NEWS

Tudor has been out of work since being sacked by Juventus in October 2025 and is set for his first spell in England, after previously taking charge of clubs in Italy, France, Turkey, Croatia and Greece.

He is tasked, first and foremost, with easing Tottenham‘s relegation fears, after a 2-1 loss to Newcastle in Thomas Frank’s final match on Tuesday left them five points above the bottom three.

Having earned a reputation as a no-nonsense defender during a playing career in which he won 55 caps for Croatia and made more than 150 appearances for Italian giants Juventus, there is one certain non-negotiable for Tudor as a manager.

“He asks his players to run a lot. In a previous interview he said ‘If you don’t run, you don’t play’,” says L’Equipe journalist Pierre-Etienne Minonzio.

“In his one season in Marseille it was always the same way of playing – 3-5-2 – and it was great to watch.

“It was not easy because Marseille’s best player was Dimitri Payet, a very gifted player but not well-known for running, and he didn’t play.

“It was a joke in L’Equipe – if Igor Tudor had Lionel Messi in his squad, Messi would not play!”

Tudor’s sole season in France saw Marseille finish third behind Paris St-Germain and Lens, despite surpassing the club’s points total from the previous campaign when they finished second.

“He did pretty well in Ligue 1. What I liked is that he doesn’t try to be liked. He is very direct, says what he thinks and doesn’t try to be attractive. There is no seduction,” says Minonzio.

“It is the same with the players. He keeps his distance and his obsession is to make training intense with a lot of running so they can be physically fit for the game.”

London, United Kingdom – The United Kingdom’s ban on Palestine Action has “backfired”, its cofounder said, after the High Court ruled that proscribing the group as a “terror” organisation was unlawful.

Critics from the United Nations human rights chief to the Irish author Sally Rooney decried the UK’s ban last June as an illiberal overreach, since it put Palestine Action on par with ISIL (ISIS), al-Qaeda and dangerous far-right organisations.

On Friday, High Court judges dealt a massive blow to the government of Labour leader Keir Starmer, saying, “The decision to proscribe Palestine Action was disproportionate.”

“Today is a victory for Palestine,” Palestine Action cofounder Huda Ammori told Al Jazeera. The ban has “backfired on [the government] massively. They’ve made Palestine Action a household name.

“They have spread the message and the power that ordinary people have to shut down weapons factories across the country and across the world. So for that, I thank them.”

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action’s stated objective has been to counter Israeli war crimes – and what it says is British complicity in them – by targeting weapons manufacturers and associated companies.

Its main target is Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, which has several sites in the UK.

“Rather than ask somebody else to stop those weapons going and being used to commit genocide, we go to the source, and we stop those weapons ourselves,” said Ammori, a 31-year-old Briton of Iraqi and Palestinian heritage.

“That is what direct action is about. If you saw a building burning down with children inside, you wouldn’t hesitate to bang down the door to save those children’s lives. It is exactly the same principle. You don’t care about the value of the door. It is about those lives. It is about the liberation of Palestine. And so we do our bit to shut down the Israeli weapons trades from Britain.”

The group has been a thorn in Starmer’s side since Israel began its genocidal onslaught in Gaza.

Palestine Action-linked activists have carried out several raids, often leaving their mark in red spray paint intended to symbolise blood.

Dozens are currently being held on remand in relation to two actions.

Some prisoners, known as part of the “Filton 24”, are alleged to have participated in a break-in at a UK subsidiary of Elbit Systems in Bristol.

Others are accused of involvement in a break-in at the UK’s largest air base in Oxfordshire, where they were alleged to have spray-painted two Voyager refuelling and transport planes. It was after this raid that the government banned Palestine Action.

They all deny the charges against them, such as burglary and criminal damage.

Six of the “Filton 24” were recently acquitted of aggravated burglary; five of them were bailed.

“At its core, Palestine Action is an organisation that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality. A very small number of its actions have amounted to terrorist action,” the High Court judges said.

Tens of thousands of people have protested against the ban. Almost 3,000 of them have been arrested for raising placards with slogans such as: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

“The government committed a huge crime against its own population,” said Ammori. “It was unlawful for them to ban Palestine Action, and when they banned Palestine Action, they subsequently did thousands of unlawful arrests against their own citizens and tried to prosecute them through the courts for terrorism offences, for holding up signs.”

Despite Friday’s ruling, the ban remains in place pending appeal.

The UK’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she was “disappointed” by Friday’s ruling and intends to appeal – earning further criticism from rights groups and some fellow Labour politicians.

John McDonnell, an MP who voted against the proscription, said on X, “I thought it was unjust. We have a right to protest, to assemble, and to speak freely in this country – that has been secured largely by direct action over centuries. I am urging the government to abide by that tradition and not to appeal this judgement.”

“Shabana Mahmood needs to take a step back,” said Ammori. “She’s completely betrayed the Palestinian people since she’s become minister … it’s only going to backfire on her.

“Palestine Action’s ban will be lifted … We won today in the High Court … If they try and appeal, we’ll beat them again.”

Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych had his appeal dismissed as images on his helmet breached an Olympic ‘sacred principle’.

⁠The Court of ⁠Arbitration for Sport on Friday dismissed an appeal by Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych to be reinstated in the Milano Cortina Olympics after he was disqualified over his “helmet ⁠of remembrance”.

The 27-year-old was removed from the Olympic programme on Thursday when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that imagery on the helmet — depicting athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine ⁠in February 2022 — breached rules on political neutrality.

“The CAS ad Hoc division dismissed the application and found that freedom of expression is guaranteed at the Olympic Games but not on the field of play which is a sacred principle,” CAS Secretary-General Matthieu Reeb said, reading from a statement following an eight-hour ‌hearing.

Heraskevych, who was seeking reinstatement or at least a CAS-supervised run, pending a decision by sport’s highest court in advance of the final two runs set for Friday evening, said he would look at his legal options now.

“CAS has failed us. We will consider our next steps,” Heraskevych told Reuters.

The case has dominated headlines in the first week of the Olympics, with the International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry meeting the athlete on Thursday morning at the sliding venue ⁠in Cortina d’Ampezzo in a last-minute attempt to broker a compromise and ⁠have him race without the specific helmet.

The IOC instead offered that he wear a black armband and display the helmet before and after the race, but said using the helmet in competition breached its rules on political protests and slogans ⁠in the field of play.

In a statement, CAS said the IOC guidelines for athletes’ expression in the Games were fair.

“The Sole Arbitrator found these ⁠limitations reasonable and proportionate, considering the other opportunities for athletes ⁠to raise awareness,” CAS said.

“The Sole Arbitrator considers these Guidelines provide a reasonable balance between athletes’ interests to express their views, and athletes’ interests to receive undivided attention for their sporting performance on the field of play.”

Ukraine’s Olympic Committee has backed their ‌athlete, who is also the team’s flagbearer for the Games and also displayed a “No War in Ukraine” sign at the Beijing 2022 Olympics, days before Russia’s invasion. Heraskevych has also received support ‌from ‌Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

CAS was established in 1984 by the International Olympic Committee as an independent judicial authority to settle sports disputes worldwide.

The case has dominated headlines in the first week of the Olympics.

Before the ruling, Heraskevych accused the Milano-Cortina Games as acting as “propaganda” for Russia.

The armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have deployed drone technology against several positions of the M23/AFC rebels around Mpety of Walikale territory in North Kivu.

According to local administrative sources, the first explosions from the drone attack occurred around 1 p.m. on Feb. 11, causing widespread panic among villagers and forcing families to leave their homes.

