US president says Washington, as the ‘winner’ of the war, has a ‘concept’ for charging a toll in strategic waterway.
Published On 6 Apr 20266 Apr 2026
President Donald Trump has suggested the United States may be looking to charge a toll in the Strait of Hormuz after the war, a move that would likely require direct US military control over the strategic waterway.
Asked on Monday whether he would accept a deal that would allow Iran to take fees from ships to traverse the strait, the US president said: “What about us charging tolls? I’d rather do that than let them have them. Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner. We won.”
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Trump reiterated that Iran has been militarily defeated, a claim that he has been making since the early days of the war, despite Iran’s sustained drone and missile attacks across the region and its continuing blockade of Hormuz.
“The only thing they have is the psychology of, ‘Oh, we’re going to drop a couple of mines in the water.’ All right, no, I mean, we have a concept where we’ll charge tolls,” Trump told reporters.
Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean, lies mostly within Omani and Iranian territorial waters. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the strait before the war.
Trump’s latest comments came as he issued what he called a “final” ultimatum to Tehran to reopen the strait and agree to Washington’s terms or face attacks against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
The US president told reporters on Monday that any deal with Iran must include reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be, we want free traffic of oil,” he said.
Reports have suggested that Iran is already charging a toll for some of the few ships it is allowing to pass through the strait.
“The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X last month.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also called for “new arrangements” to manage the waterway after the war, ensuring safe passage for ships and protecting Iran’s interests.
“I believe that after the war, the first step should be drafting a new protocol for the Strait of Hormuz,” he told Al Jazeera in March. “Naturally, this should be done between the countries that lie on both sides of the strait.”
The White House said last week that Trump is considering asking Arab countries to pay for Washington’s expenses in its war on Iran.
A top adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has threatened that Iranian allies could shut the Bab al-Mandeb shipping route as Tehran has effectively done with the Strait of Hormuz.
The Bab-al-Mandeb connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and is a crucial waterway for global oil trade. Its importance has increased since Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas is shipped in peacetime.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and veteran diplomat known for his influence within the establishment, warned on Sunday on X that “the unified command of the Resistance front views Bab al-Mandeb as it does Hormuz”.
“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes, it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move,” Velayati wrote. Iran’s state-owned Press TV subsequently confirmed his warning.
It follows US President Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges from Wednesday this week if Tehran does not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has said that Hormuz is open to ships from countries that negotiate safe passage – apart from the US and Israel. Trump has previously threatened to bomb Iran’s desalination plants.
But if Bab al-Mandeb were closed, it would impact more than the ongoing war – it could compound the global energy supply crisis sparked by the conflict, deepening the economic turmoil being felt in factories, kitchens and at petrol stations around the world.
Where is the Bab al-Mandeb?
The strait is between Yemen to its northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa to the southwest.
It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which then extends into the Indian Ocean. It is 29km (18 miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting traffic to two channels for inbound and outbound shipments and is effectively controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis.
The Yemen-based group is a central part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” – a coalition of groups ideologically or tactically aligned with Tehran which Velayati appears to have been referring to in his Sunday post on X.
Why is the Bab al-Mandeb important for the energy trade?
It is one of the world’s most important shipping routes.
The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia. When the Strait of Hormuz is open, it is also a crucial passageway for Gulf states besides Saudi Arabia to export their crude oil, gas and other fuel to Europe via the Suez Canal or the Sumed (Suez-Mediterranean) Pipeline on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
In 2024, about 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum products passed through the strait – that’s 5 percent of the global total.
If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25 percent – or a quarter of the world’s oil and gas supply.
It’s not just oil: About 10 percent of global trade sails through the Bab al-Mandeb, including containers shipped from China, India and other Asian countries to Europe.
With the Strait of Hormuz shut, Bab al-Mandeb’s importance has only grown.
Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally also relied principally on the Hormuz strait to export its oil, has increasingly turned to its Red Sea port of Yanbu to ship crude out through the Bab al-Mandeb.
