At least 60 people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza as Israel lets minimal aid in.

Gaza Strip -- At least 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza in a 24-hour period, Gaza’s health ministry said Friday, as Israel pressed ahead with its military offensive and let in minimal aid to the strip.

The dead included 10 people in the southern city of Khan Younis, four in the central town of Deir al-Balah and nine in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.

Israel is facing mounting international criticism for its latest offensive and pressure to let aid into Gaza amid a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. The strip has been under an Israeli blockade for nearly three months, according to the United Nations. Experts have warned that many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine.

Even the United States, a staunch ally, has voiced concerns over the hunger crisis.

The strikes that lasted into Friday morning came a day after Israeli tanks and drones attacked a hospital in northern Gaza, igniting fires and causing extensive damage, Palestinian hospital officials said on Thursday. Videos taken by a health official at Al-Awda Hospital show walls blown away and thick black smoke billowing from wreckage.

Israel said it will continue to strike until Hamas releases all of the 58 remaining Israeli hostages and disarms. Fewer than half of the hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Suspect charged with murder over deaths of Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington

The strikes come a day after two Israeli Embassy staffers were shot while leaving a reception for young diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum, in Washington, D.C. The suspect told police he “did it for Palestine,” according to court documents filed Thursday as he was charged with murder. He didn’t enter a plea.

On Thursday night, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the killings in Washington horrific and blasted France, the U.K. and Canada for proposing to establish a Palestinian state.

“Because by issuing their demand, replete with a threat of sanctions against Israel -- against Israel, not Hamas -- these three leaders effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power,” he said.

Earlier this week the three leaders issued one of the most significant criticisms by close allies of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza and its actions in the West Bank, threatening to take “concrete actions” if the government did not cease its renewed military offensive and significantly lift restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Aid starts entering, but agencies say nothing like enough

Amid pressure, Israel started letting in aid. Israeli officials said Friday they let in more than 100 trucks of aid, including flour, food, medical equipment and drugs. The trucks came in through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

But UN agencies say the amount is woefully insufficient, compared with around 600 trucks a day that entered during a recent ceasefire and that are necessary to meet basic needs. UN agencies say Israeli military restrictions and the breakdown of law and order in Gaza make it difficult to retrieve and distribute the aid. As a result, little of it has so far reached those in need.

The World Food Program said on Friday said that 15 of its trucks were looted Thursday night in southern Gaza while going to WFP-supported bakeries.

It said that hunger and desperation about whether food was coming in is contributing to rising insecurity, and called on Israel to allow greater volumes of food to enter, faster and more efficiently.

Israel says the aid now is to bridge the gap until a U.S. backed initiative starts soon. A group known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will take over aid distribution in Gaza, and armed private contractors will guard the distribution. Israel says the system is needed because Hamas siphons off significant amounts of aid. The UN denies that claim.

On Friday a Geneva-based advocacy group said it was taking legal action to urge Swiss authorities to monitor the foundation.

TRIAL International, which focuses on international justice, said it made legal submissions to make sure that the privately run foundation, which is listed in the Geneva commercial registry, abides by Swiss law, notably on the activities of private security groups.

A spokesman for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said that it adheres by humanitarian principles and that its operations are free from Israeli control. It said the foundation was not a military operation and its decision to integrate armed security contractors allows it the ability to access and operate in Gaza.
No movement on ceasefire negotiations in Doha

Earlier this week, Netanyahu said he was recalling his high-level negotiating team from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said a “fundamental gap” remained between the two parties and that none of the proposals was able to bridge their differences.

Hamas said no real ceasefire talks have taken place since last week in Doha. The group accused Netanyahu of “falsely portraying participation” and attempting to “mislead global public opinion” by keeping Israel’s delegation there without engaging in serious negotiations.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Settler violence in the occupied West Bank

Palestinians in the village of Bruqin, in the northern West Bank, said Israeli settlers attacked them Thursday afternoon, burning cars and damaging houses.

“We’ve been suffering since Wednesday from settler attacks and assaults -- verbal abuse, stone throwing, and constant harassment at all times,” said Mustafa Khater, whose house was attacked. He said he had previously evacuated his wife and four children for fear of attacks, but had stayed behind to protect the house.

The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. That has coincided with a rise in settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Trump’s administration has revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and will force existing students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.

