Dozens of U.N. food trucks were blocked and offloaded by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as desperation mounts following Israel’s monthslong blockade, while talks of a ceasefire inch forward.
The U.N. Food Program said Saturday that 77 trucks carrying aid, mostly flour, were stopped by hungry people who took the food before the trucks were able to reach their destination.
“After nearly 80 days of total blockade, communities are starving – and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement. “This delivery is a start, but it’s not nearly enough.”
Displaced Palestinians, including women and children living in tents, receive food distributed by aid organizations in al Mawasi district of Khan Yunis, Gaza on May 30, 2025.
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images
A nearly three-month Israeli blockade on Gaza has pushed the population of nearly 2.3 million people to the brink of famine. While the pressure slightly eased in recent days as Israel allowed some aid to enter, organizations say there still isn’t nearly enough food getting in.
The United Nations has called Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth.”
“To restore home, ease fear, and prevent further chaos, we must flood communities with food – now,” the WFP said. “Only consistent, large-scale aid can rebuild trust.”
A witness in the southern city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press the U.N. convoy was stopped at a makeshift roadblock and offloaded by desperate civilians in their thousands. Most people carried bags of flour on their backs or heads. He said at one point a forklift was used to offload pallets from the stranded trucks. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.
People carry their sacks of flour distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza, where there is a food crisis due to Israeli attacks on May 31, 2025.
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images
Hamas on Friday said it was reviewing a U.S.-led proposal for a temporary ceasefire that Israel has already accepted. President Trump said that negotiators were nearing a deal.
During the proposed 60-day ceasefire, a draft of the deal obtained by CBS News indicated that Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 dead hostages in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including some serving life sentences, and much-needed food aid and other assistance.
The United Nations said earlier this month that Israeli authorities have forced them to use unsecured routes within areas controlled by the Israeli military in the eastern areas of Rafah and Khan Younis, where armed gangs are active and trucks were stopped.
Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond for comment.
An internal document shared with aid groups about security incidents, seen by the Associated Press, said there were four incidents of facilities being looted in three days at the end of May, not including the convoy on Saturday.
The situation in Gaza highlights the growing desperation and urgent need for humanitarian assistance in the besieged enclave.
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images
The U.N. says it’s been unable to get enough aid in because of fighting. On Friday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it only picked up five truckloads of cargo from the Palestinian side of the Kareem Shalom crossing, and the other 60 trucks had to return due to intense hostilities in the area.
An Israeli official said his country has offered the U.N. logistical and operational support but “the U.N. is not doing their job.” Instead, a new U.S- and Israeli-backed foundation started operations in Gaza this week, distributing food at several sites in a chaotic rollout. Israel says the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will replace the massive aid operation that the U.N. and others have carried out throughout the war.
It says the new mechanism is necessary, accusing Hamas of siphoning off large amounts of aid. The U.N. denies that a significant diversion takes place.
Cindy McCain, the WFP’s executive director, told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” last Sunday that there is no evidence to support Israel’s claims that Hamas is responsible for the looting of their aid trucks.
“These people are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it,” she said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything. It has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death.”
Smoke and dust rising over the destroyed and heavily damaged residential areas following the Israeli attacks in the northern Gaza Strip are seen from the Gaza-Israel border region on May 31, 2025.
Tsafrir Abayov/Anadolu via Getty Images
Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its military campaign across Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the last 24 hours. It said three people were shot by Israeli gunfire early Saturday morning in the southern city of Rafah. Three other people were killed, parents and a child, when their car was struck in Gaza City.
The war began when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 250 hostages. Of those taken captive, 58 remain in Gaza, but Israel believes 35 are dead, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there are “doubts” about the fate of several others.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 54,000 Gaza residents, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
Palestinians picking up food packages from the Trump administration-backed American alternative to the United Nations (UN) in Gaza were reportedly shocked the aid was free, having become used to being charged for it.
As Breitbart News reported, the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was launched to provide an alternative to the UN, which either fails to deliver trucks of aid or allegedly lets Hamas steal the supplies.
Hamas then keeps the aid (especially fuel) for itself, sells the aid on the black market, or makes Palestinians pay inflated prices for it.
The Free Press reported that receiving free aid was in fact a new phenomenon: “According to the source, one man who picked up a food box asked four or five times if the food was really free. “It illuminated their perspective on aid and the aid distribution he had experienced in the past.” Videos of Gazans waiting in line to receive food boxes show people waving and cheering.”
Critics of Israel, including the UN, condemned the American operation, which is designed to enable Israel to undermine Hamas’s authority in Gaza while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues clearing out the terrorist group.
