News Desk

Two Iranian nationals have been charged with terror offences over an alleged plot to target the Jewish community in Manchester ahead of Yom Kippur, Counter Terrorism Policing has said.

Rahman Salehi, 35, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, are accused of preparing to commit an act of terrorism or assisting another to commit an act of terrorism on or before 20 September.

The duo were arrested in the Northern Quarter area of the city, when thousands of British Jews were in synagogues.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the news two Iranian men have been charged over an alleged plot in the Manchester area would be “deeply distressing” to the Jewish community and added “both suspects arrived by small boat several years ago”.

The men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday.

THE heartbroken sister of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s ex has slammed her over what she claims are lies about their relationship and his sudden death, The U.S. Sun can reveal.

Autumn Urker, 31, alleges her brother Ken had split from Gypsy weeks before he died and claims she WASN’T the one who raised the alarm before his body was discovered.

Ken, who shared one-year-old daughter Aurora with Gypsy, was found dead in his bed at his Louisiana home on Thursday, his 34th birthday.

Gypsy said her final message to Ken was a “Happy Birthday” text and claimed she became concerned when he failed to respond.

But speaking exclusively to The U.S. Sun, Ken’s sister Autumn blasted what she described as “lies” surrounding his death and relationship with Gypsy.

She said, “Gypsy had no right to lie and say that it was because of some text that she sent to him.”

A police report obtained by The U.S. Sun shows other family members contacted authorities.

Autumn claimed Gypsy had been telling people “they were engaged and planning a baby number two,” but “none of that was true.”

“They were not together,” Autumn said.

Asked when they split, Autumn said it was “over a month ago” and claimed Ken was the one who ended the relationship.

She said, “When he was like, ‘I’m done,’ she’d do a thing, and so it was a fight whenever they split.”

Following Ken’s sudden death, Gypsy shared an emotional tribute describing him as her “greatest love story” and saying he would “forever be my soulmate and my red string.”

But Autumn hit back, saying, “It’s a slap in the face. You don’t have to lie and make it seem like something.”

The U.S. Sun has reached out to Gypsy for comment.

Gypsy has also said she believes Ken died of an overdose, although she said she did not know whether it was intentional.

Police records obtained by The U.S. Sun list the incident as an “overdose,” but an official cause and manner of death have not yet been released.

A handgun was also found in a holster beside his bed.

Asked whether she believed her brother’s death was intentional, Autumn said, “Accident. So I have more details, so we’re just keeping [them] private.”

The police records also give a fuller account of how Ken was found.

The report says Gypsy’s half-brother Dylan Blanchard and his wife Anita decided to check on Ken and contacted the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office after becoming concerned about his behavior the night before and learning from his boss, Justin Daigle, that he had not shown up for work.

Dylan reached an unlocked bedroom window and spotted Ken unconscious on his bed.

Dylan and Justin then moved the blinds and climbed through the window, where Justin touched Ken and discovered he was cold and not breathing, the report reads.

The records do not state that Gypsy was at the home when Ken was discovered or that she was the person who contacted authorities.

Deputies reported finding syringes and a spoon next to a “brown powdery substance” in the bathroom.

Another syringe was found on the nightstand beside Ken’s bed, along with a handgun, according to the report.

Autumn revealed she had spoken to Ken just hours earlier, with their conversation continuing past midnight.

She said, “He said he just had to work, he was going home, he was tired, so he was going to go to sleep, and then he had work in the morning.”

Their final conversation ended as their calls normally did.

Autumn recalled, “‘I love you’ — it just… That’s how we hang up the phone, you know, we say that we love each other. He didn’t say anything weird.”

Autumn also revealed Ken had been deeply troubled by the reaction to an old prison phone call between him and Gypsy that resurfaced online shortly before his death.

She said, “He asked me what I thought about the phone call that everybody’s been playing this past week, calling him the most sick things, and I told him he wasn’t that guy.”

Autumn said the cyberbullying Ken faced had taken a toll.

She recalled Ken asking her, “Is this call weird?” before she reassured him, “No, it was not weird.”

Autumn said they had plans to meet for dinner or “something” on his birthday before he was found unresponsive.

Paying tribute to her brother, Autumn said, “My brother was a great man. He was the kind of man that tried to love the broken. He was the kind of man that believed without demanding proof.”

She described Ken as a loving father, brother, son and friend who made people feel heard, adding that their mother was “devastated.”

Ken first contacted Gypsy in 2017 after watching Mommy Dead and Dearest while she was serving prison time for her role in the murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard.

The pair later rekindled their romance and welcomed Aurora in December 2024.

Mahan Air is excluded from the agreement as Baghdad says Washington granted its request for a waiver.

Iraq has agreed to let Iranian airlines, except Mahan Air, operate up to 40 flights a day to and from Najaf International Airport, saying the United States granted an exemption from its sanctions.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s office announced the agreement on Friday, a day after Tehran urged Baghdad to lift restrictions that it said hurt pilgrims, patients, students and business.

The deal eases the links between the two Shia-majority neighbours since Washington sanctioned Iran’s aviation sector last month.

Al-Zaidi welcomed the “positive response shown by the US government to Iraq’s efforts and its cooperation in granting the necessary exemption”, the statement from his office said.

“Air travel does not merely represent transportation between two airports, but rather a bridge of communication between peoples,” it added.

Separately, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said the return of flights supports an Iraqi-US partnership premised on mutual respect.

Hussein also welcomed what he described as US understanding of the importance of respecting religious freedom and facilitating access for visitors to holy sites.

Flights suspended

The US Treasury announced sanctions on September 8 against 36 entities linked to Iran’s aviation sector.

Foreign ground-handling companies then refused to service Iranian aircraft for fear of falling foul of US sanctions, and flights stopped at four Iraqi airports.

Soon after, Iraq’s government held direct talks with Washington, seeking an exemption.

Iraq’s ambassador to Tehran, Yasser al-Hajjaj, told Iran’s IRNA news agency that Baghdad had not ordered the halt in flights. The suspension also led to demonstrations outside Najaf airport and in Nasiriya, Karbala and Amarah, according to Iran’s Press TV.

Najaf is the main destination for Iranian flights in Iraq. Flights to and from the city carry Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims to Iran’s holy cities or Iranians visiting sacred sites in Iraq.

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Mohammad Kazem al-Sadegh, told the Iranian news agency ISNA that there were “roughly 25 daily flights from Iran to Najaf and about 15 flights to Baghdad” before the ban.

“Around 12,000 to 13,000 people travel between Iran and Iraq and vice versa on Iranian airlines, which is not a small number,” he added.

In a statement shared on Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that Washington’s “illegal and inhumane” extraterritorial enforcement of sanctions was disrupting Iran’s trade and air transport.

Restrictions remain

Flights between Najaf and Iran restarted late on Monday, according to the Iraqi News Agency.

However, flights with Iran are still suspended at Baghdad, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah airports, forcing passengers into land journeys of at least 12 hours and disrupting pilgrim traffic.

Al Jazeera has not verified the exemption with representatives in Washington.

VICTORIA Beckham was supported by husband David and sons Romeo and Cruz at her Paris Fashion Week show – but Brooklyn has once again swerved the family. 

The fashionista and iconic Posh Spice is hosting her annual display of her clothing collection in the French capital, with David sitting front row with most of their children at the Conciergerie at 2 Boulevard du Palais. 

Romeo and Cruz were both supported by their girlfriends Jackie Apostel and Kim Turnbull, with Harper Beckham, the youngest of the Beckham clan, also there to cheer on her mum. 

