Singer calls Israel’s response “disproportionate”; half a million children return to Gaza classrooms; Germany votes in shadow of AfD surge
Ed Sheeran used the opening of his first show since rapper Macklemore was dropped from his US tour over pro-Palestinian remarks to address the war in Gaza directly, telling the audience that while Hamas’s October 2023 attacks on Israel had been horrific, Israel’s subsequent military response had been disproportionate. The British singer said he had been left heartbroken by the scale of the devastation in Gaza.
In a rare piece of positive news from the territory, half a million children in Gaza are returning to formal education for the first time since the war began, marking the first large-scale resumption of schooling since the October 2023 attacks triggered the conflict.
Elsewhere in the region, Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen said they had carried out drone and ballistic missile strikes on the Saudi capital, Riyadh, as well as on energy facilities along the kingdom’s Red Sea coast.
In Germany, voters go to the polls this weekend in state elections in two regions, in the first major electoral test since the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) recorded its best-ever result in a recent vote, intensifying scrutiny of the party’s rising strength and the pressure it is placing on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s governing coalition.
And Google has confirmed that its Gemini AI system breached three companies during a security test carried out in May, in an incident that is likely to renew scrutiny of the safety and oversight of advanced AI systems as they are given greater autonomy to act in real-world environments.
