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US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff spent over five hours in Gaza, and visited the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid site. He said the purpose of the visit was to give Trump “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.” CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher tells CNN's Christiane Amanpour that if anyone can shift the Israeli government, it's the US, and addresses reports of how food aid is being intercepted.

The Israeli military said that over 43 aid packages were airdropped into Gaza on Thursday. The packages contain food for residents in southern and northern Gaza - which residents say is like “a drop in the ocean."

At least 23 people were injured, three of them critically, when a fairground ride buckled in Saudi Arabia, sending passengers crashing to the ground, according to state media.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reports from the frontlines of Ukraine, where soldiers rush to bring in the wounded as drones constantly look for a target.

The US used about a quarter of its supply of high-end missile interceptors during the Israel-Iran war, exposing a gap in supplies, and raising concerns about US global security posture. CNN’s Tamara Qiblawi reports.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has joined France and Britain in announcing plans to recognize a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations, as international pressure builds on Israel over the ongoing war and starvation crisis in Gaza. President Donald Trump reacted to the announcement by threatening to derail trade talks with Canada.

Two leading Israeli human rights groups have accused Israel of “committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” becoming the first such organizations to make the claim. B’Tselem’s Executive Director Yuli Novak and Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s Executive Director Guy Shalev tell CNN’s Christiane Amanpour what was behind their groups’ decisions to use the word genocide.

A video verified by Reuters shows the moment when a Spanish F-18 fighter jet was forced to perform "evasive maneuvers" to avoid crashing into attendees during the Gijón Air Festival. The military praised the pilot’s actions which ensured the safety of the attendees.

Palestinian women face an awful choice between risking their own lives, which could deprive their families of their only remaining provider, or watching their children starve. CNN’s Paula Hancocks reports.

Video shows medics in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, continuing a surgery on a patient despite a powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off Russia's far eastern coast on July 30.

The strongest earthquake on the planet since 2011 has triggered tsunami warnings for parts of Russia, Japan, and Alaska, as well as all of Hawaii. CNN's Will Ripley reports on the 8.8-magnitude quake.

Odeh Hathalin, a prominent Palestinian activist who had worked on an Oscar-winning documentary, was killed on Monday during an attack by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to local journalists and officials. CNN’s Jeremy Diamond explains video circulated on social media that shows the gunman firing a hand gun in the vicinity of where Hathalin was said to be killed.

Fans celebrate in London as England has been crowned champion of Europe for the second successive time after defeating Spain 3-1 on penalties in the Women’s Euro 2025 final.

In the midst of a hunger crisis in Gaza, Israel and other countries have begun dropping aid by plane into the area. CNN’s Nic Robertson breaks down how much effect this measure can offer, while the UN calls for substantial relief to come from aid trucks moving in quickly through open corridors.

South Korean soccer star Son Heung-min will leave Tottenham Hotspur before the Premier League season begins, ending a decade-long spell with the North London club.

The announcement from the 33-year-old, a national hero in South Korea, comes amid reports that he could move to Major League Soccer in the United States.

Speaking to reporters in Seoul before a preseason friendly game against Newcastle United, Son said: “Before we start the press conference, I wanted to say I have decided to leave the club this summer. Respectfully the club is helping me with this decision.”

Calling it “the most difficult decision I have made in my career,” the forward explained: “I need a new environment to push myself. I need a little bit of change – 10 years is a long time.”

“I came to North London as a kid, 23 years old, such a young age. I leave this club as a grown man, a very proud man.”

Since joining Spurs from Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen in 2015, Son has scored 173 goals in 454 matches, forming a formidable strike partnership with England legend Harry Kane, who he eventually succeeded as club captain. He was joint top scorer in the Premier League during the 2021-22 season, when he and Liverpool’s Mo Salah both scored 23 times.

In May, he lifted the Europa League trophy after Spurs beat Manchester United in the final.

A sporting icon in South Korea, Son has scored 51 goals in 134 matches for the national team, becoming the country’s most high-profile athlete ever.

New Spurs coach Thomas Frank, speaking at the same press conference, hailed Son as “a true Spurs legend in every aspect, one of the greatest players to play in the Premier League.”

The latest meeting in one of soccer’s most heated rivalries will be the first ever to be held overseas, some 6,000 miles from its origin in the United Kingdom.

The North London Derby between Premier League teams Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, a matchup stretching back 116 years, will cap off the Hong Kong Football Festival Thursday.

The preseason friendly will take place in the city’s newly built 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. Attendance is projected to break all-time local soccer records.

“Of course, it’s a friendly, but there’s more to it,” new Spurs manager Thomas Frank told CNN Sports in an exclusive interview ahead of the match.

