UN nuclear watchdog finds Iran in breach of its obligations
An Air India plane bound for London's Gatwick airport with 232 passengers and 12 crew members on board has crashed on takeoff at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.
There were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals on board, according to the airline.
The injured are being taken to the nearest hospitals. A dedicated passenger hotline has been set up for those affected.
Local media reported that the plane crashed into a medical college hospital in Ahmedabad shortly after it left the runway. Unverified photos show the tail of the plane lodged into a building with plumes of black smoke billowing behind it..
It is unclear how many have been injured as a result of the accident.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a post on X that "the tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words."
India's Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu said he was "shocked and devastated" by the news of the crash in the Indian state of Gujarat.
"We are on highest alert. I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action," Ram Mohan Naidu said.
"Rescue teams have been mobilised, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site. My thoughts and prayers are with all those on board and their families."
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK Foreign Office has arranged crisis teams in India and the UK.
He told the House of Commons: "My thoughts, and I'm sure those of the entire House, are with those who've been affected by the tragic plane crash in India this morning.
"We know that British nationals were on board and I can confirm that the FCDO is working urgently with local authorities to support British nationals and their families, and has stood up a crisis team in both Delhi and in London."
The chief minister of Gujarat wrote on X that officials have been instructed to carry out "immediate rescue and relief operations" and to make arrangements on a "war footing".
Flight tracking data shows the aircraft was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — the first crash involving this model. The jet was 11 years old.
"We received the last signal from the aircraft at 08:08:51 UTC, just seconds after takeoff," Flight Radar wrote in a post on X.
The aircraft was scheduled to arrive at 6:25 pm local time (7:25 pm CEST).
Videos from the scene show a low-flying aircraft trailing flames and descending toward a residential neighbourhood before bursting into orange and black smoke.
Meghaninagar is a residential suburb in the Sabarmati area of Ahmedabad in India's west.
The UN nuclear watchdog's board of governors on Thursday formally found that Iran is not complying with its nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years, a move that could lead to further tensions and set in motion an effort to restore United Nations sanctions on Tehran later this year.
Iran immediately responded to the International Atomic Energy Agency board's vote, stating that it will establish a new enrichment facility.
The announcement said the facility will be 'in a secure location".
'The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this political resolution,' the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said in a joint statement.
Nineteen countries on the IAEA's board, which represents the agency's member nations, voted for the resolution, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of the closed-door vote.
Russia, China and Burkina Faso opposed it, 11 abstained ,and two did not vote.
In the draft resolution seen by media outlets, the board of governors renews a call on Iran to provide answers 'without delay' in a long-running investigation into uranium traces found at several locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites.
Western officials suspect that the uranium traces could provide evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program until 2003.
France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States proposed the resolution.
In Brussels, the European Commission expressed support for the text and called on Iran to "restore full cooperation with the agency and fully implement its obligations".
"We call on Iran to show restraint and avoid any step that would further escalate the situation," a Commission spokesperson said on Thursday afternoon.
The vote comes at a sensitive time, as tensions in the region have been rising.
On Wednesday, the US State Department announced that it is drawing down the presence of non-essential personnel in the Middle East.
The European Commission said its "limited" diplomatic presence on the ground had been "informed" about the Pentagon's plan, but that no evacuation order would be issued to its staff for now.
US President Donald Trump has previously said that Israel or Washington could carry out airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations failed.
The US and Iran have been holding talks on Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program. Oman's foreign minister said earlier Thursday that a sixth round of negotiations will be held in his country on Sunday.
The draft resolution makes a direct reference to the US-Iran talks, stressing its 'support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear program, including the talks between the United States and Iran, leading to an agreement that addresses all international concerns related to Iran's nuclear activities, encouraging all parties to constructively engage in diplomacy.'
This article has been updated to reflect the European Commission's reaction.
A curfew is in place for a second night in downtown Los Angeles after a full week of clashes between protesters and authorities sparked by immigration raids in the city.
Police detained more than 20 people on the first night of the curfew, mostly for violating the lockdown.
A demonstration in Los Angeles' civic centre just before the start of the second night of the city's curfew briefly turned chaotic when police in riot gear — many on horseback — charged at a group as police used projectiles to break up hundreds of demonstrators.
The city's nightly lockdown will remain in effect as long as necessary, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
'If there are raids that continue, if there are soldiers marching up and down our streets, I would imagine that the curfew will continue,' Bass said.
More than 400 people have been arrested by Los Angeles police since Saturday, the vast majority for violating the restriction on movement in the area. Prosecutors have charged three others for possession of a gun, a Molotov cocktail and assault against a police officer.
