As Israeli settlers harvest olives on Palestinian land, farmers face growing violence and the loss of a tradition passed down through generations.Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The video shared in Israeli settler groups shows two men bashing an olive tree with long wooden sticks. Smiling and congratulating one another, they try to knock the olives to the ground. They call the result “Pure Olive Oil”.But as Palestinian activist Bashar Qaryouti explained, the two men don’t own the land, the trees, or the olives.They’re Israeli settlers who set up an illegal settlement outpost on private property in the village of Qaryut, in the northern occupied West Bank, and made their way into this olive grove, some 200 metres (656 feet) away from Palestinian homes.“No one has come near here for about three years, thank God,” one of the two men in the video says in Hebrew.Local Palestinians know the man by name, and he does little to hide. The man is Avichai Suissa, an Israeli settler sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom – and previously by the United States – who runs a farm on the outpost. It was established more than a year and a half ago, and videos like this help Suissa raise donations for it.On his campaign page, he says the goal is to rebuild and expand the farm, which was once dismantled by the Israeli army, to prevent it from falling “into enemy hands”.“We’re gradually starting to work our way into the area,” Suissa said in the video.But the land belongs to Palestinians – residents of Qaryut – who have not been able to reach it since the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. “A few months ago, farmers tried to plough their land, but the army stopped them,” Qaryouti said.“After we complained, the army declared the area a closed military zone a few days ago, so settlers are going to other lands, to other olives to steal,” Qaryouti explained.Suissa and others are part of a growing movement of settlers who have intensified their campaign against the olive harvest. The campaign, part of a settler pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank, has turned the olive harvest season in October into a source of fear and danger.Many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank describe this year as the worst yet in terms of settler attacks, and the season has barely started.On Wednesday, armed Israeli settlers on tractors raided lands between the villages of Ramin and Burqa, in the northern occupied West Bank. They opened fire on farmers heading to their trees.Ali Bazzari, a 44-year-old farmer, was killed. His only “crime”, the family says, was trying to pick his olives.Witnesses say the Israeli army prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. Palestinians had to carry the injured through the mountains to hospitals.The Israeli Rights Group Yesh Din says it documented 109 incidents of violence directly related to the harvest in 75 Palestinian communities between September 27 and October 6, an average of 11 per day.Israeli settlers are increasingly attempting to adopt the rituals of the olive harvest season, while pushing out the Palestinians who have kept those traditions for generations.Several new farms have been set up in the occupied West Bank. One shares videos of olives being pressed. Others invite Israelis to “join in” the experience.Palestinians say the videos circulating show a disregard for the actual owners of the land taken by the settlers, and a clear attempt to appropriate the season, imitating its rituals and claiming them as their own.Those rituals – things like collective picking, singing, and shared meals on the farms – are rooted in a deep connection to the land.The olive harvest season may be an exhausting time of the year for Palestinians, with its hard work and long hours in the sun, but it’s a rewarding one. Olive farmers traditionally gather for family get-togethers, with neighbours and friends volunteering to help one another harvest the olives, in a cultural tradition known as “ouneh”.The season has a light-hearted element, with debates about whose land produces the best oil, who should charge the most, and who knows how to pick the most olives and not drop any to the ground.Older generations pass down lessons from history, such as the best time to harvest and how to nurture the trees – an inherited knowledge of climate, agriculture and the land itself.“They planted so that we can eat. We plant so they [will] eat,” a well-known Arabic saying goes. It highlights the continuity of this inheritance, and the responsibility towards future generations.These trees, which are meant to be protected, nurtured and passed on, are being taken away – not only by settlers, but by soldiers, too.Hazem Sanaf, 61, stood on a nearby hill in the village of Beit Rima and watched as Israeli bulldozers ploughed through his lands in late September, after he had received an Israeli military order. The bulldozers destroyed and uprooted more than 400 trees belonging to Hazem and his neighbour, some of them decades old, and his only source of income.