Trump’s image of dead ‘white farmers’ came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, May 22 - U.S. President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.

“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In fact, the video, published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo.

The post did not caption the image but identified it as a “YouTube screen grab” with a link to a video news report about Congo on YouTube, which credited Reuters.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker and the author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had “misidentified the image.”

She added, however, that the post, which referred to what it called Ramaphosa’s “dysfunctional, race-obsessed Marxist government,” had “pointed out the increasing pressure placed on white South Africans.”

The footage from which the picture was taken shows a mass burial following an M23 assault on Goma, filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.

“That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in ... I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the ICRC to be allowed to film,” Al Katanty said. “Only Reuters has video.”

Al Katanty said seeing Trump holding the article with the screengrab of his video came as a shock.

“In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people,” Al Katanty said.

Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the United States after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over South Africa’s land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which South Africa denies.

Trump interrupted the televised meeting with Ramaphosa to play a video, which he said showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in South Africa. This conspiracy theory, which has circulated in far-right chat rooms for years, is based on false claims.

Trump then proceeded to flip through printed copies of articles that he said detailed murders of white South Africans, saying “death, death, death, horrible death.”

Romanian court validates presidential election, rejecting defeated candidate’s challenge to results.

A top Romanian court on Thursday validated the results of Romania’s presidential election rerun, shortly after rejecting a request to annul the results by the hard-right candidate who decisively lost the race to his pro-European Union opponent.

After deliberations on Thursday, Romania’s Constitutional Court unanimously rejected the annulment request, filed on Tuesday by George Simion, in which he alleged that foreign interference and coordinated manipulation affected the vote.

The Court then validated the results and held a short ceremony attended by the elected President Nicusor Dan, the Bucharest mayor who won the tense runoff, beating Simion with 53.6% of the vote, a margin of more than 829,000 votes.

“I want to thank the Romanian people who turned out in great numbers for the May elections and, in doing so, gave legitimacy to the new president,” 55-year-old Dan, a mathematician and former civic activist, said at the court during the ceremony.

“A new chapter is beginning in Romania’s recent and contemporary history. I want to assure Romanian citizens that I understand the responsibility of the mandate they have entrusted to me,” he said. “There will be many challenges, and I hope that we will successfully overcome all of them.”

Simion, the 38-year-old leader of the hard-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, had conceded defeat after losing in the runoff to Dan, but later contested the results. The court said its decision on Thursday is final.

In his request to annul the election, Simion claimed he had “irrefutable evidence” that France, Moldova and “other actors” meddled in the ballot, but did not present any evidence. He also alleged that “deceased people” had participated in the vote, and that he requested it be canceled on the same grounds as the court’s decision last year.

After the court rejected his annulment request, Simion said in a post on Facebook that the Court “has continued the coup!”

“We have no choice but to fight!,” his post read. “I call on you to stand with me, today and in the coming weeks!”
Election rerun held after previous vote annulled

Sunday’s tense vote was held months after the same court voided the previous election in which the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu led the first round, following allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow has denied.

The Court’s unprecedented decision last year to cancel the election plunged EU and NATO member Romania into its worst political crisis in decades, compounded by a string of crises such as the war in neighboring Ukraine and a significant budget deficit.

Dan is expected to be officially sworn in next week, after which he must also contend with deep societal divisions laid bare by the vote, revealing a country where endemic corruption, inequality and an erosion of trust in traditional institutions and parties have fueled a broad rejection of the political establishment.

“Romanian society has shown wisdom, and I am convinced that in the period ahead, it will continue to push for the positive change that Romania needs,” Dan added Thursday. “I will fight for the strengthening of state institutions ... I will also fight for the country’s economic prosperity, I will be a partner to the business environment, and I will be a guarantor of civil liberties.”

Dan will also face the challenge of nominating a prime minister who can garner the support necessary to form a government — a tall order in a country where strong anti-establishment sentiment led to the emergence of figures like Georgescu and Simion.

Simion capitalized on the furor over last year’s annulment and, after coming fourth in the canceled race, allied with Georgescu, who was banned in March from running in the election redo. In the first-round vote on May 4 in the rerun, Simion won a landslide in a field of 11 candidates to enter the runoff.
Allegations of election fraud in rerun

Hours after voting opened on Friday for Romanians abroad, Simion accused the government of neighboring Moldova of election fraud, which both Moldovan and Romanian authorities rejected.

