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Canadian human rights activists are demanding answers from their government after a former United Nations special rapporteur who investigated Israeli abuses against Palestinians was interrogated at the Canadian border on “national security” grounds.

Richard Falk, 95, was stopped at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday and questioned for several hours. He said a security official told him that Canada had concerns that he and his wife, fellow legal scholar Hilal Elver, posed “a danger to the national security of Canada.

The treatment of the couple has sparked anger and calls for an explanation from Ottawa.

“We need answers – and from the highest levels of government,” said Corey Balsam, national coordinator at Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, a group that supports Palestinian rights.

Despite the outcry, Canadian authorities have not publicly addressed the incident. But the office of Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has acknowledged the case in a statement to Al Jazeera, saying he is seeking more information about what happened.

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The Trump administration’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza won strong approval at the United Nations on Monday, a crucial step that provides international support for U.S. efforts to move the devastated territory toward peace following two years of war.

The U.S. resolution that passed the U.N. Security Council authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority to be overseen by President Donald Trump and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

“This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations, will lead to further Peace all over the World, and is a moment of true Historic proportion!” Trump posted on social media.

The vote endorses Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan and builds on the momentum of the fragile ceasefire he helped broker with allies. It marks a key next step for American efforts to outline Gaza’s future after the Israel-Hamas war destroyed much of the territory and killed tens of thousands of people.

The proposal calls for a yet-to-be-established Board of Peace as a transitional authority that Trump would head. It also provides a wide mandate for the international stabilization force, including overseeing the borders, providing security and demilitarizing the territory. Authorization for the board and force expire at the end of 2027.

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission started policy discussions in Kyiv on Monday as Ukraine seeks approval for a new Extended Fund Facility program.

The fund’s representative have already met with Ukraine’s lawmakers, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine and Ukraine’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) top management.

Ukraine is now seeking a second IMF loan, as earlier financing plans assumed the war would end in 2026, while Russia’s invasion has entered its fourth year with no sign of stopping.

The existing macrofinancial programs – the current EFF program, the EU’s Ukraine Facility, and the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) loan are due to expire in 2026-2027, and partners have yet to outline new support.

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A top border patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported a surge of encounters with federal immigration agents near churches and apartment complexes.

The Trump administration has made the Democratic-led city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement crackdown it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and the fact that crime rates in the city are steadily declining.

Some businesses in Charlotte chose to stay closed at the weekend and many areas that would often be bustling on a Saturday afternoon were quiet as people stayed home in fear of anti-immigration raids and sweeps.

Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on a similar operation in Chicago, took to social media to document some of the arrests, a total that he said now stands at 81. He added that many of those taken into custody had “significant criminal and immigration history” and that the mass arrests were accomplished in “about 5 hours”.

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The Trump administration filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging California’s new laws that ban federal officers from wearing masks and requiring them to have identification while operating in the state.

The suit takes issue with what the justice department described as California’s “unconstitutional attempt to regulate federal law enforcement officers through the so-called ‘No Secret Police Act’ and ‘No Vigilantes Act.’”

“Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in a statement. “California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”

Federal officers conducting immigration raids this year have covered their faces and refused to show identification to people they detain.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed laws in September that his state the first to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces while conducting official business.

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Lawyers for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor, called Trump administration allegations of mortgage fraud against her “baseless” on Monday and accused the administration of “cherry-picking” discrepancies to bolster their claims.

After accusing Cook of misrepresenting multiple residences as her primary residence to get a better mortgage rate, Donald Trump briefly fired Cook from her role as a Fed governor and as one of 12 voting members of the Federal Reserve board that sets interest rates. The supreme court reinstated her and will in January hear arguments over Cook’s removal.

In the letter, addressed to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, and Edward Martin, the deputy attorney general, Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, outlined for the first time Cook’s detailed defense against the accusations. Lowell said that the dispute involves three of Cook’s properties: a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a condo in Atlanta, Georgia, and a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lowell said Cook’s primary residence is in Ann Arbor, where she has been a professor at Michigan State University since 2005. While she has been on unpaid leave from the position as she serves on the Fed board, she intends to return to Ann Arbor once her post ends, the letter said.

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A powerful atmospheric river weather system has mostly moved through California but not before causing at least seven deaths and dousing much of the state.

Among the dead was a seven-year-old girl who was swept into the ocean by waves estimated up to 20ft at a state beach on Friday. The girl’s father, 39-year-old Yuji Hu, of Calgary, Alberta, was killed while trying to save his daughter.

In northern California, in Sutter county, north of Sacramento, a 71-year-old man died after his vehicle was swept off a flooded bridge.

Much further south, a wooden boat believed to have been ferrying migrants toward the US from Mexico capsized in stormy seas off the coast of San Diego, leaving at least four people dead and four hospitalized.

The long plume of tropical moisture that formed over the Pacific Ocean began drenching the San Francisco Bay Area last Wednesday night and then unleashed widespread rain over southern California on Friday and Saturday.

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Three more Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, are now marooned in space following the successful return of their previously stranded comrades. The latest development highlights a potential flaw in China's space protocols, experts say, which could put astronauts needlessly at risk.

The latest stranded trio — Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang — are the crew of the Shenzhou-21 mission. They have been living onboard China's Tiangong space station since Oct. 31, shortly after they were launched into space by a Long March 2F rocket. Their mission was to take over from the station's incumbent Shenzhou-20 crew, made up of taikonauts Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong, who were originally due to return to Earth on Nov. 5.

However, after a successful handover period, the Shenzhou-20 crew's return trip was called off at the last minute when a piece of suspected space junk hit their return capsule. After tests revealed a crack in the viewing port of the struck spacecraft, the Shenzhou-20 crew boarded the return capsule designated for the Shenzhou-21 crew and successfully returned to Earth on Friday (Nov. 14).

But while many were quick to celebrate the return of the Shenzhou-20 crew, who completed the longest single spaceflight by any taikonauts (204 days), this now means that the Shenzhou-21 crew has no way of returning to Earth themselves, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.

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