Read briefing A Gallup survey highlights a deep – and historic – partisan divide over confidence in the country’s elections.With less than a month to go before the United States’ pivotal midterms, a new survey found that most independent voters and supporters of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party do not believe the elections will be honest.Polling from Gallup, released on Wednesday, found 37 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of independents have confidence in the country’s electoral system, significantly lower than US Democrats (63 percent).Overall, 49 percent of Americans said they were confident in the honesty of elections, while 51 percent said they were not. Those figures are unchanged from the country’s last midterm election in 2022.This “marks a change from 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, when confidence was nominally higher among approvers (51 percent) than disapprovers (45 percent)”, Gallup wrote in a statement highlighting the results of the survey.The numbers highlight a deep, historic partisan divide over confidence in US elections.“Since 2025 and Trump’s return to the White House, the relationship between leadership approval and confidence in elections has disappeared,” Gallup wrote.Gallup said that the US is the only country out of more than 100 polled annually over the past 15 years to show this pattern – trust in US election integrity is markedly higher among those who disapprove of the country’s leadership under Trump (52 percent) than those who approve (41 percent).In more than 100 countries where the polling organisation tracks views of national leadership and confidence in elections, people who approve of their governments have generally been more likely to trust their country’s elections.In 2025, 70 percent of people globally who approved of their national leadership expressed confidence in the honesty of their elections, compared with 30 percent among those who disapproved.“The current US pattern is highly unusual compared with the rest of the world,” Gallup wrote.Under former US President Joe Biden, 81 percent of Americans who approved of the government expressed confidence in elections, compared with just 30 percent of those who disapproved, according to Gallup.Gallup said the unusual divide could have implications for the November elections, raising questions about whether some voters will view the results as legitimate.
Read briefing Former British consul Sir Vincent Fean says Israel is acting unlawfully by demanding the UK close its East Jerusalem consulate in the wake of a new import ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Read briefing FCC commissioner warns against AI robocalls, citing risks of misinformation before crucial midterm elections.Anna Gomez, the Democratic member of the United States Federal Communications Commission, has urged the federal agency not to allow robocalls generated with artificial intelligence in the lead-up to the midterm elections in early November.On Wednesday, the commissioner pushed back against a petition from Club for Growth, a national conservative fiscal policy organisation, to allow AI-generated robocalls.The petition, filed on August 31, requested that the federal agency allow political groups to make automated phone calls to people without their prior permission. The group said it would limit calls so that the same person would not receive more than three calls over the course of 30 days and would be presented with the option to opt out.The FCC’s public comment period began on September 4, with the deadline for comments on Monday. Responses to those comments are due October 19, and the FCC has yet to decide whether it will approve the request.Robocalls have been used in political campaigns for years. The FCC prohibits such calls to cellphones and pagers without the called party’s prior express consent, but they are permitted to landlines.The concern with the use of AI is that it can sound like a real person and make it easier to impersonate someone. On the back of a rising number of scams using the technology, the FCC, in February 2024, banned it, saying, “this action now makes the act of using AI to generate the voice in these robocalls itself illegal.”“[If] the FCC allows a dark money group to flood Americans’ phones with AI-generated robocalls they never agreed to receive, it would bring chaos so close to Election Day,” commissioner Gomez told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.She told The Associated Press that removing the FCC’s consent requirement could lead to a rise in unwanted robocalls and misinformation.The concerns are not unfounded. In advance of the 2024 New Hampshire primary, voters received a robocall featuring an AI-generated version in the voice of President Joe Biden, the Democrat incumbent, telling them not to vote.The FCC said that political consultant Steve Kramer, who was working for long-shot primary challenger Dean Phillips, was responsible and could face $6m in fines. He was later acquitted of voter suppression charges.At the state level, Louisiana, Tennessee and Vermont passed laws this year requiring disclosures for AI-generated campaign phone calls. More broadly, 25 states have passed laws concerning the use of AI-generated materials in elections since 2019.Concerns about AI robocalls underscore broader concerns about AI in the run-up to the midterm elections.According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 57 percent of registered voters said that the administration of US President Donald Trump has not taken the risks of AI seriously enough, with 54 percent saying the same about congressional leadership.Late last month, the White House convened leaders from leading AI companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google, to sign a voluntary pact in which the companies agreed to put more safeguards in place around the development of their most advanced AI systems. Its non-compulsory nature has not appeased critics.“The White House Accord on Super Intelligence is ‘morally binding’ only, allowing AI companies to design their own controls, select their own evaluators, and determine whether their own procedures are being followed,” Tom Wheeler, visiting fellow in governance studies with Center for Technology Innovation (CTI) at the think tank Brookings Institution, wrote about the decision.“History suggests voluntary commitments from these companies are unreliable, as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have all walked back or violated previous self-imposed standards.”