In comment to The Associated Press on Sunday, he reiterated claims that people were being illegally transported to voting stations in Moldova, allegedly affecting 80,000 votes.

More than half a million Moldovans hold Romanian citizenship, and about 158,000 people voted at polling stations set up in Moldova in the second round. Many more dual citizens would also have cast ballots in other countries.

As a member of the EU and one of the easternmost members of the NATO military alliance, Romania plays a pivotal role in Western security infrastructure — especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

Many observers saw Sunday’s vote as crucial to maintaining Romania’s place within the network of Western alliances — especially amid fears that the Trump administration is reconsidering its security commitments to the United States’ European partners.

A video of an anti-farm murders protest in September 2020 in Normandien used by Donald Trump as “proof of persecution” against white farmers was posted by Sebastiaan Jooste.

U.S. Defense Department accepts Boeing 747 from Qatar for Trump’s use. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has accepted a luxury Boeing 747 jet from Qatar for President Donald Trump to use as Air Force One, the Pentagon said Wednesday, despite ongoing questions about the ethics and legality of taking the expensive gift from a foreign nation.

The Defense Department will “work to ensure proper security measures” on the plane to make it safe for use by the president, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. He added that the plane was accepted “in accordance with all federal rules and regulations.”

Trump has defended the gift, which came up during his recent Middle East trip, as a way to save tax dollars.

“Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE,” Trump posted on his social media site during the trip.

Others, however, have said Trump’s acceptance of an aircraft that has been called a “palace in the sky” is a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition on foreign gifts. Democrats have been united in outrage, and even some of the Republican president’s GOP allies in Congress have expressed concerns.

“This unprecedented action is a stain on the office of the presidency and cannot go unanswered,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “Until Americans get transparency on this shady deal, which apparently includes a corrupt plot for Donald Trump to keep the plane at his library after leaving office, I’ll continue to hold all Department of Justice political nominees.”

Schumer has introduced legislation that would prohibit any foreign aircraft from being used as Air Force One and forbid use of taxpayer money to modify or restore the aircraft. But on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas objected when Schumer asked for a vote, thus blocking it. He did not offer an explanation for his objection.

Critics also have noted the need to retrofit the plane to meet security requirements, which would be costly and take time.

“Far from saving money, this unconstitutional action will not only cost our nation its dignity, but it will force taxpayers to waste over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to overhaul this particular aircraft when we currently have not one, but two fully operational and fully capable Air Force One aircraft,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.

She said during a hearing Tuesday that it is a “dangerous course of action” for the U.S. to accept the aircraft from the Qatari ruling family.

Elon Musk’s pullback from politics comes after his last big investment was a flop ...

Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign.

And it was a flop.

Musk, the richest person in the world, said Tuesday that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points.

Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments show that a party-led effort in this spring’s election, dubbed “ People vs. Musk, ” succeeded in making Musk and his money “toxic.”

“The people have won,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”

Brandon Scholz, a retired longtime Republican strategist in the state, said that at least in Wisconsin, “after that court race he deserves to be labeled as toxic.”

But that doesn’t mean Musk couldn’t spend money on races in the state and nationally again, especially if the stakes are high and his money could make a difference, Scholz said.

“Does he bring with him a lot of baggage? Possibly,” Scholz said. “But over time, maybe not as much.”

Musk’s spending in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race helped make it the most expensive court race in U.S. history. And it came just five months after Musk spent at least $250 million to help U.S. President Donald Trump win, reversing losses in Wisconsin and other battleground states four years earlier.

Musk was all-in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, even making a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat — popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers — and personally handing out checks for $1 million to supporters. It was an extension of Musk’s high-profile role in the presidential race, where he campaigned alongside Trump and headlined some of his own rallies.

“It’s a super big deal,” he told the roughly 2,000-person crowd in the event center, where hundreds of protesters were rallying against his appearance outside. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”

But his appearance — and money — didn’t work.

The candidate Musk backed lost Brown County, the home of Green Bay, by 3 percentage points, going on to lose statewide by more than three times that margin.

After the defeat, Musk has said little publicly about the race and his involvement in it. His popularity has also plummeted.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll taken two weeks after the Wisconsin court election found that just 33 per cent of adults had a favorable view of the Tesla CEO, down from 41 per cent in December.

