
According to Rowley, “The US government placed a $2 million bounty on] Khun Sa’s head, which is reportedly less than what he earned in a single month.”
Opium has now made a comeback in the Golden Triangle.
Myanmar became the world’s top producer of opium in 2022 after the Taliban outlawed poppy cultivation there.
By 2024, some 995 tonnes of raw opium had been produced in Myanmar, up 135 percent from the military takeover in 2021, according to UNODC estimates. The gross value of the opium and heroin trade in Myanmar last year was estimated to be between $589m and $1.57bn, according to UNODC.
According to UN reports, Myanmar’s civil war is now in its fourth year, and the volume of drug production is related to it.
People have traditionally relied on poppy cultivation as a means of survival because Myanmar’s economy has collapsed since the military coup in 2021, and options are narrowing.
The UN notes that opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia has long been linked to poverty, lack of government services, economic challenges and insecurity.
According to the UN, “Households and villages in Myanmar that cultivate poppy and the wider opium economy do so to supplement their income or because they lack other legitimate opportunities.” <, /p >, <, p >,
But now parts of Pekon, long a military stronghold and a key drug trafficking corridor, are under the control of the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) and other Karenni armed groups fighting the ruling military.
They claim to be interested in making changes.
We oppose the use, production, and distribution of narcotics, according to Maui, the KNDF’s deputy commander.
“When we capture Burmese soldiers, they’re full of meth”, Maui said.
They immediately tell us that it is distributed by their superiors to push them to the front lines, he said, “we ask where it comes from and they tell us without a doubt.”
We’ll pursue the opium as soon as the war is over. We want it to be used only for medical purposes”, he added.
[Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera] Karenni police officers search a motorcycle at a checkpoint in Pekon, southern Shan State.
In the areas of Shan State, which they now control, Karenni police forces stop and search motorcycles and other vehicles on the roads.
“We are stopping cars and motorbikes we don’t recognise to search for drugs”, said Karenni police commander Win Ning Thun, standing at a checkpoint just outside a village in Pekon district.
Win Ning Thun, who uses the local name for methamphetamine pills, said, “We’re looking for yaba pills.”
This region was formerly under the control of the military and pro-junta militia, according to Win Ning Thun.
“Meth was moving freely under their supervision. He claimed that they reclaimed a portion of the profits from each shipment that transited.
I was supposed to earn a lot of money, I thought.
Deep in the forests surrounding Pekon, a small prison holds rows of detainees arrested by Karenni police.
“Everyone here has been detained for drug trafficking,” the statement read. Some people traveled to the Thai border with yaba pills. Others were internal couriers”, a Karenni police official told Al Jazeera.
He remarked, “These are the pills we confiscated just this past month,” pointing to a plastic bag full of small, inexpensive red yaba pills that he claimed represent a lucrative trade worth millions of dollars.
Anton Lee, one of the prisoners, had a calm, unassuming appearance and wore glasses.
“They stopped me at a checkpoint with 10, 000 pills”, Lee said.
[Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera] Young Kareni police officers posing in front of a table displaying the drugs seized during their checkpoint operations
They were traveling to the Thai border, I said. I was supposed to make a lot of money”, he said, offering no further details, only to say that the profit he hoped to earn would have fed his family for a year.
He is currently facing a lengthy prison sentence.
The military regime’s purchase of more sophisticated weapons and the rebel forces’ attempts to hold out and advance continue are just a few kilometers away from the prison.
The military’s air raids, drone strikes and artillery fire hammer schools, hospitals, homes and religious sites, turning entire villages into targets.
Yet some people in southern Shan State appear to be trying to stop the flow of drugs, even when they are under fire.
On Saturday, June 7, 2018, this is how things are going.
Fighting
Russian missile and drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and throughout the nation on Friday left at least six people dead.
In a missile and drone attack on Kyiv, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed three of the victims were emergency responders who were killed, and another 80 people were hurt nationwide.
In Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine, two people were killed, and Lutsk, in the city’s northwestern region, one more.
One of the largest numbers ever recorded in a single attack, according to the Ukrainian air force, which included 45 cruise and ballistic missiles.
In addition to striking at least three fuel reservoirs, the Ukrainian military announced overnight that it had launched a preemptive strike against the Engels and Dyagilevo airfields in Saratov and Ryazan, Russia.
Andrii Sybiha, the country’s foreign minister, claimed that Russia “reacted” to Kyiv’s audacious drone attack, which targeted Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure by attacking Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure.
In response to what it called Ukrainian “terrorist acts,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces had carried out the strikes, which targeted military and military-related targets.
Russian replacement bombers, which were hit by Ukrainian drone strikes on Siberia, will take years, according to experts from the Western military aviation community.
A man was killed trying to launch a drone attack on a military installation in the southeast of Moscow, according to the Russian National Guard.
Russian air defense units intercepted and detonated 82 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, including the Moscow region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry early on Saturday.
Six drones headed for Moscow were destroyed or downed, according to Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 174 Ukrainian drones were shot down over 13 different regions by air defenses overall. Over the Black Sea, three Ukrainian Neptune missiles were also shot down.
According to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, a locomotive train was derailed in the Belgorod region of Russia after the track was destroyed.
Regional security
After a meeting with US President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said some US lawmakers have no idea how large Russia’s military rearmament campaign is. “They clearly have no idea what is happening there right now,” he said.
Merz claimed that President Trump’s “resounding no” to a question about US plans to leave NATO had given him some comfort.
diplomacy and politics
Trump made furious remarks about the conflict in Ukraine and the park, which the Kremlin compared to a bitter dispute between young children.
Trump might have believed his own statements, according to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin. However, according to Peskov, the conflict in Ukraine was “existential.”
According to Peskov, “for us, it is an existential issue, an issue that affects our national interest, safety, our future, our children’s future, and our country,” he said to reporters.
Russia has requested mediation with Moscow and Washington regarding the use of US nuclear fuel stored at the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is under Russian control.
Russian nuclear energy chief Alexei Likhachev said that Russia was willing to either use the fuel, which was provided by US company Westinghouse, or to completely remove it and return it to the US.
Sanctions
President Trump claimed that the US Senate is considering whether to impose sanctions on Russia.
Economy
The Russian central bank made a surprise cut in the country’s key interest rate by reducing it by a full percentage point, which it justified by pointing to a stronger rouble and a declining inflation pressure. The bank, which has been under pressure from business leaders and senior government officials, began cutting rates after it eased its balance since September 2022.
In two cases involving access to government records and who should have access to them, the US Supreme Court has chosen to support President Donald Trump’s administration.
The six-member conservative majority overturned a lower court’s ruling on Friday that limited the types of data accessible by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) through the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The majority also decided that DOGE was not required to provide documents under the government transparency law known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan, the three left-leaning justices on the Supreme Court, disagreed with the majority’s decision in both cases.
Trump’s campaign focused on reimagining the federal government and reducing bureaucratic “bloat” in a key way.
DOGE was created on November 13 to “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, reduce wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” according to the release date.
At first, it was unclear whether DOGE would work with the executive branch, whether it would be a new department, a new department, or a private organization.
However, when Trump took the oath of office on January 20, he announced that DOGE, an initiative that was started by former president Barack Obama, would replace the existing US Digital Service.
Since then, the government efficiency panel has initiated extensive federal government reform, implementing widespread layoffs, and attempting to close organizations like the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Although many of the claims were refuted or questioned by journalists and experts, it also promoted savings it had made or fraud it had allegedly exposed.
In addition, DOGE’s extensive reforms of the federal government caused it to face criticism and concern, particularly as it sought greater control over sensitive data and systems.
