The Security Council debated conditions in Gaza at the request of its 10 elected members amid concern that the territory’s humanitarian crisis is being overshadowed by wider regional developments. The meeting took place under a ceasefire that has existed in name since October 2025 – but nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, and most Gazans remain displaced. Relief chief Tom Fletcher told ambassadors that “fragile gains” since the truce are “the bare minimum of what Palestinians need.” Follow live below and wider Meetings Coverage can be found here.
Author: tio
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From ‘media deserts’ to the invisibility of women, rights experts spotlight latest trends
From the invisibility of women and girls to “media deserts” amid an artificial intelligence (AI) tsunami, dozens of UN independent experts have been shedding light on the battle for equal rights worldwide as the Geneva-based Human Rights Council continued its 62nd session on Thursday. -
UN upholds freedom of movement for peacekeepers in Lebanon
The United Nations has again called for freedom of movement for its peacekeepers in Lebanon who continue to closely monitor developments in the south of the country, including in the wake of the recent provisional agreement signed by the United States and Iran. -
Climate shocks accelerating as El Niño threat looms over already vulnerable regions
Millions of people already facing hunger, displacement and economic hardship could soon face another major climate shock, as UN agencies warned on Thursday that extreme weather risks are intensifying across some of the world’s most vulnerable regions. -
US makes $1 billion contribution to UN child rights and food agencies
Two United Nations agencies have together welcomed more than $1 billion in assistance from the United States to support their operations targeting millions of children and hungry families in more than 40 countries. -
Albanian Drug Trafficking Investigation Overlaps with Probe into Planned Resort that Sparked ‘Flamingo Revolution’
Mass protests against a planned luxury resort in Albania are into their third week and questions remain about mystery investors, while the daughter and son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump have both spoken publicly in support of the project.
Now, court documents from a drug trafficking investigation reveal an explosive new element to the scandal that has shaken the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The documents reveal that an individual who sold land for the resort development — planned in the protected Vjosa-Narta lagoon — is also targeted by prosecutors in the trafficking case.
Albania’s office for the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organized Crime, known as SPAK, said in a June 13 statement that it was seeking the arrests of 20 people allegedly involved in an international drug trafficking ring. While the public statement did not name the suspects or mention the planned resort, separate court filings provide more information.
A June 10 order by the Special Court of First Instance for Corruption and Organized Crime — obtained by OCCRP’s Albanian member center, SHTEG — imposed a “preventative seizure” on a bank account holding more than 110 million euros ($127 million). According to the order, the funds originated from the sale of land “between parties Artur Shehu and Albanian Land Development sh.a.”
The order does not say who controls the account, but the court documents show that Shehu sold land earmarked for the resort project. Albanian Land Development is one of the companies involved in the resort development. The court does not implicate the company in any wrongdoing.
A separate court order identified Shehu as suspected of offences including laundering money, and participation in an organized crime group.
The document names Shehu and another suspect, stating that “there are sufficient indications of their involvement in narcotics trafficking.” It specifies that investigators suspect Shehu of laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking.
There is no evidence that Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, or any investors in the resort project, had knowledge of SPAK’s investigation or allegations against Shehu.
Shehu did not respond to detailed questions sent to his known companies. Albanian Land Development did not respond to a request for comment regarding the SPAK asset seizures
Land ‘Conflicts’
Shehu and Albanian Land Development are also mentioned in a separate SPAK probe, which focuses specifically on property secured for the the luxury resort proposed for the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape — a lagoon on the Zvërnec peninsula, near the southern city of Vlorë.
A May 31 court decision authorized search warrants on premises related to individuals and companies that sold and facilitated the sale of land for the project. Prosecutors allege that much of land designated for the luxury resort was previously acquired using forged documents. The decision, obtained by reporters, states that Shehu sold property to Albanian Land Development.
Shehu told an Albanian TV program that he had sold the properties through a middleman, and did not know who the buyer was. He said his ownership of the land was “undisputed,” Reuters reported.
However, the May 31 court decision notes that there are “longstanding and ongoing conflicts over time among several individuals, residents of the area, who claim ownership” of land sold for the project.