The Free Press noted: “None of the foundation’s success in providing over 840,000 meals so far seemed to translate on social media, where images of the aid handout were rapidly turned into memes comparing Gazans waiting for food to Jewish prisoners waiting at Auschwitz.”
Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, a confidential report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Saturday, and called on Tehran to urgently change course and comply with the agency’s probe.
The report comes at a sensitive time as Tehran and Washington have been holding several rounds of talks in the past weeks over a possible nuclear deal that U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to reach.
The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency — which was seen by The Associated Press — says that as of May 17, Iran has amassed 900.8 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60%.
That’s an increase of 294.9 pounds — or almost 50% — since the IAEA’s last report in February. The 60% enriched material is a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. A report in February put this stockpile level at 605.8 pounds.
There was no immediate comment from Tehran on the new IAEA report.
The IAEA report raised a stern warning, saying that Iran is now “the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce such material” — something the agency said was of “serious concern.”
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaks to journalists attending a weeklong seminar at the agency in Vienna, Austria, Wednesday, May 28, 2025.
Jon Gambrell / AP
Approximately 92.5 pounds of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb, if enriched further to 90%, according to the watchdog.
The IAEA report, a quarterly, also estimated that as of May 17, Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium — which includes uranium enriched to lower levels — stood at 20,387.4 pounds. That’s an increase of 2,101.4 pounds since February’s report.
Iran’s nuclear program
Iran has maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, but the IAEA chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so.
Iranian officials have increasingly suggested that Tehran could pursue an atomic bomb.
U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Israel said Saturday’s report was a clear warning sign that “Iran is totally determined to complete its nuclear weapons program,” according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
It said IAEA’s report “strongly reinforces what Israel has been saying for years — the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful.”
It also added that Iran’s level of enrichment “has no civilian justification whatsoever” and appealed on the international community to “act now to stop Iran.”
It is rare for Netanyahu to make statements on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest, underlying the urgency with which he sees the matter.
Grossi said Saturday that he “reiterates his urgent call upon Iran to cooperate fully and effectively” with the IAEA’s years-long investigation into uranium traces discovered at several sites in Iran.
The IAEA also circulated to member states on Saturday a second, 22-page confidential report, also seen by the AP, that Grossi requested following a resolution passed by the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors last November.
In this so-called “comprehensive report,” the IAEA said that Iran’s cooperation with the agency has “been less than satisfactory” when it comes to uranium traces discovered by IAEA inspectors at several locations in Iran that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites.
Western officials suspect that the uranium traces discovered by the IAEA could provide evidence that Iran had a secret military nuclear program until 2003.
One of the sites became known publicly in 2018 after Netanyahu revealed it at the United Nations and called it a clandestine nuclear warehouse hidden at a rug-cleaning plant.
Iran denied this but in 2019 IAEA inspectors detected the presence of manmade uranium particles there.
After initially blocking IAEA access, inspectors were able to collect samples in 2020 from two other locations where they also detected the presence of manmade uranium particles.
The three locations became known as Turquzabad, Varamin, and Marivan. A fourth undeclared location named as Lavisan-Shian is also part of the IAEA probe but IAEA inspectors never visited the site because it was razed and demolished by Iran after 2003.
In Saturday’s comprehensive report, the IAEA says that the “lack of answers and clarifications provided by Iran” to questions the watchdog had regarding Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Marivan “has led the agency to conclude that these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear program carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material.”
FILE – The flag of the International Atomic Energy Agency flies in front of its headquarters during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, on Feb. 6, 2023.
Heinz-Peter Bader / AP
How the world could react to U.N. report
Saturday’s comprehensive report could be a basis for possible further steps by European nations, leading to a potential escalation in tensions between Iran and the West.
European countries could move to trigger snap-back sanctions against Iran that were lifted under the original 2015 nuclear deal ahead of October, when the deal formally expires.
On Thursday, senior Iranian officials dismissed speculation about an imminent nuclear deal with the United States, emphasizing that any agreement must fully lift sanctions and allow the country’s nuclear program to continue.
The comments came a day after Trump said he has told Netanyahu to hold off on striking Iran to give the U.S. administration more time to push for a new deal with Tehran.
Trump said on Friday that he still thinks a deal could be completed in the “not too distant future.”
“They don’t want to be blown up. They would rather make a deal,” Trump said of Iran. He added, “That would be a great thing that we could have a deal without bombs being dropped all over the Middle East.”