The strikes occurred 48 hours after similar operations aimed at rebel positions in Mindjendje, close to Mpety in the Banakindi area. According to various sources in the region, the earlier missions resulted in multiple non-fatal injuries among the M23/AFC forces.

In the past month, the Walikale territory, particularly the Pinga-Mpety-Mindjendje axis, has been the theatre of violent clashes between the army and the M23/AFC rebels. This strategic area is highly sought after by both parties, intensifying regional security instability. 

The ongoing airstrikes are part of a strategy by the DRC army to reclaim control of key areas around Pinga, which is regarded as the security hub of Walikale territory. The growing arms race between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels has necessitated investments in drone warfare by both parties.

DRC has particularly invested heavily in acquiring military drones, especially the China-made Wing Loong 2 combat drone. In 2023, the country purchased nine Chinese attack drones to strengthen its military capabilities amid the war against the M23 rebels. 

The drones are recognised for their precision strike capabilities and long endurance. They are expected to give Congo’s armed forces a tactical advantage as they work to counter the M23’s advances, which Kinshasa classifies as a terrorist organisation.

An AeroVironment LOCUST laser directed energy weapon owned by the U.S. Army was central to the chain of events that led to the recent shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, according to Reuters. Though many questions still remain to be answered about how the flight restrictions came to be imposed, LOCUST was designed to respond to exactly the kinds of drones that regularly fly across the southern border from Mexico.

Readers can get caught up on what is known about the clampdown in the skies above El Paso on Wednesday in initial reporting here.

Multiple outlets had already reported yesterday that the use of a laser counter-drone system was a key factor in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) sudden decision to impose the temporary flight restrictions over El Paso. Reuters‘ report says “two people briefed on the situation” identified the laser system in question as LOCUST. TWZ has reached out to AeroVironment and the U.S. Army for more information. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which oversees U.S. military operations in and around the homeland, declined to comment.

Last July, the U.S. military released a picture, seen below, showing Army personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) conducting sling-load training with a LOCUST mounted on a 4×4 M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) at Fort Bliss. This had prompted some speculation that LOCUST systems might be in use along the U.S. border with Mexico. JTF-SB was established in March 2025 to oversee a surge in U.S. military support to the border security mission. Fort Bliss, situated in El Paso, is a major hub for those operations. It is also home to the 1st Armored Division and a significant number of Army air defense units.

As of December 2025, the U.S. Army was known to have taken delivery of LOCUST systems in at least three different configurations, including the ISV-based type. The service has also received 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) equipped with the laser and a palletized version. In 2022, the Army confirmed the operational deployment of two of the palletized systems to unspecified foreign locales. The full extent of the service’s operational use of LOCUST since then, abroad or at home, is unclear.

The U.S. Marine Corps has also moved to acquire JLTV-based LOCUST systems, and other configurations have been put forward in the past. AeroVironment completed is acqusition of BlueHalo, the original developer of LOCUST, last year.

At LOCUST’s core is a 20-kilowatt-class laser directed energy weapon. This is at the lower end of the power spectrum for this new era of laser directed energy weapons, and the system is explicitly geared toward the countering small drones mission set.

The turreted system also includes built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. It can be cued to threats by tertiary sensors, including small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems mounted on the vehicles themselves, as well as traditional radars, and other capabilities positioned elsewhere. The Army’s ISV and JLTV-based configurations both feature small radars.

LOCUST Laser Weapon System

As a relatively small system itself, LOCUST offers additional benefits in terms of mobility and flexibility. Road-mobile versions can readily deploy and redeploy to different locations in response to shifting threats. As the sling load training picture shows, versions of the system can be readily airlifted by helicopters, allowing for rapid movement to remote locales. Palletized configurations offer different types of flexibility for providing point defense at sites on land, and could potentially be installed on ships, as well.

In general, laser directed energy weapons offer the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, as long as there is sufficient power and cooling capacity. They also present a drastically lower cost-per-intercept proposition compared to traditional anti-air interceptors. This is all advantageous for engaging drones, particularly smaller and cheaper designs that can still present very significant threats. The dangers posed by uncrewed aerial systems are only set to grow as networked swarming and automated targeting capabilities, enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, become more accessible. Defenders already face real risks of just being overwhelmed by attacks involving volumes of drones.

Depending on their power level, laser weapons are envisioned as being employed against larger, as well as higher and faster flying targets, such as cruise missiles, in the future. As already noted, LOCUST is not in that power category and is focused on going after small drones, like quadcopter.

With these promised benefits in mind, the Army has been very active in its pursuit of multiple tiers of ground-based laser directed energy weapon systems, with power ratings ranging from 5 to 300 kilowatts, for years now. This includes the 50-kilowatt Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) system based on the Stryker light armored vehicle and a truck-mounted 300-kilowatt design for the Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) effort. Many of these systems have been primarily intended to serve as stepping stones to future operational capabilities. In recent years, there have been a number of additional laser directed energy development efforts, often focused on the counter-drone mission, across the U.S. military, and for use in the air and naval domains, as well as by forces on land.

As mentioned, the Army received its first versions of LOCUST in the early 2020s, as part of a rapid prototyping effort called the Palletized-High Energy Laser (P-HEL). The service tested multiple laser weapon designs under P-HEL. The Army has acquired the ISV and JLTV-based configuration through a follow-on effort called the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL).

At the same time, a laser like LOCUST can only engage a single target at once. Lower-powered lasers need to dwell on their targets for a longer period of time in order to cause significant damage by burning a hole in them, as well. This limits the number of targets a single system can engage in a given window of time.

In addition, the power of any laser beam drops as it propagates through the atmosphere further and further away from its source. Weather and other environmental factors like smoke and dust can also distort the beam and reduce its power. All of this only adds to the aforementioned dwell time. Adaptive optics, and just more power overall, can help produce useful effects at greater distances, but laser weapons continue to have short ranges, typically measured in handfuls of miles, as a general rule. As an aside, LOCUST was originally described as a 10-kilowatt system and a version has at least been demonstrated with a 26-kilowatt power rating. How much more can be scaled up within the existing form factor is unclear.

The Army, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, have repeatedly acknowledged challenges in fielding laser directed energy weapon systems. Sensitivity to vibration, humidity, dust, and sand, as well as fragile optics and cooling demands, have all created further complications for operating and sustaining these systems in real-world environments. In 2024, Doug Bush, then Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, did tell members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that unspecified laser weapons emplaced at fixed sites “are proving successful” for “some” users. This was seen at the time as a likely reference to the overseas deployment of the palletized version of LOCUST.

U.S. military officials regularly stress that lasers are not a ‘silver bullet’ solution to the problem of drones or other aerial threats, and they expect to field them as part of layered defense networks. High-power microwave directed energy weapons and electronic warfare systems have also steadily emerged as key parts of future counter-drone ecosystems, especially for responding to swarm attacks. The pursuit of lasers, specifically, to defeat drones, as well as cruise missiles and potentially other targets, is a growing trend globally, as well. In the naval domain, lasers are also seen as valuable additions to ships for point defense against small watercraft.

Drones, especially smaller types, present their own additional challenges, in general, when it comes to detection and tracking, let alone engaging them with any effector. This has been underscored in reporting surrounding the recent temporary flight restrictions over El Paso.

Official statements so far from the Trump administration have said that the clampdown on the airspace around El Paso resulted from the response to a cross-border incursion of drones operated by Mexican drug cartels, something that happens on a near-daily basis. Questions have since been raised about exactly when the incident the administration has cited may have occurred and whether any drones were actually involved in that particular case.

