President Donald Trump’s tariff pause gives Temu and Shein a temporary window of opportunity to restock U.S.-based warehouses and re-evaluate their supply chain management, experts and insiders say. On Monday, the U.S. and China agreed to lower tariffs on most Chinese imports to 30% for 90 days. The agreement included a relaxation of the so-called “de minimis” rule, effective Wednesday, which will see low-value packages shipped to the U.S. from China now be taxed at a tariff rate of 54%, down from 120% previously. Previous tariff rates had driven price increases for U.S. consumers on Shein’s platforms. Meanwhile, Temu halted direct shipments from China altogether, leading to some disruptions in fulfilling its U.S. orders. But the recent tariff cut has given them a chance to ramp up shipments from China and restock their warehouses and fulfill existing orders, supply chain experts say. “In the short term, [Temu and Shein] are definitely going to increase their shipment volume to the U.S.,” said Anand Kumar, associate director of research at Coresight Research, adding that it will also help the companies reassess their long-term strategy. According to Jason Wong, who has been associated with Temu's product logistics in Hong Kong, the company has paused shipments from China after the end of the “de minimis” exemption and relied on U.S. stockpiles to fulfill orders. Under the latest tariff policy, Wong anticipates that bulk shipments subject to the 30% tariff rate will resume to the U.S., replenishing these stockpiles. ″30% is still high, but compared to 125%, 30% is basically nothing,” he added. Small values, higher levies The tariffs situation nevertheless remains more complicated for small-value packages under “de minimis.” The latest policy update retains a $100 flat fee per postal item, while scrapping a previously planned increase to $200 starting in June, according to an executive order released by the White House on Monday. According to Wong, for Temu to resume its small-value shipments from China to the U.S., the tariffs still need to be relaxed further — something he expects will happen eventually. Shein has not said that it is ending direct shipments from China. However, it says on its platform that “tariffs are included in the price you pay.” The reduction in tariffs on low-value packages shipped to the U.S. from China could therefore result in the easing of some prices, said Coresight’s Kumar. In anticipation of changes to the “de minimis” exemption, Shein has also expanded its supply chains, building manufacturing operations in countries such as Turkey, Mexico and Brazil. It also reportedly plans to shift production to Vietnam. Shein and Temu did not immediately respond to CNBC requests for comment. On May 2, Trump ended the “de minimis” exemption policy, which analysts had criticized as hurting local businesses and disguising illicit fentanyl trade. The small-package tariff exemption had helped Temu and Shein maintain budget prices on the merchandise they shipped directly from China. The U.S. government had briefly suspended the exemption in February before reinstating the provision days later, as customs officials struggled to process and collect tariffs on a spate of low-value packages. U.S. rivals like Amazon, on whose platform many third-party sellers offload products sourced or assembled by Chinese manufacturers, are also expected to ramp up shipments during the 90-day window, trade experts said. “All the companies are just going to scramble to get everything they can into the country as quickly as they can,” said Cameron Johnson, Shanghai-based senior partner at consultancy firm Tidalwave Solutions. “Everybody’s in the same boat.”

Trump's visit did not include Israel, focusing instead on deals with Gulf nations including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 100 people in the last 24 hours and injured hundreds more, according to the Health Ministry, as President Donald Trump tours the Middle East with few remarks on Israel's intensifying war on the enclave. The United States would no longer give "lectures on how to live" to the Middle East, Trump said, as he focused instead on speeches about American glory, luxury jets and handshakes with billionaires. Trump wrapped up his four-day tour of the region Friday, which included stops in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but not Israel, skirting attention on ceasefire negotiations or the lifting of Israel's total blockade on aid entering Gaza. Since March 2, Israel has blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine or commercial goods into Gaza, which Israeli officials say is intended to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. United Nations officials have accused Israel of using “starvation a bargaining chip.” The aerial offensive is raising fears of another ground invasion, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month that he would order the military to ramp up its operations and seize the entire strip. One of those Israeli missiles landed on the home of 11-year-old Ibrahim Al-Banna in southern Gaza on Thursday evening. Ibrahim's uncle Abd Al-Banna arrived at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, carrying his dead body wrapped in a green blanket. The boy's mother broke down into tears, seeing her son's body on a gurney, a NBC News crew witnessed. “My darling, my Abdu … you are my heart … I wish it were me instead of you,” she said, crying and embracing his lifeless body. As his family wrapped Ibrahim's body into a white funeral shroud at the morgue, his uncle leaned into him and said, "When you meet God, tell him they left Gaza alone — without food, without water, without hope.” Aside from broadly declining to discuss human rights issues with Middle Eastern officials, as previous U.S. leaders have done, Trump's public statements on Gaza has been limited to saying he wanted to make Gaza a “freedom zone.” He did not elaborate on details of such a proposal, but said Friday, “We're looking at Gaza. And we're going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.” Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu has been strained in the weeks ahead of his trip as they grow apart on two of the region's most pressing issues: the war in Gaza and aggression from Iran, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials with the knowledge of the tensions told NBC News. Despite an alignment on display in the early days of Trump's administration, in which he encouraged the Israeli military to “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza and restarted supplying weapons to Israel that then-President Joe Biden had paused, Trump has since become frustrated with the staunch U.S. ally, including Netanyahu’s decision to intensify the military offensive on the enclave. In turn, Netanyahu is said to be frustrated with Trump’s refusal to support military strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, opting instead to negotiate with Iran, and for stepping back from U.S. strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Israel's intensified strikes on Gaza were paired with ongoing violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have ramped up their raids and settler violence has soared. The Israeli military killed five members of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad on Thursday, the group's military wing said after Israeli forces surrounded their homes in a West Bank town. The raid was in response to a gunman opening fire on a vehicle carrying Tzeela Gez, a pregnant 30-year-old Israeli woman who was being driven to the hospital. Gez died while giving birth, though her baby survived. Netanyahu said he was “deeply shocked by the horrific attack.” Hamas praised it as "heroic." Palestinian health officials say more than 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel killed about about 1,200 people with about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Businesses have begun ramping up shipments to the United States from China after President Donald Trump paused some of his tariffs on imports from that country, creating a surge in demand that could lead to supply chain bottlenecks in the coming months. Freight bookings out of China increased nearly 300% this week compared to the week earlier, soaring to the highest levels of the year, said Ben Tracy, vice president of strategic business development at Vizion, a company that produces container-tracking software. That came after Trump announced Monday that he was reducing the tariff on Chinese imports for 90 days while Washington and Beijing continue trade talks. U.S. companies halted shipments and canceled orders last month, when Trump ratcheted up his tariffs on Chinese imports to more than 145%, making it unaffordable for many companies to import their goods. While Chinese imports still face a 30% tariff, companies appear to be taking advantage of the 90-day pause on the higher tariffs to catch up on delayed shipments and get as many products into the U.S. as they can at the relatively lower rate. “Over the past month, we saw a huge drop off in trans-Pacific trade, especially from China, dropping by 60% or more in terms of those volumes,” said Jessica Dankert, vice president for supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “So now that we have at least relative certainty for the 90-day window, we definitely expect to see those volumes ramp back up again.” But despite the pause to some tariffs, companies aren't expecting smooth sailing in the coming months. It can typically take around a month for goods to travel from China to the U.S., but a surge in demand and limited numbers of ships, port docking space and trucks to transport goods could add up to several additional months of time, said Bryan Gross, a principal at PwC who works on supply chain issues. “There’s only a certain amount of capacity in that pipe, it can only expand so far. There’s only a certain number of container ships. There’s only a certain number of appointments in the ports to be able to consume that capacity,” he said. “That bubble of goods is going to start flowing through the system, but it’s constrained by the size of the pipe.” That supply and demand imbalance could also lead to higher shipping rates, which have already jumped in recent days. Because it can take several months for a ship to travel to the U.S. then back to China, an increase in ships leaving China in the coming days and weeks could lead to a shortage of container ships available this summer, which is the peak time for retailers to be shipping their back-to-school and holiday merchandise. “What may be an issue is that in two months time, which would be peak season for retail, we might not have enough containers available in China to load, and not only containers, but also not enough ships there,” Tracy said. For other industries, it could already be too late to get the goods in time for their peak season. U.S. fireworks importers halted many of their shipments coming from China in April because they couldn't afford the higher tariff rates, said Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association. While the China tariffs remain a significant cost at 30%, companies have started to resume shipments, she said. But it will likely be too late for some to get their goods in time for Fourth of July, resulting in shortages of certain products. “Everybody is scrambling now to try to take advantage of the 90-day pause. But those sailings, the bookings take a while. It’s not like you just flick a light switch and everything is back on,” Heckman said. “Companies are making those arrangements, they’re going to try to get in what they can, but some of that’s probably going to come after the Fourth of July.” There could also be consequences for next year, when America is celebrating the 250th anniversary of its independence and the fireworks industry was expecting a surge in demand. Many fireworks companies halted their production in China during April as a result of the uncertainty around the tariffs. While some have restarted that production, they have lost valuable manufacturing time during a limited window when Chinese companies can produce fireworks for the U.S. market, Heckman said. Retailers also remain concerned about the longer-term impact that tariffs could have on their businesses as they try to plan for the coming months. “Now that we have a window of a bit more certainty for the immediate future, there’s the ability to plan a little bit more and try and get some of the more critical goods in production and on the water and brought into the U.S.,” Dankert said. “But I think looking long term, what the business and what the industry really needs is the sense of stability and the kind of certainty going forward to make those longer decisions around ordering.”

