NEWS

Friday morning. The electric fluctuations were so frequent that I decided to go to the gym and work out for a bit. Though I was tempted to get angry with my work being interrupted, I remembered that Caracas is a bubble when it comes to electricity. In other parts of the country, blackouts happen sometimes twice a day, sometimes lasting for 16 hours in total.

In their anguish, people have taken to the streets, burning tires and blocking highways. Without fans or air conditioning it is hard to survive the Super El Niño phenomenon, which recently joined our catalog of misfortunes by raising temperatures across the board. Children who can’t sleep at night end up falling asleep in school the next day.

Not only that, these blackouts and power surges damage appliances and put water pumping stations offline, leaving communities without water supply. What makes everything worse is that authorities do not publish rationing schedules, making it impossible for families and businesses to undertake any minimal planning.

To “explain” things, the acting Delcy Rodríguez government celebrated the fact that national electricity demand exceeded 16,424 megawatts (MW) on September 22, calling it a “historic milestone” and highlighting a 9% increase compared to the peak demand in 2025.

What officials failed to mention is that in 2013 Venezuela recorded a demand of 18,700 MW, far, far higher than the figure announced this month, without any blackouts.

Furthermore, the supposed economic improvement is that oil production rose to 1.23 million barrels per day, but it appears that the United States is the only one benefiting from the additional revenue. The vast majority of the Venezuelan population is seeing absolutely no economic benefit, neither before nor after the twin earthquakes. Between shady business deals and power outages, we are truly in the dark.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello assured that he “wouldn’t sugarcoat things for the people” and admitted that the electricity crisis “is a serious problem.” However, his solution was to ask mayors and governors to request that private companies with power plants generate their own electricity. We will then surely see a “record high” diesel demand, which will leave the agricultural sector without fuel.

The truth is that the blackouts are causing massive paralysis, costing the industrial sector up to 44% of its productive hours. In a country that has advocated  “economic diversification” for years, the little energy that is available is prioritized to keep oil production going in the oil-producing regions – lest Trump and the corporations get upset – and to try and mitigate the impact on the country’s capital. 

What is rarely mentioned is that although Venezuela has a nominal installed capacity of approximately 35,000 MW, a figure that doubles the national peak demand, actual stable generation barely reaches 12,000 MW. This operational deficit is what causes the constant blackouts the population is currently enduring. The 1,300 MW that the authorities promise to bring back online in the coming months will only slightly alleviate the issue.

The deterioration of the National Electric System (SEN) is structural and affects both transmission and distribution. The transmission grid exceeds its technical safety limits almost daily by transmitting more power than allowed, causing voltage fluctuations. At the same time, the distribution system has been deteriorating for years. There is a shortage of basic spare parts, transformers, and distribution cables resulting from years of US sanctions.

To add to the paradox, what is the proposed solution? Privatization! At a time when service is at its worst, the National Assembly has preliminarily approved reform of the Organic Law of the National Electricity System and Service to open up generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization to private operators. The incentive is a new tariff structure designed to reflect “the real costs” of the service and generate “reasonable returns” for investors. 

Truth be told, if we were to pay “the real costs” of the current service, we would have to be compensated day after day. Perhaps people will go from having no electricity due to the condition of the power grid to having no electricity because they cannot afford the bill.

Even in a country where we’ve grown accustomed to hearing extravagant promises – ranging from millions of barrels of daily crude output to imminent economic prosperity – the outlook for electricity is far from encouraging. Preliminary assessments from experts suggest that a complete overhaul to prevent blackouts and modernize the grid in the medium and long term could cost up to $40 billion.

Maybe the US would be willing to “lend” us some of our own money to do this? Even if it did, we would obviously have to do it through US corporations, because if there’s one thing Washington knows how to do, it’s paying itself and keeping the change.

The best example is the recent oil deal, “the biggest in history” according to Trump. From what has been reported, Venezuela is going to hand over 17 prime oil fields, some producing extra-heavy crude in the vast Orinoco Belt and others producing light crude in Lake Maracaibo, to a company that seems straight out of a lazy Hollywood movie script.

The company in question is NABEP, owned by Alejandro Betancourt – who deserves a column all to himself – and which will now be under the control of the Pentagon. The US will have preferential access to the oil produced, including 20% at cost. The most screwed-over country in the hemisphere, handing over subsidized oil to the superpower that kept it under a vicious blockade for more than a decade.

Which brings us back to the electricity problem. From the oil deal to the state of the electrical grid, propagandists want us to believe that once the US is satisfied, once the transnational corporations and their local allies are making enough money, things will improve for the Venezuelan people. We have seen that movie before and it turns out differently. Let the last one out turn off the lights.