Elon Musk, a billionaire and tech entrepreneur who had been a prominent supporter of Trump’s re-election campaign, led DOGE up until last week. However, following the end of the billionaire’s term as a “special government employee” in the White House, Musk and Trump have a public disagreement.
Due to this conflict, DOGE’s future is uncertain.
Social Security data can be accessed.
In order to combat waste, fraud, and abuse, DOGE’s controversial initiatives have included a push to access Social Security data.
The president and Musk made fabricated claims that millions of people with addresses containing people who are at least 150 years old at the start of Trump’s second term were receiving Social Security benefits. However, fact-checkers quickly refuted that assertion.
Instead, they pointed out that a code has been put in place by the Social Security Administration to stop payments for those who are deemed to be at least 115 years old.
They also pointed out that the Trump administration’s confusion may be caused by COBOL’s programming language flagging incomplete birthdates in the Social Security system with birthdates dating back 150 years. A 2024 inspector general report found that less than 1% of Social Security payments were made erroneously.
Musk called for the Social Security Administration to be eliminated, while Trump officials also criticized it.
Due to the sensitive nature of such information, US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in March blocked DOGE from having unrestricted access to Social Security data.
Social Security numbers, for instance, are crucial for establishing a person’s identity in the US, and their release could compromise privacy.
According to Lipton Hollander, DOGE “never identified or articulated even a single reason” for the DOGE Team’s need for unrestricted access to SSA’s entire record systems. She questioned why DOGE didn’t try to be “more tailored.”
She wrote in her decision that the government simply reiterated its call to modernize the system and find fraud. Its method of doing so translates to using a sledgehammer to fly.
However, the judge’s ruling did allow DOGE to view anonymized data without providing any personally identifying information.
However, the Trump administration filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, alleging that Judge Lipton Hollander had overstepped her bounds by preventing DOGE’s access.
In an unsigned decision, the Supreme Court upheld Lipton Hollander’s temporary data restrictions on Friday.
However, Justice Brown Jackson wrote a sour dissent in the Supreme Court, claiming that the court was willing to uphold rules to support a president who was not willing to let legal disputes arise in lower courts.
This Court “puts on its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than to extinguish them,” Brown Jackson wrote.
She claimed that if DOGE were temporarily barred from accessing Social Security data, the Trump administration had not established that any “irreparable harm” would result.
However, she claimed that the court was “jettisoning careful judicial decision-making and seriously risking the privacy of millions of Americans” by granting the Trump administration’s emergency petition.
Do transparency laws apply to DOGE?
According to federal transparency laws, the second Supreme Court decision from Friday involved DOGE itself.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government watchdog organization, filed the lawsuit as part of it.
It argued that DOGE’s broad powers suggested that it should be subject to FOIA-style laws, just like any other executive agency. CREW claimed, however, that DOGE’s structures had been shielded from outside inquiries by the ambiguity surrounding them.
The lack of clarity regarding DOGE’s authority, according to CREW, raises an open question in a statement despite the information that is readily available to the public.
The organization wanted DOGE to be required to provide details about how it operates.
The Supreme Court halted the lower court’s decision on Friday (PDF), after a US district judge had sided with CREW’s request for records in April (PDF). The court of appeals received the case’s request for a narrowing of the April order.
The conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruled that “any inquiry into whether an entity is an agency for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act cannot turn on the entity’s capacity to persuade.”
Novak Djokovic, the reigning champion, defeated Jannik Sinner 6-4, 7-5, 7-6 (3) to advance to the French Open final against defending champion Carlos Alcaraz.
On Friday night on Court Philippe-Chatrier, Djokovic, the men’s record 24-time Grand Slam champion, was unable to counter Sinner’s unwavering accuracy and pounding forehands.
After Adriano Panatta, the 1976 champion, Adriano Panatta, Sinner was the only other Italian man to reach the Roland-Garros final.
When the eighth-seeded Italian retired with a leg injury, Alcaraz had previously led 4-6, 7-6 (3), 6-0, 2-0.