A view from orbit: Digital power may be invisible, but its infrastructure is now as critical as any territory on Earth. Unsplash+
In 2024, the world’s digital economies constituted about 15 percent of global GDP in nominal terms, and there are rising elements of emerging digital economies in almost every nation, according to the International Data Center Authority’s Global Digital Economy Report 2025. With data being the most expensive commodity in the world, the capability to process and transact data becomes vital to the prosperity of nations. This is an era where GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) or HPCs (High Performance Computing) have the potential to be used alternatively with GDP as a measurable economic indicator. The digital economy represents all economic activities reliant on or significantly enhanced by digital technologies, including digital infrastructure, digital services and data. In essence, a digital economy uses technology to create, deliver and transact goods and services. With its importance to our modern lives, the global digital economy stands on five pillars that define its existence, growth and sustainability.
The Five Pillars of the Digital Economy
Pillar 1: Strategy
Strategy is the foremost fundamental pillar of building digital economies. Without an overarching strategy defining the digital economy goals and objectives, the journey will be random and insecure for all stakeholders. The U.S., as the world’s largest digital economy, has reached its status due to the sheer size of its technology and investment base. However, to date, the nation lacks a strategic plan at the macro level to harness the key targets and decipher measurable milestones for building and operating a sustainable digital economy. This is while smaller nations are becoming fierce competitors by not only learning from the lessons learned by the world’s leading nations, namely the U.S., but also planning for shortcuts and strategizing to optimize results. Like any other form of economy, digital economies can also be vulnerable and face potent catastrophes if they are not well-planned and clearly understood. All world nations need a coherent, comprehensive digital economy strategy that will maintain their consistent growth over the long term.
There have been attempts to put forward such plans throughout the most recent administrations. However, all these plans partially tackled the grander scheme of the digital economy and merely focused on transforming the business functions of the government. Barack Obama Administration tried to codify this culture by enabling the nation’s first national CIO, who developed a Cloud First strategy that continues to be followed to some extent throughout U.S. government agencies today. Donald Trump’s first administration unleashed the Cloud Smart strategy in an amplifying continuation. Due to the predicted shortages of energy and liquidity, the current administration started its international economic campaigns by visiting energy and cash-rich nations of the Middle East to secure investments with a key focus on A.I. and digital infrastructure. However, all of these are responsive measures and not proactive by any stretch of the imagination. Most days in the tenures of any administration are spent on familiar geopolitical and domestic concerns, and there appears to be no national call for creating a robust digital economy model for the world, similar to the 1960s call for landing people on the moon.
Meanwhile, the world’s second-largest economic power, China, is clearly focusing on A.I. development given the recent appearance of the DeepSeek generative A.I. platform, and unmistakable activity in building out its data center infrastructure and the electricity to power it. Though not transparent in their thinking, China’s leaders seem determined to continue the country’s superpower status. Similarly, Saudi Arabia is emerging as a noted leader in this area, with its Vision 2030, which focuses on A.I., smart cities, increased cloud services and e-government services. In parallel, a recent announcement of a sprawling A.I. campus that would consume several gigawatts of power in the United Arab Emirates is a clear indicator of the UAE’s vision for this sector as well. In India, Narendra Modi’s Administration, recently reelected for a third term, remains focused on turning what is now the world’s most populous country into a developed nation by 2047. India has accomplished a heavy economic lift in recent decades, and its people seem determined to keep this momentum alive.
Pillar 2:Policy
Subsequent to strategy, policy is paramount to the success of digital economies. Even the best strategies would be infertile if they were not accompanied by effective policies that mandate change and maintain order. In the absence of effective policies, even if there are short-term gains in sight, long-term credentials remain volatile. Government policy functions as a reach of a nation’s executive arm to encourage the development of digital economies and the legal framework to do so. In this context, the role of policy is to legalize the phase-by-phase deployment of the overarching national digital economy strategies and render a predictable business and investment environment that fosters stability and growth.
Many pieces of recent legislation around the world focus on what not to do. For example, the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) focuses on illegal content, A.I. platform accountability and individual user rights. The companion Digital Markets Act (DMA) seeks to regulate fair-minded competition. The more recent EU A.I. Act follows these precedents. Similarly, laws in the United States, such as the E-Sign Act, Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and California Consumer Privacy Act, focus on legal issues and regulatory control. India, Singapore, Australia, Nigeria, and others have similar new regulations.
But where is the legislation for upgraded “interstate highway” networks, massive A.I. center development and government support of modern software development? While we are busy being proud of our immense global edge, other nations are bringing their bright minds to set the right policies that make digital economy sense, given their nations’ natural strengths and vulnerabilities. For instance, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently announced lifting all taxes related to data centers in hopes of attracting $2T of digital infrastructure investments to the country. As technology evolves, policies must change. Without the right policies, the world’s greatest economies will suffer the gravest impacts. The first policy required for any nation, state or organization is to make sure all policies are regularly revisited and revised.