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An American basketball player for the Indonesian league was arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle illegal drugs to the country, police said Thursday. The Southeast Asian country has extremely strict drug laws, and convicted smugglers are sometimes executed by firing squad. Jarred Dwayne Shaw, 34, from Dallas, Texas, was arrested May 7, after police raided his apartment in Tangerang regency, just outside the capital, Jakarta, and seized 132 pieces of cannabis candies, said Ronald Sipayung, the Soekarno-Hatta Airport police chief. The arrest followed a tip from the airport’s customs that reported Shaw had received a suspicious airway package from Thailand, Sipayung said. Cannabis has been decriminalized in Thailand since 2022. Under Indonesia’s anti-drug laws, Shaw faces up to life in prison or the death penalty if found guilty, Sipayung said. A video circulating on social media purportedly showed Shaw, wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, resisting as he was being pushed away by police and shouting “Help … help!” when he was about to be arrested. Shaw has played for several clubs in the Indonesian Basketball League since 2022, and signed a contract with Tangerang Hawk last year. He told police during interrogation that he wanted to share the cannabis candy with fellow basketball players, according to Sipayung. He said the candy contained a total gross weight of 869 grams (30.6 ounces) of illegal cannabinoid inside a package. “We are still running the investigation to uncover the international drugs network behind this case and to stop its distribution,” Sipayung said. Shaw did not make any statement when he was presented by the authorities at a news conference Wednesday wearing a detainee orange T-shirt and a mask with his hands tied. The Tangerang Hawks’ manager, Tikky Suwantikno, told reporters on Thursday that they regretted what had been done by Shaw and that the club had immediately fired him because he had breached his contract. The Indonesian Basketball League banned Shaw from playing for life, said its chair, Budisatrio Djiwandono. “We don’t tolerate players, administrators or anyone in the field involved in drugs. There is no room for drug users in the basketball world,” Djiwandono said. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population. About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, according to data from the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections. Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.

Most victims, including women, children and a journalist, were killed by Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza that hit homes and tents, local medics said. Israeli military strikes killed at least 60 people in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian medics said, as the United States and Arab mediators pushed for a ceasefire deal and U.S. President Donald Trump visited the Middle East. Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in Israeli airstrikes that hit homes and tents, they said. The dead included local journalist Hassan Samour, who worked for the Hamas-run Aqsa radio station and was killed along with 11 family members when their home was struck, the medics said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has intensified its offensive in Gaza as it tries to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the deadly attacks the Palestinian militant group carried out on Israel in 2023. Hamas said in a statement that Israel was making a “desperate attempt to negotiate under cover of fire” as indirect ceasefire talks take place between Israel and Hamas, involving Trump envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha. Israel carried out the latest strikes on the day Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced to flee their hometowns and villages during the 1948 Middle East war that gave birth to the state of Israel. With most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza internally displaced, some residents of the tiny enclave say suffering is greater now than at the time of the Nakba. “What we are experiencing now is even worse than the Nakba of 1948,” said Ahmed Hamad, a Palestinian in Gaza City who has been displaced multiple times. “The truth is, we live in a constant state of violence and displacement. Wherever we go, we face attacks. Death surrounds us everywhere.” Palestinian health officials say the Israeli attacks have escalated since Trump started a visit on Tuesday to the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that many Palestinians had hoped he would use to push for a truce. The latest strikes follow attacks on Gaza on Wednesday that killed at least 80 people, local health officials said. Little has come of new indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas led by Trump’s envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha. Hamas says it is ready to free all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza in return for an end to the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers interim truces, saying the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated. “At a time when mediators are exerting intensive efforts to put the negotiation back on the right track, the Zionist occupation (Israel) responds to those efforts by military pressure on innocent civilians,” the group said in a statement. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants an open-ended war and he doesn’t care about the fate of his hostages,” it said. Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 52,900 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It has left Gaza on the brink of famine, aid groups and international agencies say. A U.S.-backed humanitarian organization will start work in Gaza by the end of May under an aid distribution plan, but has asked Israel to let the United Nations and others resume deliveries to Palestinians now until it is set up. No humanitarian assistance has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation in Gaza.

MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian local government has decided against repairing an often-vandalized monument to renowned British explorer James Cook because it would be destroyed again. But the mayor on Wednesday rejected accusations that the vandals have won. Statues and monuments to the 18th-century naval officer are common in Australia and are often defaced by opponents of Britain’s settlement of the country without a treaty with its Indigenous people. In 1770, then Lt. Cook charted the Australian east coast where Sydney would become the first British colony on the continent. The granite and bronze monument to the master navigator and cartographer in an inner-city Melbourne park was vandalized days after the anniversary of the first British settlers’ arrival at Sydney Cove was commemorated on Jan. 26. Opponents of Australia Day celebrations denounce the public holiday as “Invasion Day.” There are growing calls for the country to find a less divisive national day. The monument in Melbourne’s Edinburgh Gardens was snapped at its base and spray painted with the words “cook the colony.” Mayor Stephen Jolly, head of the Yarra City Council, which is a municipality near the heart of Melbourne, said his fellow councilors had voted unanimously on Tuesday night against spending 15,000 Australian dollars ($9,700) on repairing the monument, which remains in storage. Jolly said the decision to permanently remove the monument, which included an image of Cook’s face cast in bronze, was about economics rather than taking a position in Australia’s culture wars. “It’s about being economically rational. It’s AU$15,000 a pop every time we have to repair it and it’s persistently getting either demolished or vandalized or tagged,” Jolly told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s just a waste of ratepayers’ money. We can’t afford to do that,” Jolly added. But Victoria state’s Melbourne-based conservative opposition leader, Brad Battin, condemned removing such memorials as surrendering to vandals. “We need to stand strong and remember the fact that this is part of our history,” Battin told reporters. “If you start to remove the history of our state and our country because of activists, then you’re actually giving in to those that are campaigning against it,” Battin added. Jolly disagreed that his council had given the vandals what they wanted. “No, I think they would’ve loved for us to put it back up and then they could’ve just tagged it again or destroyed it again and just had this ongoing sort of little war going on in Edinburgh Gardens,” Jolly said. “I think they’re probably the most disappointed people that it’s not going to be there anymore,” Jolly added. The base of the monument remained at the entrance to the park on Wednesday with a traffic cone attached to warn cyclists, joggers and pedestrians of the trip hazard it presents. Someone has scrawled a smiling face and a torso on the cone in an apparent reference to the memorial that had once stood in its place. Jolly said a local branch of the Captain Cook Society, an international group that celebrates the explorer, has offered to preserve the bronze plaques. Melbourne-based society member Bill Lang said discussions were underway to find a short-term home for the monument, such as a museum. Lang said the council’s decision not to repair the monument was disheartening. “It’s very disappointing for every open-minded Australian that believes that there are lots of things that we can learn about and learn from our history that we should celebrate,” Lang said.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand parliamentary committee has recommended the unprecedented suspensions of three Māori lawmakers for performing a protest haka in the debating chamber last year. The haka is a chanting dance of challenge of great cultural importance in New Zealand, and the three lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori party, performed one to oppose a controversial bill that would have redefined the country’s founding document. On Wednesday a committee recommended record suspensions and severe censure — the harshest penalties ever assigned to New Zealand parliamentarians — after finding the trio in contempt of Parliament. Government bloc lawmakers, who hold the majority, are expected to endorse the penalties in a vote Tuesday. But Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee took the unusual step Thursday of saying he would first allow unlimited debate before the vote due to the severity of the proposed punishments. The recommendations were the latest twist in the fraught saga over the bill, now defeated, that opponents said would have provoked constitutional havoc and reversed decades of progress for Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people. Video of the legislators in full cry drew global attention last November. The bill they opposed was vanquished at a second vote in April. However, some lawmakers from the center-right government objected to the Māori Party legislators’ protest during the first vote and complained to parliament’s speaker. At issue was the way the trio walked across the floor of the debating chamber toward their opponents while they performed the haka. “It is not acceptable to physically approach another member on the floor of the debating chamber,” Wednesday’s report said, adding that the behavior could be considered intimidating. The committee denied the legislators were being punished for the haka, which is a beloved and sacred cultural institution in New Zealand life, but “the time at and manner in which it was performed” during a vote, according to the findings. The committee deciding the fate of the lawmakers has members from all political parties. The government’s opponents disagreed with parts or all of the decision but were overruled. “This was a very serious incident, and