However, despite also being in Paris for the annual fashion week, Brooklyn – who has publicly fallen out with his family – has shown no sign of an olive branch, instead attending other events with his wife, Nicola Peltz-Beckham.

The couple were spotted watching the Messika runway at Paris’s Grand Palais on Thursday evening, just a mile down the road from the venue the Beckhams appeared at today.

The day before, they attended another show for Balenciaga.

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Romeo had also arrived in the city ahead of his mum’s event, though according to the Daily Mail, successfully managed to swerve his brother by partying at another event.

A source told the site: ‘No good will come from them bumping into one another, relations are still devastatingly strained.”

They added that, despite the animosity “Brooklyn is missed” from the family events, but at this point he’s decided to keep away.

The family have been at odds for at least the past year, and over the past month has been doubling down on his commitment to wife Nicola with a string of public appearances, including a red carpet appearance at Venice Film Festival last month while also snubbing his brother Romeo’s birthday.

In the meantime, the rest of the Beckham clan have been putting on a united front, coming together to watch Cruz perform at Reading and Leeds Festivals at the end of August.

He shortly after posted a gushing tribute to his family and girlfriend as his UK tour with his band came to an end.

“I am so grateful for everyone around me, not only are they my best friends but they are family, this journey has been so incredible and i have learned so much because of these people.”

He then shared some extra words for partner, Jackie, writing: “Last but definitely not least Jackie, you honestly have no idea how lucky we are to have you, not only do you take care of me but this whole operation, from creative to strategy to mgmt.

“We are a team and would not be doing this without you. I really love you so much.”

Israel’s top court has overturned an election panel’s ban on Arab parties contesting parliamentary elections this month, saying the decision had not met the legal requirements for excluding them, according to Israeli media.

The Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously on Friday to undo the Central Elections Committee’s disqualification of the country’s two main Arab-majority political lists – Ra’am, also called the United Arab List, and the Joint List, which is an alliance of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad.

The decision keeps Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, in the race after critics accused the committee of double standards ahead of the October 27 Knesset vote.

The court also voted 7-2 to reinstate Ofer Cassif, a sitting Jewish member of the Knesset from the Arab-Jewish Hadash party and an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, media reports said.

The two dissenting justices said Cassif backs “armed struggle against the state of Israel”, which is grounds for his disqualification.

In September, the elections committee voted to disqualify the Joint List and Ra’am as parties, as well as Cassif and Sami Abu Shehadeh, head of the Balad party, as individuals.

Balad leader withdraws

The Supreme Court has nearly always overruled the committee when it votes to ban candidates.

However, at a hearing on Thursday, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told Abu Shehadeh that a majority of the nine justices favoured disqualifying him from the election.

They gave him until Friday to withdraw, saying that if he did not, he would be disqualified, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.

Abu Shehadeh withdrew from the election after that.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led the push to bar him over an article written after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Abu Shehadeh described the attack as “an important historical event” in the piece, but denies supporting it.

Balad said in a statement that a court-ordered removal, rather than a voluntary one, would have had “grave consequences for the country’s political and parliamentary life” as it would set a precedent around the removal of Arab candidates.

Double standards

The Ra’am party made history after the 2021 election, becoming the first Arab party to join an Israeli government when it took part in a disparate coalition that briefly removed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power. Most Palestinian citizens of Israel had stayed out of coalition politics until then.

In this election, Ra’am is also fielding a Jewish Zionist candidate for the first time, Yoav Segalovitz, who won popularity in Arab communities for his work to curb crime as deputy minister for internal security.

The election committee’s September vote drew accusations of a double standard, as Palestinian-led parties faced exclusion while parties led by far-right ministers, some of whom have been sanctioned internationally, stayed on the ballot.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, Abu Shehadeh said he withdrew because he “didn’t have any other choices”.

Although the Supreme Court has restored the Arab parties to the ballot, Abu Shehadeh said the reversal did not make the original disqualifications acceptable.

“In the end, what happened yesterday was a historical catastrophe for democracy, or the very narrow margins of democracy in the State of Israel,” he said. “I was disqualified because I think differently, because I have a different narrative on how to read history, the present, and the future in the place that we live today.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs has reportedly been placed in solitary confinement following allegations of his lavish federal prison lifestyle.

The action follows NBC News’ Tuesday reporting of detailed accounts of four anonymous inmates who alleged that the 56-year-old has been paying men for special services including massages, using a contraband phone and keeping an illegal stash of alcohol.

Combs is currently serving a 50-month sentence at FCI Fort Dix, a low-security federal prison in New Jersey, after he was convicted of transporting prostitutes across state lines for drug-fueled sex performances known as “freak-offs.”

Following the news, Combs was placed in a Special Housing Unit (SHU), better known as solitary confinement, a source told the outlet.

This is not the first time the disgraced music mogul has stepped foot inside the SHU. In July, the music artist and producer spent some solo time after getting into a prison fight, sources told TMZ and NBC News.

Allegations of Combs’ pampered incarcerated lifestyle emerged just as his release date moved up again, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate database.

He is now scheduled to be released on Jan. 21, 2028.

Sources told NBC News that Combs pays inmates to clean and cook special meals for him, including curry chicken, pizza and empanadas and that the hip-hop artist also receives Chinese-style massages.

To pay for this labor, inmates allege that individuals outside of prison are depositing thousands of dollars into the commissary accounts of those serving the “Bad Boy for Life” rapper.

One source told NBC, “This is not some normal s— you see in jail. This is some rich s—. It looks crazy, but again, it’s Diddy.”

The news outlet also reviewed footage obtained from inside the correctional facility which showed Combs using a phone, a prohibited item across state and federal prisons. Multiple inmates claim he uses it to scroll Instagram and view explicit nude content shared by an old girlfriend.

Two sources also say Diddy has access to a “jailbroken” tablet where he watches movies and documentaries, including “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” the Netflix docuseries produced by his adversary Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

(After learning of this detail, the “In Da Club” reacted with amusement on his Instagram account, sharing an image of the article and stating in his caption: “coming to a prison near you”).

Other claims state that the “Mo Money Mo Problems” rapper is purchasing an antidepressant drug known as Remeron, or “rem-roms,” from other inmates and keeping a stash of smuggled liquor.

“Hell yeah, I drank with him,” one of the men, who recounted drinking Hennessy with Combs, told NBC.

Combs’ representatives on Friday claimed to be unaware of any actions taken against the rapper: “We have no idea that he’s there. And we have no idea when he’s exiting, if he is. BOP doesn’t share that information with us.”

They also shared a statement on Wednesday following allegations against Combs.

“The continued scrutiny of every mundane detail of Sean Combs’s life in prison has reached the point where the media characterizes ordinary prison life as news,” the spokesperson said via email. “The only real news is that Sean continues to serve his sentence within the rules and he patiently awaits the court’s decision on his appeal.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday; however, a FCI Fort Dix spokesperson on Wednesday said they cannot comment on the “conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual,” nor can they “confirm or deny the existence of a corresponding investigation.”

“Like all correctional agencies, contraband, particularly cell phones, narcotics, and weapons, remains a constant challenge, and we continue to tackle the problem of contraband being introduced into our facilities,” the spokesperson said on Wednesday. “Inmates are not permitted to have access to cell phones, and all incarcerated individuals in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who are found to violate the ‘Inmate Discipline Program’ policy are subject to sanctions.”

Last year, Combs’ was involved in a lengthy and public trial involving allegations of sexual assault and other violence. His former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones lodged civil complaints against the music tycoon.