Jessica Dos Santos is a Venezuelan university professor, journalist and writer whose work has appeared in outlets such as RT, Épale CCS magazine and Investig’Action. She is the author of the book “Caracas en Alpargatas” (2018). She’s won the Aníbal Nazoa Journalism Prize in 2014 and received honorable mentions in the Simón Bolívar National Journalism prize in 2016 and 2018.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Some countries, from which Brazilians living overseas are able to vote, have also already released preliminary vote count data.

In China, Lula won 56.63% of the votes, while Bolsonaro came in second with 31.33%. Lula also won in countries including South Korea, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.

In Israel, however, Bolsonaro won 74.40% of the valid votes. He also won 71.59% of the valid votes in Japan.

Today’s result will also determine the composition of the Senate from February 2027 onwards, as 54 of the Senate’s 81 seats are being contested, representing two-thirds of the chamber.

Currently, the largest bloc in the Senate is Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL), followed by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which has served in a coalition government under Lula.

In the last election four years ago, Lula narrowly defeated Flávio Bolsonaro’s father, Jair. But the tumultuous aftermath of the election, which saw Jair Bolsonaro convicted of plotting a coup after thousands of his supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress, has had a lasting impact on the nation’s political life and this election.

Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup and is barred from standing for office.

Because of recurrent health problems, he is currently under house arrest rather than in a cell, but he has been prohibited from posting on social media or making public statements.

Despite these restrictions, there is little doubt that Flávio Bolsonaro has his father’s backing.

We have officially received our second rendering of Boeing’s F/A-XX concept, which has now officially won the tender, beating out Northrop Grumman to build the Navy’s next-generation stealth fighter. Let’s take a look at what we can see in this new image and discuss what insights it may provide.

Before we start, it’s worth reminding our readers that we are basing this analysis on two publicly released renders of a highly classified aircraft design. There are deliberate choices made in these renderings to obscure critical features and capabilities and mislead foreign intelligence as to the jet’s intended capabilities. So please keep in mind that the details are bound to change. This is also just a preliminary analysis. We will expand on it once we have more time to digest what we are seeing.

The front quarter view of the jet taxiing to a catapult aboard a carrier shows us a very broad, tailless, heavy tactical aircraft. This is a large jet. Clearly internal volume was a driving design factor, as it should be. You can read more about this in our past reporting here.

The aircraft is depicted with what appears to be a large single-piece canopy with a cockpit for just a pilot. Visibility to the rear looks limited at best. There has been much speculation about the possibility that F/A-XX will have the provisions for two crewmen in order to better take on its complex roles over long distances — in particular acting as a battle manager, including for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and other drones. This appears not to be the case, and a high degree of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will have to help with what will be extremely complex tactical problems the single pilot will face. It’s also worth noting that U.S. Navy carrier air wings have retained two-seat tactical jets for frontline use, with the F/A-18F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler serving today. If F/A-XX replaces these aircraft, it will be the end of frontline two-seat tactical jet operations for the seagoing service.

We see a very broad nose section, which could (and likely would) contain a relatively giant active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. There is also a prominent chine-line edge wrapping around the forward fuselage, which is a normal trait of low-observable (stealthy) aircraft. The nose looks a bit more contoured, similar to the only other rendering we have of Boeing’s F/A-XX, compared to the shovel-like design of the company’s F-47 for the U.S. Air Force. Below the rear of this visible chine-line appears to be the engine intakes, mounted on the sides of the lower fuselage. They look to be a blended trapezoidal arrangement and are also set far back from the nose.

The F/A-XX’s extremely stout landing gear are depicted prominently in this new image, with a twin-wheel nose gear and thick mains. These are customary features for a carrier-based fighter and especially a heavy one like this.

The jet’s wings have a positive dihedral just like the F-47 renders, which seems to be something of a trademark of Boeing’s next-generation fighter design. This Klingon Bird of Prey look harkens back to the Boeing Bird of Prey demonstrator, which you can read more about here. We also see the wing’s large trailing edge flaps extended, which would be critical to slow-speed terminal operations around the carrier.

Finally, one thing we don’t see clearly is of particular note: the canard foreplanes that have been featured in F-47 imagery, as well as hinted at in Boeing’s only other F/A-XX rendering. It isn’t clear if they may be blended with the fuselage above the inlet areas and are obscured by the steam, or if they simply do not exist in this rendering. The inclusion of canards has been one of the most debated aspects of the F-47 and Boeing’s F/A-XX design, although they seem to make more sense for a naval fighter considering the tailless jet’s low-speed requirements that are needed to fly off the carrier. Again, you can read our past feature about the canards and our follow-up here and here.