“The [laser] anti-drone technology was launched near the southern border to shoot down what appeared to be foreign drones,” according to a story yesterday from CBS News, which was among the first to report on that detail. “The flying material turned out to be a party balloon, sources said. One balloon was shot down, several sources said.”

Other outlets, also citing anonymous sources, have since reported on the use of a laser directed energy weapon to down one or more innocuous balloons along the southern border earlier this week. However, the exact relationship between those engagements and the temporary flight restrictions remains murky.

However, “the Mexican cartels have been running drones on the border lately, the sources said, but it was unclear how many were hit by the military’s anti-UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) technology this week,” CBS News‘ report yesterday had also noted. “One official said at least one cartel drone was successfully disabled.”

It has also now been widely reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel have been the ones actually operating the laser systems along the border through an agreement with the U.S. military. This speaks to additional ongoing complications surrounding domestic authorities for responding to drone threats, something TWZ has explored in detail in the past. This is despite significant changes to policies that allow for broader and more rapid responses within the United States, at least on the U.S. military side, just in recent weeks.

Furthermore, a breakdown in coordination between the Army, CBP, and the FAA over the use of lasers along the border, operationally and/or in testing, looks to have been a central factor in the decision to shut down the airspace around El Paso based on the reporting to date.

“My team has been working with the FAA, DOW [Department of War], and others to gather more information about this morning’s temporary airspace closure in El Paso,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, wrote in a post on X yesterday. “I’m hopeful more details can be publicly shared in the coming days on interagency coordination.”

“The amount of misinformation being spread – including by the White House – is alarming and unhelpful,” Veronica Escobar, the Democrat who currently represents the El Paso area in the House of Representatives, also wrote yesterday in a series of posts on X. “To be clear: this was the result of incompetence at the highest levels of the administration.”

More details are yet to come about the exact circumstances surrounding the flight restrictions imposed this week around El Paso. What has already emerged points to a growing use, or at least desire to use, laser directed energy weapons like LOCUST to challenge the current flow of uncrewed aerial systems across the southern border from Mexico.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

DP World appoints new chairman and group CEO following departure of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem over ties to sex offender.

United Arab Emirates-based logistics giant DP World has appointed a new chairman and CEO, after coming under pressure over former company chief Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein

The UAE government’s Dubai Media Office said Friday that Essa Kazim had been appointed chairman and Yuvraj Narayan as group CEO of DP World, one of the world’s largest logistics companies, which claims to handle about 10 percent of global trade.

The roles were previously held by bin Sulayem, one of Dubai’s most powerful and well-connected people, who has led DP World – which operates more than 60 ports and terminals worldwide – for more than four decades.

Sulayem’s lengthy tenure at the helm of the logistics giant came to an end in a firestorm of controversy over his links with the disgraced financier, after recently declassified documents showed the pair had exchanged messages for years before and after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Salacious exchanges

The friendly exchanges between the two include discussions about deals and also mention bin Sulayem visiting Epstein’s private island while sharing contacts in business and politics.

The two men also shared salacious comments about women, with bin Sulayem’s email address featuring a correspondence in which Epstein remarked, “I loved the torture video.”

Bin Sulayem’s name was blacked out in documents released by the Department of Justice, but on Tuesday, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna identified him in the House of Representatives, along with five others whose names had been redacted, saying the government had shielded their names “for no apparent reason”.

Since Khanna’s speech to Congress, the Justice Department partially unredacted some of the files he pointed to.

Partners suspend ties

While the files referenced by Khanna did not appear to implicate bin Sulayem or the other men in any specific crimes, the revelation of bin Sulayem’s years-long friendship with Epstein prompted the ‌United Kingdom development investment agency, British International Investment, and Canada’s second-largest pension fund, La Caisse, to announce they had paused future ventures with DP World in response.

La Caisse, which in 2022 invested $2.5bn in Jebel Ali Port, the Jebel Ali Free Zone and the National Industries Park, three of DP World’s flagship assets in the UAE, said on Tuesday that it would not carry out further investments until it shed light on bin Sulayem’s links to Epstein and took “necessary actions”.

On Friday, British International Investment welcomed DP World’s appointment of a new ⁠chief executive and said it would resume investment alongside the company.

“We ‌welcome today’s decision by DP World and look forward to continuing our partnership to advance the development ⁠of key African trading ⁠ports to unlock the continent’s global trading potential,” a ⁠spokesperson for the agency said.

Epstein was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008, spending about a year in prison before his release.

His contacts with a network of wealthy and influential figures continued in the wake of his conviction until an investigation into the wealthy financier was reopened in 2019.

Epstein died in prison that year while facing charges of sex trafficking underage girls.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has claimed victory in the country’s first election since a student-led uprising that ousted longtime leader Sheikh Hasina in 2024.

Unofficial results confirmed by election officials to Al Jazeera on Friday showed the BNP winning 209 seats, easily crossing the 151-seat threshold needed for a majority in parliament.

Its leader, Tarique Rahman, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, is now set to become the country’s next prime minister. BNP officials said the party expected to form a government by Sunday.

The BNP was followed by Jamaat-e-Islami, which secured 68 seats in Thursday’s polls – its highest-ever tally.

The party, which is led by Shafiqur Rahman and contested for the first time since a 2013 ban that was lifted after Hasina’s ouster, said it is not “satisfied” with the vote count and raised “serious questions about the integrity of the results process”.

The National Citizen Party (NCP), led by youth activists instrumental in toppling Hasina and part of a Jamaat-led alliance, won just six of the 30 seats that it contested.

The Election Commission has yet to formally announce the final tally, which is expected either later on Friday or on Saturday.

Turnout stood at almost 60 percent of registered voters, according to the Election Commission, well over the nearly 42 percent in the last election in 2024.

The election featured a record number of parties, more than 50, and at least 2,000 candidates, many of them independents. The parliament comprises 350 lawmakers, with 50 seats reserved for women.

More than 127 million people were eligible to cast their votes, with many expressing enthusiasm for what was widely seen as Bangladesh’s first competitive vote in years.

An interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, 85, has been in office since Hasina fled to India in 2024 after widespread protests led largely by young people, who were killed in their hundreds by security forces.

Tarique Rahman, who has never held government office, returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years of self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom. The 60-year-old has yet to comment on the unofficial results but on Friday, he waved from his car as he left his house in the capital, Dhaka, for a mosque.

In a statement, the BNP asked people to refrain from large celebrations and offer special prayers instead.

“Despite winning … by a large margin of votes, no celebratory procession or rally shall be organised,” the party said in a statement.

‘Litmus test’

The 78-year-old former leader, Hasina, was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity for the bloody crackdown on protesters during her final months in power, and remains in hiding in India. Her Awami League party was barred from the election.

BNP members have said the party would formally request Hasina’s extradition from India. In its manifesto, the BNP promised to prioritise job creation, protect low-income and marginal households and ensure fair prices to farmers. Tarique Rahman has also promised to revive a stagnant economy, reset ties with countries in the region and crack down on corruption.

Abbas Faiz, an independent South Asia researcher, said the election was a test of how Bangladesh was “ready for democracy”.

“Also, a test of the political parties which have been able to take part in the elections. They have actually understood the aspirations and the wishes of the people of their country for the removal of corrupt practices in the administration and parliament,” Faiz told Al Jazeera.

He added the election is the “litmus test” which puts responsibility on the “shoulders of the new government”.

But Faiz explained that the election would have been “fairer” if all parties, including the Awami League, were allowed to participate.

“But in a way, the problem lies with the Awami League itself, because it did not reimage itself as a party that could be trusted by the general populace in Bangladesh,” he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the US ambassador to Bangladesh, Brent T Christensen, were among the first to congratulate Rahman on his party’s victory. China’s embassy in Dhaka also congratulated the BNP over its election showing.