In July 2025, Combs was found guilty on two counts of a prostitution-related charge, but the magnate was found not guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, which carried heavier penalties, including a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Saeed Ayed* watches over his livestock herd. The animals are starving and parched due to a two-week-long Israeli siege on the Ras al-Ahmar Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley.

Access to the community has been blocked since mid-September, as Israeli forces continue building a barrier through Palestinian land in the area, including a road for military patrols, trenches and embankments.

Since the road closures began, movement for Palestinians has been severely restricted. They are forced to move around at night, transporting water, fodder and milk via donkeys under the cover of darkness to avoid detection by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Ayed told Al Jazeera that no water had entered the community over the past three days after Israeli forces sealed the access points residents had been using to bring in supplies.

“The situation is dire. We are completely besieged, and the livestock cannot survive without water and food for this long,” Ayed said. “We own 15,000 head of livestock, and we fear they will perish because of the siege.”

Ras al-Ahmar is a 300-person village home to around 50 families who have lived off livestock and herding since the 1970s. Ayed said that Israeli settler attacks – part of a wider pogrom against Palestinians across the West Bank – had intensified since February, accusing settlers of trying to force residents out to seize their land.

“We have faced livestock theft, attacks on our dwellings, beatings of residents and vandalism of our homes. This was happening almost daily, yet we refused to leave. Now, they are completely besieging us to force us out,” he added.

The greatest challenge facing residents is restricted access to medical care as a result of the siege, a particular concern for the elderly.

Disease is also rampant among livestock, particularly newborn animals. And with veterinary teams unable to reach the area and treat the animals, deaths have been reported.

The military barrier – which Israel calls Crimson Thread and says it is needed for security – runs for roughly 20km (12 miles) through the northern Jordan Valley, with a width of up to 50 metres (165 feet).

Construction expanded early this year, including the digging of trenches and the bulldozing of agricultural land that damaged wells, water networks and greenhouses. The Israeli military seized nearly 115 hectares, 85 percent of which is privately owned Palestinian land, according to Kerem Navot, which monitors Israeli land policies in the West Bank.

Abdullah Bisharat, head of the village council of Ras al-Ahmar and Atuf, a nearby rural area also facing the military blockade, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli blockade has stopped 51 schoolchildren from attending classes for two weeks because vehicles can no longer reach them.

Israeli forces confiscated a tractor belonging to the village council on Sunday, detaining its driver as he was delivering animal fodder and water to Ras al-Ahmar, Bisharat said.

“We reached out to human rights organisations, but unfortunately no one was able to break the siege. Hundreds of people there are suffering, the majority of whom are women and children,” Bisharat added.

Broader context

The targeting of Bedouin and herding communities in the Jordan Valley is part of a mounting pressure campaign on residents to abandon their properties by restricting access to land and pastures. The tactics include settler violence, the demolition of structures and the closure of roads and access points.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has described Bedouin and herding communities as among the groups most vulnerable to displacement in the West Bank. Dozens of Palestinian communities across the West Bank have been entirely or partially displaced since 2023, when Israel began its genocide in Gaza and ramped up its attacks on the West Bank after the October 7 Hamas attack.

OCHA has reported that at least 130 Palestinian communities have experienced full or partial displacement since January 2023, with 48 communities completely displaced, including 12 from January to August.

According to OCHA, more than 2,500 Palestinians were displaced in 2026 due to settler attacks and related access restrictions, out of a total of more than 6,400 displaced since 2023.

As the Israeli elections – scheduled for October 27 – approach, Palestinian analysts and rights advocates argue that the measures being implemented on the ground are entrenching a new reality that may persist regardless of the next government.

Hassan Mleihat, chairman of the al-Baydar Organization for Defense of Bedouin Rights, told Al Jazeera that settlers appear to be rapidly intensifying measures aimed at displacing Bedouin communities in the lead-up to the elections.

Mleihat said that Israel’s objective was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and seize control of their land.

“The road being constructed near Ras al-Ahmar aims to dominate the area’s land under security pretexts and to isolate Palestinian communities into tiny geographical pockets, effectively confining their presence there,” he said.

A new reality

Observers believe the significance of these Israeli measures against Palestinian communities extends beyond their immediate impact on the population, creating demographic, geographic and security-related changes that may prove irreversible even if the Israeli political landscape shifts after the elections.

Adel Shadid, an expert on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that Israel currently exercises an unprecedented degree of control over Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Palestinians, he said, live in small, fragmented and scattered enclaves with Israeli control over security, military and economic matters, as well as the minutiae of daily life.

He said the change was not only limited to geography but also entails normalising the presence of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank so that they are viewed as an integral part of the region’s fabric, rather than a temporary presence or a reality subject to change.

“This shift is accompanied by the entrenchment of the perception that the West Bank is no longer viewed as a Palestinian area – or even a disputed one – but rather as a territory where Jews have the right to live in safety and security,” he said.

Shadid argued that this perspective also shapes how Israeli and Palestinian communities in the West Bank are perceived by the Israeli state. Israeli settlers are presented as a population requiring protection, while Palestinians are increasingly framed primarily as a security threat.

“This logic extends to how the land and the very elements of life are treated. A tree, for instance, might be viewed as a potential resource for acts targeting the Jewish community; consequently, cutting it down is seen, within this framework, as a security measure that warrants no intervention,” he said.

Shadid said this was also changing perceptions of the role of the Israeli army and police in the West Bank. He argued that the security forces’ role was increasingly seen as protecting settlers against a so-called “Palestinian threat”, rather than restraining settler aggression against Palestinians.

“This new reality is not tied to the current Israeli government. Rather, it creates a dynamic that will persist beyond the elections, regardless of the outcome,” Shadid said.

*Saeed Ayed is a pseudonym used at the individual’s request for security reasons.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has said the woman at the centre of the Cornell University rape case was “failed” at “every turn”.

The woman, known as Jane Doe in legal documents, alleges she was drugged and raped by several men at a fraternity house in 2024.

The case was investigated at the time but no charges were laid. It recently reopened after the woman filed a civil lawsuit last month that thrust the allegations into the national spotlight.

At a news conference on Friday, Hochul said she was “deeply disturbed” by how the investigation was handled. She has now appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James to lead the case.

This appointment was made after Hochul said she “lost faith” in the local prosecutor’s ability to oversee the investigation.

Expressing outrage that local prosecutors did not interview the accuser themselves, Hochul on Friday said: “This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and then at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her.”

She has also vowed to close a “loophole” that prevents prosecutors from pursuing rape charges in cases when the victim has voluntarily consumed drugs or alcohol. Jane Doe is believed to have voluntarily taken drugs and alcohol on the night of the alleged gang rape.

“If someone is too intoxicated to consent it should not matter if they chose to use drugs or alcohol,” said Hochul, adding: “Voluntary intoxication is not a licence for gang rape.”

James, who is the state’s chief legal officer, appeared alongside Hochul at Friday’s news conference, pledging to “lead a process guided by the facts and the law”.

She said her office would interview witnesses and pursue prosecutions if warranted.

District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who previously led the investigation, has defended his office’s previous decision not to file charges in the case, arguing they were not given enough evidence to meet the legal threshold.

Van Houten said much of the information released in recent weeks about the case was not passed to his office.

In a statement on Friday, he said he supported James’ investigation, adding: “It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university.”

Cornell has said it provided evidence to the district attorney’s office from its own investigation, including a Snapchat group chat in which fraternity members discussed a “free” sexual encounter with Doe on the night of the alleged assault.

Shaun Wright-Phillips is adamant he’s having a great time on Strictly Come Dancing – he just needs to tackle the issue of looking very serious on screen.