Read briefing The Catholic Church in Australia has been marred by abuse allegations in recent years.A former Roman Catholic bishop has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for sexually abusing two young indigenous men in Western Australia.Seventy-six year old Christopher Saunders was sentenced by the District Court of Western Australia and showed no reaction during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing.In August, a court found Saunders guilty of one count of sexual penetration without consent and 12 counts of indecent assault.The offences took place between 2010 and 2019 when he was bishop of Broome, a remote diocese in northwestern Australia.Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, issued a statement apologising for the pain and suffering Saunders inflicted on victims, saying their trust had been “profoundly betrayed by a leader of the Church”.Saunders was ordained a priest in 1976 and initially worked at mission stations in outback regions from the 1970s onwards. In the 1990s, he was appointed bishop of Broome by Pope John Paul II.Following the abuse allegations, Saunders suspended his duties in 2020 and in August 2021 Pope Francis accepted his resignation. The clergyman has consistently denied the allegations.He is said to have regularly invited young indigenous Aboriginal men and teenagers to a beach house or a Catholic Church residence, providing them with alcohol and cigarettes, and giving them money and mobile phones.The assaults on the two young men reportedly took place while they were heavily intoxicated.In 2013, Australia’s government set up a Royal Commission, a high-level inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse, after a series of scandals involving the Catholic Church.In 2017, the commission revealed that most of the abuse took place in churches, with seven percent of Catholic priests accused of abusing children in Australia between 1950 and 2010. It said allegations were almost never investigated.It found that 4,444 alleged incidents of child sexual abuse had been reported to church authorities. In some dioceses, more than 15 percent of priests were perpetrators.The commission also heard testimony from the Vatican’s former finance chief Cardinal George Pell, who was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing choirboys in Melbourne, Australia in the 1990s.Pell – who had been Pope Francis’s anti-corruption tsar – was released from prison in 2020 after a court quashed his conviction. He died in Rome on January 10, 2023, at the age of 81 due to heart complications following hip surgery.
Read briefing Rahul Gandhi has been arrested several times at protests demanding the resignation of poll body chief.Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been detained for the third time in two days during a protest demanding the resignation of the election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists.Gandhi and other opposition lawmakers were apprehended by police on Wednesday as they marched towards Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in India’s capital, New Delhi.A live feed on the YouTube channel of Gandhi’s Congress Party showed police taking him into a vehicle and driving away. Authorities also detained several other opposition lawmakers and protesters.Opposition parties, their student units and the “Cockroach” youth movement have been demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, accusing the poll body he heads of benefiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.India’s Election Commission has so far removed more than 130 million names from the voter lists, with millions appealing the removals. About 969 million people were eligible to vote in the 2024 election.Protesters allege the changes disproportionately removed voters who support opposition parties while preserving or adding voters more likely to back Modi’s party.The commission and government deny the allegations. They say the revision has no political motive but is aimed at removing duplicate and ineligible entries while ensuring eligible voters remain registered.Opposition lawmakers led by Gandhi protested on Tuesday as well, before police broke up their gathering and briefly detained them.Speaking before his detention on Wednesday, Gandhi said protesters showed up unannounced after Delhi police “stopped” their gathering the day before.“We will go to the designated protest site, sit there, and tell the country that, for us, Gyanesh Kumar is not the legitimate commissioner,” he told reporters, referring to Jantar Mantar.“The people who have done this [vote theft] are traitors … Gyanesh Kumar will have to resign,” he added.The demonstrations present a new political challenge to Modi midway into his third term, just months after similar protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party youth movement forced the resignation of his education minister over exam paper leaks.The “Cockroach” protests, one of the most visible signs of public dissent against Modi’s government in recent years, reflected growing anger over job scarcity, corruption and a lack of government accountability.