As the overnight curfew began, Bass wrote on X that it was designed to "stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the president's chaotic escalation".
She earlier blamed the demonstrations on Trump's immigration raids, claiming that the move had "provoked residents". "A week ago, everything was peaceful," she told a news conference on Wednesday.
Los Angeles was "part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in taking over power from a local government, from a local jurisdiction," she suggested.
Dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles area banded together to demand that the Trump administration stop the immigration raids.
Trump however, showed no sign of heeding their pleas. A total of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines have been deployed by the US president to squash the unrest, despite objection from California's Democratic governor Gavin Newsom.
Around 500 of the National Guard troops deployed in LA were trained to accompany agents on immigration raids, Major General Scott Sherman said Wednesday.
'We are expecting a ramp-up,' Sherman said.
Newsom has asked a federal court to put an emergency stop on the military helping immigration agents in LA.
The Trump administration called the lawsuit a 'crass political stunt endangering American lives" in its official response on Wednesday. The city 'would be burning to the ground' if he had not sent in the military, Trump said.
The military is now closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations. The Guard has the authority to detain people who attack officers temporarily, but any arrests must be made by law enforcement.
On Wednesday, demonstrations spread to other cities including Dallas and Austin in Texas and Chicago, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made — including 86 in New York.
In Texas, police in Austin used chemical irritants to disperse several hundred demonstrators on Monday. Republican Governor Greg Abbott's office said Texas National Guard troops were 'on standby" in areas where demonstrations are planned.
A 66-year-old woman in Chicago was injured when she was struck by a car during downtown protests Tuesday evening, police said.
Sherman noted that protests across the nation were being discussed. 'I'm focused right here in LA, what's going on right here. But you know, I think we're, we're very concerned.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
AFP
5 hours ago
- AFP
Land grab conspiracies spread alongside Canadian wildfires
"This isn't just wildfire policy -- it's a global land control strategy operating through 'sustainability' language," a June 1, 2025 Facebook post claims. The text claims the "Rio Law" is a global framework established to encourage sustainability that can be used to reclassify land in Canada for resource extraction and forbid residents from returning home after they are evacuated due to wildfires. The text spread across Facebook, Instagram and X partly echoing debunked theories about Agenda 21 and moves to push fire-displaced residents into "smart cities" where they will be subjected to strict technology surveillance or face restriction of movement. Simultaneously, users on Facebook and TikTok made additional claims about land grabs precipitated by wildfire evacuations invoking either controversy over Ontario province's Bill 5 or images of a possible pipeline route, which would supposedly cross Manitoba to reach Hudson's Bay. Image Collage of screenshots of Facebook posts taken June 13, 2025 Conditions are primed for another massive wildfire season in Canada, as the over 3.6 million hectares (13.8 thousand square miles) of area burned so far in 2025 has already surpassed the year-to-date average for the past decade (archived here). More than 30,000 people have evacuated their homes in western Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces, including remote Indigenous communities fleeing south. f June 12, some 7,000 evacuees in Saskatchewan province began returning home. Media report people will also soon be allowed to go back to communities Manitoba, but many areas remain under evacuation orders there and in neighboring Ontario. res hit as trade tensions with the United States have triggered the new federal government to open discussions about access to Canadian natural gas and coveted minerals. But the potential projects, including pipelines, raise concerns of environmental impact and Indigenous consent. Nevertheless, experts told AFP it was highly improbable for a wildfire to be used to intentionally target specific areas for resource exploitation. Unforeseeable spread Mike Flannigan a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University (archived here) said a wildfire is defined by three factors: how it starts, what it can burn through, and the weather conditions around it. Many fires are started -- mostly unintentionally -- by humans, he said, but fuel and weather play too large of a role in where flames spread, making it nearly impossible to start a wildfire that could successfully target a premeditated location. Flannigan also pointed out that climate change creates conditions that suck up moisture from vegetation and generate stronger wind, a mix conducive to more unwieldy fires. "The drier the fuel, the easier it is for a fire to start," he told AFP on June 5. Wildland firefighters use burning techniques to impede the path of smaller and less intense fires and keep them away from populated areas (archived here), but Flannigan said once the blazes reach the tops of the trees -- also known as a crown fire (archived here) -- response becomes limited. "There's only two options then: one is evacuate, get out of the way until the weather changes or the fuels change, or do a burnout operation, which is where you get in front, where the wildfire is spreading, start a new fire that's fighting against it," he said. Hossein Bonakdari, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa (archived here), analyzed indicators such as leaf coverage and winter snow area to predict the probability of wildfire in certain parts of Canada. Even with these prediction tools, Bonakdari noted, a plethora of minute variables dictating a wildfire's spread exist, making it impossible to foresee whether it could reach a certain location. "I need a dataset of today to do the prediction for tomorrow," he said on June 6. Resource regulation While the claim that wildfires could be used to clear certain areas for resource extraction may be unsubstantiated, concerns about infringement on Indigenous treaty rights in relation to Ontario's Bill 5 exist (archived here). The legislation gives the province authority to declare "special economic zones" (archived here), overriding local laws for resource projects in a move that Indigenous leaders say will conflict with the government's treaty obligations. Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans, for example, on extracting minerals from the Ring of Fire deposit in the north of the province. Other Canadian premiers also recently floated the idea of a pipeline through Manitoba to end in Hudson's Bay, similar to what has been referenced in some land grab claims online. Using reverse image search, AFP traced the map in those posts to a 2023 blog proposing a path for pipelines (archived here). However, no formalized proposals for such a project could be found. The posts also the 1992 Rio Declaration (archived here). The document produced at the United Nations' Earth Summit does not mention removing people from land. Rather, it lays out principles of protecting environmental and developmental systems, to which it says states should agree. AFP previously debunked claims about resident displacement to extract resources following hurricane evacuations. Read more of AFP's reporting on wildfire misinformation here.
