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Israeli Ambassador Gilad Cohen has accused the WIND VILLA guest house in Kyoto of discrimination following an incident in April in which an Israeli tourist was asked to sign a pledge stating he had never “been involved in any war crimes that violate humanitarian and international law”.

In a post on X over the weekend, Cohen described the request as a “blatant act of discrimination against Israeli citizens and an unacceptable attempt to equate them with war criminals”.

“I call on the Kyoto City authorities to address this case swiftly,” Cohen said.

“We trust that the Japanese authorities will continue to uphold the values of hospitality and respect that Japan is so well known for – and ensure all visitors feel welcome and safe.”

WIND VILLA owner Ace Kishi said in an interview that he has no plans to change the policy following an investigation by Kyoto city authorities and a rebuke from the Israeli envoy.

Kishi said he began asking guests to sign the pledge about six months ago in response to world events.

“I was really concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israeli attacks on Gaza,” Kishi told Al Jazeera.

“I just wanted to take some measures for our safety, and for guest safety, as well, and to express our disagreement with war crimes and international violations.”

Kishi said only four people have signed the pledge so far – three Israelis and one Russian.

The Israeli tourist in April was the first to take issue with the request, he said, although some guests were surprised by the document.

“Mostly, they have had no objection, they just looked a little confused,” Kishi said.

“The last one was quite confused and upset. But eventually he signed and said he hadn’t committed any war crimes.”

In an account of his interaction with the Israeli tourist posted on X last month, Kishi described the man as an otherwise pleasant guest and admitted to feeling a “little sorry for him”.

“The pledge thing made us pretty awkward, but he still greeted me every time we met,” Kishi wrote.

“He even held the door open for me while I was carrying my luggage. But he believed that what Israel was doing was absolutely right and thought that I was brainwashed for criticising it.”

The Israeli tourist, who has not been named, shared a similar version of events with an Israeli news outlet following his trip to Kyoto – although the Israeli report suggested the pledge was a “condition for check-in”.

“In the end, I decided to sign it because I have nothing to hide,” the guest was quoted as telling Ynet News, which said the tourist had served as a combat medic in the navy reserves.

“The statement is true – I did not commit any war crimes, and Israeli soldiers do not commit war crimes. I signed because I didn’t want to create problems, and because this form means nothing,” he was quoted as saying.

Following complaints from Cohen and the Israeli embassy, Kyoto tourism authorities visited the guest house several times to carry out an investigation, Kishi said.

“At least the authorities, both from the city and the Japanese government, don’t think it’s a violation of the Hotel Act,” Kishi said, referring to the Japanese law governing public accommodations.

“They are just expressing their concerns and trying to convince us to change our measures. But it’s beyond their authority, so it’s very indirect.”

Kishi said he has tweaked the wording of the pledge to state that it would not affect guests’ eligibility to stay at WIND VILLA, to avoid further incidents.

He also clarified in a public letter to Cohen that the pledge requires “all guests whom our guesthouse identifies as potentially having been involved in war crimes to sign the form,” including those from Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Mali, Myanmar, Palestine, Russia, Syria, and Sudan.

Booking.com has suspended WIND VILLA’s account since the April incident, although the Israeli guest used rival site Expedia.com to book his stay, according to Kishi.

WIND VILLA’s other accounts on booking sites, including Expedia.com, continue to operate as normal, Kishi said.

The Kyoto government and Israel’s embassy in Tokyo did not reply to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

The Japan Times quoted a city official as saying WIND VILLA had not violated Japanese law, but the pledge was “inappropriate”.

Booking.com told Al Jazeera that the company’s mission “is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, and we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind”.

“We have temporarily suspended this property so that we can investigate the matter further,” the spokesperson said.

The WIND VILLA incident follows a similar occurrence in Kyoto last year, when a local hotel refused an Israeli man accommodation over his potential ties to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The Kyoto hotel in question received verbal and written warnings from the city that it had acted illegally, according to Japan’s Kyodo News.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told local media at the time that it was “unacceptable” for any hotel to refuse accommodation because of a guest’s nationality.

“We hope all visitors to Japan will be able to engage in various activities in Japan, feeling secure,” she told a news conference.

By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.

But the results were not there. The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.

The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.

It did not help that two $67 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America’s flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea. By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.

Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who was already in Omani-mediated nuclear talks with Iran, reported that Omani officials had suggested what could be a perfect offramp for Mr. Trump on the separate issue of the Houthis, according to American and Arab officials. The United States would halt the bombing campaign and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel. U.S. Central Command officials received a sudden order from the White House on May 5 to “pause” offensive operations.