The court decision authorized the search of the residence of Pullumb Petritaj, who prosecutors allege has acted as Shehu’s representative in land dealings.
“Pullumb Petritaj was convicted and has faced numerous judicial proceedings related to the falsification of documents for properties associated with citizen Artur Shehu,” the court document states.
Petritaj is reportedly appealing his convictions. He did not respond to requests for comment.
In a 2021 investigation, OCCRP documented how Shehu and his family members had acquired hundreds of hectares of land around the county of Vlorë — including in the same area where the resort is now planned — even though local residents claimed they were the true owners.
Albanians have been caught up for decades in competing land claims — a legacy of the communists who nationalized property, and a subsequent spree of theft during attempts to return it to private ownership. A former director of the Real Estate Registration Office in Vlora told OCCRP in 2021 that separate court decisions have often granted the same land to different people.
That situation adds to an already bumpy road for the luxury development, which has been publicly championed by Rama, as well as Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
While media reports have suggested Kushner is financially involved in the resort project through his investment firm Affinity Partners, OCCRP has not found evidence of that. Affinity Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
Fast Tracked Resort
Nestled along the sun-drenched Adriatic coast of Vlorë county, the Vjosa-Narta lagoon is one of Albania’s most pristine remaining landscapes. Along with a centuries-old monastery in Zvërnec village, the area is a delicate ecosystem that serves as a sanctuary for sea turtles, the rare Dalmatian pelican, and flocks of flamingos.
The peace of the lagoon was abruptly punctured on the morning of January 21 when a convoy of SUVs rolled through the coastal villages, escorted by police.
Inside one of the luxury vehicles sat Ivanka Trump. Media outlets like the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network covered her visit, during which she reportedly lit candles at the Monastery of Saint Mary, photographed the wetlands, and dined twice with Rama.
In an interview later, Ivanka Trump gushed about “this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, beautiful white sand beaches.”
Soon after her visit, the Albanian government approved a development permit for Zvërnec South Adriatic Development LLC, the company fronting the resort project. Corporate registry filings reveal a complex ownership structure that obscured the people behind the company.
With an address in a high-rise in the capital of Tirana, Zvërnec South Adriatic Development listed a sole Albanian administrator when it was created by a Dutch private limited company called Universal Properties Projects B.V.
Universal Properties Projects was registered at Amsterdam’s World Trade Center, in the business district of the Dutch capital, just four days before Zvërnec South Adriatic Development was established. The founding capital for Universal Properties Projects was a single euro.
Corporate documents show that Universal Properties Projects was wholly owned by another Dutch company, Blue Industries Investment Holding B.V. The documents do not state the owners of Blue Industries Investment, but they show the company director was another firm called Dutch Trust Management B.V.
The owners of Dutch Trust Management are unclear, but the firm’s two directors are citizens of Russia and Bulgaria who are both partners at an Amsterdam-based financial advisory firm.
The corporate gymnastics culminated in another transaction on May 7.
According to a share purchase agreement, Universal Properties Projects sold 100 percent of its stake in Zvërnec South Adriatic Development to Sazan Development Holding LLC, an entity registered in Qatar.
The Qatari’s company’s ultimate beneficial owners were identified in a March 2026 Albanian registry declaration as Mohamad Moataz Mhd Ruslan Al Khayat, and Ramez Mhd Ruslan Al Khayyat. The brothers are Qatari businessmen who have been publicly linked to financing the Albanian resort development.
One of the directors of Sazan Development Holding, Mahmoud Mutlak Subhi Abdel Khaliq, was also listed as an administrator of Albania Land Development — the company that acquired land from Shehu, who is named in the narcotics trafficking probe.
A document from Albania’s official beneficial ownership registry shows that Albania Land Development is owned by Sazan Land Holding, and that the Khayyat brothers control the company.
Flamingos and Swimming Pools
Rama has fiercely defended the planned resort in the Albanian Parliament, arguing that the Qatari investors are from a globally-renowned company. He has also pointed out that their investment funds are subject to anti-money-laundering oversight by Albanian authorities and international partners.
Rama’s office did not respond to emailed questions, but he told Reuters recently that the project would go ahead, calling the estimated 4-billion-euro investment a “blessing for the country.”