“It’s a great development for a historic fixture. Of course, traditions are hugely important. But I also think the world is developing, and we want to come out here and embrace our fans. It doesn’t get any bigger than playing against Arsenal.”

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, who hopes his team’s new star signing Viktor Gyökeres will spearhead them to glory this season, told CNN Sports it was “a brilliant idea to bring all that tradition, history and rivalry to Hong Kong.”

While there has been raucous support for both teams during their preseason tour around Asia, some diehards still grapple with such a sacred derby being sanctioned overseas.

The fixture has only been played outside of London once, and never beyond the country’s borders.

On one hand, it seems inevitable given that sport is seeing unprecedented spending and global commercialization.

On the other, preserving soccer heritage is fundamental.

“If I put my London hat on, it’s a bit strange,” said Hong Kong-born Myles Pyne, an Arsenal season ticket holder now based in London.

“The derby over the years has seen so many red cards and flashpoints, and players are absolutely pumped up before the game. You’re not going to get that same needle. Of all the teams they could have picked for a preseason game, this one feels like it’s ruining the sanctity (of the derby) a little bit.”

“But if I put my Hong Kong hat on, it’s awesome,” he said, noting that many fans in the city wouldn’t normally “get the opportunity to see what a North London Derby looks like.”

Billy Ip, who runs Hong Kong’s Tottenham supporters’ club, is similarly torn.

“It’s a bit of both – you want to experience the derby in London, and of course some will want to keep it there,” he said.

“But some of us can’t afford to travel to London to watch any football match at all, let alone the North London Derby. It’s a good chance to experience the vibes of such a high-level match outside of Europe.

“Putting big games on in big cities is a trend to commercialize more. It’s part and parcel of the game now.”

Adam Ng, of the opposing Arsenal supporters’ club, added: “It’s so meaningful to us that they are visiting. This could be once-in-a-lifetime for us overseas supporters.”

The attendance record set to tumble on Thursday was set by Liverpool and AC Milan in the same tournament the previous week.

Should the event be a hit overall, Australia-based organizer TEG Sport is confident this will only be the start for big-name sports outfits visiting Hong Kong and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

“The clubs were very much the drivers of wanting to come – we just needed that world-class stadium worthy of hosting such a historic match,” Rachael Carroll, its managing director, said.

“I can absolutely say that there are a whole other bunch of clubs around the world – top football clubs – that are watching with interest.”

South Korean police have arrested two people over the alleged blackmail of Tottenham Hotspur captain and soccer superstar Son Heung-min, according to South Korean’s Yonhap news agency, after reports a woman threatened him with a pregnancy claim.

Son, 32, had filed a police complaint against a woman and a man for blackmail and threatening to spread “false information,” his agency, Son & Football Limited, said on Thursday.

“We will take strong legal action without leniency to punish those who have made threats of blackmail with obvious false information,” the agency said in a statement on its website.

The Gangnam Police Station in southern Seoul said it was investigating a woman in her 20s and a man in his 40s on charges of attempted extortion after receiving Son’s complaint last week, according to Yonhap.

The woman allegedly approached Son last June, claiming she was pregnant with his child and demanded money in exchange for her silence, Yonhap reported, citing police. She reportedly sent Son an ultrasound image and received 300 million Korean Won ($215,180), the news agency said.

The man, believed to be an acquaintance of the woman, also allegedly tried to blackmail Son in March, demanding 70 million Korean Won ($50,200), Yonhap reported. He did not reportedly receive any money, Yonhap said.

CNN has reached out to the Gangnam Police Station.

Police arrested the woman Wednesday evening local time for blackmail and the man for an attempted blackmail. Authorities raided the two individuals’ homes and secured their phones for further investigation, according to Yonhap.

“Son Heung Min is an obvious victim of this incident,” the soccer star’s agency said.

“We apologize once again for worrying everyone supporting Son Heung-min with such a scandalous issue,” the agency wrote.

Son is hugely popular in his home country, South Korea, and has become known as one of the greatest Asian soccer players of all time.

Son started playing football as a child in Chuncheon, located about 46 miles northeast of Seoul, under his father’s supervision. In 2009, he was chosen to join a prestigious youth training academy in Germany, where he eventually made his professional debut at the age of 18.

He joined Tottenham from Bayer Leverkusen in August 2015 and has since been breaking records set by his role models Park Ji-sung, the first Korean to play in the Premier League and only Asian player to win the men’s Champions League, and Cha Bum-kun, who played over 300 matches in the Bundesliga for Eintracht Frankfurt and Leverkusen from 1979 to 1989.

Son has broken records for the most goals scored by a Korean player in a season in a European league. He also became the first Asian footballer to win the Premier League’s Golden Boot with 23 goals in the season – level with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in 2022.