Musk’s involvement in the race came at the same time he was the chain-saw-wielding face of the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal government.

His Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, has enacted deep cuts to the workforce and spending, in some cases seeking to shutter entire agencies, but it has fallen far short of its goals for reducing federal spending.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, of Wisconsin, is one of the most liberal members of Congress and a loud critic of both Trump and Musk.

Pocan is skeptical that Musk truly will back away.

“I don’t believe any of it, first of all,” Pocan said. “This just means they realize how toxic Elon Musk is and the work he did through DOGE.”

Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator, was also tempered in her excitement over Musk saying he plans to do a “lot less” political spending in the future.

“There’s a ton of other billionaire bros, I’m sure, willing and happy to step up in his place,” Roys said.

Musk could also get involved with future races, but in a much more low-profile way, said Scholz, the Republican.

“In Wisconsin, he had such a huge, huge, huge profile,” Scholz said. “He became the campaign. He became the story.”

Musk spent at least $3 million on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race himself. Musk-backed groups America PAC and a Rebuilding America’s Future spent another $19 million in support of the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel. That was part of more than $100 million spent on both sides.

America PAC spent at least $6 million on vendors who sent door-to-door canvassers across the state, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It was a reprise of what the group did last fall across the seven most competitive presidential battleground states, including Wisconsin, which were carried by Trump.

In addition to his political contributions, Musk paid three individual voters $1 million each for signing a petition in an effort to goose turnout. Musk also offered to pay $20 to anyone who signed up on his group’s site to knock on doors for Schimel and posted a photo of themselves as proof. His organization promised $100 to every voter who signed the petition against “activist judges” and another $100 for every signer they referred.

Musk himself hosted Schimel on his podcast and cast what was at stake in stark terms.

“A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” Musk said in a social media post on the April 1 election day. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

Democrats made the race a referendum on both Musk and Trump’s agenda, successfully electing a judge whose victory ensures the Wisconsin Supreme Court will remain under liberal control until at least 2028.

Coincidentally, Musk’s announcement about spending less on political races came just hours after a liberal judge announced her candidacy for the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor is challenging a conservative incumbent justice who sided with Trump in his unsuccessful lawsuit that attempted to overturn his 2020 loss in Wisconsin. The race will be decided in April, months before the midterms in which Democrats hope unease with Trump and Musk will help the party make gains.

Taylor appeared to be taking a similar approach to her campaign that the winning Democratic-backed candidate did this year.

“My campaign is going to be a campaign about the people of this state,” she told The Associated Press, “not about billionaires, not about the most powerful.”

A suicide car bomber strikes a school bus in southwestern Pakistan, killing 5 people. A suicide car bomber struck a school bus in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five people — including at least three children — and wounding 38 others, officials said, the latest attack in tense Balochistan province.

The province has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with an array of separatist groups staging attacks, including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA, designated a terror group by the United States in 2019.

A local deputy commissioner, Yasir Iqbal, said the attack took place on the outskirts of the city of Khuzdar as the bus was taking children to their military-run school there.

Troops quickly arrived at the scene and cordoned off the area while ambulances transported the victims to hospitals in the city. Local television stations aired footage of the badly damaged bus and scattered debris.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion is likely to fall on ethnic Baloch separatists, who frequently target security forces and civilians in the region.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi strongly condemned the attack and expressed deep sorrow over the children’s deaths. He called the perpetrators “beasts” who deserve no leniency, saying the enemy had committed an act of “sheer barbarism by targeting innocent children.”

Officials, who initially reported that four children were killed but later revised the death toll to say two adults were also among the dead, said they fear the toll may rise further as several children were listed in critical condition.

Blaming India

The military also issued a statement, saying the bombing was “yet another cowardly and ghastly attack” — allegedly planned by neighboring India and carried out by “its proxies in Balochistan.”

There was no immediate comment from New Delhi.

Most of the attacks in the province are claimed by the BLA, which Pakistan claims has India’s backing. India has denied such claims.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed his condolences and also blamed India, without providing any evidence to support the claim.

“The attack on a school bus by terrorists backed by India is clear proof of their hostility toward education in Balochistan,” Sharif said, vowing that the government would bring the perpetrators to justice.

Later, Sharif’s office said he is traveling to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, along with Field Marshal Asim Munir, to meet with the victims of the attack, and to receive a briefing.