For this, it has turned to the East West Pipeline, running from the Abqaiq oil processing centre close to the Gulf to Yanbu. The 1,200km (745-mile) pipeline is operated by Saudi oil giant Aramco.
Where the East West Pipeline transferred an average of 770,000 bpd to the Red Sea coast in January and February, according to energy intelligence firm Kpler, Saudi Arabia cranked up its use in March, when Hormuz was shut. By the end of March, oil was flowing at the pipeline’s capacity of 7 million bpd – more than ever before.
A Yemeni soldier stands guards in front of a commercial ship, ‘Al-Nuba’, which is docked for maintenance, on the coast near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Yemen,on April 5, 2026 [File: Abdulnasser Alseddik/AP]
How could Iran and its allies shut it?
The Houthis have already shown they can do it. During Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, they blocked the Bab al-Mandeb for what they described as ships associated with Israel or the US.
Because of frequent attacks on shipping, insurers refused to offer reducing traffic. In May 2025, the US and the Houthis agreed to a ceasefire and the Yemeni group has since opened up the Bab al-Mandeb again.
Recent days have shown how easy it would be for the Houthis to repeat the disruption during the war on Gaza.
Since late March, the Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel, pointing to their effective entry into the war – for now, against Israel, not the US.
But Nabeel Khoury, a former US diplomat, told Al Jazeera that the missile attacks launched by the Houthis against Israel amounted to “token participation, not full participation”.
“They have fired a couple of missiles as a warning because of all the talk of potential escalation. There are US troops on their way to the region. There’s been talk that if there is no agreement, there might be a full-scale attack on Iran as has not been seen so far,” the former deputy chief of mission in Yemen told Al Jazeera.
If the Houthis truly wanted to enter the war, their weapon would be the blockage of the Bab al-Mandeb.
“All they have to do is fire at a couple of ships coming through, and that would lead to the arrest of all commercial shipping through the Red Sea,” he said. “That would be a red line, and then you would see attacks against Yemen [from the US and Israel] very quickly.”
What would a closure of the Bab al-Mandeb mean for the world?
Elisabeth Kendall, a Middle East specialist and the president of Girton College at Cambridge University, told Al Jazeera that if the Red Sea strait is blocked, it would create a “nightmare scenario”.
“Because if you have restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz at the same time as restrictions are escalating in the Bab al-Mandeb, then you really will disrupt, if not cripple, trade toward Europe. So this is a knife edge, really, depending on what happens next,” she told Al Jazeera.
Kendall, however, said that while this was a “sweet spot” for the Houthis, the Yemeni group might not want to “provoke a Saudi or indeed a broader response.”
United States President Donald Trump says Washington had armed Iranian opposition groups and protesters during mass antigovernment demonstrations in December and January, in which thousands of people were killed during crackdowns by government forces.
Speaking with Trey Yingst on Fox News in a Sunday morning phone interview, the president said the US had been directly involved in efforts to destabilise and overthrow the Iranian government weeks before strikes were launched on February 28 by the US and Israel across Iran and as American negotiators were engaging with senior Iranian officials in Europe.
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As the US-Israel war on Iran entered its 38th day, at least 2,076 people have been killed in Iran and 26,000 injured.
“President Trump told me the United States sent guns to the Iranian protesters,” Yingst reported on Fox News channel.
“He told me, ‘We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them to the Kurds.’ And the president says he thinks the Kurds kept them. He went on to say. ‘We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them.’”
Trump has often framed the decision to strike Iran alongside Israel as partly inspired by his wanting to “free” Iranians from the rule of the Islamic Republic after it cracked down on those protests in January.
But his statements to Yingst could lend weight to Tehran’s own assertions that the protests were not organic and “foreign-backed terrorists” had instigated them. Still, analysts warned that Trump’s frequently shifting statements on Iran mean that it is hard to know with certainty the extent to which the US might have been involved in the protests.
Here’s what we know:
Protesters march against the government in Iran on January 24, 2026, in Berlin, Germany [Omer Messinger/Getty Images]
What happened during the protests?