The former footballer, 40, showed plenty of technique in the opening week but was clearly thinking hard about the moves when he scored just 15, and he hopes to look more relaxed this weekend.

He and pro partner Alexis Warr are taking on a salsa to the Bee Gees Seventies classic ‘You Should Be Dancing’ from Saturday Night Fever as part of Movie Week on the BBC show.

On the BBC show, Shaun says: “It’s been way harder than I expected on multiple fronts, not just the atmosphere, not just the viewers watching, but to play the part and try and do the acting and smiling, as well as concentrating on the most difficult parts of the dance. That is kind of where I lost my happy face and went straight into ‘football serious mode’ to make sure I got all the steps right.

“And to be honest, that is one thing I was really happy about is the fact that the steps that I was taught and my arm placement was correct. And that’s what I went in there trying to do.”

He adds: “It’s not even about being the first out. I just want to be the best I can be at the dances that I’m taught. So the competitive edge is still there, but it’s more with myself to become the best that Alexis can possibly get me to than against all the other contestants.

“Yeah, of course I want to get to the final. Who doesn’t want to get to the final in Strictly? But the learning path and the journey and meeting the wonderful people behind the scene, the pros, the other cast, all plays a major factor in it as well for me.”

Strictly judge Motsi Mabuse said Shaun was too “shy” whilst Craig Revel Horwood mocked his hopes of dancing “like a pro” by saying that would take a good few weeks yet and then gave him a score of just ‘2’.

But unfazed, Shaun says: “I want to say I wasn’t shy. Of course, I was nervous and terrified in the moment, but that face wasn’t me not expressing myself.

“That was me expressing myself in a way that I’ve just known how all my life in terms of concentrating and focusing on what needs to be done at what times. You’ve got 90 seconds, so you have to hit everything on time, otherwise, it can mess up everything else. So it was just for my first dance, it was a lot to think about.

“Honestly, I’m used to being criticised and told how to make myself better through my football career. So everything the judges say, whether I agree or not, I respect it. They’re the masters of that trade and I’m going to try and implement it into this next dance coming up the best I can do and hopefully just keep growing with more and more with confidence.”

Alexis adds: “He definitely was enjoying it and he was making sound effects throughout this dance as well. We were hyping each other up, talking, saying, ‘Let’s go’.

“We are trying to experiment with what it’s like to be more animated and just to be more external with everything.”

Shaun, 44, played for Manchester City, Chelsea and England during his career, and is the adopted son of Arsenal legend Ian Wright. His mum Sharon is also a keen supporter and Strictly fan and they sometimes dance around the house together on a Sunday with music blaring out.

On his family feedback, Shaun says: I spoke to my dad after the show. He’s just proud that I’m doing it because he knows it’s way out of my comfort zone. And to do it, he’s just chuffed that I did it.

“But my mum was there and all she kept saying is, ‘Come on son, you’ve got to shake those hips a little bit more’. But that was about it. I just said, ‘You try being out there then’.”

His fancy footwork which used to see him gliding down the wing on the pitch may be an asset of sorts when it comes to Strictly, but he says the main thing that translates is his work ethic.

He it pushing hard this week in the hope that practice makes perfect.

“I would say the part that transfers over is that no matter how tired I am, if Alexis says, ‘Again’, I’m ready to go again. No matter how much it kills me, I will go again just to try and help it become more set into my body. I’d rather just keep doing it over and over again. No matter how tedious it might feel, I will just keep going.

Partner Alexis agrees and adds: “I definitely do see that being the biggest transfer over is his work ethic. It’s really impressive. I’m sometimes the one that has to be like, ‘Okay, give me five minutes’.

“This week we’re definitely not playing it safe, and so definitely pushing him to the max with certain things. But he is such a hard worker and is really putting in the effort. So I’m proud and I’m happy with where it’s at, so I’m really excited for the performance.”

And as a former Man City player, I also wondered if he had given much thought this week to the Premier League victory over the club in court over breaches of its financial regulations, which could see the club relegated or titles taken away from them.

But laid back Shaun is not letting it affect him at all.

“I’m over it to be totally honest with you,” he says, referring to the process which has taken a number of years.

“It’s been going on for that long. There’s one thing I can say on it, whatever has happened behind the scenes, the players and the fans, they didn’t pay for that. And no matter how much money you spend, it doesn’t buy you the Premier League. That’s my personal opinion.”

He adds: “It’s disheartening to see what’s out there, but at the end of the day, it will all resolve itself whatever way it’s going to do it, and it’s just onwards and upwards. But in terms of, for me, for here, I’ve got tunnel vision on right now.

“There’s way too much to think about in the routines that they are giving me to have any thought process outside of Strictly right now. I just hope everyone will vote for us this week and can help us get through.”

* Strictly Come Dancing continues tonight, Saturday October 3, on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer at 6.15pm.

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A historic collapse

One factor in the widespread disillusionment has been the Banco Master scandal. The financial imbroglio has delivered a black eye to both ends of Brazil’s political spectrum.

A range of business leaders, political figures, regulators and judges have been swept up in the scandal.

A mid-sized lender, Banco Master grew aggressively over the last decade by selling high-yield deposit certificates. Some of those certificates offered returns of up to 140 percent relative to Brazil’s benchmark interbank rate.

But Banco Master did not have the assets needed to sustain that output.

It lacked the money to pay back its risky loans, and what assets it did have were diverted to shell accounts, according to prosecutors.

Brazil’s Central Bank ultimately liquidated Banco Master in 2025, as the lender faced a major funding squeeze.

Its owner, Daniel Vorcaro, was subsequently arrested, accused of an array of financial crimes, including money laundering and fraud.

The collapse of Banco Master triggered a nearly $7.7bn payout from Brazil’s Credit Guarantee Fund, the largest disbursement in the nonprofit insurance’s history.

Investigators have suggested that Vorcaro protected his fraud scheme by cultivating influence among power brokers among Brazil’s elite.

Among those implicated in the scandal is Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the presidential candidate.

Last month, the Supreme Court unsealed documents showing he is under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering in connection with Vorcaro.

Audio recordings have also surfaced, appearing to show Bolsonaro soliciting the disgraced bank leader for millions in funding. The money was slated as financing for Dark Horse, a film about his imprisoned father, Jair Bolsonaro.

Flavio Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing. He described the interaction as a private sponsorship opportunity, unrelated to the Banco Master scandal.

Job growth in the United States slowed in September, falling short of economists’ expectations as the unemployment rate rose in the final jobs report before the consequential midterm elections.

The US economy added 29,000 jobs in September, according to the Labor Department’s report released on Friday, far below economists’ expectations. Dow Jones had forecast 84,000 jobs, while economists polled by Reuters said they expected 90,000 job additions.

The unemployment rate also rose by 0.1 percentage point, from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent.

The healthcare sector led the gains, accounting for the majority of new jobs. The industry added 17,000 jobs, marking a slowdown from an average of 33,000 jobs per month over the past year. Construction added 11,000 jobs, while manufacturing added 9,000.

Financial activities, which include sectors such as commercial banking and insurance, shed 7,000 jobs.

Most other sectors were largely unchanged, including retail, oil and gas extraction, and leisure and hospitality.

“Today’s disappointing report shows the labour market is grinding to a halt, marked by slow hiring and declining real wages that leave workers with very little leverage,” Kyle Moore, chief economist at the think tank The Century Foundation, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Previous jobs reports were also revised downward. July was revised from an initial gain of 21,000 jobs to a loss of 10,000 jobs. August was revised down by 29,000 jobs, from 162,000 to 133,000.

