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Colombia is suspending exports of coal to Israel in protest over the war in Gaza, the South American country’s president announced on Saturday.

“We are going to suspend coal exports to Israel until the genocide stops,” president Gustavo Petro posted on X.

Petro shared a draft decree issued by the ministry of trade which stated that exports will only be resumed once Israel complies with orders from the International Court of Justice last month to halt its military offensive in Rafah.

The trade ministry said the ban will come into effect five days after publication in the country’s official gazette. Shipments to Israel that have already been approved will not be affected.

Colombia is Israel’s largest supplier of coal, according to the American Journal for Transportation. Coal exports to Israel were worth $320mn in the first eight months of last year, according to government data, while Colombia’s leading mining agency reports that taxes, royalties and other payments related to coal exports to Israel are worth around $165mn per year to the treasury.

Colombia’s announcement of trade sanctions on Israel follows a broader move by Turkey, which last month halted trade with the Jewish state until it allows an “uninterrupted and sufficient flow” of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Last Sunday, the Maldives announced a ban on Israeli tourists in solidarity with Gaza.

Despite long historical ties and collaboration on defence between the two countries, Petro — Colombia’s first leftist president — has been one of the most vocal critics on the world stage of Israel’s conduct in Gaza following the attack by Hamas on October 7. 

In May, after breaking diplomatic ties with Israel, Petro traded barbs with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the Colombian president an “antisemitic supporter of Hamas”.

Petro, a leftist former guerrilla member who took office in August 2022, has also requested that Colombia join South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

The spat between Colombia and Israel breaks with decades of warm relations. Israel is a major supplier of weapons to Colombia, which are used by the Colombian military to fight drug traffickers and insurgent groups.

In 2020, during the tenure of Petro’s rightwing predecessor Iván Duque, a free trade agreement between the two countries came into effect. Petro in February suspended new Israeli weapons purchases.

Colombia’s mining association ACM warned on Thursday that suspending coal exports to Israel would hurt Colombia’s economy. “This decision would not comply with international commitments by Colombia that should be respected and puts at risk the confidence of markets and foreign investment,” ACM said in a statement.

Petro has also sought to position Colombia as a global leader on climate change, pledging to wean the country off fossil fuels despite oil and coal products together making up over half of exports. 

A tax reform passed in late 2022 prohibited extractive companies from deducting royalties from their taxable income, though the constitutional court ruled that provision illegal in November last year.

Speaking at a banking conference on Friday night, Petro said that the court’s decision was the reason for a recent shortfall in government tax take, necessitating spending cuts.

Sergio Guzmán, director of Bogotá-based consultancy Colombia Risk Analysis, said that the decision to suspend coal exports to Israel was “shortsighted” as the global market for the fossil fuel continues to dwindle amid a transition to greener energy sources.

“Petro is making a grandiose geopolitical move that is poised to hurt Colombia potentially more financially than Israel, the target of the action,” Guzmán said.

A Michigan man who went viral for unlawfully driving during a virtual court meeting in May never actually had a driver’s license, adding a new twist to the bizarre story.

Corey Harris, 44, was arrested last month for driving under suspended driving privileges, according to Michigan’s Department of State, in a recorded moment that quickly spread across social media.

“Mr. Harris, are you driving?” a visibly amused Judge Cedric Simpson asks Harris on the May 15 video.

“Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office actually, so just give me a second,” Harris confirms.

The judge says in the video that the charge for which Harris was to appear was regarding driving with a suspended license and then orders Harris to turn himself in to the Washtenaw County jail that same day.

Harris’ stunned face quickly sparked memes across social media and artist renderings of him went viral.

But since that incident made national headlines, the story has taken several turns. Following Harris’ arrest and two-day stint in jail, it was reported that his license was actually supposed to have been reinstated more than two years prior and that a clerical error was responsible for the embarrassing incident.

That, however, is not the case, Angela Benander, director of communications for the Michigan Department of State told NPR.

“This isn’t a clerical error. This is a failure of action,” she said.

In a new hearing this week, Judge Simpson makes clear that Harris never actually had an eligible driver’s license. And records from Michigan’s Department of State, obtained by NPR, show this as well.

In Harris’ case, it was his driving privileges that were suspended, not his license, Benander explained.

When he was eligible to have those privileges reinstated, and eventually secure a license, Benander said Harris did not follow the proper steps to make that happen.

“You can have a secretary of state driver’s record without ever having an official driver’s license. And that’s usually because, when you receive a suspension of driving privileges, we will create a record and then list it as suspended,” Benander explained.

“So, in this case, there was a record; it was suspended status. That doesn’t mean that he had a license, which it turns out he did not ever have a valid driver’s license,” she said.

Harris was ordered back into police custody following this week’s hearing and bailed out by his wife the same day, his attorney, Dionne Webster-Cox said.

“He just wants to be a law-abiding citizen. He wants to be. But bless his heart,” Webster-Cox said.

She said Harris is working to get his driver’s permit now and her office is dedicated to helping him getting properly registered to drive again.

“There’s just something about him. It’s that kind of, like, lovable goofball,” Webster-Cox said.

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Israel’s military freed four hostages held by Hamas in Gaza on Saturday after an operation in Nuseirat in the centre of the enclave.

The rescue of one woman and three men — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — brings the number of hostages brought back alive by Israel’s military to seven and is the largest rescue operation since the start of the war against Hamas.

The four were kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took about 250 hostage.

Roughly half of the hostages were released during a truce last year in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, hailed the rescue and said Israel would “keep fighting” until the 120 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza — 43 of whom are thought to have died — were brought home.

The Hostages Families Forum Headquarters, which represents relatives of the captives, welcomed the rescue as a “miraculous triumph”, and urged the government to “remember its commitment” to bring back all the hostages — “the living for rehabilitation, the murdered for burial”.

Health officials in Gaza said that the fighting in Nuseirat had caused “many” fatalities and injuries. A spokesman for Al Aqsa hospital in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, said that so far 55 bodies and dozens of injured people had been brought to the hospital, and that “many” more were expected.

In the wake of the rescue operation, Benny Gantz, the former general and opposition politician who joined Netanayhu’s coalition in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack, cancelled an address scheduled for this evening. He had been widely expected to announce his departure from the government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a recording of himself speaking to Argamani after her rescue.

The spokesman for Israel’s military, Daniel Hagari, said the hostages had been rescued from two locations in Nuseirat by special forces in an operation at around 11am local time. All four were “alive and well” and would undergo medical checks in Israel.

The rescue comes as Israel is under mounting international pressure over the soaring civilian toll of its offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,500 people, according to Palestinian officials, as well as stoking a humanitarian catastrophe.

Last month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over the war, while the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “immediately halt” its offensive in Rafah and allow more aid into Gaza.

On Friday it emerged that the UN had added the Israeli military to a list of countries and organisations that fail to protect children in conflict.

The news sparked a furious response in Israel, with its ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan — who published a recording of himself receiving the news — describing the decision as “shameful”.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed the decision, saying “accountability is overdue”.