Read briefing The top US public health agency’s remarks come as the Trump administration said it’s ‘closely’ watching the incident.The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said it’s “aware of and closely monitoring” a suspected pneumonic plague outbreak in Russia.The top US public health agency released a statement on social media Tuesday, attempting to ease rising global concerns after the unexplained death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old woman who worked at an anti-plague laboratory in Siberia.“While the circumstances of this reported case remain unconfirmed, plague is a serious bacterial disease that is treatable with antibiotics, particularly when recognized and treated early”, the CDC said.Russian authorities, who have released few details on the events surrounding Shipilova’s death, have quarantined a hospital in the country’s Irkutsk region and are tracing the laboratory technician’s contacts.Russian media reports also say authorities have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation.The CDC emphasised the need for “rapid identification and treatment of infected individuals”, but said the incident posed little risk to the US.“CDC and our interagency partners are prepared and continue to monitor the situation closely”, the agency said.The remarks from the US health agency come as the Trump administration said it’s “closely” watching the incident, which Russia has said is under control.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday pushed Moscow for more information on Shipilova’s death.“I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Rubio told reporters in Iceland.Rubio added that the US has “measures” available to help Russia if the situation becomes more serious, but needed to know more before it could step in.Dr Ashish Jha, who coordinated former US President Joe Biden’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, said on Tuesday that it is unlikely Shipilova was the only person who contracted a case of pneumonic plague.“That would be great,” Jha wrote on X. “But given the context and history, to assume it is that would be unwise.”“We need to understand exactly what has happened. And we have to assume we may not know the full truth,” he added in a separate post as he echoed the Trump administration’s calls for more transparency from Russia.Pneumonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is usually found in small mammals and their fleas. According to the World Health Organization, the plague is highly infectious and can be transmitted through respiratory particles. It can be fatal if not treated early.
Read briefing Yates will examine Cornell’s sexual assault investigations, disciplinary process and campus police response.Cornell University trustees have named former United States Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to conduct an independent internal review of how the university handles allegations of sexual assault and harassment, following widespread criticism over its response to a former student’s rape allegations.The trustees announced on Tuesday that Yates will examine how Cornell investigates reports of sexual misconduct and assault, its disciplinary procedures, campus police responses and the university’s oversight of fraternities.Yates served as deputy attorney general during the administration of former President Barack Obama and as acting attorney general at the start of Donald Trump’s first presidency. Trump fired her in 2017 after she directed Justice Department lawyers not to defend his initial travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries.“It is imperative that Cornell be willing to examine itself with the same rigor we expect of others,” Cornell Board of Trustees Chair Anne Meinig Smalling said in a statement.The appointment comes after renewed criticism of Cornell’s handling of allegations made by a woman, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, who said she was sexually assaulted by multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024.The case resurfaced after Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the university, the fraternity and seven former students in September.No criminal charges have been filed in the case. Cornell has said it expelled some students and suspended others who were accused following its own investigation, while the Chi Phi chapter was shut down.“We don’t have all the answers, but we are committed to investigating and finding the answers our community deserves,” Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff said in a video message on Saturday.Yates, now a partner at the law firm King & Spalding, conducts independent investigations and previously led a 2022 investigation into sexual abuse and misconduct in the National Women’s Soccer League that found systemic failures.New York Attorney General Letitia James is separately conducting a criminal investigation into the allegations after Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor last week.Hochul had called for an independent review of Cornell’s handling of the case amid criticism from students, faculty and others.
Read briefing A late right-wing shift, a banking scandal and economic frustration may be behind Bolsonaro’s last-minute gains, experts say.With three weeks to go until Brazil’s presidential runoff, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva finds himself in a weaker position than he — or most pollsters — had expected.A second round of voting was widely predicted. But most recent polls had Lula entering a runoff from first place, putting him about three percentage points ahead of rival Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.Instead, Bolsonaro took about 47 percent of the vote on Sunday to Lula’s 45 percent, a reversal that surprised analysts and raised questions about what happened in the final days of the campaign, and what the polls may have missed.Carlos Pereira, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think-tank in Brazil, believes part of the answer lies in a late shift among voters who had planned to support smaller right-wing candidates.Bolsonaro himself had said he was banking on exactly that, telling reporters on election day that he expected a “protest vote” from people who might have otherwise backed another candidate but were united in their opposition to Lula.