Wages grew by 3 percent, marking the slowest annual wage increase in five years.

Friday’s jobs report caps a week of weakening economic data before the consequential midterm election on November 3.

According to an AP-NORC poll released on Thursday, 61 percent of Americans polled said the US economy is worse off now than when Trump took office in January 2025.

“When businesses are barely hiring and raises aren’t keeping up with rising prices, it’s a stalled economy – and working families are stuck in it,” Breyon Williams, chief economist for Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank, said in a statement.

Trump has been trying to change the narrative on the slumping economy. On Monday, he said in a Truth Social post that “The United States has the BEST Employment Numbers in HISTORY.”

Stalling growth

On Tuesday, the US Labor Department released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, which showed little change, suggesting what economists call a low-hire, low-fire environment. That means those who have jobs are generally not leaving for new ones, while employers are maintaining the status quo rather than expanding.

On the other hand, ADP’s private payroll report, released on Wednesday, showed that 90,000 jobs were created across the private sector. The sheer number of layoffs fell, too, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The report, released Thursday, showed that employers cut more than 43,000 jobs in September, marking an 18 percent decline in layoffs from August.

Friday’s jobs report comes before the Federal Reserve’s final policy decision before the midterm election. During its two-day policy meeting on October 27-28, the central bank will decide whether to raise, cut or maintain interest rates.

The odds increasingly suggest the Fed will hold rates steady in the 3.75-4.00 percent range, according to CME FedWatch, a tool that tracks the likelihood of monetary policy decisions. The FedWatch tool indicates there is currently a 77.3 percent chance that rates will hold steady, up from 35.8 percent this time last week.

US markets are trending upward on the heels of the report. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 1.5 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 0.6 percent and the S&P 500 is up 1.1 percent in midday trading.

The price of gold, which is largely considered a safe investment during times of economic uncertainty, rose 1.1 percent to $4,223.49 amid the jobs report.

CHARLOTTE Dawson has shown off her incredible weight loss in before and after snaps.

The mum-of-three took to her Instagram page to share that she can fit back into her size 10 jeans again.

The star took to her account to share how she did it – and mentioned her new lifestyle and fitness platform.

Showcasing her amazing fat loss with a picture of her before and after, she told her 1.4m followers: “I’VE GOT MY FAVOURITE SIZE 10 JEANS ON.

“Honestly… I can’t believe I’m saying this. Looking at these pictures makes me SO proud of myself.

“Not because of a number on the scales, but because I’ve done this the RIGHT WAY. The Confidence Curve way.

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“Sarah @nourishbysg has been sorting me out for over a year now with my food, gut and getting my skin looking glowy and Kelly @kellyameliaaerial has been training with me getting me feeling strong, healthy and fabulous now and I’ve been keeping my confidence in check!! Now it’s yours turn @confidencecurve_cc.”

She confessed that there were “no quick fixes” and she “didn’t punish herself”, but she just made “better choices” and “moved her body”.

Her fans rushed to the comments section to praise her efforts, with one writing: “Looking fab.”

Another said: “Go on my girl.”

A third chimed in: “You look amazing. Well done.”

In another video shared to her account and Confidence Curve, she filmed herself struggling to get into the item of clothing, followed by her with a smile on her face with them on her body.

But Charlotte, who is mum to Noah, Jude and Gigi, later had to take to he later had to take to her Story to vent after receiving some negative messages.

She said: “I don’t own a pair of jeans, every knows me, I don’t wear jeans, I don’t like the fit, they are uncomfortable.

“But these jeans, I have had these for years and years. Size 10. Can never get them on.

“I am just going to tell you something, I am not a size 10… I’m a size 12. well, 14-12, more to a 12-10 now. I’m so happy I got into a size 10 jeans.

“Nobody f***ing believes me, nobody believes me in the comments. What the f***?”

Back in March, the mum-of-three announced she was quitting her fitness plan brand Belleh Blaster which combined “fun dance routines” with diet plans and a private Instagram group community.

Eritrea has cut off diplomatic relations with neighbouring Ethiopia, escalating a long-simmering conflict between the two states rooted in territorial disputes and mutual accusations of interference.

The move comes as fighting flares in northern Ethiopia between Ethiopian federal troops and an opposition alliance that Addis Ababa accuses Eritrea of backing.

The clashes are the most severe in Ethiopia since its 2020-2022 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

But this time, the ripple effects could go further, potentially fuelling broader unrest in a region already plagued by numerous interrelated conflicts, analysts warn.

Here’s what we know about the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, the latest fighting in northern Ethiopia and what it could mean for the region at large:

Why did Eritrea break off ties with Ethiopia?

Eritrea announced it was severing ties with Ethiopia on Thursday, after Addis Ababa announced it would close its embassy in Asmara and expel 10 Eritrean diplomats.

In a statement, Eritrea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Ethiopia’s actions had left it with “no option but to reciprocate in kind and sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia”.

The Eritrean ministry accused Ethiopia of pursuing a years-long “agenda of incessant hostility”, including by infringing on its coastal areas and arming fighters opposed to Ethiopia’s government.

Ethiopia has likewise accused Eritrea of backing armed groups opposed to its government. Both sides have rejected the other’s accusations.

The diplomatic breakdown follows months of worsening relations, driven largely by disputes over landlocked Ethiopia’s push for access to the Red Sea and allegations that Eritrea is backing the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which leads the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, a rebel alliance fighting for control of parts of northern Ethiopia.

Have Ethiopia’s ties with Egypt and Sudan been hit, too?

Yes. Ethiopia accuses Egypt and Sudan of joining Eritrea in backing Tigrayan rebel forces, worsening already strained ties with both countries.

Ethiopia has long been at odds with Egypt over the status of Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project, which Cairo views as a risk to its water security and share of the Nile.

Ethiopia and Egypt have also expelled diplomats. Cairo ordered an Ethiopian diplomat to leave the country on Thursday, after Addis Ababa earlier kicked out an Egyptian diplomat, Egyptian state-linked media reported.

Egyptian state-linked broadcaster Al-Qahera News quoted an Egyptian official as calling Ethiopia’s move to expel the Egyptian diplomat as “regrettable and unjustified” and saying that Cairo responded in line with “the principle of reciprocity”.

The latest conflict also has implications for Sudan, whose military-backed government accuses Ethiopia of backing rebel forces it is fighting in its own civil conflict. Ethiopia rejects those allegations.

“The conflicts in Ethiopia and Sudan have become more interconnected, with the Ethiopian government and Sudanese Armed Forces accusing each other of harbouring and equipping respective opposition forces from inside their own borders,” Ahmed Soliman, senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank’s Africa programme, told Al Jazeera.  “Egypt has also been drawn into the escalation with its long-running enmity with Ethiopia over the Nile.”

What is happening in northern Ethiopia?

Tigrayan-led rebel forces have engaged in clashes with Ethiopian government-backed forces in the country’s north since last week. Fighting is concentrated in three regions: Tigray, Amhara and Afar.

Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Ethiopia, Mohammed Taha Tawakel, reported that forces loyal to the federal government have made significant gains in the Tigray region, taking control of several towns and closing in on the regional capital, Mekelle.

Further east in Afar, a pro-government armed group claimed on Thursday to have recaptured the town of Erebti, which rebel forces had taken control of earlier in the week. The pro-government group thanked the Ethiopian military for its “magnificent air support” and said it would pursue further advances.

Despite the pro-government advances, Tawakel reported that rebel forces still maintain what he described as a “strong rear link with Eritrea” along the countries’ border.