The election commission also said some 48 million ‌voters chose “Yes” ‌while about 23 million said “No” in a referendum on constitutional reforms held alongside the election, though there was no official word on the outcome.

The changes include two-term limits for prime ministers and stronger judicial independence and women’s representation, while providing for neutral interim governments during election periods and setting up a second house of the 300-seat parliament.

Fahmida Khatun, an economist and executive director of the Dhaka-based Centre for Policy Dialogue, told Al Jazeera that early signals support the perception of a credible election.

Although heavy security was reported across polling stations, “broadly, the voting was peaceful”, Khatun said, pointing to the voter turnout figure as an indicator of healthy participation.

“This indicates citizens wanted to exercise their voting rights and they wanted to choose their own people,” she added.

Several hundred international observers monitored Thursday’s voting, with the European Union’s Election Observation Mission expected to issue a preliminary report on its findings on Sunday.

Iraq says more than 3,000 Syrians are among the ISIL-linked detainees transferred to one of its prisons by US military.

More than 5,000 ISIL-linked (ISIS) detainees have been transferred from Syrian jails to a prison in neighbouring Iraq so far, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Justice.

In comments to the Iraqi News Agency on Friday, ministry spokesperson Ahmed Laibi said the transfers and ongoing detention of the prisoners had been carried out at the request of an international coalition led by the United States to combat ISIL, of which Iraq is a key member.

In separate comments on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein gave a lower figure, telling Reuters that about 3,000 ISIL-linked detainees had been transferred.

He told the news agency that the process was ongoing and that Baghdad was in discussions with various countries about repatriating their nationals who had been transferred.

Iraq would need more ⁠financial assistance to ⁠deal with the intake, he said, adding that there had been a recent ⁠uptick in ISIL activity in Syria.

The US military has been transporting thousands of ISIL-linked prisoners from jails and detention centres previously run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.

The transfers have come as control of the prisons has been handed over to the Syrian government, amid a push by Damascus to assert its authority over the full extent of a country still fragmented in the wake of a brutal war.

Deadly clashes with SDF forces broke out amid the Syrian army’s advance in recent weeks, including in and around key prison sites, resulting in some ISIL detainees escaping and raising fears the armed group could exploit any security vacuum to regroup.

A ceasefire has since been struck between the government and the SDF.

Detainees mostly Syrian nationals

Laibi, the Iraqi Justice Ministry spokesperson, said that of the 5,064 ISIL detainees transferred so far, more than 3,000 were Syrian, while at least 270 were Iraqi.

He said the detainees were being held in a single prison, in a section separated from other prisoners.

The detainees would all be investigated and prosecuted under Iraqi law, he said, while the responsibility for feeding the thousands of detainees was being handled by the international coalition, rather than Iraq.

Last month, lawyers for a group of French ISIL suspects who had been transported by the US military from Syria to Iraqi prisons in an earlier series of transfers claimed the inmates had been subjected to “torture and inhumane treatment” there.

Damascus becomes US’s main anti-ISIL partner

The US military has previously said up to 7,000 people with alleged ISIL links could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities.

US Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US forces in the Middle East, said last month that facilitating the secure transfer of detainees was critical to preventing mass breakouts that could pose a direct threat to the US and regional security.

The statement came shortly after the US special envoy to Syria said that Washington’s main partner against ISIL in Syria would be the Syrian government, rather than the SDF, which had held that position for years.

The shift followed Syria – under new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who was once deemed a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the US – joining the anti-ISIL coalition in November.

US departs Syrian base

The ongoing transfers of the detainees from Syria have come as the US military reduces its presence in the country, where it has conducted operations against ISIL for years.

On Thursday, Syrian ⁠forces ⁠announced they had taken control of the al-Tanf military base, a strategic garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan, following the withdrawal of US forces.

Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said the departure was “part of a deliberate and conditions-based transition”, and that US forces remained “poised to respond to any [ISIL] threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts” to prevent the group’s resurgence.

While ISIL was largely defeated in 2017 in Iraq and in Syria two years later, sleeper cells still carry out attacks in both countries.

The UK’s High Court has ruled that the government ban on the pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action as a ‘terror group’ was unlawful. The case was brought by the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori. Rory Challands is outside the court in London.

The U.S. Air Force has now denied taking delivery of any F-35A Joint Strike Fighters from the latest Lot 17 production batch without radars installed. This comes a day after TWZ published a detailed piece examining a recent unconfirmed report that the U.S. military has been receiving radar-less F-35s since last June due to issues tied to the new AN/APG-85 radar. Earlier this week, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) had declined to confirm or deny whether that was the case, citing “enhanced security measures.”

“USAF F-35A lot 17 aircraft are delivering with APG-81 radars,” an Air Force spokesperson told TWZ today in an unprompted statement. “The Air Force is working with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office to deliver F-35s with APG-85 radars, and actual modernization plans, capabilities, and schedules remain classified to maintain program security.”

Since at least 2023, Northrop Grumman has been developing the APG-85 as a replacement for the existing AN/APG-81 radar used on all F-35 variants. The new radar is one part of the larger critical Block 4 upgrade package, which has been beset by delays and cost growth. Block 4 is also supposed to eventually include replacements for the Joint Strike Fighter’s AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System (DAS) and Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS), as well as a new electronic warfare suite and a host of other improved capabilities. In the past, the Air Force has described the electronic warfare package, which will be directly tied in with the APG-85, as a top priority.

“Lockheed Martin has been delivering F-35s to the military services since last June without radars, including all F-35As,” Defense Daily had reported last week, citing an anonymous source. “F-35 deliveries to U.S. units in the field since last June have had the APG-85 mountings, which do not fit the APG-81.”

“The radar-less F-35 deliveries have not affected sales to foreign partner nations which have the APG-81 on their jets, the source said,” that story added. “Without a radar, there had to be additional weight added in the nose for aircraft balance during flight. Radar-less F-35s have been able to fly, as long as they are accompanied by other F-35s, data linked and equipped with the APG-81, the source said.”

As mentioned, TWZ reached out earlier this week to the F-35 JPO with queries regarding the details in the Defense Daily piece.

“F-35 Lightning II aircraft are being built to accommodate the F-35 advanced radar (APG-85) for [the] U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps,” an F-35 JPO spokesperson had told us in response. “Initial fielding for some F-35 aircraft is planned for Lot 17, which began delivery in 2025 and continues through September 2026.”

“Due to program security reasons, we are protecting any additional information with enhanced security measures,” the spokesperson added.

In addition, Defense Daily‘s report last week said it received a statement from the Air Force that was similar to the response we subsequently received from the JPO.

“This advanced radar [APG-85] will be compatible with all variants of the F-35 aircraft,” an Air Force spokesperson told that outlet. “Due to program security reasons, we are protecting any additional information with enhanced security measures.”

What has now changed regarding these “enhanced security measures” and why is unclear. There are still questions from our story yesterday that remain unanswered, including whether or not jets configured to accept the APG-85 can have the APG-81 installed for the time being. If modifications are required for this, it is not clear how substantial or invasive they might need to be. As we previously noted, a separate report last year from Breaking Defense had also pointed to a backwards compatibility issue and potential need to redesign the entire forward end of the fuselage to be able to accommodate both the APG-81 and the APG-85.

TWZ has followed up with the Air Force to see if more information may now be available.

