Food aid began arriving in Gaza, with some turmoil. Palestinians overwhelmed a new center distributing food on Tuesday, breaking through fences. People fled in panic amid gunfire. The health ministry said 47 people were wounded. One person was killed. The Israeli military later said the situation was under control.

The distribution hub outside Rafah was opened the day before by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the U.S.-backed organization slated by Israel to take over aid operations despite opposition from the U.N. and other humanitarian organizations. – The Associated Press
Related Monitor story: Earlier this month, our Gaza reporter looked at the mounting need for relief.

The U.S. stopped scheduling visa interviews for foreign students. The suspension is intended to be temporary and does not apply to foreign applicants who had already scheduled interviews. Meanwhile, the department is preparing to expand the screening of applicants on social media. The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students. – AP

National Public Radio sued President Donald Trump. NPR and three of its local stations filed a lawsuit Tuesday against him, arguing that an executive order aimed at cutting federal funding for the organization is illegal. The lawsuit argues that Mr. Trump’s executive order, which also targets PBS, violates the First Amendment. Mr. Trump issued the order after alleging there is “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting. – AP
Related Monitor story: Earlier this year, we looked at the widening gulf between the president and the press, and at the stakes.

Officials charged abuse of Ukrainian POWs at Russia’s hands. Abuse inside Russian prisons was likely a contributing factor in many of the more than 200 Ukrainian POW deaths in Russian prisons since Moscow’s full-scale invasion three years ago, according to officials from human rights groups, the U.N., and the Ukrainian government. They say evidence points to an effort to cover up torture, starvation, and inadequate care. Russia previously accused Ukraine of mistreating Russian prisoners of war – allegations the U.N. has partially backed up. – AP

The Trump administration plans to cut $100 million in federal contracts for Harvard. The move intensifies the president’s clash with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. The government already has canceled more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants for the Ivy League school, which has pushed back on the administration’s demands for changes to several of its policies. – AP

More than 3.6 million cases are pending in immigration court, and the Trump administration is seeking to fast-track deportations. One tactic: Lawyers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement terminate people’s cases in immigration court. Then ICE officers arrest them there. ICE has defended courthouse arrests as a way to reduce safety risks to the public, its personnel, and immigrants. But immigrant advocates decry what they see as barriers to due process. And lawyers say they’re hearing that immigrants’ fears of arrest at court may keep them from showing up. 

The Philippines Constitution recognizes “the Filipino family as the foundation of the nation,” and the family unit is central to Filipino culture. But amid economic and political instability at home and abroad, a growing number of young women in the Philippines are breaking social taboos and making the decision to not have children. The average number of children Filipino women will have over their lifetime has declined from 2.7 in 2017 to 1.9 in 2022 – the “sharpest ever recorded,” according to the Philippine Commission on Population and Development.

Nearly 43 million Americans hold $1.7 trillion in federal student debt. More than 5 million borrowers have skipped monthly payments for at least a year. Now, after five years of policy changes that included a payment pause during the pandemic, millions of delinquent borrowers are being directed to pay up. The government is threatening to deduct money from wages or seize tax refunds, starting this summer. As delinquent loan collection resumes amid staff cuts and confusing options, some are losing trust in the system.

In our Points of Progress this week, Thailand bans the corporal punishment of children. Stockholm’s first “tree officer” talks about a design pioneered in Sweden that makes trees happier in urban environments. In the United States, renewable energy use outpaced fossil fuels for the first time. And in Zambia, building homes with local materials – such as earth blocks instead of imported aluminum and steel roofing – benefits the local economy and reduces environmental impacts.

Sectarian tensions run high in Plateau state, Nigeria. Disputes over land or politics can erupt into violence. The peace-building group Yiavha has been working since 2014 to change that narrative. Its mission: to enable the personal transformations of the aggrieved. In 2022, for example, a Yiavha youth leader invited a man whose grandfather had been killed by a mob to recount his story to a room full of people from ethnic groups that he distrusted. Gradually, a sense of healing replaced the man’s desire for vengeance. Yiavha has held scores of such storytelling sessions since its 2014 founding. It relentlessly targets distrust.

He’s been banned from making movies. Banned from giving interviews. Banned from traveling.

But, impelled by a commitment to independent thought and expression, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi can’t help but defy such restraints by his autocratic government. He did this in the limelight last Friday, accepting in person the top honor at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Mr. Panahi’s winning movie, “Un Simple Accident,” appears to be both humane and highly political. Its message and manner of production spotlight opposing facets of Iranian society: civilians’ unabated aspirations for freedom, for a system that embodies both justice and mercy; and the inhumane and repressive practices of a theocratic regime.

“I have become a filmmaker in spite of restrictions,” Mr. Panahi told The Guardian. He has been jailed twice, and the film draws on his prison experience. “The fear of being arrested is constant,” he admitted.

Yet he has not let this fear rule him, continuing to make movies in ingenious ways. He shot one at home with the curtains drawn, used his car as a mobile studio for another, and smuggled a third out of the country on a USB stick.

His cast, most of them amateurs, also displayed such determination. The winning film was shot in public locations without required permits. Female actors performed without the required head covering – the very act that led to the death of young Mahsa Amini and sparked mass protests in 2022.

So far, the government’s response to the Cannes award has been tempered. Perhaps it is wary of drawing further negative attention at this time. Its economy strained by oil embargoes and proxy wars, Iran is negotiating with the United States about its nuclear program and the potential easing of international sanctions. Some analysts say the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is edging out the firebrands from his government.

Mr. Panahi returned to Tehran without incident Monday. A group of fans greeted him at the airport and conversed briefly. In such exchanges, such “small things,” freedom is found, wrote Iranian-born British citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was imprisoned in Iran for six years. “Freedom is not an island; it is in connections and conversations, in everyday human things.”