He also reported growing fears that fighting could move into major urban centres of Tigray, such as Adwa, Axum, Shire and Mekelle. Some people have already begun fleeing to Amhara and Afar, he added.

Outside northern Ethiopia, the conflict appeared to spill into the capital, Addis Ababa, for the first time early on Thursday, as an explosion was reported at the Ministry of Defence.

AFP quoted a diplomatic source as saying small drones were the most probable cause of the blast.

While Ethiopia’s army has a much larger arsenal of drones, rebel forces have previously used them to target airbases and airports in various parts of the country, reported conflict monitor ACLED.

What are the roots of the Ethiopia-Eritrea dispute?

Ties between the neighbours have been historically fragile. In 1962, Ethiopia annexed Eritrea. An armed independence struggle, led by Eritrea’s current President Isaias Afwerki, secured independence in 1993. The countries fought another border war from 1998 to 2000.

When Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, he moved to end the tensions and normalise diplomatic relations with Eritrea. During Ethiopia’s last civil war in 2020-2022, Eritrea even backed Ethiopia’s government against the TPLF.

But Abiy’s ambitions to seek direct sea access for landlocked Ethiopia have contributed to recent tensions, say analysts. Abiy has repeated that Ethiopia has a right to sea access, words that officials in Asmara take as a declaration of territorial conflict with Eritrea.

Could the current conflict spread in the region?

Many analysts fear it could.

Laura Hammond, professor in development studies at SOAS University of London, told Al Jazeera this scenario is already under way.

“The risks that conflict will spread to other countries, or that neighbours in the region will be brought into the present conflict are already playing out in terms of Eritrea’s support for the TPLF and the Alliance for Survival,” said Hammond.

“There is a strong possibility that Eritrea will become more involved in the conflict on the ground inside Tigray if it continues much longer,” she continued. “There is also a risk that the conflict could inflame relations with and inside Sudan.”

Martin Plaut, an analyst specialising in the Horn of Africa, also said there was a “real danger” of the conflict spreading.

“The situation is extremely tense and it would only require a spark to ignite a conflagration that could engulf [Ethiopia and Eritrea], as well as neighbouring Sudan,” he told Al Jazeera.

DANNY Cipriani’s ex wife Victoria Rose has taken a savage swipe at the rugby star as she sells off his “prized possessions” for £850.

Victoria, who was married to Danny from 2021 to 2024, has suggested a dark side to the former England rugby union star that requires the help of a priest.

She’s now flogging his old rugby kits, international caps and even his old kit bags on Vinted.

And Victoria wrote on social media alongside a personalised England Rugby bag: “What I’m finding inside some of these bags, I’m learning far more about my ex husband than I ever needed to know. Some of it needs a priest, not a Vinted listing.”

Victoria also said of his old Gloucester top: “As you know, guys, I’ve put this up for sale a few times and then taken it straight back down again.

“It was one of his most prized possessions, so I’ve always found this one particularly hard to let go of.

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“But the truth is, it can’t mean more to me than it did to him. So. it’s back online.”

Victoria is selling the gear after claiming that he has left her in financial woe.

She revealed earlier this year she was taking legal action against him.

She posted: “I take no pleasure in posting this, but when someone else’s debts end up on your doorstep, silence stops being an option.

“Sorry to drop this on such a gorgeous day, but let’s be clear: I have zero qualms airing this publicly.

“My ex-husband once happily sold a pack of lies about me to the press, lies that dragged me through two brutal years of court hell before I was fully exonerated and proven innocent. He didn’t lose a second’s sleep over how that wrecked my life, so forgive me if I return exactly the same courtesy now.

 “This morning I woke up to bailiffs banging on my door and my car clamped. My car.

“Because the system decided that a debt racked up by my ex, after we’d already separated, in his name, his responsibility, gets to magically teleport across the Atlantic and land on me in the UK while he ghosts every letter, email, and demand sent his way.

“I had to pay his debt today just to get my car unclamped and back in my driveway. Not my bill.

“Not my problem, except it became my problem because he’s untouchable in LA.

“Meanwhile, Danny’s over there in the States, blissfully “connecting with his inner child,” chatting mystical dragons with his girlfriend, posting about soul growth and manifesting miracles.

“How touching. Shame the actual, physical world bills don’t manifest the same level of enlightenment; they just keep boomeranging back here for someone else to sort out.

“Receipts are kept, proof is solid, and today the emails start flying, including straight to the embassy.

“Because the same man currently trying to charm his way into US residency can’t even handle basic adult responsibilities in the country he left behind. If you can’t face your debts here, you don’t deserve the privilege of pretending to be squeaky clean somewhere else.

“Take responsibility for your own actions, Daniel. This is your public warning! I’m initiating proceedings for your DEBT!!!!”

Victoria previously claimed he left her to cover the £16,000-a-month household bills and tens of thousands of pounds of debt.

But Danny alleged she had stolen money from his ill mother and was guilty of financial misconduct towards him

She said: “He took the allegations to the police and I was subject to a criminal investigation for seven months.

“I didn’t steal anything from Danny or his mum and have been cleared by a court of wrongdoing. It was a lie.”

The former star and Victoria officially filed for divorce in August 2024, nine months after their bitter break-up.

Danny has since moved on with American actress AnnaLynne McCord.

The couple tied the knot on in August 2026, in an intimate backyard ceremony at their home in Los Angeles.

Both decrees to tackle housing affordability crisis shot down as critics say measures would tighten the housing market.

Spain’s government has lost key votes to ratify emergency measures aimed at tackling the nation’s housing affordability crisis, after protests intensified last month following the eviction of an 87-year-old woman.

The proposed measures, which comprised two separate decrees, were both shot down by the majority of ⁠the 350-seat lower house of parliament on Friday.

The move is a heavy blow to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose government faces public pressure, including from the hundreds of protesters who had gathered outside parliament demanding help for renters.

The first decree was meant to stop evictions of vulnerable people, make real estate speculation harder, impose tighter restrictions on short-term leases and provide tax incentives to encourage renting and the construction of housing.

The second decree proposed making leases automatically renew when they are set to expire, essentially making them indefinite. A property owner would have to pay a tenant 12 months of rent to break the contract.

The right-wing ⁠Catalan separatist ⁠party Junts refused to back the housing decrees, saying they would ultimately tighten the housing market. The centre-right Popular Party and far-right Vox also voted against the measures.

Sanchez, who leads a coalition government composed of his Socialist Party and the far-left Sumar, ⁠appealed to lawmakers in the run-up to the vote to put aside political calculations and pressure.

“Think about ordinary people, about those who most need the protection of public institutions. Think about the millions of young people who ⁠cannot afford to ⁠move out of their parents’ homes. Think about the families living with the constant ⁠anxiety of ever-rising rents,” he said.

“Do the right ⁠thing, because I ⁠believe that if you do not, history will judge you sooner than you ‌think, and far more harshly than you can imagine.”

Miriam Nogueras of Junts argued the decrees would only lead to owners removing their properties from the rental market, and thus driving up prices even further.

“These decrees still allow speculators to buy property and to evict people,” Nogueras said.

‘Your profits, our misery’

As the vote was under way, protesters marched on the parliament demanding help for renters.

The government decrees were intended to quell a public uproar following the televised eviction on September 23 of Maria del Carmen Abascal, known across Spain as Maricarmen, that set off protests and a camp-in that occupied Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square ever since.

Abascal was living in the property in Madrid’s central Retiro neighbourhood under a rent-capped lease contract signed by her father in the 1950s. The property was then bought by the real estate and investment firm Urbagestion in 2018.