Rama has also publicly dismissed environmental concerns, stating that the permits issued so far are limited to temporary access roads and research activities, while environmental studies are still underway.
However, what began as a localized outcry over a planned development in a protected coastal enclave has rapidly spread into a nationwide reckoning over corruption. The two SPAK investigations only add to the controversy.
Already, protesters have been marching with placards calling for Edi’s resignation. Others carry messages like: “The homeland is not for sale.” Another is even more blunt: “You are thieves.”
Dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution,” protestors have flooded the grand boulevards of Tirana with many carrying pink likenesses of the iconic birds to symbolize the threat that the resort project may pose to the Vjosa-Narta lagoon.
Environmentalists point specifically to a controversial 2024 legislative change. That year, the Albanian Parliament amended the Law on Protected Areas, stripping away strict prohibitions on construction in ecologically sensitive zones, and paving the way for strategic investments.
Rama has argued that the lagoon’s protection status is designed for coexistence between nature and economic, social, and tourism activities, rather than a blanket ban on development.
Conservationists disagree.
“Permitting the construction of five-star resorts would transform the landscape into an urban area imposed upon the natural habitats of birds,” said Olsi Nika, executive director of Eco Albania.
“In other words, where flamingos have their nests today, tomorrow there will be the swimming pool of a villa,” he said.
Additional reporting by Dragana Peco.
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Major Publishers Sue ‘WeLib’, a Pirate Site Built on Anna’s Archive Code
In May, thirteen major publishers won a massive $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna’s Archive in a New York federal court.
This week, the same publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, filed a new complaint at the same court, this time with the relatively young pirate library WeLib as the target.
Again, the stakes are substantial, with the publishers seeking up to $19.5 million in potential damages for direct copyright infringement.
A New Entrant
The similarities don’t stop at the legal arguments and stakes. Anna’s Archive already highlighted the newcomer in a blog post last year, describing WeLib as a “new entrant” in the space that had copied both its collection and its code.
“They appear to have mirrored most of our collection, and use a fork of our codebase,” Anna’s Archive noted.
The same blog post was also critical of WeLib for not contributing back to the ecosystem and recommended that people avoid using the site.
From Anna’s blog post 
This week, the publishers also warn against using the site, albeit for different reasons. Their complaint accuses WeLib’s unnamed and anonymous operators of widespread copyright infringement, while also confirming that connection to Anna’s Archive.
“Defendants’ entire business is the illegal copying and distribution of literary works,” the complaint notes, adding that “WeLib was created after its operators copied the source code and most of the contents of the Notorious Pirate Site, Anna’s Archive.”
Not a Library
WeLib describes itself as an “endless library” founded on the principle that “education and literature belong to everyone.” The publishers, however, clearly don’t agree with the library framing, noting libraries can be trusted; pirate sites not.
“Libraries are trusted institutions that serve the communities that fund them by lending books and other publications they have lawfully acquired. Using this label for WeLib explicitly misleads the public and allows WeLib to hijack the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.”
“WeLib is no more than a pirate website that reproduces and distributes works of authorship owned by others to users for a profit, without authorization from or compensation to the copyright owners,” the complaint adds.
WeLib.org 
The complaint notes that WeLib’s operators made efforts to keep their identities hidden. However, the site itself quickly became a go-to portal for many book pirates.
The complaint notes that, by WeLib’s own account, its collection includes 43 million books and 98 million articles. The site reportedly has over 80,000 active monthly users who accessed more than 51.7 million books and downloaded 14.5 million files last month.
While the site can be used for free, users can pay for fast downloads and to skip the queue. Subscriptions start at $7 per month for 25 fast downloads and 25 fast reads per day; while the top tier costs $90 a month for 1,000 daily downloads.
Staggering Scale 
These payments, or “donations” as WeLib calls them, can be made through cryptocurrency, WeChat, and Alipay. They are allegedly processed through a company called Malum.co, which offers payment services to high-risk vendors, without the need for any KYC identity checks.
Damages and Domain Seizures
The complaint lists a sample of 130 copyrighted works as evidence. This mirrors the Anna’s Archive lawsuit, where the court awarded $150,000 per work, which is the statutory maximum, resulting in a total of $19.5 million.
