International Glance
A British judge has ordered the UK home secretary to “get on with” explaining her opposition to Hamas's appeal to be removed from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Hamas, currently proscribed in the UK, is appealing against this designation before the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC), an independent tribunal.
Last April, Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, instructed British lawyers to appeal against the UK’s 2021 decision by former Home Secretary Priti Patel to designate the movement as a terrorist organisation.
Four months later, in August 2025, Hamas lodged a second appeal to POAC after former UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper rejected the group’s request to be taken off the list of banned groups.
During Thursday’s proceedings, Justice Jonathan Swift, the chair of POAC, told government lawyers to respond to Hamas's appeal and to “clearly explain any reasons for delay” by 20 May.
UK judge orders home secretary to explain opposition to Hamas de-proscription appeal
US votes against UN resolution labeling slavery ‘gravest crime against humanity’
The U.S., Israel and Argentina on Wednesday voted against a United Nations resolution led by Ghana to label the international slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and call for reparations.
The resolution received 123 votes from the U.N. General Assembly in favor and 52 countries abstained, including all 27 European Union members, the United Kingdom, Australia, Oman and Japan.
The resolution also focused on the need to address historic wrongs toward Africans and people of the diaspora, and it placed emphasis on claims for reparations.
Diplomats cheered and some danced over the resolution’s adoption.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dan Negrea called the resolution’s text “highly problematic in countless respects.” Negrea said in a statement that the U.S. “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”
IOC bans transgender women athletes beginning with LA Games in 2028
Transgender women are banned from competing at the Olympics, beginning with the Los Angeles Summer Games in 2028.
International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry announced the change Thursday, March 26, reversing its 2004 decision to allow the participation of transgender athletes. To date, only one openly transgender woman has competed at the Olympics in 2021, a weightlifter from New Zealand who did not make it past her opening round of competition at the Tokyo Games.
Women who want to compete at the Olympics will have to do a one-time genetic test.
The IOC began examining the issue of transgender participation in September 2024 after several sport federations, including World Athletics and World Aquatics, took steps to limit or ban transgender athletes. A year later, Coventry announced the creation of a working group that looked at "scientific, medical and legal developments since 2021."
Massive Air Assault on Western Ukraine: Russian Drones Hit Historic Lviv Center, Ternopil
A Russian drone strike hit central Lviv on Tuesday, March 24, injuring at least two people and damaging residential buildings, local officials said.
Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said the attack struck the city center and may have affected a UNESCO-listed heritage area.
Mayor Andrii Sadovyi said a residential building was damaged in the strike, adding that emergency services were working at the scene.
Separately, explosions were reported in Ternopil, according to Mayor Taras Pastukh, who urged residents to remain in shelters.
In Lviv, Sadovyi later reported another drone strike hitting a residential building in the Sykhiv district, on Chervonoi Kalyny Avenue.
He added that a third location was recorded near the beginning of Bandera Street, where debris was found.
Russian Strikes Hit Zaporizhzhia Region 700 Times In 24 Hours, Killing Two
Russian forces carried out around 700 strikes across Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region over a 24-hour period, killing two people and injuring eight others, regional authorities said.
The attacks targeted dozens of settlements and caused widespread damage to civilian infrastructure.
According to Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration head Ivan Fedorov, Russian forces launched a total of 700 strikes on 39 settlements in the region over the past day.
The attacks included airstrikes, drone assaults, artillery fire and multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) strikes, with drones accounting for the majority of incidents.
Fedorov said Russian forces carried out nearly 400 drone attacks, mostly using FPV drones, alongside dozens of airstrikes and hundreds of artillery strikes.
Socialist Grégoire becomes Paris mayor as the far right wins Nice in key municipal elections
Socialist candidate Emmanuel Grégoire won the Paris race Sunday, succeeding fellow party member Anne Hidalgo as the French capital’s mayor, as results of the final round of municipal elections showed clear gains for the traditional left and right, and one major win for the far right in the French Riviera city of Nice.
French voters returned to the polls Sunday in about 1,500 communes. The vote is seen as a test of the balance of power on France’s local political map before the 2027 presidential race begins to take shape.
Definitive results were still pending Sunday evening in largest cities.
About 93% of 35,000 villages, towns and cities selected their mayors in the first round last week, with mostly one or two candidates, not associated with any party, competing.
Judges clear ICC’s Karim Khan over sexual misconduct claims
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has been cleared of all wrongdoing by a panel of judges appointed to review the findings of a United Nations investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him, Middle East Eye can exclusively reveal.
The highly confidential report by the panel of three judges was submitted to the ICC’s executive oversight body, the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), on 9 March. It will not be made publicly available, and has not been seen by the majority of the court's 125 member states.
Since December, the judges, who were appointed by the ASP, have been examining an external fact-finding report conducted by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) into the allegations against Khan, which have unfolded in parallel with his office's efforts to pursue a war crimes investigation against Israeli officials over the war in Gaza.
The role of the panel has been to provide independent legal advice to the bureau, based on the facts presented in the OIOS report, on whether Khan, who has strenuously denied all allegations, has committed serious misconduct, less serious misconduct, or no misconduct at all.
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