Freedom Flotilla, Brazil, RFK Jr., Death of Frederick Forsyth: Nightly News

Freedom Flotilla: Gaza boat activists transferred to airport for repatriation. The passengers of the Madleen sailboat, seized by Israel while attempting to reach the Palestinian enclave, arrived Monday evening at the Israeli port of Ashdod. They were then transferred to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday. “Those who refuse to sign the expulsion documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority, in accordance with Israeli law,” the ministry said on X. The sailboat, carrying 12 activists, including Swedish actress Greta Thunberg, left Italy on June 1 to “break the Israeli blockade” of Gaza, which is in the grip of a disastrous humanitarian situation. “The activists will return home as heroes, having defied the Israeli blockade […]. The Israeli government, for its part, will count the affair as a victory of hasbara — a bloodless interception of vain but harmless enemies,” observes the left-wing Israeli daily Ha'Aretz . Everyone has played their part, and everyone receives their bouquet of flowers and round of applause. And the Gazans, for their part, will wake up hungry again tomorrow morning.”

Brazil: One of the defendants in the Bolsonaro trial confirms a plan for a “state of siege” in 2022. The far-right ex-president has considered the possibility of declaring this emergency regime and calling new elections after his defeat to Lula in 2022, his former aide, Mauro Cid, said on Monday. The interrogation lasted about four hours during a hearing broadcast live on television. Jair Bolsonaro, who faces a long prison sentence for attempted coup d'état, is also due to be questioned this week, along with seven other co-defendants among his closest collaborators, including former ministers and high-ranking military officials. Cid is considered a traitor by the Bolsonaristas for having entered into a collaboration agreement with the authorities: "in exchange for revealing everything he knew about the coup plot, the military man asked for benefits, such as a judicial pardon or a prison sentence of less than two years," recalls Folha de São Paulo .

The Trump administration fires experts from a key vaccine panel. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that he has fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, accusing them of conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal . RFK believes this overhaul of the panel is essential to restoring public trust. He said new members will replace the outgoing experts. The move has been greeted with concern by many medical experts in the United States. “American vaccine policy risks becoming a laughingstock,” Jonathan Temte, a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin, said in an interview with NPR on Monday. Robert Kennedy Jr. has promoted vaccine misinformation for two decades, including the widely debunked claim that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes cases of autism. Since taking office, he has reduced access to Covid-19 vaccines and continued to sow doubt about the MMR vaccine, even as the United States experiences its worst measles outbreak in years.

Death of British writer Frederick Forsyth. This master of the spy novel, author of “The Jackal,” among others, died Monday at the age of 86, his literary agent announced. A former secret agent and journalist, he covered the Biafran civil war for the BBC in the late 1960s. Forsyth also “became known as a political and social commentator, often delivering trenchant critiques of the European Union, international terrorism, security issues and the status of the British armed forces,” notes the Guardian . “But it is his thriller novels that will be best remembered.” He is the author of some 20 books that have sold some 75 million copies worldwide. Several of his novels have been adapted for film, including “The Jackal” and “The Odessa File.”