In addition to the monetary damages, the publishers are also seeking a permanent injunction that aims to take the site offline. They ask the court to order third-party registries, registrars, and hosting providers to disable WeLib’s domains and render them untransferable.
Domain Names Targeted 
This also includes a specific request to disable the authoritative nameserver for the .st domain, registered through Njalla, a Costa Rica-based registrar that is not necessarily responsive to U.S. court orders.
The AI Training Conundrum
As with other recent publisher lawsuits, the complaint also mentions AI training. Specifically, it alleges that WeLib supplies copyright infringing data to AI companies.
“WeLib has also been an illegal supplier of stolen content to the AI industry. In a recent lawsuit, publishers alleged that Meta utilized WeLib to train their Llama models,” the complaint reads.
The recent lawsuit they refer to is Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms which is filed by several of the same publishers through the same law firm, Oppenheim + Zebrak. However, what that complaint actually says about WeLib is more specific and not in line with the current case.
The Elsevier v. Meta complaint describes WeLib as a source found within C4 training dataset Meta used, but identifies it as “formerly known as PDF Drive.” This dataset was built years ago from a Common Crawl snapshot and predates WeLib and even Anna’s Archive.
From Elsevier v. Meta 
More confusingly, the complaint against WeLib that was filed this week makes no mention of it formerly being known as “PDF Drive”, or the C4 dataset for that matter.
According to our knowledge, there is no evidence that content hosted by WeLib was included in the C4 database. All we can confirm is that the database does include “PDF Drive” data and that the pdfdrive.com domain redirected to the new WeLib site at some point.
PDF Drive is a long-running PDF hosting site that has operated for years, predating Anna’s Archive entirely. It has no documented connection to Anna’s Archive’s codebase or collection. Whether it shares more than a domain redirect with the WeLib now being sued is unclear.
The publishers’ framing of WeLib as an active AI training pipeline may be backed up with further evidence later, or not. For now, WeLib has yet to respond. However, since anonymous operators typically don’t show up in court, this case may also copy Anna’s Archive’s path, heading to a default judgment.
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A copy of the complaint, filed by Oppenheim + Zebrak on behalf of the thirteen plaintiff publishers, is available here (pdf).From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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99 Ways to Die – And How to Avoid them
An entertaining guide to death, with tips on how to avoid it, from an emergency medicine doctor.
The post 99 Ways to Die – And How to Avoid them first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
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Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
Israel’s government asked Meta to censor social media content about its ongoing war against Iran, according to internal documents viewed by The Intercept.
Company records show that Israel petitioned Meta to take down Facebook and Instagram posts expressing support for Iran, opposition to Israel, and even depictions of Iranian missile impacts.
The government flagged a variety of materials related to the war, including posts mourning the death of Ayatollah Khamenei following his assassination by the U.S. and Israel on the opening day of the conflict, content supportive of Iran’s retaliatory attacks, and Iranian accounts that shared military analysis and propaganda sympathetic to the Iranian regime’s perspective.
“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war efforts is as old as time.”
In some cases, Meta complied with the censorship requests, the records show, though it is unclear on what grounds. Meta maintains that it only removes content as required by law or materials that violate its speech policies.
When asked how many Iran-related takedown requests had been granted to date since the war began, the company did not answer. The Israeli Ministry of Justice, which submits takedown requests to social media platforms, did not respond to a request for comment.
Israel’s social media lobbying is not new; for years the nation has leaned on its close relationship with Meta to push for targeted enforcement of the company’s content moderation rulebook.
Israel’s Office of the State Attorney routinely lodges complaints to social media platforms on behalf of state security agencies about content deemed illegal or said to promote “terrorism,” according to its website. In the documents reviewed by The Intercept, the office in some cases made no claim that the social media content violated Israeli law. Instead, the office asked that posts or accounts should be removed because they were in violation of Meta’s content moderation rulebook.
Meta, for instance, designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “Dangerous Organization,” and prohibits users from engaging in many forms of positive speech about its actions. This means posts supportive of retaliatory missile launches by the IRGC, for instance, could run afoul of the company’s rules. No such prohibition exists for users who post favorably about the U.S. or Israeli militaries.