Announcing the cessation of hostilities, the president sounded almost admiring about the militant Islamist group, despite vowing earlier that it would be “completely annihilated.” “We hit them very hard and they had a great ability to withstand punishment,” Mr. Trump said. “You could say there was a lot of bravery there.” He added that “they gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that.”

Whether that proves to be true remains to be seen. The Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Friday, triggering air raid sirens that drove people off beaches in Tel Aviv. The missile was intercepted by Israeli air defenses.

The sudden declaration of victory over the Houthis demonstrates how some members of the president’s national security team underestimated a group known for its resilience. Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of Central Command, had pressed for a forceful campaign, which the defense secretary and the national security adviser initially supported, according to several officials with knowledge of the discussions. But the Houthis reinforced many of their bunkers and weapons depots throughout the intense bombing. Significantly, the men also misjudged their boss’s tolerance for military conflict in the region, which he is visiting this week, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Trump has never bought into long-running military entanglements in the Middle East, and spent his first term trying to bring troops home from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

What’s more, Mr. Trump’s new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, was concerned that an extended campaign against the Houthis would drain military resources away from the Asia-Pacific region. His predecessor, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., shared that view before he was fired in February. By May 5, Mr. Trump was ready to move on, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials with knowledge of the discussions in the president’s national security circle. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.

“We honor their commitment and their word,” Mr. Trump said in remarks at the White House on Wednesday.

A White House spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, said in a statement to The New York Times that “President Trump successfully delivered a cease-fire, which is another good deal for America and our security.” She added that the U.S. military had carried out more than 1,100 strikes, killing hundreds of Houthi fighters and destroying their weapons and equipment.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the operation was always meant to be limited. “Every aspect of the campaign was coordinated at the highest levels of civilian and military leadership,” he said in an emailed statement.

A former senior official familiar with the conversations about Yemen defended Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, saying he took a coordinating role and was not pushing for any policy beyond wanting to see the president’s goal fulfilled.

General Kurilla had been gunning for the Houthis since November 2023, when the group began attacking ships passing through the Red Sea as a way to target Israel for its invasion of Gaza.

But President Joseph R. Biden Jr. thought that engaging the Houthis in a forceful campaign would elevate their status on the global stage. Instead, he authorized more limited strikes against the group. But that failed to stop the Houthis.

Now General Kurilla had a new commander in chief.

He proposed an eight- to 10-month campaign in which Air Force and Navy warplanes would take out Houthi air defense systems. Then, he said, U.S. forces would mount targeted assassinations modeled on Israel’s recent operation against Hezbollah, three U.S. officials said.

Saudi officials backed General Kurilla’s plan and provided a target list of 12 Houthi senior leaders whose deaths, they said, would cripple the movement. But the United Arab Emirates, another powerful U.S. ally in the region, was not so sure. The Houthis had weathered years of bombings by the Saudis and the Emiratis.

By early March, Mr. Trump had signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan — airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.

At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results. In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (around $30 million each), hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple U.S. officials said.

That possibility became reality when two pilots and a flight deck crew member were injured in the two episodes involving the F/A-18 Super Hornets, which fell into the Red Sea from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman within 10 days of each other.

Meanwhile, several members of Mr. Trump’s national security team were battling disclosures that Mr. Hegseth had endangered the lives of U.S. pilots by putting operational plans about the strikes in a chat on the Signal app. Mr. Waltz had started the chat and inadvertently included a journalist. American strikes had hit more than 1,000 targets, including multiple command and control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations, the Pentagon reported. In addition, more than a dozen senior Houthi leaders had been killed, the military said.

But the cost of the operation was staggering. The Pentagon had deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses, to the Middle East, officials acknowledged privately. By the end of the first 30 days of the campaign, the cost had exceeded $1 billion, the officials said.

So many precision munitions were being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the United States might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China. And through it all, the Houthis were still shooting at vessels and drones, fortifying their bunkers and moving weapons stockpiles underground.

The White House began pressing Central Command for metrics of success in the campaign. The command responded by providing data showing the number of munitions dropped. The intelligence community said that there was “some degradation” of Houthi capability, but argued that the group could easily reconstitute, officials said.

Senior national security officials considered two pathways. They could ramp up operations for up to another month and then conduct “freedom of navigation” exercises in the Red Sea using two carrier groups, the Carl Vinson and the Truman. If the Houthis did not fire on the ships, the Trump administration would declare victory

Or, officials said, the campaign could be extended to give Yemeni government forces time to restart a drive to push the Houthis out of the capital and key ports.