the likes of which I have never seen before in my 23 years in the debating chamber,” said the committee’s chair, Judith Collins. The three legislators did not appear before the committee when summoned in April because they said Parliament does not respect Māori cultural protocol and they would not get a fair hearing. “The process was grossly unjust, unfair, and unwarranted, resulting in an extreme sanction,” Māori party spokesperson and lawmaker Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said in a statement. “This was not about process, this became personal.” The report recommended that Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is New Zealand’s youngest lawmaker, be suspended from Parliament for seven days. The co-leaders of her political party, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, face 21-day bans. Three days is the longest a lawmaker has been barred from the House before. Suspended legislators are not paid during their bans. Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer, the leaders of the party that advocates Māori rights and holds six of Parliament’s 123 seats, have lambasted the committee’s process as intolerant of Māori principles and identity. The pair received more severe sanctions than Maipi-Clarke because the younger lawmaker had written a letter of “contrition” to the committee, the report said. The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill sought to redefine New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 pact between the British Crown and Māori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonization. The English and Māori language versions of the treaty differed, and the Crown immediately began to breach both, resulting in mass land thefts and generations of disenfranchisement for Māori, who remain disadvantaged on almost every metric. But in recent decades, Māori protest movements have wrought growing recognition of the Treaty’s promises in New Zealand’s law, politics and public life. That produced billion-dollar land settlements with tribes and strategies to advance Indigenous language and culture. Such policies were the target of the bill, drawn up by a minor libertarian party that denounced what it said was special treatment for Māori as they tried to rewrite the treaty’s promises.

The Trump administration says Afghan refugees can safely return to Afghanistan despite warnings from rights groups and lawmakers that Afghans who worked for the U.S. military face the threat of persecution, imprisonment and even execution by the Taliban regime. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Monday it had stripped legal protections for thousands of Afghans in the U.S., saying that the security and economic situation in Afghanistan no longer justified granting them temporary protected status, or TPS. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer” prevents Afghans from returning to their home country, she said. DHS officials had previously signaled plans to cancel temporary protected status for Afghans but did not formally rescind it until Monday. Lawmakers and rights groups said the Trump administration’s decision would put thousands of Afghans’ lives at risk and betray partners who had risked their lives to work for the U.S. military during America’s 20-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. “It’s just absurd and divorced from reality to claim that Afghan refugees can safely return to Afghanistan,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director for global humanitarian protection for the nonprofit Human Rights First. “Many Afghans would face dire risks of persecution if they are forced back into the hands of the Taliban,” Acer said. “Journalists, human rights advocates, religious minorities, women’s rights defenders and people who worked with the U.S. military and government are all in danger of Taliban persecution or retaliation if they are forced back to Afghanistan.” Kim Staffieri of the Association of Wartime Allies, a nonprofit that helps Afghans who worked for the U.S. government, said it “is unfathomable that DHS can say the economy of Afghanistan has stabilized, that it’s much safer now and that Afghans don’t need TPS anymore.” Apart from reports of the Taliban’s human rights abuses, aid groups say Afghanistan is plagued by rising poverty and hunger. According to the World Food Programme, 3.5 million young children are expected to suffer from malnutrition this year, the highest level ever recorded in the country. Lawmakers, including some Republicans, said the administration was jeopardizing the lives of those who had stood by the United States. “Afghanistan is not safe,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The Taliban continues to crack down on human rights and target Afghans who speak out against them, including those who aided American servicemembers like me during the war. It’s cruel and wrong that President Trump is turning his back on those fleeing violence and persecution.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned the move as a betrayal and said it contradicted “overwhelming evidence” that Afghans with ties to the U.S. faced persecution and torture by the Taliban. “Deporting our partners to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is morally indefensible and recklessly endangers lives,” she said. Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, a former chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, praised President Donald Trump’s foreign policy overall but said he was concerned for the safety of Afghan partners. The Taliban “have made their thirst for retribution against those who helped the United States clear,” McCaul said. “Until they demonstrate clear behavioral changes, I urge the administration to continue prioritizing the safety of the Afghan men and women who risked their lives to help our troops.”