Urbagestion sought to terminate Abascal’s contract and evict her after raising her rent from 500 euros ($572) to 2,650 euros ($3,010) – nearly double her pension of 1,350 euros ($1,533) a month – according to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

When the police carried out her eviction on their fourth attempt, hundreds of activists who had been protesting against her losing a home she had lived in her entire life were waiting outside. Abascal has since been offered a preliminary agreement that would allow her return to her home.

Protesters rallying at the chamber in downtown Madrid on Friday held up homemade signs with images of vultures on them, denouncing the real estate speculators they blame for driving up prices.

Some people gathered outside the assembly chanted “your profits, our misery” as lawmakers voted down the government’s decree.

The average rent in Spain has almost doubled in the past 10 years. The average price per square metre has risen from 8.20 euros (about $9.08 at the time) in 2016 to 15.1 euros ($17.15) this year, according to the real estate website Idealista.

Caracas, September 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Minister of Electric Energy Rolando Alcalá announced a plan to add 1,300 megawatts (MW) to the country’s electric grid amid growing protests against recurring blackouts. 

In a televised message published on Tuesday, Alcalá pledged that the electricity supply would improve in the final quarter of 2026 to mitigate outages. He explained that a unit at Planta Centro, Venezuela’s main generation complex serving the central-western region, will come online “in the coming days” and provide 600 MW to the area.

The official also announced that seven generation units with a combined capacity of 500 MW will be added to a key thermoelectric plant in Zulia state, which borders Colombia and is one of the areas hardest hit by power failures. 

The government is also reportedly working on an alternative energy plan for the state, including the Machango solar panel park, which is expected to come online next year.

The remainder of the planned generation will come from units located in other regions of the country. 

“Other units will be brought online nationwide, for a total of 1,300 megawatts during this final quarter of 2026. These will help achieve greater stability, continuity, and fewer interruptions in electricity service nationwide,” Alcalá said in a video shared by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez on social media.

“We have a clear plan to face the challenges of the National Electric System and we are executing it,” she wrote on X. “With organization, coordination, and effort we move forward to overcome this situation.”

Meanwhile, the president of the National Electric Corporation (CORPOELEC), Juan Fernández, explained that “as a complement to the thermal generation plan, major transmission projects are being carried out.” He highlighted the expansion of the Planta Centro substation with the addition of a new 400-230 kV autotransformer, equipment that recently arrived from abroad.

“This year, we have gained access to original spare parts and components from the world’s leading manufacturers,” he added, referencing agreements with US-based GE Vernova, Germany’s Siemens, and Argentina’s Impsa. The US Treasury Department has issued sanctions waivers allowing transactions with Venezuela’s electricity sector.

The latest announcements came amid near-daily protests over power outages throughout the country. Demonstrators have taken to the streets to bang pots and pans or block streets to demand that authorities answer for blackouts that can add up to 16 hours per day.

On Wednesday night, protesters from Guacara, Carabobo State, temporarily blocked the Central-Regional Highway, the main highway connecting Caracas to Western regions, after electricity was shut off for a second time in the same day. 

In statements to local press, demonstrators have highlighted that high temperatures and mosquitoes make it hard to sleep without ventilators or air conditioning, leading children to fall asleep in school. They have also criticized authorities for not producing a rationing schedule, making it impossible for families and businesses to plan around outages.

In their Tuesday televised message, Venezuelan government officials stated that the country’s electricity demand has risen in recent weeks, driven by a “rebound in economic activity,” high temperatures caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon, and the twin June 24 earthquakes which “delayed plans that had been underway to repair the electrical system.”

On September 22, the Ministry of Electric Energy reported that electricity demand in Venezuela had reached a record high of 16,424 megawatts (MW), the highest level recorded in the past nine years.

Venezuela has a nominal installed generation capacity of approximately 35,000 megawatts (MW), twice the country’s peak demand. However, actual stable generation currently stands at just 12,000 MW due to a deep structural crisis resulting from US sanctions that prevented the purchase of spare parts, as well as issues of underinvestment, lack of maintenance, and corruption.

Nevertheless, authorities claimed that a proposed reform of the Organic Law of the National Electricity System and Service will allow “the integration of the public and private sectors in electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization,” with the aim of “promoting competitiveness, and attracting investment to strengthen electrical infrastructure.”

The new law was preliminarily approved by the National Assembly in June, with a second discussion and final approval yet to be scheduled.

The previous legislation, enacted in 2010 under President Hugo Chávez, exclusively reserved all activities across the electricity supply chain for the state, centralized through the state-owned CORPOELEC. The reform authorizes strategic partnerships and concession agreements with domestic and international private companies.

In defending the new law, Venezuelan officials have defended the adjustment of electricity tariffs to reflect “real costs” and secure returns for investors.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

The multidisciplinary artist rafa esparza was maybe 19 and in the break room of the now-defunct Orchard Supply Hardware in Pasadena when he first found out about the revolutionary art group Asco. It was the early 2000s, and he was working full-time while going to school part-time at East Los Angeles College. He’d bring his homework to his job, and an older colleague, Ignacio, took interest in the books he was reading — mostly about Chicana/o studies and art.

Ignacio grew up in East L.A., and showed esparza a big manila envelope stuffed with incredible sketches and drawings by Glugio “Gronk” Nicandro. Gronk, a friend of Ignacio, was one of the founding members of Asco, which roared to life as an unapologetically Chicano organization in the early 1970s and was made up of East L.A. natives including Patssi Valdez, Harry Gamboa Jr. and Willie Herrón.

Esparza is now among two generations of L.A. Chicano and Mexican artists who have passed the torch that Asco used to blaze its groundbreaking trail. The story of the art group and its descendants, also including Maria Maea and San Cha, is featured in the new documentary, “Asco: Without Permission.” Executive produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, the film premiered last year at SXSW and arrives on TV for the first time at 7 p.m. Friday as part of PBS SoCal’s “Voces” series (plus PBS.org and the PBS app).

The beginning of a movement

When Asco first coalesced, Gamboa Jr. went to Los Angeles County Museum of Art and noticed a striking absence of Chicano pieces. In the film, he recounts how, after his concerns were dismissed by a higher-up at LACMA, Asco decided to take matters into its own hands. The group came back later that evening and tagged the building with their names (“Spray Paint LACMA,” 1972), effectively reclaiming the entire museum as a work of Chicano art.

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The No-Movie “Chicano Cinema,” starring Harry Gamboa Jr.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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A group shot of the art group Asco. From left to right: Willie Herrón, Gronk, Patssi Valdez and Harry Gamboa Jr.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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Members of the art group Asco pose in Malibu. From left to right: Gronk, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herón and Harry Gamboa Jr.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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Patssi Valdez poses with her golden No-Movie Award, a parody of the Academy Awards, protesting the lack of Latino representation in Hollywood.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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The Asco No-Movie “The Gores (Whittier Blvd + Ax)” (1974).  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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The Asco No-Movie “Star” (1980), starring Patssi Valdez.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

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A still photo of the Asco performance piece “Birds Wave Goodbye,” from 1972.  (Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

Asco’s work remained in relative obscurity — living in local mythology through storytellers like Ignacio — for decades. Then, in 2011, LACMA‘s views evolved and the museum gave Asco its first major retrospective, “Elite of the Obscure.” Documentary writer and director Travis Gutiérrez Senger came across press coverage of the retrospective and felt immediately drawn to the group, connected “on almost a cellular level.”

But it wasn’t until Trump’s first run for presidency and subsequent election, when his language around Latinos and immigrants dangerously sharpened, that Gutiérrez Senger knew in his gut that he needed to make this film now.