Demonstrations started on December 28 among shopkeepers in downtown Tehran who were angry about a deepening economic crisis and the falling value of the Iranian rial.
Soon, they spread to big and small cities across the country, morphing into nationwide demonstrations as hundreds of thousands of people of all ages took to the streets. Some protesters by then had begun to call for a change in the government.
Rights groups said Iranian authorities cracked down on the protests, especially on January 8 and 9. Thousands of people, most of them young Iranians, were reportedly killed from gunshots and stab wounds, and tens of thousands of others were arrested.
Iranian authorities also cut off the internet “to conceal their crimes”, according to Amnesty International, throwing the country into an information blackout for days.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Soto said at least 5,000 people were killed and the real death toll could be as high as 20,000.
At least four people have since been executed in connection with the protests, according to Amnesty, with several more people on death row.
The protests were the largest since the September 2022 women’s rights demonstrations that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. She had been arrested for not properly covering her hair. Amini’s death sparked nationwide demonstrations. Authorities were then also accused of firing at protesters and arresting and eventually executing some of them.
What did the Iranian government say?
Then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in a rare acknowledgement on January 17 that “several thousands” of people were killed in the protests after days of official hedging on casualty numbers as bodies piled up.
However, Khamenei blamed the deaths not on Iranian forces but on US- and Israel-backed groups that he said had hijacked the economic protests.
Khamenei accused Trump of being a “criminal” and of being personally involved in the instigation.
Tehran has long blamed its enemies, the US and Israel, for fomenting domestic crises, but alleged this time that the US involvement was deeper than usual.
“Those linked to Israel and the US caused massive damage and killed several thousands” during the protests that shook Iran for more than two weeks, Khamenei was quoted as saying by state media.
“The latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the US president personally became involved,” he added.
Iranian officials later admitted the death toll was about 5,000, including at least 500 security personnel killed by “terrorists and armed rioters”.
An unnamed Iranian official told the Reuters news agency most of the violence and deaths occurred in Kurdish territory in northwestern Iran. That area has long been home to Kurdish separatists and has often recorded unrest.
The Iraq-Iran border crossing of Bashmaq near Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region on March 11, 2026 [AFP]
What did the US government say about the protests?
About a week into the crisis, Trump warned Iran against targeting protesters.
“If Iran sho[o]ts and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform without giving details about what a “rescue” would look like.
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” the president added.
Then on January 13, he wrote, “Help is on its way,” appearing to address Iranian demonstrators. He urged them to “take over your institutions” while issuing threats to Iranian authorities if protesters were killed.
Trump’s warnings to Tehran came after the US bombed three of Iran’s most important nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June. Trump said then that the strikes “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran launched retaliatory strikes on US military assets deployed at a base in Qatar.
After Trump confirmed on February 28 that the US and Israel had launched strikes on Iran, he said the primary goal of the war was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons.
He also linked the action to the January protests.
Tehran had “killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested”, Trump said. The US was now “giving you what you want”, he said, addressing Iranians he said had been calling for US intervention.
Are Trump’s actions and words impacting the Iranian opposition?
Several Iranian Kurdish groups on Sunday denied Trump’s claims of arming them during the December and January protests.
Iranian Kurdish groups have long opposed the government in Tehran and are seeking self-determination. They share close ties with Iraqi Kurds, who successfully fought for a semiautonomous region decades ago. Many operate along the Iraq-Iran border and in northern Iraq.
While they’ve long been fractured, several of the Iranian Kurdish groups banded together in a coalition days before the US and Israel launched the war.
In its first week, Tehran began hitting Kurdish positions in Iraq after US media reported that some Kurdish opposition leaders were speaking with Trump.
At the time, analysts speculated the US could be trying to support Iranian Kurds to seize parts of Iran bordering Iraq. The aim, they said, could be to create a buffer area that would allow invading Israeli or US ground forces to move in from Iraq.
However, so far, neither Israel nor the US has launched ground attacks. Opposition Democrats in the US Congress have spoken out against the war and have particularly opposed US ground troops being sent into Iran although the Trump administration has not entirely ruled it out.