“Usually, voters, they vote [sincerely] in the first round, and they vote strategically in the second round,” Pereira told Al Jazeera.This time, he said, some voters who were planning to cast their ballot for candidates like the former governor of the central state of Goias, Ronaldo Caiado, and businessman and founder of the right-wing Free Brazil Movement, Renan Santos, appear to have made the strategic choice earlier.“They thought, ‘Let’s try to resolve this election right now,’” Pereira said. “If you’re gonna vote for Flavio anyway in the second round, why not vote for him right now?”That early consolidation could also matter in the runoff. Political analyst Rafael Favetti told Reuters news agency that some of the support Bolsonaro would have usually picked up only in a second round had already been “front-loaded,” potentially leaving him less room to expand his coalition.Another factor, Pereira said, was the Banco Master scandal, a sprawling alleged banking fraud that rattled both campaigns in the final weeks, touching figures across the political spectrum.Among them was Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the case that sent Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, to prison. De Moraes was accused of improper ties to Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro after documents emerged appearing to show the banker seeking legal advice from him. De Moraes has denied the allegations.Pereira believes that connection may have acted as a late “trigger” for some voters. Bolsonaro’s supporters have seen Moraes as a political ally of Lula, with Flavio making a direct link between the two on the campaign trail earlier this year, saying, “Anyone voting for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes.”A September Datafolha poll found 34 percent of Brazilians associated the Banco Master scandal more with the left, compared with 27 percent who associated it more with the right.Andre Pagliarini, a professor of history and international studies at Louisiana State University and author of Lula: A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future, agreed the scandal may have hurt the president. A campaign dominated by “spectacular, unceasing scandal involving seemingly the entire political class”, he said, played to Bolsonaro’s strengths as an “anti-institutional insurgent”.“The irony, of course, is that Flavio himself was directly implicated in the Banco Master scandal in a way that Lula is not,” he said in an email.The younger Bolsonaro is under investigation over allegations that he sought money from Vorcaro to finance a film about his father. He denies wrongdoing.For Pagliarini, the bigger surprise was the scale of support for the right, which extended well beyond the presidential race.Bolsonaro won nearly four percentage points more than his father did in the first round in 2022, while his Liberal Party emerged with the largest bloc in Brazil’s Senate. The right also came out strong in gubernatorial races and made significant gains in the southeast of the country.“There clearly was a powerful information environment around Flavio that allowed his campaign to keep its message in front of voters even as the mainstream press exposed scandal after scandal,” said Pagliarini. “If anything, the polls underestimated the commitment of voters already leaning right.”But the results also point to a deeper challenge for Lula and the Brazilian left: a sense among many voters that the government is not delivering enough, particularly on the economy and public security.On paper, Lula can point to a number of positive economic indicators, like record-low unemployment, falling inequality and easing inflation. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into a sense that life is getting easier, as Brazilians have continued to feel squeezed by high food prices and household debt.
Read briefing Letter from progressive US representatives brings attention to Israeli abuse and detention of Palestinian medical workers.A group of six progressive Congress members in the United States have released a statement condemning Israel’s abuse of Palestinian healthcare workers, including the Gaza doctor Hussam Abu Safia, who has been held in Israeli detention since 2024.The Tuesday statement draws attention to Israeli attacks on Palestinian medical workers, who have been targeted and detained during the country’s genocidal war on Gaza.It was signed by Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Summer Lee, Pramila Jayapal and Delia Ramirez.“Over the last three years, the Israeli government has systematically destroyed the health system in Palestine, murdering at least 1,700 Palestinian doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other healthcare workers and destroying dozens of hospitals,” the statement reads.“It has arrested and arbitrarily detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers, including at least 16 physicians who continue to be held in inhumane conditions.”Among those detained is Abu Safia, who lawyers say was subjected to abuses such as torture, sleep deprivation and beatings during his detention.Israeli soldiers arrested Abu Safia in December 2024, after he and other medical workers reportedly refused to evacuate from Kamal Adwan Hospital, where they worked.Israeli attacks on health infrastructure in Gaza, including the destruction of nearly all of the strip’s hospitals and medical centres, are one component of what rights groups have depicted as an effort to deprive Palestinians of essential services such as food, water and medical treatment.Tuesday’s statement argues that such efforts are part of an “intentional policy designed to further occupation, apartheid, and genocide against the Palestinian people”.That assessment is shared by a growing number of rights organisations, scholars and United Nations officials, who have denounced Israeli actions in the Palestinian strip.Israeli officials have stated that they target hospitals and medical facilities as part of an effort to attack the Palestinian armed groups that allegedly use such facilities to carry out and coordinate operations.Such claims have often failed to withstand scrutiny. Israel admitted that its soldiers killed a group of 15 emergency workers in southern Gaza in March 2025, after initially stating that the ambulance convoy had approached soldiers “suspiciously” and claiming, without evidence, that several of those killed were linked to Hamas.A report by the group Forensic Architecture and Earshot found that Israeli soldiers fired more than 900 bullets as they opened fire on a clearly marked ambulance convoy and killed some of the medics “execution-style” before burying their bodies and their vehicles.