As we detailed in our piece yesterday, there are additional questions about the general status of work on the APG-85 and the rest of the Block 4 upgrade package, and the timeline now for the delivery of any of those capabilities. The integration of the APG-85, as well as the new electronic warfare suite and many of the other improvements, are all directly intertwined with the need for more auxiliary power-generation and thermal cooling capacity. These demands are supposed to be addressed, at least in part, by an engine upgrade effort that is itself now running behind schedule.

The goal had previously been for F-35s with a complete suite of Block 4 improvements to begin arriving this year. A September 2025 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, said that those plans had been revised to focus first on a truncated portion of the upgrade package, but that schedule had still been set back at least five years.

The F-35 program continues to stare down growing costs associated with operating and maintaining the jets. Altogether, the total cost of the program from the start of development in the 1990s through the end of the type’s expected lifecycle in the 2070s, is now estimated to be approximtely $2.1 trillion. The JPO has stressed that inflation is expected to account for roughly half of that figure.

Altogether, even if F-35s are not being delivered now without radars, there are still significant challenges facing the Block 4 upgrade package and the rest of the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The recent use of a laser directed energy weapon to down an aerial object near El Paso, Texas, and its chaotic aftermath, highlight the policy challenges and impediments the U.S. still faces in defending against drone incursions over the homeland. These are major national security concerns and a topic The War Zone has been reporting on for years.

The latest chapter in the ongoing saga of U.S. efforts to begin countering small drone incursions over the country began last week. Reacting to what they thought was a drone operated by a Mexican drug cartel, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel reportedly used a laser directed energy weapon to take down the object, which multiple reports say turned out to be a Mylar balloon. The system, which Reuters identified as a AeroVironment LOCUST laser counter-drone weapon, was lent to CBP by the U.S. Army. This is the first publicly known instance of an object being shot down over the U.S. with a laser in an operational setting.

You can read more about LOCUST and how it works in our story here.

The use of the LOCUST came as the FAA was working on “a safety assessment of the risks the new technology could pose to other aircraft,” The New York Times reported. “F.A.A. officials had warned the Pentagon that if they were not given sufficient time and information to conduct their review, they would have no choice but to shut down the nearby airspace.”

The tug of war between the Pentagon and FAA – which led to a shutdown of airspace over the nation’s 23rd largest city – is a glaring example of the convoluted and conflicting authorities the U.S. relies on to deal with the increasing threat posed by drones.

The FAA did not respond to our request for comment. We also reached out to U.S. Northern Command and AeroVironment for comment.

However, safety concerns about using directed energy weapons, and especially kinetic ones, to take down drones in the U.S. have been a major factor in why they aren’t employed in this role. 

A little less than a year and a half ago, officials at U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which has coordinating authority for counter-drone efforts in the U.S., said the use of such weapons was not yet on the table. The reason is that they can create dangerous or otherwise serious collateral effects that are not a concern in a war zone.

“The biggest thing right now is the impact of the laser when it moves beyond its target,” NORTHCOM Deputy Test Director Jason Mayes said of laser directed energy weapons for counter-drone use. “You know, how far is it going? What’s that going to do? How long does the laser need to remain on target before it begins to inflict damage and so on, right?”

Mayes, speaking to a small group of reporters, including from The War Zone at Falcon Peak 2025, a counter-drone experiment at Peterson Space Force Base in October 2024, also raised questions about whether the laser beam could impact aircraft or even satellites passing by, as well as things on the ground like “hikers up on a hill.”

The military has been working to mitigate those concerns, Mayes proffered at the time.

“I think that we could get to a point where we have approval for that here in the homeland,” he posited.

The video below shows a test of a U.S. Navy shipboard laser directed energy weapon capable of being employed against drones.

USS Portland (LPD 27) tests LWSD laser system

It is unclear when the approval to use laser counter-drone weapons came or how extensive such permissions have been. We also don’t know if the LOCUST system, understood to have been stationed at nearby Fort Bliss, was sent there under a pilot program established under the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It calls for at least four military installations to be used to speed up the development of counter-drone efforts at bases across the country. The measure includes systems “capable of destroying or disabling a small unmanned aircraft by means of high-powered microwave, laser, or other similar technology.”

Fort Bliss is also home to a significant portion of the Army’s air defense units, which are increasingly charged with the counter-drone mission. The base is also a major hub for border security operations, which the U.S. military often conducts in cooperation with law enforcement agencies, as well.

The future domestic use of laser counter-drone weapons remains an open question, but the NDAA pilot program gives the military additional authorities under existing statutes to at least test them. Still, as we have frequently noted, a confusing and often competing set of federal laws governing the use of counter-drone systems domestically impacted the ability to defend against these threats. The El Paso situation is a case in point of how challenging this can be.

NORTHCOM has authority over the troops and equipment, in this case a laser system, to take down the drones. However, federal laws limit where and when the military can use these systems, which is a large reason why CBP was involved.

In advance of the U.S. hosting the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games, the Trump administration pushed to expand counter-drone authorities. Congress granted that when it passed the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Under a federal law known as 124n, “the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ, including CBP, have limited authority to mitigate drone threats domestically to protect covered facilities or assets,” Scott Shtofman, Vice President & Counsel, Regulatory Affairs for the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), told us. “That authority has been extended and expanded, under the Safer Skies Act of the NDAA, to certain certified state, local, Tribal, and territorial agencies operating under federal training and oversight.”

Still, “it’s not a blanket nationwide shoot down power and only applies in defined threat situations,” he added. 

Meanwhile, under another federal statute commonly referred to as 130(i), “DoW can mitigate drone threats to protect military installations and missions inside the U.S., but it does not have general domestic airspace policing authority,” Shtofman posited.

However, the Pentagon is working to expand its counter-drone capabilities. 

In January, the recently created Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) 401 announced updated guidance for counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operations. The move empowered installation commanders “to take decisive action to protect military facilities, assets, and personnel within the homeland,” according to a press release at the time.

“The guidance, signed by the Secretary of War on December 8, 2025, streamlines and consolidates existing policies for detecting and mitigating UAS under the authority of 10 U.S. Code § 130i,” the release added, referring to another one of the laws governing domestic counter-small drone efforts. “It addresses the direct and growing threat posed by the proliferation of inexpensive and capable UAS. This updated framework provides commanders with the expanded authority and flexibility needed to dominate the airspace above their installations.”

Among other things, the new rules eliminate restrictions on defense perimeters that reduced installation commanders’ abilities to protect against drones.

“The previous ‘fence-line’ limitation has been removed, giving commanders a larger defensive area and greater decision space to protect covered facilities and assets,” the new rules state.

In earlier reporting, we noted that not all installations were considered “covered” to take down drones. The new rules permit service secretaries to determine which installations should be covered, to increase the number.

Beyond that, the Pentagon is now allowed to share “UAS track and sensor data among interagency partners, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). It also allows for the use of trained and certified contractor personnel as C-sUAS operators.”

“Every commander has the inherent right to self-defense,” the Pentagon told us. “The Department of War will defend its personnel and assets from illicit UAS activity in accordance with our authority under title 10 Section 130i, and the standing rules for the use of force.”

In addition to the numerous drone incursions over U.S. installations that we have frequently covered, cross-border cartel drone operations are a chronic issue, and we have been calling attention to the growing dangers they pose for many years now. Controversy over the El Paso incident was magnified after the White House insisted that the U.S. shot down a cartel drone flying over the border, which was later contradicted by the reporting that it was a mylar balloon.

Regardless of what it was, small drones remain a clear and present danger to the U.S. Whether new technology and additional authorities to use them will make a difference is an open question.

Update: 8:31 PM Eastern –

A U.S. official responded with answers to some of our questions.