On Sunday, a senior official of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) told the Iraqi broadcaster Rudaw that Trump’s statements to Fox were false.
The KDPI was one of the groups that the US media reported Trump had spoken with in March.
“Those statements made are baseless, and we haven’t received any weapons,” Mohammed Nazif Qaderi was quoted as saying. “The weapons we have are from 47 years ago, and we obtained them on the Islamic Republic’s battlefield, and we bought some from the market.”
The official added that KDPI’s policy is not to “make demonstrations violent and use harsh methods. Rather we believe we must make our demands in a peaceful and civil manner without weapons.”
Denials have also come from the Komala Party, another opposition group.
Iran analyst Neil Quilliam of the United Kingdom’s Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera that it’s hard to assign much weight to Trump’s statements because of the claims and counterclaims often coming from him and his administration.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise if it were later revealed that the US had lent support to protesters to try to encourage a revolt. In fact, I would expect them to do so,” the analyst said.
“However, Trump’s comment reveals nothing material and likely reflects more about him than anything else. His remark about the Kurds keeping the weapons sounded more like sour grapes because they refused to revolt right now rather than pocketing weapons supplies,” he added.
Still, the analyst said that even as a throwaway line, such statements from Trump are likely to affect the cohesion of Iranian opposition groups and their aim to overthrow the Iran’s government.
United States President Donald Trump has announced that the US military has rescued a missing American fighter jet crew member in Iran.
The Air Force officer went missing in a remote part of Iran after the downing of his F-15 jet on Friday. Its two crew members ejected from the plane. The pilot was quickly rescued by US forces, but a search had to be launched for the F-15’s weapons systems officer.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump wrote that the US had rescued the second “seriously wounded, and really brave” airman from “deep inside the mountains of Iran”. It was reported that a firefight between US and Iranian forces took place in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province before the rescue. Iran has not confirmed this, however.
Here is how the complicated rescue mission unfolded:
What has Trump said about the rescue?
While the identity of the rescued airman has not been made public, Trump referred to him as “a highly respected Colonel”.
He added that the type of rescue mission that recovered him “is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment’”.
Trump said two raids had taken place, and the pilot was rescued in “broad daylight” during the second raid. It is unclear when precisely the pilot was rescued. The US president wrote that the rescue was “unusual, spending seven hours over Iran”.
In his post, Trump said he would talk more about the rescue mission during a news conference with the US military in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday at 1pm (17:00 GMT).
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone because his Commander in Chief, Secretary of War, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and fellow Warfighters were monitoring his location 24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”
Trump added that he had ordered dozens of aircraft carrying “lethal weapons” to be sent to retrieve the airman, who had managed to evade Iranian forces for two days.
Iranian state media released on April 3, 2026, images of what they said were fragments of a downed US fighter jet found in central Iran [Handout/IRIB via Reuters]
How did the search unfold?
On Friday morning, the US confirmed that an F-15E Strike Eagle had been shot down over southern Iran. The F-15 is a tactical fighter jet used by the US Air Force that first flew in 1972. Modern variants of the jet cost more than $90m each.
State media outlets in Iran showed photos of what they said was wreckage from the F-15 and what appeared to be an ejection seat with an attached parachute.
Trump suggested that the US knew the location of the plane’s second airman and was tracking him as the rescue mission unfolded.
Iran was also racing to locate the airman. Tehran called on the public to hand over the soldier to the authorities in what appeared to be an effort to secure an American prisoner of war.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Sunday that Iranian forces had also destroyed two C-130 aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters during the operation to rescue the US airman in southern Isfahan province.
What do we know about the two C-130 planes that Iran says it destroyed?
The C-130 Hercules and the newer C-130J Super Hercules variant were developed by the US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. They are military transport aircraft primarily used for tactical airlifts, troop transport and medical evacuations.
The Wall Street Journal reported that each C-130 costs more than $100m.
