AMSTERDAM (AP) — A judge in Amsterdam on Wednesday rejected an appeal by a Jewish organization to block two performances by the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, ruling that the concerts are not a threat to public order.
Ye has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, leaving Dutch authorities under mounting pressure to cancel the gigs on June 6 and 8.
The Central Jewish Council filed the emergency lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that Ye should be banned from the country for voicing admiration for Adolf Hilter and selling T-shirts featuring swastikas.
According to the Amsterdam District Court, there were no grounds to bar Ye from performing. “There are no indications that West’s presence in the coming days will lead to concrete public order dangers,” the court said in a statement.
The Central Jewish Council expressed disappointment with the ruling. “The feeling we are getting is that it is okay if you are antisemitic,” Chanan Hertzberger, the organization’s chair, told The Associated Press.
Lawmakers in the Netherlands supported a motion to bar Ye from entering the country but the country's immigration minister said there was no legal basis for such a move. Ye's remarks were “reprehensible” but there was “no reason to bar him," Bart van den Brink told journalists last week.
The 48-year-old was set to perform his first European dates in more than a decade. In April, he was barred from entering the U.K. over his remarks, setting off a series of cancellations. Shows in Italy and Poland have been scrapped.
More than 100,000 fans turned out in Istanbul on Saturday evening to watch Ye’s first performance in Turkey.
Concert organizers say 70,000 tickets have been sold for the two upcoming shows at the Gelredome in the eastern Dutch city of Arnhem.
Ye apologized in January through a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal, stating that his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life.”
FILE - Kanye West performs at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival on April 20, 2019, in Indio, Calif. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait briefly shut its main airport Wednesday after Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal, killed one person and wounded dozens — the latest in back-and-forth attacks by Iran and the U.S. that test a fragile ceasefire.
The strike reinforced the risks to residents and travelers in Gulf countries that had considered themselves relative havens before the war, now in its fourth month.
Talks have dragged on for weeks as mediators seek a more enduring truce in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. They are increasingly strained by Israel’s broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
A regional official said Iran wanted a separate ceasefire in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations continue.
The fighting in Lebanon has also exposed a rift between Israel and the U.S., which is pushing its ally for restraint. In a measure of the friction, Trump acknowledged that he'd called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy” during a phone call earlier this week. Nonetheless, both men say their rapport is solid.
Iran maintains its hold on the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for the world’s oil and natural gas and related products like fertilizer — and the U.S. continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Global fuel prices remain high, and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond the region.
In Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio huddled for three hours at the White House Monday as Trump worked on “that final piece” of getting commerce flowing. Rubio, meanwhile, faced grilling in Congress over the war and its economic fallout.
A spokesperson for Kuwait's Defense Ministry, Brig. Gen. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi, said “a number of hostile drones” targeted a passenger building at Kuwait International Airport. It had opened only Monday after a months-long closure because of the war, which began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
India’s embassy said the person killed was an Indian national. Authorities said 63 were wounded, including passengers and workers, and some suffered serious injuries.
Kuwait's Defense Ministry said it destroyed over a dozen missiles and a similar number of drones from Iran.
The airport partially reopened later, with Kuwait Airways flights resuming at a different terminal, according to civil aviation authorities. No other flights were operating.
The Foreign Ministry said Kuwait will “neither accept nor tolerate” the attacks and was kicking out two Iranian diplomats. Such expulsions are an established means of communicating international ire.
The U.S. military said two Iranian missiles fell apart en route to Kuwait and that it “downed multiple drones” targeting American forces in the country.
The military also said U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at the Gulf kingdom, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet. Bahrain’s Defense Ministry said its military intercepted and destroyed three missiles and a number of drones fired by Iran.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it targeted the headquarters of the 5th Fleet and U.S. military facilities in another country, but did not name Kuwait.
Both the U.S. and Iran said they were retaliating for earlier attacks or attempted ones.
Netanyahu told the American business-news channel CNBC that Iran was “playing with fire,” but he said any decision about whether to scale up a military response would rest with Trump. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared on X that “any hostile act will be met with an immediate, decisive response.”
The U.S. military said it launched strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the U.S. strikes on the island, where it said a telecommunications tower was struck, and other previous strikes. It called them “acts of aggression” that it said violated the ceasefire.
Israeli forces have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter-century, while Hezbollah has launched rocket and drone attacks. The declared ceasefire in Lebanon is officially in place, and no side has formally withdrawn or declared it over even as attacks continue.
Iran insists that any larger potential truce must quell the fighting in Lebanon. Netanyahu wants to keep the issues separate and is under domestic pressure to strike Hezbollah as he prepares for elections this fall.
In a podcast interview released Wednesday, Trump confirmed a report that he had called Netanyahu “crazy” Monday in a phone conversation peppered with an expletive. Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” that he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fight with Hezbollah was holding back talks with Iran.
Still, Trump said his relationship with Netanyahu was good, and “we’ve worked very well together.”
Netanyahu responded that he and Trump sometimes have “tactical disagreements” but have “common goals” and “agree on the main things.”
“He respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences,” the prime minister said on CNBC.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi, Sam Mednick in Jerusalem, Jennifer Peltz in New York and Lisa Mascaro and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
People swim on a public beach as smoke, background, rises from an Israeli airstrike that hit the Qlaileh village, seen from the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike that hit Burj al-Shamali village near the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A woman holds a poster of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a pro-government gathering at Islamic Revolution Square in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People gather on paddleboards in shallow water as cargo and service vessels are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