1. The limit on the distance installation commanders can counter drones is the capability of their counter-UAS systems and the ability to coordinate with local authorities and communities.
2. No sites have been chosen yet for the counter-drone pilot program.
3. To his knowledge, the El Paso incident was the first time a directed energy weapon had been used against illicit drones in the homeland.
4. There are no statutory preclusions to using directed energy weapons against drones in the homeland.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Gezani is forecast to return to cyclone status when it strikes southern Mozambique on Friday evening.

Nearly 40 people have been killed and more than 12,000 others displaced after Cyclone Gezani slammed into Madagascar’s second-largest city earlier this week, as Mozambique braced for the storm’s arrival.

Updating its tolls as assessments progressed, Madagascar’s National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) said on Thursday it had recorded 38 deaths, while six people remained missing and at least 374 were injured.

Gezani made landfall on Tuesday at the Indian Ocean island nation Madagascar’s eastern coastal city, Toamasina, bringing winds that reached 250km/h (155mph).

Madagascar’s new leader, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, has declared a national disaster and called for “international solidarity”, saying the cyclone had “ravaged up to 75 percent of Toamasina and surrounds”.

Images from the AFP news agency showed the battered city of 500,000 people littered with trees felled by strong winds and roofs blown off buildings.

Residents dug through piles of debris, planks and corrugated metal to repair their makeshift homes.

More than 18,000 homes were destroyed in the cyclone, according to the BNGRC, with at least 50,000 damaged or flooded. Authorities say many of the deaths were caused by building collapses, as many give inadequate shelter from strong storms.

The main road linking the city to the capital, Antananarivo, was cut off in several places, “blocking humanitarian convoys”, it said, while telecommunications were unstable.

The storm also caused major destruction in the Atsinanana region surrounding Toamasina, the disaster authority said, adding that assessments were still under way.

France announced the dispatch of food aid and rescue teams from its Reunion Island, about 1,000km (600 miles) away.

Thousands of people had been forced to leave their homes, said the United Nations’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), describing “widespread destruction and disruption”.

The cyclone’s landfall was likely one of the strongest recorded in the region during the satellite era, rivalling Geralda in February 1994, it said. That storm killed at least 200 people and affected half a million more.

Gezani weakened after landfall but continued to sweep across the island as a tropical storm until late on Wednesday.

It was forecast to return to cyclone status as it reaches the Mozambique Channel, according to the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre La Reunion (CMRS), and could from Friday evening strike southern Mozambique.

Mozambican authorities issued warnings on Thursday about the approaching storm, saying it could cause violent winds and rough seas of 10-metre waves and urging people to leave the area of expected impact.

Both Madagascar and Mozambique are vulnerable to destructive storms that blow in off the Indian Ocean. Just last month, the northwestern part of Madagascar was hit by Cyclone Fytia, killing at least 14 people.

Mozambique has already faced devastating flooding from seasonal rainfall, with nearly 140 lives lost since October 1, according to the country’s National Disasters Management Institute.

Two weeks ago, 12 miles from Twickenham, Scotland parked coaches on very English lawns.

In the stately surroundings of RGS Surrey Hills school in Dorking, a group of Under-16 and Under-18 prospects ran through drills under the eyes of staff from Scottish Rugby’s SQ (Scottish Qualified) programme.

The scheme is designed to establish connections with youngsters who, like Ashman, Rodd and many others, live and play outside of Scotland, but could one day represent its senior sides.

The SQ programme’s coaches, which include English-born former Scotland international Peter Walton, act on tip-offs from schools and clubs.

They also set up a recruiting station at high-level age-grade rugby events, inviting those with the ancestry and interest to scan a QR code and enter their details.

All countries work to maximise their talent pool.

England are keen to ensure that Under-20 Rugby World Cup winner Junior Kpoku, who plays for Toulon and could become available to France, will go on to wear white at senior level.

South African-born centre Benhard Janse van Rensburg will soon be eligible for England on residence grounds after the Rugby Football Union successfully asked for a review of his tie to the Springboks.

But for nations with a smaller talent pool – Scotland has about 50,000 club players, compared to England’s 880,000 – there is a higher premium on making sure a particular promising youngster chooses to represent them.

What are the factors that come into a player’s decision?

First and foremost, there is national pride.

Ashman said that back in 2021, he explained “quite bluntly” to England’s coaches that he wanted to play for Scotland.

Sometimes, however, players can be torn between different parts of their identity.

Flanker Gary Graham, the son of former Scotland prop George Graham, grew up in Carlisle. He attended a training camp with England and, perhaps in an effort to wind up his father in a joint interview, told the Daily Mail in February 2018, external that he “feels more English than Scottish”.

Within a year later, having not played for England, he made his debut for Scotland, assuring fans that he has “always wanted to play for his country”.

Nablus, the occupied West Bank – For decades, the Zenabia Elementary School has been offering an intimate learning environment to aspiring young students from across the educational spectrum in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

But now, due to Israel’s years-long withholding of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian school system is effectively broke. Like administrators at all government-run schools in the West Bank, the Zenabia school principal, Aisha al-Khatib, is struggling to keep her small, public school in session.

For most of the week, the Zenabia school is shuttered, and children roam the streets or stay at home. School supplies are woefully missing, with even regular schoolbooks now reduced to “bundles of pages”.

“We do everything we can, but we do not have the time or the materials or the consistency to properly teach our children and keep them off the streets,” says al-Khatib. “And this is everywhere in the West Bank.”

Targeting the education of Palestine’s children, she says, “means destroying the nation”.

Under the direction of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israel has systematically been withholding billions of dollars in tax revenues over the past two years that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The measure is partly intended to punish the PA for its longstanding policy of paying families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for resisting the occupation – even after the PA announced early last year that it was reforming such policies.

Public services have faced severe cuts, affecting the salaries of bureaucrats, sanitary workers, and the police.

But possibly nowhere has that budgetary crisis been felt more than in the education sector.

At Zenabia and elsewhere in the West Bank, public schools are currently only open for a maximum of three days a week. Teachers face long stretches of not being paid, and when they are, they only receive about 60 percent of what they were earning before, resulting in strikes.

And the effects of these cuts in education are showing up on the days when school is in session. Class time is so diminished at Zenabia that teachers focus almost solely on teaching mathematics, Arabic, and English, with subjects like the sciences being essentially cut altogether.

The result, educators warn, could be lasting educational gaps for a generation of Palestinian students.

“As principal of the school, I know that [the students] are not [at] the same [educational] level as before,” al-Khatib says.

‘We are always absent from school’

Spending most of his days out of school, star student Zaid Hasseneh, 10, tries to keep improving his English by looking up words on Google Translate. Zaid dreams of going to university someday in the United States, with hopes of becoming a doctor.

“I want my son to grow up to be cultured – not just memorise the material he learns at school,” says his mother, Eman. “No, I want his cultural knowledge to develop and become diverse and advanced.”

Eman helps Zaid when she can with his studies, but she is busy keeping the family afloat financially after her husband lost his work in Israel. Before Israel’s war on Gaza began in 2023, Eman’s husband worked in Tel Aviv as a mechanic. After Israel revoked his work permit, along with those of some 150,000 other West Bank Palestinians, he has been unable to find work. Eman now works in a halawa factory as the sole breadwinner.

“I go home tired from work, but I have to keep up with [Zaid] regularly,” says Eman. “I tell him, ‘The most important thing is studying. Studying is essential for life.’”

But Eman realises how limited she is in helping her son with his studies. “The teacher knows one thing, but I don’t know how to explain it,” says Eman. “And now, the books [they receive in school] aren’t complete books anymore. They’re bundles. Regular books are 130 pages, but these are 40 or 50 pages.”