Sinner wants to win his fifth major title, Alcaraz, while Sinner wants his fourth.
Djokovic fought back in the third set before fading in the tiebreaker, skipping a quick shot from the net to tie the game, and then lost the match point when his forehand hit the net.
Sinner remarked, “These are exceptional and special moments.” “I’m very happy”.
After winning the US Open and the Australian Open, he extended his winning streak to 20 matches.
Djokovic was competing for a 38th Grand Slam title, his eighth in Paris, where he had already won three titles. However, he spent the majority of the semifinal camping out behind the baseline, sliding over at full stretch and yelling loudly as Sinner hurriedly left and right like a windshield wiper.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia speaks with Umpire Damien Dumusois in the semi-final match between Jannik Sinner of Italy [Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters]
In the ninth game of the third set, Sinner executed a cross-court two-handed backhand winner with such flawless timing that even Djokovic applauded it.
Sinner hardly had any chances for him to break Sinner’s serve, but there did seem to be a moment of hope in the tenth game when Djokovic had four chances.
Nole! screams the crowd for a while before they broke out. Nole”! at 15-40 as Djokovic forced two break points.
Sinner saved both. The tensions were rising.
When a few rowdy fans yelled out as Sinner prepared to serve, telling the offenders to “Chut”!, the crowd started self-policing. (French for shush)
On his third break-point chance, Djokovic’s forehand deflected wide, making it a deuce. Damien Dumusois, the chair umpire, came down to check the mark. It was on the line, Djokovic said, and he turned around and walked over.
A man has been returned to the United States after being mistakenly deported by the Donald Trump administration, where authorities claim he will face criminal charges.
According to recently released court records, Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, who had lived for nearly half of his life in Maryland before being deported in March, is accused of transporting undocumented immigrants to the US.
Abrego Garcia was reinstated to the US on Friday, according to US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Despite a court order forbidding his removal, the indictment against him was filed on May 21 despite a court filing on May 21.
According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security, the Tennessee Highway Patrol conducted a 2022 traffic stop that suspected Abrego Garcia of human trafficking before ultimately issuing just a warning for an expired driver’s license.
A grand jury “found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said at a press conference.
After American officials presented his government with an arrest warrant, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to have him return to the US.
In addition to the Trump plan to deport undocumented immigrants to the country’s Central American nation, Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in the country without the proper process, according to the president’s plan.
Bukele stated in a social media post that his administration cooperates with the Trump administration and would “of course” not decline requests to return a “gang member” to the US.
On Friday, June 6, at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, US Attorney General Pam Bondi addresses a press conference regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Deportation is a “distinct legal issue.”
According to Rosiland Jordan of Al Jazeera, Abrego Garcia could receive a fine of up to $2,500 and up to 10 years in federal prison if found guilty.
But “that does not address the ongoing issue of whether or not he should be deported,” she continued. That is a distinct legal issue.
Abrego Garcia will be able to contest the charges in court and in court. According to Bondi, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence.
Andrew Rossman, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said it would now be up to the US government to ensure that he received fair treatment.
The administration simply refused to allow him to return, according to Rossman, a partner at the law firm Quinn Emanuel. “Today’s action proves what we’ve known for a long time,” Rossman said.
According to court documents, Abrego Garcia’s deportation defied an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from returning to El Salvador, where it was determined that he was likely to face gang persecution if he was.
Trump’s critics cited the false deportation as an example of the Republican president’s aggressive strategy of upholding deportations.
According to officials, Abrego Garcia was allegedly a member of the MS-13 gang. His attorneys have disputed his involvement in a gang and claimed that he has not been found guilty of any crime.
The executive branch and the judiciary, which have ruled against a number of Trump’s policies, have escalated in Abrego Garcia’s case.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the Trump administration had no basis for what she called Abrego Garcia’s “warrantless arrest,” and that the US Supreme Court had issued an order to facilitate his return.