The newspaper said in a report on Sunday that the US blew up the C-130 jets on the ground during the rescue operation, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the matter. This unnamed official did not explain how the jets were downed during the rescue operation but told the outlet that it was necessary to destroy them to ensure they did not fall into enemy hands.
Has the US lost other military assets or personnel?
Yes. This conflict has killed 13 US service members and wounded more than 300, the US military’s Central Command said, but no US soldiers have been taken prisoner by Iran.
Since the start of the war on February 28, the US has lost three F-15 fighter jets in what it said was a friendly fire incident over Kuwait. A US military refuelling aircraft also went down over Iraq last month, killing all six crew members.
According to the US military, the last US fighter jet to be shot down by enemy fire before the F-15 on Friday was an A-10 Thunderbolt II during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
At least one Black Hawk helicopter was hit during the initial rescue operation, US officials said, but it managed to stay airborne.
An A-10 Warthog aircraft was also hit near the Strait of Hormuz a short time after the F-15E on Friday, but its pilot was able to eject before the plane crashed and was subsequently rescued. Iranian media reported this aircraft was hit by Iran’s defence systems.
Iran has not yet confirmed that a firefight took place before the F-15 airman’s rescue. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said a firefight appeared to have occurred in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province and nine people were reported to have been killed in “strikes” there although it was unclear if this was related to the US rescue mission.
Company says move amid US-Israel war on Iran comes after a request from the US government.
Published On 5 Apr 20265 Apr 2026
Satellite imaging company Planet Labs has said it will indefinitely withhold visuals of Iran and the region of conflict in the Middle East to comply with a request from United States President Donald Trump’s administration.
The US company announced the decision in an email to customers on Saturday, with news agencies quoting it as saying the government had asked satellite imagery providers to impose an “indefinite withhold of imagery”.
The restriction expands upon a 14-day delay on imagery of the Middle East that Planet Labs implemented last month, which extended an initial 96-hour delay, a move the firm said was meant to prevent adversaries from using the imagery to attack the US and its allies.
Planet Labs said it will withhold imagery dating back to March 9 and that it expects the policy to remain in effect until the end of the war, which began on February 28 when the US and Israel launched aerial attacks against Iran. The conflict has since spread across the region, with Iran firing missile and drone barrages at Israel and US assets, as well as civilian infrastructure across the Gulf.
Planet Labs, which was founded in 2010 by former NASA scientists, said in its email to customers that it would switch to a “managed distribution of images” deemed not to pose a risk to safety.
Under a new system, Planet Labs will release imagery on a case-by-case basis for urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest.
“These are extraordinary circumstances, and we are doing all we can to balance the needs of all our stakeholders,” the California-based company was quoted as saying.
Military uses of satellite technology include target identification, weapons guidance, missile tracking and communications. Some space specialists say Iran could be accessing commercial imagery, including pictures obtained via US adversaries. Satellite images also help journalists and academics studying hard-to-reach places.
Authorities in New Iberia, Louisiana, have said the incident does not appear to be an intentional car-ramming.
Published On 4 Apr 20264 Apr 2026
An estimated 15 people have been injured in Louisiana’s Iberia Parish, after a car struck participants at a Lao New Year parade in the United States.
According to a statement from the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office on Saturday, some attendees were seriously injured.
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“Based on the preliminary investigation, this does not appear to be an intentional act,” said Rebecca Melancon, a sheriff’s office spokesperson.
The Acadian Ambulance company confirmed on social media that it had taken 11 people to the hospital using ground transport, and another two victims were airlifted to seek urgent care. Ten ambulances and two medical helicopters were deployed to the scene.
The incident took place in New Iberia, a city of more than 28,000 in Iberia Parish, some 34km (21 miles) south of Lafayette, Louisiana. It is situated roughly 214km (130 miles) west of New Orleans.
The Louisiana Lao New Year Festival parade is an annual tradition on Easter weekend in the parish, and the celebration features live music, food vendors and a beauty pageant.
In the aftermath of the car crash, the festival issued a statement on social media, saying that all of its security resources had been surged to the scene.