Read briefing Lionel Messi super fan Yadil M Iqbal traveled from Kerala, India, to Buenos Aires to watch his idol play his final international game against Benin.
Read briefing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election strengthened nationalist parties, with the SNSD of banned Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik declaring victory. Al Jazeera Balkans’ Aida Duratovic explains how the key question now is whether Bosnia’s leaders can form a government.
Read briefing Yemen’s government has launched an operation to retake territory held by the Houthis and restore its full control of the country.The Iran-backed Houthi rebel force, also known as Ansar Allah, has made significant territorial gains in the past month, seizing large areas on the Red Sea coast.In response, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan have met to discuss the situation in Yemen.In August, they signed a joint defence pact, which is being tested by this conflict.Will the counteroffensive by Yemen’s internationally recognised government achieve anything on the ground?Abdulaziz AlGhashian – Senior non-resident fellow at the Gulf International ForumTimothy Lenderking – Former US special envoy for Yemen and former deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Peninsula affairs
Read briefing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are facing increased Israeli violence and discrimination since October 2023.Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have killed at least one person and injured several others in violent incidents across the territory.Troops opened fire on a vehicle carrying three Palestinians near Bani Naim, east of Hebron, on Monday. The Israeli military reported that the car had rammed one of its vehicles. The incident left one Palestinian dead and two others seriously injured, according to Palestinian officials.It was just the latest in the territory, which has seen a sharp rise in violence in the run-up to Israeli elections later this month. Reports illustrate Israeli efforts to prevent Palestinian politicians and parties from participating.Elsewhere, the military reported an incident involving two Palestinians near Ramallah, while Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the Imriha area southwest of Jenin, injuring three people.The Palestinian General Authority of Civil Affairs named the man killed as 38-year-old Hossam Alaa al-Din Abdul Jabbar Walad Ali. The authority said Israeli forces withheld his body.In a post on X, the Israeli army said the three Palestinians were “driving suspiciously” and had attempted to carry out a car-ramming attack against soldiers.It said the vehicle carrying the suspects had accelerated towards the Israeli military vehicle and hit it before soldiers opened fire.In Ramun, near Ramallah, the Israeli military said it had dispatched troops after a report that a vehicle had been set on fire and that two “terrorists” were in the area, including one carrying a knife.One of the Palestinians “was neutralised by an Israeli civilian,” the military said, without specifying what the term meant.Palestinian authorities said that Ahmad Mazen Kahla was “critically injured by Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire” in the area.The Palestinian Red Crescent said its crews treated three people injured in an attack by Israeli settlers in the Imriha area and took them to hospital.Sources told Anadolu news agency that a Palestinian suffered a broken leg, another sustained a hand injury and an elderly man was beaten and pepper-sprayed.According to the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, 66 Palestinians have been killed in at least 14,742 attacks in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since October 2023.The attacks have also damaged or destroyed 147,111 trees by breaking, uprooting, burning and poisoning, including 100,485 olive trees, the commission said.
Read briefing Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have agreed to trigger collective deterrence measures in response to attacks by Yemen’s Houthi group on Saudi Arabia. The agreement came at an emergency meeting of their Mecca Defence Alliance in Riyadh.
Read briefing English Premier League viewership up 20 percent among young Americans following World Cup, Nielsen Sports data shows.The Premier League has struck a chord with young Americans after the US cohosted this year’s World Cup, with viewership for the English top-flight up 20 percent among 18-34-year-olds so far this season, shows data from Nielsen Sports released on Monday.US broadcasters NBC and the USA Network have attracted an average of half a million viewers for Premier League games so far this season – a 3 percent increase as the sport’s popularity has grown.“The World Cup served as a powerful catalyst, expanding the Premier League’s footprint across a far broader demographic in the US,” said Jon Stainer, global GM at Nielsen Sports.“Our data shows that fandom is not only reaching record highs but it is also expanding rapidly among younger, diverse audiences and carrying over into major domestic and international leagues.”Just over one million Americans watched Tottenham Hotspur’s 2-0 home defeat by Newcastle United on August 29, the Premier League’s most-watched match in the US this season so far.Spurs have been involved in three of the six most-watched Premier League games in the US this season, as their 3-0 loss at Brentford and 0-0 home draw with Everton also made the list.Major League Soccer also benefitted from the growing exposure in the lead-up to the World Cup, with interest soaring 23 percent among 16-34 year olds.Interest in the World Cup peaked at 87 million fans in July, with female supporters accounting for 44 percent of the total fanbase, according to Nielsen Fan Insights, which collects data from half-hour online surveys with a sample size of 3,000 in the US.