Pakistan regularly accuses India, its archrival, for violence at home. These accusations have intensified in the wake of heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations amid a cross-border escalation since last month over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, divided between the two but sought in its entirety by each.

That escalation raised fears of a broader war, and during this period the BLA appealed to India for support. India has not commented on the appeal.

A vicious insurgency

Though Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan is its least populated. It’s also a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority, whose members say they face discrimination by the government.

In one of its deadliest recent attacks, BLA insurgents killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March.

And earlier this week, the BLA vowed more attacks on the “Pakistani army and its collaborators” and says its goal is to “lay the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and independent Balochistan.”

Militant groups are also active in the Balochistan and though it is unusual for separatists to target school children in the province, such attacks have been carried out in the restive northwest and elsewhere in the country in recent years.

Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, though the military also runs a significant number of institutions for children of both civilians and of serving or retired army personnel.

In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban carried out the country’s deadliest school attack on an army-run institution in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 154 people, most of them children.

#Canada is in discussions to join the U.S. “Golden Dome” missile defence program, according to a spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

In a statement to CTV News, the PMO said Canadians gave Prime Minister Mark Carney “a strong mandate to negotiate a comprehensive new security and economic relationship with the United States”.

The statement adds that Carney, his ministers, and their American counterparts are having wide-ranging discussions.

“These discussions naturally include strengthening Norad and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome,” said the PMO statement sent to CTV News.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced aspects of his continental missile defence shield adding “it automatically makes sense” for Canada to be involved.

“Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it,” Trump said. “So, we’ll be talking to them. They want to have protection also, so as usual, we help Canada.”

According to Trump, the system will be able to intercept missiles launched at North America from the other side of the globe, or from space.

The U.S. president claims the multilayered system will be completed within his term, which ends in 2029, and will cost $175 billion. Tuesday, Trump said his administration would work with Canada to ensure “they’ll pay their fair share”.

“We are dealing with them on pricing. They know about it very much,” Trump said.

The PMO would not comment on how much Canada would be willing to invest in the Golden Dome system.

In March, a senior government source pointed out Carney did announce a $6-billion investment to build an early warning radar system in partnership with Australia. The amount of money had already been outlined in the 2022 plan to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad).

The Liberal election platform also committed to more than $18 billion in spending on national defence. The amount would Canada on track to “exceed our NATO target by the year 2030,” according to policy experts who briefed reporters when the platform was released April 19.

The U.S. president seemed to take notice of Canada’s efforts to increase military spending during Carney’s visit to the White House, saying, “Canada is stepping up the military participation.”

Trump’s “Golden Dome” was a 2024 campaign promise and is based on Israel’s “Iron Dome” defence network designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells with a range of 4 to 70 kilometres.

#EU will provide emergency funds to help keep Radio Free Europe afloat after U.S. cuts.

The European Union agreed Tuesday to provide emergency funds to help keep Radio Free Europe afloat after the Trump administration stopped grants to the pro-democracy media outlet, accusing it of promoting a news agenda with a liberal bias.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty started broadcasting during the Cold War. Its programs are aired in 27 languages in 23 countries across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. Its lawyers have been fighting the administration in court.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc’s foreign ministers had agreed to a 5.5-million-euro (US$6.2 million) contract to “support the vital work of Radio Free Europe.” The “short-term emergency funding” is a “safety net” for independent journalism, she said.

Kallas said the EU would not be able to fill the organization’s funding gap around the world, but that it can help the broadcaster to “work and function in those countries that are in our neighborhood and that are very much dependent on news coming from outside.”

She said that she hoped the 27 EU member countries would also provide more funds to help Radio Free Europe longer term. Kallas said the bloc has been looking for “strategic areas” where it can help as the United States cuts foreign aid.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s corporate headquarters are in Washington and its journalistic headquarters are based in the Czech Republic, which has been leading the EU drive to find funds.

Last month, a U.S. federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore $12 million that was appropriated by Congress. Lawyers for the service, which has been operating for 75 years, said it would be forced to shut down in June without the money.

In March, Kallas recalled the influence that the network had on her as she was growing up in Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union.

“Coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain, actually it was (from) the radio that we got a lot of information,” she said. “So, it has been a beacon of democracy, very valuable in this regard.”