NEW DELHI — The Indian government on Tuesday disputed President Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S.-mediated ceasefire between India and Pakistan came about in part because he had offered possible trade concessions. Addressing a weekly news conference, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said top leaders in New Delhi and Washington were in touch last week following the Indian military’s intense standoff with Pakistan, but that there was no conversation on trade. “The issue of trade didn’t come up in any of these discussions,” Jaiswal said, referring to the conversations held between Vice President JD Vance and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Indian counterpart, S. Jaishankar. Following Saturday’s understanding between India and Pakistan to stop military action on land, in the air and at sea, Trump told reporters on Monday that he had offered to help both nations with trade if they agreed to de-escalate. “I said, come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it. Let’s stop it. If you stop it, we’ll do a trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade,’” Trump said. “And all of a sudden, they said, I think we’re going to stop,” Trump said, crediting trade leverage for influencing both the nations’ decision. “For a lot of reasons, but trade is a big one,” he said. The militaries of India and Pakistan had been engaged in one of their most serious confrontations in decades since last Wednesday, when India struck targets inside Pakistan it said were affiliated with militants responsible for the massacre of 26 tourists last month in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any links to the attackers. After India’s strikes in Pakistan, the two sides exchanged heavy fire along their de facto borders, followed by missile and drone strikes into each other’s territories, mainly targeting military installations and airbases. The escalating hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals threatened regional peace, leading to calls by world leaders to cool down tempers. Trump said he not only helped mediate the ceasefire, but also offered mediation over the simmering dispute in Kashmir, a Himalayan region that both India and Pakistan claim in its entirety but administer in parts. The two nations have fought two wars over Kashmir, which has long been described as the regional nuclear flashpoint. New Delhi also declined Trump’s offer for mediation on Tuesday. “We have a longstanding national position that any issues related to the federally controlled union territory of Jammu and Kashmir must be addressed by India and Pakistan bilaterally. There has been no change to the stated policy,” Jaiswal said. Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Tuesday that Pakistan was expelling a staff member of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, accusing him of unspecified inappropriate activity and giving him 24 hours to leave the country. In a tit-for-tat move last month, India and Pakistan reduced each other’s diplomatic presence in Islamabad and New Delhi. So far, none of the expelled diplomats have returned. Pakistan and India routinely expel each other’s diplomats over allegations of espionage.

The attacks came amid President Donald Trump’s four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He is not expected to visit Israel. Hours after Israel was accused of making “starvation a bargaining chip” in Gaza, its military launched a wave of deadly strikes across the enclave, killing at least 70 people, Palestinian health officials said “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, unable to be reached by ambulances and civil defense crews,” the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement. The strikes came less than 24 hours after United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called an Israel-initiated and U.S.-backed humanitarian aid distribution plan for Gaza a “cynical sideshow” and “a deliberate distraction.” At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Fletcher said the plan was a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement” of Palestinians in the war-torn enclave, adding that the international community should reflect on what it will tell future generations about what actions were taken “to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.” No humanitarian aid has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises, has warned that half a million people, or around a quarter of the enclave’s population, face starvation. Wednesday’s strikes came after at least 48 people, including 22 children, were killed strikes on two hospitals in Gaza on Tuesday. It was like the “earth split open and swallowed people,” Asma Abu Daqqa told the crew as she frantically searched for her children who were inside the hospital at the time of the strike. “They left us with no safe place. They targeted us in the hospitals,” she added. Tomo Potokar, a British plastic surgeon, said he was thrown off his bed when the strikes hit. “There’s damage all around here. There’s damage to the operating theater,” he said. “This hospital has many patients in it that need treatment who were already badly injured." Calling the strikes “targeted,” the Israeli military said it had destroyed an “underground” Hamas infrastructure beneath the hospital that was the site of a “command and control center.” Israel has justified previous strikes on Gaza hospitals the same way. Hamas has denied it uses the facilities to shield fighters and weaponry, while the U.N. has said the strikes reflect a “pattern of deadly attacks” that have pushed Gaza’s health care system “to the brink of total collapse.” Many of the injured from the strikes on the European Hospital were transferred to Nasser Hospital, which was also hit by an Israeli strike that left a gaping hole through the third floor and damaging a burn unit. “The ward is almost destroyed,” Ahmed Ryad Seiam, a paramedic at the hospital, told the NBC News crew at the scene. Palestinian health officials say almost 53,000 people have died in Gaza since the outbreak of the war that began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. The latest strikes came amid President Donald Trump’s four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He is not expected to visit Israel. Palestinians were hoping his visit would pressure Israel into a reduction of violence. Hamas on Monday released Edan Alexander, the last known living American hostage it had been holding. Trump said in Riyadh on Tuesday that more hostages would follow and that the people of Gaza deserved a better future.