In late April, Mr. Hegseth organized a video call with Saudi and Emirati officials and senior officials from the State Department and the White House in an effort to come up with a sustainable way forward and an achievable state for the campaign that they could present to the president.

The group was not able to reach a consensus, U.S. officials said.

Now joining the discussions on the Houthi operation was General Caine, Mr. Trump’s new Joint Chiefs chairman, who was skeptical of an extended campaign. General Caine, aides said, was concerned about supply of assets he thought were needed for the Pacific region.

Also skeptical of a longer campaign were Vice President JD Vance; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Mr. Hegseth, people with knowledge of the discussions said, went back and forth, arguing both sides. But Mr. Trump had become the most important skeptic.

On April 28, the Truman was forced to make a hard turn at sea to avoid incoming Houthi fire, several U.S. officials said. The move contributed to the loss of one of the Super Hornets, which was being towed at the time and fell overboard. That same day, dozens of people were killed in a U.S. attack that hit a migrant facility controlled by the Houthis, according to the group and aid officials.

Then on May 4, a Houthi ballistic missile evaded Israel’s aerial defenses and struck near Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

On Tuesday, two pilots aboard another Super Hornet, again on the Truman, were forced to eject after their fighter jet failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, sending the plane into the Red Sea. By then, Mr. Trump had decided to declare the operation a success.

Houthi officials and their supporters swiftly declared victory, too, spreading a social media hashtag that read “Yemen defeats America.”

Living within one mile of a golf course doubles the risk of developing Parkinson’s, a new study suggests.

US researchers believe pesticides used to keep greens and fairways in immaculate condition could be triggering the condition by leaching into water supplies or becoming airborne.

In new research, a team from the Barrow Neurological Institute, Arizona analysed health data from people living near 139 golf courses in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

They discovered that living within one mile of a golf course was associated with a 126 per cent higher risk of developing Parkinson’s compared with individuals living more than six miles away.

The study also found a linear relationship between the chance of developing Parkinson’s and distance from the greens, with each mile away reducing the chances of diagnosis by 13 per cent.

Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, Dr Brittany Krzyzanowski said: “These findings suggest that pesticides applied to golf courses may play a role in the incidence of Parkinson’s disease for nearby residents.

“Public health policies to reduce the risk of groundwater contamination and airborne exposure from pesticides on golf courses may help reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease in nearby neighbourhoods.”

The overall chance of developing Parkinson’s is small, with about 0.005 per cent of people in their 30s diagnosed, rising to about 1.7 per cent of people in their 80s.

Previous studies have suggested that exposure to pesticides such as organophosphates raise the risk of the condition, and in 2011 the US National Institutes of Health warned that rotenone and paraquat in particular multiply the risk of Parkinson’s by 2.5.

That study found the pesticides can inhibit the function of the mitochondria, the structure responsible for making energy in the cell, as well as causing oxidative stress that can harm cellular structures. Seven pesticides in groundwater

There is also evidence that pesticides from golf courses can pollute groundwater. A study of water courses surrounding four different golf courses in Cape Cod, Massachusetts discovered that they were contaminated with seven different pesticides including those linked to Parkinson’s.

But although there has been anecdotal evidence that living near golf courses may increase the chance of Parkinson’s and cancer, there have been no major studies until now.

The latest research looked at nearly 4,500 people who lived in the vicinity of golf courses, including 418 Parkinson’s patients.

It found a clear link for those living within three miles of a golf course, with the risk decreasing as people moved farther away. The effects were strongest in residential areas that shared their groundwater with a golf course.

Britain has traditionally used fewer pesticides on golf courses than the US, and recently banned the most harmful chemicals.

Experts at the charity Parkinson’s UK also pointed out the disease starts in the brain 10 to 15 years before diagnosis, so the seeds may have been planted long before people moved near a golf course.

Dr Katherine Fletcher, the research lead at Parkinson’s UK, said: “Parkinson’s is complex. The causes of the condition are unclear and are likely to involve both genetic and environmental factors.

“Many studies have investigated whether pesticides increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s in different populations around the world. The results have been varied, but overall suggest that exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of the condition.

However, the evidence is not strong enough to show that pesticide exposure directly causes Parkinson’s. In Europe and the UK, the use of pesticides is strictly controlled, and some – like paraquat – are banned, due to concerns about their wider health and environmental impacts.

“So, the risk of exposure to these for most people is extremely low.”