Read briefing Israel’s president declared that the ‘antisemitic lie’ deliberately endangers Jews and Israelis.Israel has reacted with anger after the United Kingdom’s Green Party voted to define Zionism as a form of racism.Israel, as well as British Jewish groups, lashed out on Sunday following the vote by the small political party. The Israeli government declared that it now views the left-leaning Greens as giving “legitimacy to terrorism”.The Green Party, which received 6 percent of the vote in the UK’s national elections in 2024, said it regarded Zionism as “an ethnonationalist political project” and repeated its call for Britain’s Labour government to end all arms trade with Israel.In a swift response, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the policy went “far beyond the boundaries of legitimate political debate” and called on other British political parties to condemn the resolution.“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle,” the ministry wrote on social media.Israeli President Isaac Herzog labelled the move “a disgrace and a shame”. Writing on social media, he said: “Those who claim the antisemitic lie that ‘Zionism is racism’ deliberately endanger Jews and Israelis everywhere.”Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said it is “not Zionism that’s racism, it is the Green Party”.The Movement for Progressive Judaism, a British group, said: “The Green Party has made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party”.It added that the support of some Jews for the motion did not mean it would not be used to discriminate against others.During the vote, the Green Party also reaffirmed its “commitment to Palestinian liberation, the right of return, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and a full arms embargo against Israel”.It also reiterated support for “the establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine”, the party said in a statement.The motion was backed by a majority of 1,022 to 813. Party leader Zack Polanski, who is running for Parliament in former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s London constituency, did not vote.In an interview with UK media outlet Sky News, the Greens’ co-deputy leader Mothin Ali said that the heavy casualty toll during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and its ongoing attacks were the context for the vote.Following the passage of the resolution, Polanski and other Green Party members said in a joint statement they would “continue to stand in opposition to genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and the illegal occupation” and “call out the heinous crimes of the Netanyahu government”.
Read briefing The US Coast Guard says a field of debris found near Nantucket, Massachusetts, is believed to be from an emergency medical plane that went missing over the Atlantic Ocean late Saturday night with six people on board.
Read briefing Leftist incumbent Lula is seeking a fourth term in office, facing off against right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.
Read briefing Supporters of jailed former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan have launched a long march towards Islamabad.
Read briefing Voters in Bosnia and Herzegovina go to the polls for the 10th time since the end of the war more than three decades ago.They’re electing more than 500 members of a complex government structure. The Dayton Peace Accord ended the war in 1995.But deep political and ethnic divides remain. Some analysts say this vote could be the most consequential since the agreement was signed.Guests: Jahja Muhasilovic – Assistant Professor at the International University of SarajevoNina Sajic – Professor in the School of Political Science at the University of Banja Luka
Read briefing The US president published a lawmaker’s cell phone number as he called for the passage of a bill making Daylight Saving Time permanent.United States President Donald Trump has increased the pressure on US Senate Republicans to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, singling out one of the body’s members for stalling legislation to end the twice-a-year changing of clocks.In a social media post on Saturday, Trump blasted US Senator Tom Cotton for “holding up” the Sunshine Protection Act, which Trump has personally opted to call the “No More Changing of Clocks Act”.“For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it’s very easy to do, it only takes one!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account about the Arkansas Republican. “It should pass overwhelmingly, in a Bipartisan fashion”.“Nobody wants to spend their precious time running all over the place, turning Clocks back twice a year and, having sunshine in the afternoon is better than early in the morning!” he added.Trump went even further, publishing what he claimed was Cotton’s phone number as he implored Arkansas residents to pressure him. The move echoed a moment during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, when then-candidate Trump gave out US Senator Lindsey Graham’s number after the former rival criticised him.Al Jazeera called the number listed in Trump’s post, but an automated message stated the voicemail box was full. Cotton’s spokesperson and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.The president has routinely pushed Senate Republicans to pass legislation mandating year-round daylight saving, which would end Americans’ decades-long practice of changing their clocks twice a year to increase daylight hours. On Friday, Trump urged the US Senate to approve the bill, which passed the US House in July by a 308-117 vote.Cotton has previously opposed the bill, arguing in a US Senate floor speech last year that farmers, construction workers, commuters and children heading to school would begin their days in the dark during the winter.Trump disputed that argument in a separate post on Saturday, saying the bill “would be a very nice and easy WIN for the Republican Party”.