France 24
10 hours ago
- France 24
World leaders call for restraint, de-escalation after Israeli strikes on Iran
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as a "declaration of war"and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel would pay for its 'foolish mistake'. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation in Iran would continue for 'as long as it takes' while US President Donald Trump warned Tehran of "even more brutal" attacks if it does not make a deal on its nuclear programme". "Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left ... JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE," Trump said in a post on social media. Earlier the US President told Fox News that the US hoped to continue talks with Iran to end its escalating uranium enrichment programme. "Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table," he said. 'Maximum restraint' French President Emmanuel Macron said Israel had the right to defend itself, but called for Israel and Iran to 'exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate', and "avoid jeopardising the stability of the entire region". Macron spoke on the phone with Netanyahu after Israel launched its attack on Iran, the French presidential palace said on Friday, without giving further details. Macron also held a call on Friday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to discuss the situation, their offices said. "The leaders discussed the long-held grave concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, and called on all sides to refrain from further escalation that could further destabilise the region," said a statement from Starmer's office. UN Chief Antonio Guterres also called for 'maximum restraint' from both sides to avoid "descent into deeper conflict, a situation that the regoin can hardly afford", his spokesperson said. Russia urged its citizens in Israel to leave the country, as spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told state news agencies that the Israeli strikes were 'unprovoked'. 'Russia is concerned and condemns the sharp escalation of tensions,' he said. China said it was 'deeply worried" about the "severe consequences" of Israel's actions, as it called on relevant parties to 'take actions that promote regional peace and stability". 'Dangerous escalation' Countries neighbouring Israel and Iran roundly condemned the attacks. Iraq said the Isreli stikes were a violation of international law and "a serious threat to international peace and security". It lodged a complaint with the United Nations Security Council over Israel's "violation' of its airspace during the attacks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the attacks a 'clear provocation that disregards international law'. A vocal critic of Israel and a fervent advocate of the Palestinian cause, Erdogan urged the international community to "put an end to Israeli banditry". Oman and Qatar said the attacks threatened stability in the region. Meanwhile, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, long seen as the Iran-led axis's most powerful group said that Israel's "brutal" strike threatened to "ignite the region". "This enemy adheres to no logic or laws and knows only the language of killing, fire, and destruction," the group said. Yemen's Houthi rebels said they backed Iran's 'full and legitimate right to respond by all possible means" to the Israeli strike. The Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war, said that Israel's 'aggression' constituted a 'dangerous escalation that threatens to destabilise the region'.
France 24
12 hours ago
- France 24
Korean peninsula: Living under propaganda loudspeakers
11:19 South Korea has suspended its propaganda broadcasts across the border to North Korea, following the election of new president Lee Jae-myung, who wants to improve relationships with Seoul's Communist neighbour. According to the South's military, Pyongyang has followed suit by switching off its loudspeakers near the Demilitarised Zone. It comes as a relief to local residents, who have had to contend with blaring sounds 24/7. But first, the sole survivor of Air India Flight 171 says he felt like the plane "came to a standstill" for a few seconds, before crashing into a building. All remaining 241 people onboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner died, and as the jet ploughed into a residential area, it caused more deaths on the ground – making this the world's worst air disaster in a decade. We also explore China 's near-monopoly of the rare earths supply chain and why the US so badly wanted shipments to resume.