“We are profoundly saddened by the news of the incident near the festival grounds,” festival organisers wrote. “We are awaiting additional details from authorities as they become available.”
They added that Saturday’s musical events were cancelled, though vendors were permitted to stay open until 9pm local time (2:00am GMT, Sunday).
“We are praying for the victims and for their families during this difficult time,” the organisers wrote. “As of now, and if security resources are restored for tomorrow (Sunday) we will reopen only the religious services of the festival, and vendors will stay open.”
The Lao New Year is a tradition typically associated with Buddhism, and it takes place each year in April, as the dry heat in Laos gives way to the wet monsoon season.
Louisiana is home to a small but vibrant Lao community. In New Iberia, one neighbourhood is called Lanexang Village — roughly translated to the “million elephants” village — and it is reportedly home to hundreds of Lao people.
Many arrived as a result of the Vietnam War, which bled into Laos, with communist and US-backed forces clashing over the course of nearly 16 years.
The Pathet Lao, a communist movement, ultimately took over the country in 1975, ending Laos’s monarchy. Hundreds of thousands of people fled in the aftermath, with many resettling in countries like Thailand and the US.
Lawyers have estimated that as many as 75 women may have a stake in the $72.5m settlement reached with Bank of America over accusations related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
United States District Judge Jed Rakoff had called on the lawyers to compile a broad list of publications by Friday that could be used to notify Epstein’s victims, who are believed to number in the hundreds.
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Rakoff explained he wanted to make sure that “nobody is left out” of the settlement. A final approval hearing for the settlement is scheduled for August 27.
The settlement was first announced in court filings on March 27, after a proposed class action lawsuit against Bank of America was allowed to proceed.
In October, a woman who went by the pseudonym Jane Doe filed the lawsuit on behalf of herself and the other women and girls who say they were abused by Epstein.
She and her lawyers argued that Bank of America, the second-largest banking institution in the US, had ignored suspicious transactions related to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operations.
The lawsuit further alleged that Bank of America knowingly benefitted from its relationship with Epstein and obstructed enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a federal law designed to prosecute sex trafficking.
As part of the settlement, Bank of America reiterated its position that it did not participate in Epstein’s sex crimes.
“While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs,” its statement said.
Rakoff gave his preliminary approval to the settlement on Thursday, though he acknowledged that the gravity of Epstein’s crimes go beyond a dollar amount.
“While it’s perhaps extremely likely that the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrous acts can never be fully compensated, the victims are entitled to receive just compensation from any person or entity that knowingly, recklessly or otherwise unlawfully facilitated his sexual trafficking,” Rakoff said.
The Bank of America deal is the third such settlement with a major banking institution.
In 2023, two other financial organisations, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, also agreed to settle with victims over accusations that they overlooked telltale signs of Epstein’s crimes. JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $290m, while Deutsche Bank settled for $75m.
Judge Rakoff, however, dismissed a suit in January against the Bank of New York Mellon. Lawyers for Doe are appealing that decision.
Rakoff has argued that, while it is fair to seek compensation from those who facilitated Epstein’s crimes, not everyone associated with the convicted sex offender should be held liable.
“It’s not fair to penalize those persons or entities that were drawn into his wide orbit but had no role in assisting or benefiting from his egregious misconduct,” Rakoff said.
Prosecutors believe Epstein had been preying upon girls and young women for decades before his death in a New York City jail in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
A wealthy financier, Epstein had also cultivated a social circle inhabited by some of the most powerful figures in politics, arts and business.
They included figures like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a disgraced former prince from the United Kingdom, and two United States presidents, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Critics have long argued that Epstein’s influential associates helped shield him from accountability during his lifetime.
In 2008, Epstein struck a deal with prosecutors that saw him register as a sex offender and plead guilty to two state charges: solicitation of prostitution and procuring a minor for sex.
But through the deal, he avoided federal charges and a lengthy prison term. He ended up serving only 13 months of an 18-month sentence.
At the time of Epstein’s death in 2019, federal prosecutors had renewed their investigation into the financier and brought sex-trafficking charges against him.