“If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn’t have to run all over their houses, farms, workplaces, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so”, Trump wrote.Trump, an avid golfer, also highlighted what he considered to be another selling point of the bill: the North American Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) tour.“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments”, he wrote in a post, which included a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp supporting the bill. “Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps more importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.”The US president, who spent part of Saturday at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, indicated in a subsequent post that he had received personal feedback on the proposal: “I don’t know about anyone else, but a table full of very distinguished people just told me that they HATE, immediately after a mandatory time change, going home at night – and it’s DARK. It’s depressing!”In 1974, the US Congress briefly adopted year-round daylight saving time in response to the country’s energy crisis. But Congress repealed the law less than a year later over safety concerns as children commuted to school before sunrise.US senators left Washington this week and have no set plans to return until after the November 3 midterm elections.Some members, such as Senator John Kennedy, weren’t optimistic that Senate Republican Leader John Thune would bring the bill up for a vote before polling day.“It’s dead as disco,” the Louisiana Republican told Reuters this week of Trump’s push to make daylight saving time permanent. “My sense is it would have trouble passing … I don’t think the leader is going to bring it up.”
Read briefing Funeral prayers were held at Gaza City’s Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church for a Palestinian mother and daughter who were among five killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment.
Read briefing The emperor is a symbol of Bulgarian national identity whose repatriation stoked tensions with Greece.More than 1,000 years after his death, the remains of medieval ruler Czar Samuel have arrived in Bulgaria.A symbol of Bulgarian national identity, Samuel was a warrior emperor who battled the Byzantine Empire to expand his kingdom before suffering defeat and dying soon after in 1014. His supposed remains were discovered in a Greek border area in the 1960s.The coffin and remains were flown on Saturday to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on board a military aircraft that was surrounded by air force fighter jets.Thousands of people poured into a public square to honour the czar’s arrival, which capped years of fraught negotiations between Bulgaria and Greece until an accord was reached this week.Bulgarian politicians across the spectrum paid tribute to the medieval ruler, listening to the national anthem and a 21-gun salute.“Today, we Europeans are learning to read history with a desire to belong not only to our homeland, but also to the culture that unites us across the entire European continent,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said.“That is why Europe must not reopen old wounds but must work for peace as the supreme good,” Radev continued, referring to the centuries-old rivalry between neighbouring Greece and Bulgaria.Martin Nestorov, a 42-year-old software engineer, told the AFP news agency he attended the ceremony “to welcome Czar Samuel back to Bulgaria, where he belongs”.“I am here because I am Bulgarian, and a Bulgarian is returning to his homeland,” added Tsanka Zlatkova, 65, a retired art historian.A procession brought the remains to be laid in the Church of Saint Sofia, a sixth-century basilica that is the capital’s namesake and where church officials say Samuel was baptised.The handover of Samuel’s remains is part of a broader accord between the Greek and Bulgarian culture ministers.In exchange, Greece is slated to receive 48 objects that Bulgarian troops pillaged from churches and monasteries in Greece during World War I.Speaking before the handover, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he hoped the ceremony would boost Greece’s campaign to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of 2,500-year-old marble sculptures taken from the Acropolis in Athens and later displayed in the British Museum.“The global community is essentially re-evaluating its longstanding stance on protecting cultural heritage,” Mitsotakis said, adding that historical heirlooms “cannot be treated as the spoils of war”.Bulgaria is not the only country to have claims on Samuel. A huge statue of the czar stands in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, with Macedonians claiming him as “their” ruler.In 2022, a bilateral commission recommended presenting Samuel as the head of a state that “most contemporary historiographers consider to be the Bulgarian Empire”, based in what is currently North Macedonia.
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