Both Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur continued to live in their own parallel worlds as both English teams reached the Europa League final on Thursday.

The pair will meet in Bilbao, Spain, on May 21 in the hope of salvaging their seasons, with both suffering staggeringly bad form in the Premier league.

Tottenham currently sits 16th in the table having lost 19 times this season, while Manchester United is in 15th having won just four league games since the turn of the year.

Europe, then, has provided sanctuary for the otherwise beleaguered clubs and offers both a chance to lift the Champions League trophy next year – the winner of the Europa League qualifies for the continent’s top club competition.

Along with the prestige of playing in the Champions League, participating in next year’s tournament will also provide both clubs with a big financial boost and help attract the world’s best players to help bolster their squads.

It’s a prize, then, that neither can afford to miss out on.

In truth, both teams breezed into the final having each won their semifinal first legs last week, meaning the return fixtures on Thursday were relatively routine.

Manchester United, which held a 3-0 lead, did initially go behind at Old Trafford through Mikel Jauregizar’s wonderful strike but recovered well to win 4-1 on the night, courtesy of goals from Casemiro, Rasmus Højlund and a brace from the impressive Mason Mount.

“It’s a different competition and the opponents are different, the physicality I think is important. We are more comfortable in this kind of game,” Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim told reporters after the game, trying to explain why his team’s form is so much better in the Europa League.

“I do think the games are completely different … when we arrived at the beginning in our club, I think it was more the physicality and the speed of the game, so we were more comfortable to play in the Europa League.”

Meanwhile, Tottenham traveled to the Arctic Circle to play Norweigan side Bodø/Glimt, looking to protect its 3-1 first-leg lead.

It dealt with the unusual surroundings well on Thursday to win 2-0 on the night, with goals from Dominic Solanke and Pedro Porro ensuring safe passage to the final.

For Spurs, there is the added pressure of winning the club’s first trophy since 2008 and first continental silverware since the 1983-84 season. The north London club has struggled to shake off the reputation of being “nearly good enough” over the last decade and has another chance to right that wrong in the final.

Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou will also want to back up his claim that he always wins a trophy in the second season after joining a new club.

“It’s exciting. It’s brilliant. We know, irrespective of which club you’re at, you don’t get these opportunities too often, so you want to make the most of them,” Postecoglou said to reporters after Thursday’s win.

“We’ve a couple of weeks to prepare for it, it should be a great game, and obviously, it gives our supporters some hope now that we can do something special this year.”

Before this tournament kicked off, many had predicted both teams would have made the final given their superiority over most of the other teams in Europe’s second tier competition.

But given how unfathomably poor their league forms have been, it’s quite incredible that teams positioned so low in the Premier League table are competing in a European final.

The hope, for both sets of players, is that victory in Bilbao can be the ultimate distraction from their misgivings in the league, and give their respective fans something to cheer about in an otherwise chastening season.

Tottenham Hotspur player Rodrigo Bentancur has been given a seven-match domestic suspension and fined around $126,000 (£100,000) for a comment he made in an interview about teammate Son Heung-min.

A report published by the English Football Association (FA) on Monday details how, in an interview with Uruguayan journalist Rafa Cotelo, Bentancur said that South Korean international Son and his cousins “all look more or less the same.”

The report notes that the comment was subsequently posted on Cotelo’s YouTube channel as part of a 45-minute-long film.

According to the FA, the midfielder acted in “an improper manner and/or used abusive and/or insulting words and/or brought the game into disrepute” with the comment, which was judged to be an “aggravated breach” of FA regulations because it made reference to Son’s ethnicity.

Bentancur apologized for the comment earlier this year, referring to it in an Instagram post as “an unfortunate misunderstanding” and adding that “all has been clarified and solved with my friend (Son).”

The post continued: “If someone felt offended because of my words through this media tool I would like to offer my sincere apologies … I’ve never had the intention to offend directly or indirectly anyone.”

CNN has contacted Bentancur’s representatives for further comment.

In June, soon after the video clip was circulated online, Son said that Bentancur had apologized for making a “mistake,” adding that his teammate “would not mean to ever intentionally say something offensive. We are brothers and nothing has changed at all.”

Tottenham, meanwhile, said that it “fully support(s)” Son and would be providing “further education for all players in line with our diversity, equality and inclusion objectives.”

Bentancur’s suspension begins on Saturday when Tottenham faces Manchester City. He will be eligible to play again against Nottingham Forest on December 26, as well as in Europa League games.

The 27-year-old has made 14 appearances for Tottenham this season, scoring in the club’s 2-1 defeat against Ipswich on November 10.