Britain suspended trade negotiations with Israel. It announced the move Tuesday while leveling sanctions targeting West Bank settlers. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the government couldn’t continue discussions on an agreement with a government pursuing what he called egregious policies in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The actions came a day after the United Kingdom, France, and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s handling of the war. – The Associated Press
Related Monitor story: As Israel blocks aid, Gaza’s mothers are watching their children starve.

The European Union slapped new sanctions on Moscow. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the EU expects an unconditional and immediate ceasefire from Russia. Diplomatic efforts have produced little progress in halting the fighting. In a Monday phone call, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised U.S. President Donald Trump that Russia is “ready to work with” Ukraine on a memorandum outlining “a possible future peace treaty.” – AP

China replaced the U.S. as top donor to the World Health Organization. Beijing announced Tuesday at the World Health Assembly that it will give an additional $500 million to the WHO over five years. The United States withdrew from the WHO on the first day of President Donald Trump’s current term, leaving the organization with a massive budget shortfall. – Reuters

Spain ordered Airbnb to block over 65,000 home listings. Facing an affordable housing crisis, the Spanish government had imposed restrictions on landlords wanting to list homes on Airbnb to free up units for renters. These had gone largely unenforced, but now officials are cracking down, as protests against mass tourism have intensified across the country. Airbnb says the problem of affordability is not holiday rentals but a shortage of housing. In Amsterdam, regulations on short-term rentals haven’t slowed the flow of tourists. – Staff

Vietnam approved a $1.5 billion Trump Organization development plan. U.S. President Trump’s family business and its Vietnamese partner seek to build golf courses, hotels, residences, and parks in a project spanning 2,446 acres in northern Vietnam’s Khoai Chau district. Vietnam is heading into negotiations with the U.S. over the Trump administration’s 46% tariffs on its exports. The president’s son Eric Trump is expected to visit Ho Chi Minh City this week. – AP, Reuters

Federal disaster assistance for Mississippi is two months behind. A request is still pending more than two months after 18 damaging tornadoes. The emergency management director in one of the state’s hardest-hit counties says debris removal operations have ground to a halt and people who lost their homes aren’t getting the help they need. – AP
Related Monitor story: In February, we reported on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role and performance in North Carolina’s flood recovery.

In its newly intensified Gaza operation, is Israel aiming for territorial conquest or to apply political pressure on Hamas? The Gaza offensive appears at odds with U.S. wishes, and may have contributed to Vice President JD Vance’s decision to cancel a visit to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has ordered resumption of food aid to Gaza under U.S. pressure, angering his hardest-right coalition partners.

Three men represent the spectrum of Trump-world economic actors, from mainstream allies (Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent) to fiercely devoted friends (Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) to MAGA stalwarts (special trade adviser Peter Navarro). While they may disagree on details, they share an unquestioned loyalty to President Donald Trump – even when it means defending policies that have been criticized by economists on both right and left. First among equals is Mr. Bessent, who commands the most respect among legislators and in the private sector. 

Five years ago, the murder of George Floyd by police sparked a protest movement across the United States. We spoke with Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who represented Mr. Floyd’s family, about trying to hold police accountable today. Mr. Crump sees a pattern of two steps forward, one step back in the battle for racial justice. “Right now,” he tells the Monitor, “we are taking a step back from the progress we made in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.”

Oftentimes new technology is pitted against tradition. But in the Indigenous Guarani Kaiowá territory in Brazil, ancient – and modern – practices are recorded and preserved for use in a new virtual reality museum project. For decades, researchers would visit Indigenous villages and gather audiovisual records that locals never saw again. Now, the Indigenous people make the recordings themselves. Even the elders have lost their initial mistrust of cellphones, says Luan Iturve, a young Indigenous audiovisual producer and actor involved in the project.

The interests of industry and endangered species often are at odds. But the North Atlantic right whale is drawing notable cooperation from several parties as it tries to survive. Now, everyone from fishers and marine ecologists to maritime corporations and coastal residents – even on tiny Nantucket island – is leaning into technology to help stem the decline. The cooperation and technology are causing hope for the right whales’ survival to slowly, and cautiously, grow.

In Sudan, an East African nation where a civil war has entered its third year, volunteers are heeding a traditional concept rooted in Islam – nafeer – to bring succor and practical support to those displaced by fighting. They are operating communal kitchens and emergency shelters, providing safe spaces for children to learn and play, and arranging evacuations from areas under bombardment.

At some point, their example might even help inform negotiations to end a war that has caused an estimated 150,000 deaths and displaced some 12 million Sudanese. 

These citizen-supported “emergency response rooms,” as they are called, are not new. For centuries, through collective action in local communities, Sudanese have helped one another build homes, bring in a harvest, and cope with natural disasters. The first mass-organized nafeer campaign was formed in 2013 in response to severe flooding. Currently, more than 700 response rooms function in areas controlled by the two warring factions in the war.

“Without [the emergency response rooms], I could not even imagine what our lives in this conflict would look like,” one meal recipient told The New Humanitarian news agency. The term nafeer, which in Arabic means a “call to mobilize,” comes from an Islamic term associated with a spiritual struggle to align oneself with Allah’s will. 

As elsewhere in the world during times of crisis ordinary Sudanese are displaying extraordinary courage and resourcefulness to both aid and unite civilians in humanitarian efforts, setting a vision for postwar society. In recognition of this, a mid-April conference in London brought pledges of $750 million in aid from the United Kingdom and European Union. But it failed to engender a consensus on how to end the war.

Even as the international community continues deliberations to end the war, Sudan’s nonpartisan mutual-aid networks offer pointers for a different future. According to the Baker Institute for Public Policy, these structures challenge the common assumption that civilians, especially in aid-dependent contexts, “lack agency during times of conflict.” Even more profound is the emergency response rooms’ embrace of inclusivity and possession of what one analyst identifies as “moral clarity and the trust of the people they are serving.” 

Will Sudan’s current and future leaders heed this example?