To compound the dearth in school resources, students and their families describe erratic schedules that make cumulative learning a near impossibility. “The whole family’s routine is affected,” says Eman.

Even Zaid is now often spending his days out in the streets rather than studying in the classroom – or otherwise on his phone, playing mobile games.

That is the case for most students these days.

Muhammad and Ahmed al-Hajj joined Zenabia four years ago as six-year-olds when they faced extreme bullying in another school. They came to love the new school and the intimate setting it offers. But the twins now mostly spend their time on their phones. With their parents also struggling to earn enough money to get by, they’re left at home alone during their days off from school.

“It’s not good at all. We are always absent from school,” says one of the twins. “It’s not like a full schedule, and we try to study as much as we can, but still, we don’t feel good about it.”

Some families have switched their children over to private schools, but few can afford to do so. “My [monthly] salary is 2,000 shekels [$650],” explains Eman Hassaneh. “About 1,000 goes towards the home rent. Another 500 goes towards bills. And only very little is left for food. I cannot also take care of his education.”

Teachers quitting, and mounting dropouts

Collectively, the PA’s multi-year budget cuts of billions of dollars are shrinking both the attendance of students and the number of teachers, too.

“Many of the teachers left working in the schools to work in factories because they do not get enough salary,” says al-Khatib. “And they don’t feel that they are giving what they need to give the students.”

Tamara Shtayeh, a teacher at Zenabia, nowadays only teaches maths, English, and Arabic due to the reduced funding. “As a teacher, the three-day solution is a bad solution because it doesn’t cover the minimum education that is needed,” she said. “Not for the students, and not for the teachers as well.”

Due to her reduced salary, Shtayeh, a mother of three girls, is selling products online on the side to support her family. Even the school’s principal, al-Khatib, says she can now only afford to send one of her two college-age daughters to university, with the other daughter staying at home.

School hours are reduced even further as Israeli soldiers regularly raid the surrounding areas, closing the school every time they do so. With the crisis stretching on for years now, Shtayeh is sensing a generational gap widening between the previous generation that received five days of school, and this one going to school for about half of that.

Shtayeh and al-Khatib worry about the lack of routine in the children’s lives. For every student like Zaid, who is devoted to educating himself despite the circumstances, many more students are dropping out of the system altogether.

Not far from Zenabia, Talal Adabiq, 15, now spends his days selling sweets and drinks for eight hours a day on the streets of Nablus.

“I don’t really like school,” says Talal. “I prefer working.”

Talal told his parents about a year ago that he wanted to drop out of school. Though they wanted him to continue his studies, he told them he did not find much use for school anymore – and he used the irregular school schedule to prove his point.

Offering to help support his struggling family financially, Talal subsequently dropped out of al-Kindi School. He now makes “about 40 to 50 shekels a day” ($13-16) hawking street goods.

As he sells lollipops and other sweets on a Tuesday afternoon, several teenage boys looked on nearby. They say they’re still in school, but on this budget-mandated day off, some of the boys joke about how “fun” it would be to not go to school at all.

Talal, meanwhile, shrugs off questions about what dropping out of school portends for his future. “God willing, things will be better,” says Talal. “I don’t know how.”

In the estimations of educators and representatives from the Palestinian Authority, about 5 to 10 percent of students have dropped out of school in the West Bank in the past two years.

‘Our children deserve a chance at life’

While massive budget cuts roil the education sector, the Palestinian Authority is struggling to come up with solutions as its budgetary woes deepen – and schoolchildren otherwise face threats, violence and demolitions at the hands of Israeli soldiers, settlers and the Israeli Civil Administration.

Even before the war on Gaza began, the school sector was facing a variety of crises, with teacher strikes commonplace, as well as Israeli attacks on school infrastructure and children on their way to class, with at least 36 demolitions of 20 schools between 2010 and 2023.

But systemic attacks on education are now intensifying. According to Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, in his district alone, three schools have been attacked in the last two months by settlers. In nearby Jalud last month, settlers set a school on fire. The rise in violence is leaving students at once traumatised and fearful of going to school, says Daghlas.

“In the past three months, most of the invasions that target homes in the Nablus district are targeting schoolchildren. They will take the kid along with one of the parents. They subject them to interrogation for a few hours,” says the governor. “What kind of psychological state will the students have after these interrogations?”

According to PA estimates, more than 84,000 students in the West Bank have had their education disrupted by incidents including settler attacks, military raids and demolitions of schools. More than 80 schools serving approximately 13,000 students are under threat of full or partial demolition by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Between July and September 2025 alone, more than 90 such education-related incidents were documented in the West Bank.

In Area C – the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control – students from isolated villages sometimes have to walk several kilometres to reach their schools, in which they regularly face harassment or attacks from settlers as well as soldiers on the way, with a rising trend in settler outposts deliberately placed near schools.

“These are not individual acts by some violent settlers,” says Mahmoud al-Aloul, the vice chairman of the central committee of Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling political party. “Rather, it’s a general policy that is supported by the occupation.”

In 2025, Nablus governorate alone had 19 students killed by Israeli army gunfire, according to Daghlas. A total of 240 were injured.

Education officials say the longer the crisis persists, the greater the long-term impact will be as teacher attrition, interrupted learning and rising dropout rates compound over time.

“The continuation of the crisis means risking long-term institutional erosion, in which temporary solutions become permanent, and the regime becomes less able to restore its previous level of quality, efficiency and justice,” says Refaat Sabbah, the president of the Global Campaign for Education. “Saving education today is not a sectoral option, but a strategic necessity to protect society and its future.”

For Eman Hassaneh, that means safeguarding her son Zaid’s future hopes and dreams. “We hope all of these barriers to education won’t actually affect our children and their passion for learning,” she says.

“Our children deserve a chance at life.”

The CIA’s latest YouTube video offers instructions on how to contact the agency on the encrypted Tor Browser.

The CIA has released a new Chinese-language recruitment video on its YouTube channel, encouraging members of China’s military to spy for the United States.

Released on Thursday, the video is the latest addition to a YouTube series targeting Chinese and Russian citizens with information about how to securely contact the US spy agency using the encrypted Tor Browser.

The videos typically focus on a fictional character who is having doubts about their government before deciding to spy for Washington.

The latest video by the CIA, which runs just under two minutes, focuses on a Chinese military officer going through the motions of his job while sharing his growing alarm with his country’s leadership, who are said to be “protecting only their own selfish interests” in the clip.

The video then moves to the officer at home with his wife and daughter, observing that he cannot “allow these madmen to shape my daughter’s future world”.

Alluding to ancient China’s military strategist Sun Tzu’s The Art of War text, the narrator observes that while the greatest winner is the one who “triumphs without fighting”, China’s leadership is eager “to send us to the battlefield”.

In its final scenes, the video cuts to the protagonist removing a bag from a work safe and then driving through a military checkpoint to a deserted car park. Sitting alone, he logs onto a computer to contact the CIA, which he says is a “way of fighting for my family and my nation”.

The video ends with a dramatic flourish of words: “The fate of the world is in your hands” – before sharing instructions on how to download the Tor Browser to contact the CIA.

The accompanying text below the YouTube video asks users: “Do you have information about high-ranking Chinese leaders? Are you a military officer or have dealings with the military? Do you work in intelligence, diplomacy, economics, science, or advanced technology fields, or deal with people working in these fields?”

Beijing did not immediately comment on the CIA’s video, but its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described previous US intelligence recruitment drives as malicious “smears and attacks” against China that deceive and lure Chinese personnel to “surrender”.