What set Asco apart was the fact that it was an art group, not a singular artist, working in tandem to react to social and political realities, including the 1968 East L.A. walkouts, the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, the Vietnam War, police brutality and gang violence.

“I would have never done the film if it wasn’t a collective,” Gutiérrez Senger said. “The thing about art history — and in literature and film — we often canonize individuals. When I saw Asco and it was a group, and they’re [on] the cover of Artforum or at the Whitney … that to me was really, really captivating. And, I thought, also very constructive.

“This isn’t just a group; this is a metaphor for how we mobilize and change,” Gutiérrez Senger remembers thinking.

Art as action

Asco was a fecund ecosystem, as is the close-knit community of contemporary artists following in its footsteps. The documentary recounts the history of the original group while heeding its call to action by collaborating with next-gen artists to carry the tradition forward. In 2023, Gutiérrez Senger curated a pop-up exhibition — featured in the film — alongside Pilar Tompkins Rivas, called “Asco and the Next Gen: An Inter-Generational Celebration of Latinx Art.” “Asco and the Next Gen” included esparza, Maria Maea, San Cha, Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, Guadalupe Rosales, Gabriela Ruiz and Dorian Wood.

“When you’re deeply collaborating with folks, and you’re in each other’s mediums and you’re sharing thoughts, and you’re thinking together, conceptualizing together, birthing a project together from scratch, you really have to step beside yourself, and understand that this is something that you’re co-creating,” esparza said. “Versus, I think art teaches us to center the single voice, the singular author of an artwork. And my experience of life, of art-making, has been the complete opposite: I think that we’re constantly reflecting each other.”

Esparza’s contribution to that 2023 pop-up was called “Corpo RanfLA: Terra Cruiser” and was originally staged outside the fairgrounds of Art Basel Miami a year prior. The L.A. version took place in the parking lot of an Arts District strip mall. Esparza bounced. He lay in a prone position, arms extended, body ensconced in gold and green lowrider armature, adhered to a blue bike frame, rocking on a 25-cent mechanical ride mechanism. The early connections esparza had with Asco resonated deeply in his relationship to art-making.

“They’re guerrilla, not asking for permission, just doing what they wanted to do with the help of their collective efforts,” esparza said. “That’s an ethos that’s very present in my own performance work, and it’s something that I hold very dear to me. It’s something that I always want to protect, in terms of how the art industry so powerfully commodifies everything you make as artists. I feel like performance still holds this power to really resist that, depending on how we will it into being.”

The interdisciplinary artist Maria Maea (left) and the filmmaker Travis Gutierrez Senger (right), writer and director of “Asco: Without Permission,” pose at Barker Block. Maea is featured in the film, in which she and Gutierrez Senger collaborated on a new “No-Movie,” titled “Pasado/Futuro.”

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Moving pictures are part of the revolt

Asco also had an interest in film. The art group members didn’t see themselves — or Chicanos or Latinos — represented in Hollywood, so they did it themselves, subverting a movie into a single still photograph that became its own story; an implied narrative. These, featured in the documentary, were called No-Movies.

In addition to the “Asco and the Next Gen” pop-up exhibition, Gutiérrez Senger and the filmmaking team invited multidisciplinary artist Maria Maea, San Cha, musician Fabi Reyna and Mexico City-based Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya to create new No-Movies, also featured in the film, in response to Asco’s original No-Movies.

Maea first learned about Asco through esparza, too. He’s a mentor of sorts to her (they’re part of the same “interlocked brown community,” she says), and they were making adobe bricks together on the banks of the L.A. River for esparza’s 2017 Whitney Biennial installation when he told her the story about the hardware store and the manila envelope.

“They had a finite amount of resources, and they took this cinematic film lens or film camera film and shot these stills,” Maea said. “I think for me, it was so beautiful to see the infinity that could happen in front of it, the story that could happen behind it. It felt like we were just seeing this snapshot of a beautiful cinematic moment.”

The documentary’s new No-Movies are slightly longer, but still snippets of less than five minutes. The main character of Maea’s “Pasado/Futuro” No-Movie, the Being, sprang from the show “L.A. Fonts,” in the artist Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s backyard. (“Pasado/Futuro” also includes a group of kids working in a garage, meant to emulate Asco’s own garage origins — and to represent the next next gen. Its cast includes Maea’s younger sister, Ariel-Evelia Tuilaepa Diaz.) The Being is alien, mystical and magical, a migrant finding her way in a new world. (Maea often works with palm weaving, incorporated here, and palms have their own migration story to L.A.)

A still from “Pasado/Futuro,” one of the contemporary No-Movies in the film, featuring Maria Maea as The Being.

(Asa Nisi Masa Films / PBS)

“Something that really intrigued me was their sci-fi aspect of this film,” Maea said of Asco. “Like, they lived in a real world where they were experiencing the Chicano Moratorium, they’re experiencing violence in the streets, and they were also experiencing … the news projected back at them, that they were the issue,” stranger-than-fiction scenarios they synthesized into sometimes-futuristic or dystopian work.

Composer and performer San Cha’s No-Movie, “Luna,” made together with the musician Fabi Reyna, began as a song San Cha had written for a friend who had died; she had had a dream of him on the moon. In collaboration with Gutiérrez Senger, the No-Movie evolved into a piece about a lover, played by Reyna. Now, “Luna” is tender and otherworldly, drenched in the high drama and glamour that San Cha so loves.

San Cha was born in San José, then moved to San Francisco, where she was taken in by the Bay Area drag scene — specifically by her drag mother Per Sia, who’s still there. (San Cha recently relocated to Amsterdam.)

“She is from South-Central, but she studied art, visual art,” San Cha said. “She was a photographer, and she really got into the drag scene, and she was super familiar with Asco. We would do these processions in the Mission, from the Mission to the Castro … and she would always mention Asco in these moments.”

That’s likely because Asco’s early performances, as the art historian and curator C. Ondine Chavoya points out in the film, emphasized procession, mobility, mobilization and occupation, marking sites of political violence. Once San Cha moved to L.A., she found community quickly, too. She met Maea — with whom she made a video, “Coatlicue,” for the Music Center’s For the Love of L.A. program — and later lived with esparza.

“We can’t really perform in a vacuum,” San Cha said. “I can’t imagine doing this by myself, ever.… When I moved to L.A., there’s someone for everything.… And that way I didn’t feel the need to do everything alone. And even though in L.A. it was a little more professional, there’s so many people that are just like family.”

A still from “Luna,” one of the contemporary No-Movies in the film, featuring Fabi Reyna (left) and San Cha (right).

(Asa Nisi Masa Films)

When Gutiérrez Singer first started making this film, he thought that it — and Asco itself — was about saying “f— you” to the systems and institutions and racism that give us asco. (“Asco” means nausea or disgust in Spanish.)

“But at the end of the project, I started looking at the work and myself and the artists I had made the film with, and just seeing this incredible beauty and love,” he said. “And I realized that the power of Asco’s work is ultimately about self-love, and that when you feel that — and you can feel almost a collective sense of self-love as brown people — it gives you incredible potential and strength.”

United States President Donald Trump has said Europe has agreed to release a “massive amount” of their diesel stockpile, although no European parties have confirmed the claim.

Trump made the statement on his Truth Social account on Friday as he has heaped pressure on European countries to release diesel stockpiles to ease soaring prices caused by the US-Israel war with Iran and the resulting constriction of traffic via the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump had previously floated banning US diesel exports if European countries did not comply. The European Union had earlier on Friday said it “fully rejects” the threat.

More to come…