The BBC and Independent report that Iranian Sirous Asgari, a materials science professor from Tehran and who was charged in 2016 in the US with trying to trade secret research from an American university, has returned to Iran. In an Instagram post on Tuesday morning, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif welcomed what he described as the “good news” of Asgari’s return, but accused the US of holding “hostage” several other Iranian scientists. Asgari was a lecturer at Sharif University of Technology when he was accused by US prosecutors of stealing trade secrets from a research project being carried out by Case Western Reserve University in Ohio for the US Navy.

The Times and the Guardian lead with the warning from the UN that the health system in Yemen is in a state of collapse after five years of war, disease and starvation, and now coronavirus. A Saudi-led fundraising conference yesterday was told that the country was billions of dollars short of the regular annual funding intended to ease its long-running humanitarian crisis, even before the virus began to affect the country. Britain pledged £160m yesterday towards the UN target of $2.41bn in aid.

The Telegraph reports on Iran’s declining influence in Iraq as its new “pro-Western prime minister” takes office. According to the report, Mustafa al-Khadimi, who was sworn in earlier this month by replacing Adel Abdul Mahdi, reflects the fact that the Iranian military chief who replaced Qassem Solaimani has struggled to wield the same influence in Iraq as his predecessor did. In return for backing Mustafa al-Khadimi, Washington is likely to lean heavily on him to do more to assert Baghdad’s independence from Tehran.

The Financial Times reports that the US turned down the UAE’s offer to screen hundreds of employees at its embassy shortly after opening a test centre due to the involvement of Chinese firms and technology, which raised a “red flag” and concerns about patient privacy. The US decision laid bare lingering tensions between Abu Dhabi and Washington over the UAE’s deepening relationship with China at a time when the Trump administration has been trading verbal blows with Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic.

Robert Fisk writes in the Independent that while European foreign ministers agree that annexation of the West Bank is against international law and that the theft of other people’s territory is anathema to the core principles of the EU, the Union has a long history of turning a blind eye.

The Financial Times reports that Israel is battling to keeping the coronavirus crisis under control as cases rise among school students. According to the report Israel has told almost 10,000 students and teachers to quarantine at home as it struggles to stem an outbreak of coronavirus in schools three weeks after reopening its economy. Israel’s experiment with returning children to schools has been closely watched abroad as the country took the lead in opening up its economy after a relatively mild trajectory of fewer than 20,000 cases and under 300 deaths. No more than 30 people are currently on respirators.

All the Israeli media report on yesterday’s protests held in front of the former US Embassy in Tel Aviv to denounce police violence in the US and in Israel. The protesters — a mix of Israelis, including Ethiopian Jews and African-American immigrants — compared the situation in Israel to that in the US, reading out lists of the names they said were victims of police brutality. They used slogans like “No justice, no peace” and “Solomon Tekah, the last victim” — a reference to the death of an Ethiopian-Israeli teenager shot by an off-duty police officer last year.

Kan Radio News notes this morning that schools and kindergartens will remain open despite 220 students and teachers testing positive for coronavirus across Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with several cabinet ministers and decided to reject the Health Ministry’s recommendation to close all middle schools and high schools in Jerusalem. The pace of infection has continued to rise in Israel after 116 people tested positive for the coronavirus yesterday, 18 more than on Monday. Haaretz reports that Municipal social service departments are on the verge of collapse due to the large caseload from the coronavirus crisis, which is overwhelming its already overburdened social workers. According to an organisation that represents 260 heads of municipal social service departments, “The coronavirus crisis could lead to the collapse of welfare and social service bureaus in local authorities due to the anticipated pressure on personnel, and their inability to carry out the many tasks and duties in a professional manner.”

Kan Radio News also reports that Israel has stopped deducting from the tax funds that it levies on the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) behalf the sums the PA pays out to terrorists and to the families of terrorists who were killed. The law allowing Israel to make such deductions was passed into legislation two years ago, and Israel began to implement it a year ago, but it reportedly stopped making the deductions three months ago. Israeli officials say the security cabinet would be convened soon to discuss the issue.

Yediot Ahronot reports that in February the Jordanian secret services arrested five citizens suspected of planning terrorist attacks on Israeli targets in the West Bank. Judicial source told the Associated Press that the trial of the five citizens had begun recently at the state security court, a military tribunal that usually deals with terrorism-related cases. According to the charge sheet, one of the suspects had visited the Gaza Strip in 2007, where he was trained to make explosive vests and bombs. The suspect returned to Jordan in 2010 and seven years later, recruited the four other suspects with whom he plotted to infiltrate the West Bank and carry out attacks “with bombs against buses and trains and with explosive vests against other Israeli targets”.