Pillar 3: Energy
With the exponential rate of A.I. growth, the demand for building massive data centers has never been greater. These data centers need energy to fuel their processing capabilities and fulfill their function. Currently projected to need at least 300 gigawatts of energy for data centers by 2023, the world is under pressure to meet this demand, and the attention on the global scarcity of energy is unlike any other time in the history of humankind. This is another area of concern to the United States, which has already seen electricity shortages in its most highly developed data center hubs. Loudoun County, VA, famously has the world’s largest concentration of data centers and has been combating this shortage to meet its data center market demand over the past several months. Concerns over the consumption of electricity by data centers have also been raised in Singapore, South Korea, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and many developing nations that have underdeveloped, struggling electricity grids. Seemingly, sustainability has been front and center in any discussions of energy and has now been built out to deliver 30 percent of the world’s electricity. Though not renewable, nuclear energy is sustainable and was given a new life with its endorsement at the United Nations’ COP28 summit in December 2023 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Encouraging the development of sustainable energy weighs heavily in determining the best performers in the IDCA’s Global Digital Readiness of Nations ranking. The United States is not a leader in this area, even as significant amounts of solar and wind energy continue to be developed, and large amounts of hydropower are imported from Canada.
Pillar 4: Human Capital
Educating and empowering the necessary human capital is critical to developing and growing global digital economies. Possessing a skilled and capable workforce is a key success factor for any nation on the digital economy front. The IDCA’s Global Digital Economy Report 2025 found a need for slightly more than 100 million new IT-related jobs throughout the world by 2030 if the global workforce is going to keep pace with the massive buildout of A.I. data centers. China and India both face serious demands for new tech job creation, but the rest of the developing world sees a need for at least 25 million of these jobs. To combat this challenge, effective and tactical professional training (such as certified training programs) plays a vital role here. Even the world’s highly developed nations face daunting tasks of retraining and upskilling existing tech workforces to meet the demands of today and the near-term future. This makes it incumbent upon nations to plan carefully and effectively for their human capital and ensure that human resource shortages are overcome with speed and care so that their digital economies do not tremble.
Pillar 5: Digital Infrastructure
The digital economy is just a term without the data centers, as the data factories that process and turn a nation’s modern economic wheel. Digital infrastructure density actually varies by magnitudes throughout the developed world, even as many nations are concerned about provisioning new infrastructure. This disparity is magnified by at least 1,000 times in the developing world, much of which is utterly lacking in the digital infrastructure required to bring life to strategies and policies. The underlying digital infrastructure and data center “footprint,” as it’s called in the data center industry, sets the foundation for any nation’s digital economy. The United States currently has more than 40 percent of the entire world’s footprint, but must modernize many of its existing facilities and think on a grand scale if it wishes to establish and maintain leadership with A.I.. Numerous highly ambitious plans have been announced for the U.S. this year, including the $500 billion StarGate plan. But it behooves the U.S. leadership to think of a more organized, thought-out plan to develop on this scale and to work with the business leaders who plan to make it happen. With the ever-expanding densities, devising and building the right set of digital infrastructure gear is key to ensuring that the needs of the new A.I. workloads are met.
It is perceived that the most significant projects can remain the province of the world’s largest nations. However, in a world where nations need to share knowledge and resources, the development of digital economies does not have to be a winner-takes-all competition. If some measure of coordinated strategy and collaborative policy can be worked out, the entire world will benefit. The U.S., still the world’s largest economy by a significant amount, can lead the way in continuing to develop its digital economy and setting examples to be followed. The world’s other major economic powers can do the same, including China, India, the largest EU nations, the U.K., Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Smaller nations such as Switzerland, Singapore and Malaysia can continue to attract business and credible momentum.
Beyond the world’s largest nations, several others leap out with promising prospects for rapid development in A.I. and digital infrastructure to boost their digital economies. However, it is in every nation’s interest, including that of the United States, to address their concerns successfully through global collaboration and resource-sharing. Accomplishing real digital economy progress requires thoughtful commitment. To harvest the rewards of digital economies, it is absolutely essential for all nations to become inclusive and agile. At the core of this inclusive agility, the five digital economy pillars of strategy, policy, energy, human capital and digital infrastructure must work together and in an integrated fashion to render digital services and economic outputs.
Mehdi Paryavi is the Chairman and CEO of the International Data Center Authority (IDCA), the world’s leading Digital Economy think tank and prime consortium of policymakers, investors, and developers in AI, data centers, and cloud.
5 aid trucks allowed into Gaza as Netanyahu acknowledges hunger crisis – CBS News
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The head of the United Nations’ humanitarian aid relief is calling the handful of aid trucks finally allowed into the Gaza Strip, “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.” Debora Patta reports on the food crisis.
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President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April that sought to protect America’s “leadership in deep sea science and technology” by authorizing mineral exploration on the ocean floor.
