International News from Friday, April 18th, 2025

A US judge barred the Trump administration from rapidly deporting hundreds if not thousands of migrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to show they fear being persecuted, tortured or killed there.

Israeli airstrikes hit around 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, the military said on Friday, hours after Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire offer that it said fell short of its demand to agree a full end to the war.

The Trump administration on Thursday ordered a social media vetting for all US visa applicants who have been to the Gaza Strip on or after January 1, 2007, an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters showed, in the latest push to tighten screening of foreign travellers.

A US citizen hijacked a small Tropic Air plane in Belize on Thursday at knifepoint, injuring three others before being shot and killed, police said.

A former Harvard Medical School morgue manager accused of stealing and selling organs and other parts of cadavers donated to the school for medical research and education has agreed to plead guilty.

Hamas wants a comprehensive deal to end the war in Gaza and swap all Israeli hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel, a senior official from the Palestinian group said, rejecting Israel's offer of an interim truce.

US strikes on the Ras Isa fuel port in western Yemen killed at least 38 people on Thursday, Houthi-run media said, one of the deadliest days since the US began its attacks on the group.