One of the lawyers representing Doe, David Boies, said he believes there are at least 60 to 75 women who may be eligible to participate in the Bank of America settlement.
“There may be more we haven’t identified,” he added.
United States-based scholars sign open letter raising concerns about conduct, rhetoric during US-Israeli war on Iran.
Published On 3 Apr 20263 Apr 2026
More than 100 United States-based international law experts have signed an open letter condemning US and Israeli military strikes on Iran as a violation of the United Nations Charter and potentially amounting to “war crimes”.
The letter, published on Thursday, also said the conduct of US forces and statements by senior US officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law”.
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The scholars warned that the US-Israeli campaign, which began on February 28, was launched without UN Security Council authorisation and without credible evidence of an imminent Iranian threat.
“Force against another state is only permitted in self-defense against an actual or imminent armed attack or where authorized by the UN Security Council. The Security Council did not authorize the attack. Iran did not attack Israel or the United States,” the letter said.
The experts’ concerns fall into four areas: the legality of the decision to go to war; the conduct of hostilities; threatening rhetoric from senior officials; and what they describe as the dismantling of civilian protection structures inside the US government under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “gloves off” approach to warfare.
The scholars highlighted a strike on a primary school in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, as well as attacks on hospitals, water plants and energy infrastructure.
“We are seriously concerned about strikes that have hit schools, health facilities, and homes,” the letter said.
‘Alarming disrespect’ for international law
The letter also condemned public statements by senior US officials, including President Donald Trump.
In particular, it noted a mid-March comment from Trump where he said the US may conduct strikes on Iran “just for fun”. It also cited comments from Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth from early March in which he said the US does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement”.
“Public statements by senior officials indicate an alarming disrespect for the rules of international humanitarian law accepted by states, and which protect both civilians and members of the armed forces,” the letter said.
It also added that the war is costing US taxpayers up to $2bn a day.
The letter was co-authored by prominent legal scholars including Yale Law School’s Oona Hathaway and Harold Koh, Philip Alston of NYU, and former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth.
The experts said that due to their connection to the US, their main focus was on the conduct of that government, but they “remain concerned about the risk of atrocities across the region”.
They also highlighted the “importance of equal application of international law to all, including countries that hold themselves out as global leaders”, expressing concern about the harm this war is doing to the international legal order and the system of international law.
The signatories are urging Washington to change course, writing: “We urge US government officials to uphold the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and human rights law at all times, and to publicly make clear US commitment to and respect for norms of international law.”
US president has said that he will use tariffs to bring down costly pharmaceutical drugs, but the impact remains uncertain.
Published On 2 Apr 20262 Apr 2026
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that could slap long-threatened tariffs of up to 100 percent on some patented drugs if pharmaceutical companies don’t reach deals with his administration in the coming months.
Under Thursday’s executive order, companies that have signed a “most favoured nation” pricing deal and are actively building facilities in the US will have a zero-percent tariff.
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For those that don’t have a pricing deal but are building such projects in the US, a 20 percent tariff will apply, but it will increase to 100 percent in four years.
A senior administration official told reporters on a press call that companies still have months to negotiate before the 100 percent tariffs kick in. Bigger companies will have 120 days, and 180 days are offered for everyone else.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview the executive order before it was issued, did not identify any companies or drugs that were in jeopardy of getting hit with the increased tariffs.
But the source noted the administration had already reached 17 pricing deals with major drugmakers, 13 of which have signed.
In Thursday’s executive order, Trump wrote that he deemed the tariffs necessary “to address the threatened impairment of the national security posed by imports of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients”.
The order arrived on the first anniversary of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, when the president unveiled sweeping new import taxes on nearly every country in the world, sending the stock market reeling. Those “Liberation Day” tariffs were among the duties the Supreme Court overturned in February.
Critics, pharmaceutical leaders and medical groups warned of the consequences the new tariffs could bring.
Stephen J Ubl, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company trade group PhRMA, said taxes “on cutting-edge medicines will increase costs and could jeopardize billions in US investments”.