Meta did not respond to questions about the Iran war requests, but spokesperson Daniel Roberts provided a statement to The Intercept. “Anyone is able to report content they think violates our rules. Regardless of who or how a piece of content is flagged, we assess it based on our policies, which govern what is and isn’t allowed on our platform. It is wrong and irresponsible to imply that these requests are in any way unusual or improper.”
A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.
Meta has faced scrutiny, specifically in the Middle East, for removing content that doesn’t violate the company’s rules. A 2022 audit commissioned by the company itself found discrepancies in its content moderation practices between Arabic and Hebrew content. “Arabic content had greater over-enforcement (e.g., erroneously removing Palestinian voice) on a per user basis.” the company found. A 2023 report by the company’s inhouse Oversight Board described the “over-enforcement” of the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals blacklist, disproportionately composed of Muslim and Middle Eastern entities.
Meta has long claimed that as an American company, it is legally required to sometimes remove content pertaining to certain entities sanctioned by the U.S., such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But legal scholars say that has little to no precedent or basis in existing sanctions law, which focus on matters of material support rather than political speech. It’s a policy that has created an immense ideological slant: A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.
Further adding to the imbalance when it comes to Middle East crises is the fact that Meta has granted Israel privileged access to its content moderation policy teams. In 2024, The Intercept reported how Meta employee Jordana Cutler, a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, served as a dedicated liaison to the Israeli government, advocating for the country’s interests and helping facilitate the removal of unwanted speech. Few other countries in the world have a dedicated representative within Meta — in 2020, a similar policy head for India market resigned after revelations she had lobbied for rule enforcement that favored India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party. Asked if Cutler has had a role in facilitating Israeli takedown requests of content relating to the war, Meta did not respond.
“Meta’s close relationship with the Israeli government for takedown requests has been a long-standing issue,” Evelyn Douek, a Stanford Law School professor and scholar of digital speech policies, told The Intercept. “Meta’s acquiescence in lots of takedown requests has been a long-standing practice.”
These asymmetries of censorship power are particularly sensitive during times of war, said Douek.
“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war efforts is as old as time,” she said. “Allowing governments to claim national security reasons to suppress speech willy-nilly would obliterate the value of speech protections.”
According to a source familiar with the matter, Israel lobbied Meta to implement a blanket rule restricting imagery of war damage within its territory, mirroring an Israeli news media censorship policy that bars journalists from documenting weapon impacts without military approval. Meta has so far declined to implement such a policy for its billions of global users, the source said. Meta did not respond to questions about the status of this request.
The U.S. and Iran signaled this week that a ceasefire agreement is imminent, though Israel has suggested it would not abide by the terms of a deal. While many of the censorship requests directly addressed the war, others were tangential to the conflict itself. The records show Israel has pushed to remove content expressing outrage over last month’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by far-right government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It also sought to stifle posts critical of rhetoric by Israel that linked Israel’s recent closure of Al-Aqsa with the ongoing war.
In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown requests.
In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown requests. The State Attorney’s Office boasted a 92 percent compliance rate in 2023, and a 2025 report by Drop Site News said the overall rate has climbed to 94 percent since the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Records reviewed by The Intercept show Israel asked for Iran war takedowns using the exact same language evoking Hamas’s October 7 attack that it submitted when requesting the censorship of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli speech across the globe during Israel’s war on Gaza.
“It suggests that they don’t expect their requests are being reviewed very carefully,” Douek said.
Douek argued that the wartime censorship requests underscore the danger of policing speech entirely out of public view through “opaque processes” like governmental backchannels.
“These companies … have been responsive to their own geopolitical and commercial interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful governments.”
“These platforms have always maintained that they are neutral, or that they are just a platform for people to express their views, but it has long been true that these companies have always presented a particular view of the world and have been responsive to their own geopolitical and commercial interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful governments,” Douek said.
This creates a deeply lopsided dynamic when it comes to the Iran war: The two arguably best-represented governments in the world within Meta — the U.S. and Israel — are allied belligerents in a conflict against a state deeply sanctioned by the company’s speech rules. “You’re going to end up with a skewed debate,” Douek said.
The post Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show appeared first on The Intercept.