The CIA’s network in China was famously dismantled by Beijing between 2010 and 2012, leading to the death or imprisonment of at least 30 people, according to a 2018 investigation by Foreign Policy magazine.

The collapse of the US spying network was linked in part to a botched communication system.

The United States has revoked a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for its actions to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The decision on Thursday is the most aggressive move by President Donald Trump to roll back environmental regulations since the start of his second term.

Under his leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalised a rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the “endangerment finding”.

It is the legal underpinning for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

Established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama, the finding establishes that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.

But President Trump, a Republican, has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”. The endangerment finding, he argued, is “one of the greatest scams in history”, adding that it “had no basis in fact” or law.

“On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world,” Trump said at a White House ceremony on Thursday.

He hailed the repeal of the endangerment finding as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far”.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who also attended the ceremony, described the endangerment finding as “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach”.

Rescinding the endangerment finding repeals all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks. It could also unleash a broader unravelling of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say.

But Thursday’s new rule is likely to face pushback in the US court system.

Overturning the finding will “raise more havoc” than other actions Trump has taken to roll back environmental rules, environmental law professor Ann Carlson told The Associated Press news agency.

Environmental groups described the move as the single biggest attack in US history against federal authority to address climate change. Evidence backing up the endangerment finding has only grown stronger in the 17 years since it was approved, they said.

As part of Thursday’s decision, the EPA also announced it will end tax credits for automakers who install automatic start-stop ignition systems in their vehicles. The device is intended to reduce emissions, but Zeldin said “everyone hates” it.

Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticised his Democratic predecessors, saying that, in the name of tackling climate change, they were “willing to bankrupt the country”.

The endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry”, Zeldin said, criticising the leadership of Obama and former President Joe Biden in particular.

“The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

The endangerment finding had allowed for a series of regulations intended to protect against climate change and related threats.

They include deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the US and around the world.

Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator who served as the White House’s climate adviser in the Biden administration, called the Trump administration’s actions reckless.

“This EPA would rather spend its time in court working for the fossil fuel industry than protecting us from pollution and the escalating impacts of climate change,” she said.

EPA has a clear scientific and legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gases, McCarthy explained, adding that the health and environmental hazards of climate change have “become impossible to ignore”.

Thursday’s EPA action follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding.

Conservatives have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Democratic Senator Ed Markey said that keeping the endangerment finding should have been a “no-brainer”.

“Trump and Zeldin are putting our lives and our future at risk,” he said in a video statement.

“They have rolled back protection after protection in a race to the bottom. Instead of ‘Let them eat cake,’ Zeldin is saying, ‘Let them breathe soot.’”

A United States judge has granted an injunction preventing the Department of Defense from stripping Senator Mark Kelly, a military veteran, of his retirement pension and military rank.

The Defense Department had taken punitive action against Kelly for critical statements he had made against President Donald Trump.

But on Thursday, Judge Richard J Leon, an appointee of Republican President George W Bush, issued a forceful rebuke, accusing the Trump administration of trying to stifle veterans’ free speech rights.

Leon directed much of his ruling at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a senior Trump official who announced on January 5 that Kelly would be censured for what he characterised as “seditious” statements.

“Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired service members, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow Defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired service members have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years,” Leon wrote.

“If so, they will more fully appreciate why the Founding Fathers made free speech the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights!”

History of the case

Thursday’s decision comes after Kelly, a Democratic member of Congress, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on January 12, alleging “punitive retribution”.

He had drawn the Trump administration’s ire with several public statements questioning the president’s military decisions.

Kelly, who represents the swing state of Arizona, had condemned the administration for sending military troops to quell protests in Los Angeles in June 2025.

Then, in November, he was also one of six former members of the US’s military and intelligence communities to participate in a video reminding current service members of their duty to “refuse illegal orders”.

That video quickly attracted Trump’s attention, and the president issued a string of social media posts threatening imprisonment and even the death penalty.

“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP?” Trump wrote in one post.

In another, he suggested a harsher punishment: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Shortly thereafter, the Defense Department announced it had launched an investigation into the video and Kelly specifically, given his role as a retired Navy captain.

Hegseth accused Kelly of using “his rank and service affiliation” to discredit the US armed forces, and he echoed Trump’s claims that the video was “reckless and seditious”.

His decision to pen a formal letter of censure against Kelly prompted the senator to sue.

Such a letter serves as a procedural step towards lowering Kelly’s military rank at the time of his retirement, as well as curbing his post-military benefits.

But Kelly argued that such punishment would serve to dampen the rights of veterans to participate in political discourse – and would additionally hinder his work as a member of Congress.

An exclamation-filled ruling

In Thursday’s ruling, Judge Leon determined that Kelly was likely to prevail on the merits of his case – and, citing the folk singer Bob Dylan, he added that it was easy to see why.

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Leon said in his often quippy ruling.

“After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’”

Leon acknowledged that granting an injunction against the government is an “extraordinary remedy”. But he argued it was necessary, given the gravity of the case.

The judge conceded that the Defense Department does have the ability to restrict the speech of active-service military members, given the need for discipline among troops.

But the Trump administration argued in its court filings that those restrictions extended to retired military veterans as well.

Leon, however, dismissed that assertion with the verbal equivalent of a snort: “Horsefeathers!”

“Speech from retired servicemembers – even speech opining on the lawfulness of military
operations – does not threaten ‘obedience, unity, commitment, and esprit de corps’ in the same way as speech from active-duty soldiers,” Leon wrote.

“Nor can speech from retired servicemembers ‘undermine the effectiveness of response to command’ as directly as speech from active-duty soldiers.”

Leon also acknowledged that Kelly’s role as a lawmaker in Congress compounded the harms from any attempts to curtail his free-speech rights.

“If legislators do not feel free to express their views and the views of their constituents without fear of reprisal by the Executive, our representative system of Government cannot function!” he wrote, in one of his many exclamatory statements.

The judge was also harshly critical of the Trump administration’s arguments that Kelly’s rank and retirement benefits were solely a military matter, not a judicial one.

Leon described Hegseth’s letter of censure as making Kelly’s punishment a “fait accompli” – a foregone conclusion – given that such a document cannot be appealed and could itself serve as the basis for a demotion.

“Here, the retaliation framework fits like a glove,” Leon said, appearing to validate the crux of Kelly’s lawsuit.

At another point, he rejected the government’s arguments by saying, “Put simply, Defendants’ response is anemic!”

The injunction he offered, though, is temporary and will last only until the lawsuit reaches a resolution.

Trump administration responds

In the wake of the injunction, Kelly took to social media to say the short-term victory was a win for all military veterans.

“Today a federal court made clear that Pete Hegseth violated the Constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said,” Kelly said in a video statement.

“But this case was never just about me. This administration was sending a message to millions of retired veterans that they, too, can be censured or demoted just for speaking out.”

He added that the US faces a “critical moment” in its history, warning of the erosion of fundamental rights.

Kelly then proceeded to accuse the Trump administration of “cracking down on our rights and trying to make examples of anybody they can”. He also acknowledged that the legal showdown had only just begun.

“I appreciate the judge’s careful consideration of this case,” Kelly said. “But I also know that this might not be over yet, because this president and this administration do not know how to admit when they’re wrong.”

Within a couple of hours of Kelly’s post, Hegseth himself shared a message on social media, confirming that the Trump administration would forge ahead with contesting Thursday’s decision.

“This will be immediately appealed,” Hegseth said of the injunction. “Sedition is sedition, ‘Captain.’”

Kelly is considered a Democratic contender for the presidency in 2028.