He pointed to America’s already large footprint in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and noted medicines sourced from other countries “overwhelmingly come from reliable US allies”.
Trump has launched a barrage of new import taxes on US trading partners since the start of his second term and repeatedly pledged sky-high levies on foreign-made drugs.
But the administration has also used the threat of new levies to strike deals with major companies — like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb — over the last year, with promises of lower prices for new drugs.
Beyond company-specific rates, a handful of countries have reached trade frameworks with the US to further cap tariffs on drugs sent to the US.
The European Union, Japan, Korea and Switzerland will see a 15 percent US tariff on patented pharmaceuticals, matching previously agreed rates for most goods.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom will get 10 percent, which Thursday’s order noted would “then reduce to zero” under future trade agreements.
The UK previously said it secured a zero-percent tariff rate for all British medicines exported to the US for at least three years.
Ten Muslim civil rights groups have issued a joint letter denouncing the arrest of a Palestinian American community leader in Wisconsin, Salah Sarsour.
The president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a vocal Palestinian advocate, Sarsour was reportedly pulled over by 10 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while driving on March 30.
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The joint letter explains that Sarsour was transferred to a detention facility in Illinois, then to Indiana, leaving his family “scrambling to determine his whereabouts”.
A lawful permanent resident, he had lived in the US for 32 years, according to the letter, and his wife and children are all US citizens. Sarsour has been in immigration detention ever since his arrest.
“We must be clear that Salah is being targeted on the basis of his Palestinian and Muslim background,” the letter, issued Thursday, said.
It was co-signed by organisations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and the US Council of Muslim Organizations.
The groups noted that, under President Donald Trump, a number of immigrant activists, scholars and foreign students had been targeted for deportation based on their pro-Palestinian solidarity.
“His detention reflects a troubling trend we’ve seen with Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Mohsen Mahdawi and other voices critical of Israeli oppression,” the groups wrote.
“This administration is weaponizing the U.S. justice system to advance the interests of a foreign state, Israel, at a time when it is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.”
The groups have launched an online campaign for Sarsour’s legal defence. By Thursday afternoon, it had earned over $35,500 in donations.
While the Trump administration has yet to issue a statement about Sarsour’s arrest, it has taken a hardline approach to pro-Palestinian activism.
When running for re-election in 2024, Trump pledged to crack down on protesters denouncing human rights abuses during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
According to statements obtained by the Washington Post in May 2024, Trump reportedly called the protest movement a “radical revolution” and said that, if he were elected, he planned “to set that movement back 25 or 30 years”.
Within months of taking office in January 2025, Trump proceeded to take action.
Starting in March 2025, his administration moved to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds from universities that saw protests unfold on their campuses, citing claims of anti-Semitism.
Federal agents also arrested legal permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student leader, stripping him of his green card.
One scholar, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkiye, saw her student visa revoked for co-signing a pro-Palestinian opinion piece in her school’s student newspaper.
The arrests and subsequent efforts to rapidly deport the activists and scholars have prompted widespread condemnation as a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and protest.
Officials in Wisconsin have been among the leaders to denounce Sarsour’s arrest as the latest in a series of efforts to stifle free speech. Two local alderpersons, JoCasta Zamarripa and Alex Bower, called the situation a “nightmare”.
“This is an illegal detention of a longtime permanent U.S. resident, as Mr Sarsour is a Milwaukeean who is lawfully present in our community,” they wrote in a joint statement on Thursday.
“The unacceptable activities by ICE — and especially illegally detaining citizens without due process — must stop immediately. How dare federal ICE agents come into our community and unlawfully detain a grandfather, a faith leader, a Wisconsinite!”
State Senator Chris Larson, meanwhile, underscored that the federal government has yet to offer any reasons publicly for Sarsour’s arrest.
“We have already seen numerous Muslim activists unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the Trump Administration for their beliefs and their speech,” Larson wrote.
“These Unconstitutional assaults on our freedoms should alarm all of us. When any individual or group is targeted by the government for their speech, all of our freedoms are threatened.”
