What happened
Palestinians, Arab states, Israeli anti-occupation groups and the UK have condemned new steps approved by Israel’s security cabinet for the occupied West Bank, warning that they are, in effect, de facto annexation. The measures would expand Israeli control over land administration, planning and enforcement, while making it easier for Jewish settlers to acquire Palestinian property.

Who said what
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the steps “dangerous” and an attempt to legalise land seizure, urging intervention by the US and UN.

Israel’s government is “racing against time to establish irreversible ‘facts on the ground’ before October elections for the Israeli parliament or Knesset”, said Mohammad Mansour on Al Jazeera. Israel’s ministers also “fear that US President Donald Trump might shift his stance on annexation”.

What next?
The Yesha Council, which represents settlement communities regarded as illegal under international law, welcomed the move as the “most important in 58 years”, saying it amounted in practice to a declaration that “the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people”.

What happened
A Cambridge museum will hand back bronze statues to Nigeria that were originally looted by the British military in 1897. More than 5,000 castings, known as the Benin bronzes, were seized from the then Kingdom of Benin and have since become contentious symbols of colonial pillaging. Several other museums have already returned their collections.

Who said what
After “thorough and robust consideration”, the “overwhelming view” was that the museum should relinquish control of its 116 Benin objects, said Nicholas Thomas, director of Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MMA).

This is “sure to increase pressure on other British institutions to follow suit”, said The Observer. The British Museum, which has 900 Benin bronzes (pictured above), is “increasingly isolated” in how it handles “objects taken by force”.

The director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Olugbile Holloway, said he expected a “domino effect” of artefacts being returned, including those held by the British Museum. “The issue has come to their doorstep.”

What next?
The MMA will send 100 castings to Nigeria at its own expense; the rest will remain on long-term loan.

Mexico has amended its constitution to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes and vapes. The move has seen legal sales plummet as vendors close up shop, leaving the $1.5 billion industry in the hands of the country’s infamous cartels. A lack of clear legislation has allowed these criminal organisations to strong-arm their way into the industry.

In 2022, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an “outspoken critic of vaping”, banned the import and sale of e-cigarettes, said The Associated Press. The move put e-cigarettes and vapes on the same level as fentanyl, “something many lawyers see as totally out of proportion”.

However, the “lack of a law to implement the ban left a loophole”, and vapes continued entering the country from China and the United States. In December that legal loophole was closed by a new law that “prohibits virtually everything about vapes except consumption, imposing fines and prison sentences of up to eight years”.

But in the void left by the end of the legal vape industry, an “illicit market for vapes and tobacco” became one of the most “dynamic sources of financing for organised crime”, said Forbes Mexico. Seven cartels are currently vying for control of the market in the country, according to the report “Smoke, vaping and power: the new business of organised crime”, compiled by civil organisations and Mexican journalist Oscar Balderas.

Mexico passed the constitutional amendment, but “failed to write the rulebook”, Julia Anguiano, the research director at Instituto RIA, told the Latin American Post. “Now we’re living in a dangerous vacuum.” The law “benefits no one – not the users, not public health, not even law enforcement”.