While the aircraft clearly shares distinct attributes with the F-47, it isn’t clear exactly how far the commonality between them goes. We could end up with a literal navalized F-47, which would leverage as much efficiency as possible between the two designs, or we could see major design elements and even proportional changes. The requirements imposed by carrier operations do dictate size and weight, to a certain degree. What lives beneath the jet’s skin – hardware and software – will have the most commonality regardless.

There is also the question of the aircraft caught on a thermal imager flying outside of Area 51, which was likely a Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) demonstrator from Boeing, or at least an aircraft related to those efforts based on how unique Boeing’s design clearly is. It’s always possible that the Navy flew its own NGAD demonstration program. The service has been notoriously tight-lipped about its NGAD risk reduction efforts.

Ireland players again wore black armbands in recognition of Palestinians killed in Gaza and bowed their heads during the Israeli national anthem before the teams’ second UEFA Nations League football match on Sunday.

The League 3 Group B match ended in a 1-1 draw and, despite being played behind closed doors and on neutral ground, was once again played out in a confrontational manner.

Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher stepped in as captain for Dara O’Shea, who was excused to be with his wife for the birth of their child, and pointedly avoided shaking hands with Israel captain Dor Peretz, despite completing the usual pre-match formality with the referee and one of his assistants.

Kelleher’s action was a repeat of O’Shea’s, who refused to shake Israel captain Manor Solomon’s hand before the first match in Debrecen, Hungary, last week. Ireland went on to win that game 3-0 through three first-half goals.

Solomon was dropped to the bench for Sunday’s match in Backa Topola, Serbia. Israel forward Sayed Abu Farchi was back in the squad after serving a suspension for getting sent off following his gun-simulation goal celebration during Israel’s 3-1 defeat to Austria on September 25.

Finn Azaz, whose mother has Israeli heritage, was among the Irish substitutes after playing from the start against Austria on Thursday.

Troy Parrott’s penalty in the 39th minute, after a foul by Peretz on Jimmy Dunne, gave Ireland a 1-0 halftime lead. A disagreement also broke out on the sidelines as the players made their way off the field for the interval, although the referee quickly intervened.

Peretz secured a point for Israel with a poked effort from close range in the 47th minute.

Sunday’s game was initially supposed to be played in Dublin, but the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) moved it to a neutral venue for “operational reasons” in June following widespread calls for a boycott in protest of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The FAI said the game would be played with no fans present.

It followed the FAI’s motion the previous November calling on UEFA to ban Israel from club and international competitions.

All the Irish players had been under pressure from home – where affinity with Palestinians is strong – to boycott the second match against Israel, though the pressure was greater during the first game.

“I felt that pressure growing day by day, and it’s getting almost to a breaking limit now,” Ireland coach Heimir Hallgrimsson said at the time.

Ultimately, only reserve goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu decided to skip both of the contentious games, saying in a statement that it was his “personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong”.

More than 160 Irish sportspeople had signed an open letter urging the FAI to reconsider its decision to go ahead with the two games.

Before the departure for Hungary, people protested outside the team hotel in Dublin for the players to boycott the matches. The SIPTU trade union displayed a huge poster in central Dublin beside the River Liffey asking the players to “Go with your conscience!” and “Don’t play with genocide” beside an image of a blood-splattered ball.

Former Ireland coach Brian Kerr said the FAI had “lost the respect of the Irish people” for going ahead with the games.

But the FAI argued UEFA could sanction the team. Ireland is cohosting the 2028 European Championship with England, Wales and Scotland.

Protesters threw tennis balls with Palestinian flags onto the field during Ireland’s 2-2 draw with Austria on Thursday. A man with a Palestinian flag also tried running onto the field.

On Saturday, an Israeli journalist stated during the pre-match news conference that the Irish players had called the Israeli players “monkeys” during last week’s game, leading to an immediate rebuke from Irish communications officer Kieran Crowley, who said it was “a lie” and ended the news conference.

The players had only decided to go ahead with the fixtures after a dramatic day in Debrecen before the first match, when both the news conference and training were delayed for hours while they deliberated. They reportedly voted 14-8 in favour of continuing after Bazunu’s withdrawal that morning.

Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ was only providing stripped-back coverage of both games against Israel to meet contractual obligations. There was no studio presentation, commentary on the international feed, or analysis. RTÉ said it was not accepting advertising or sponsorship around either game.

RTÉ also recently announced that Ireland will boycott the Eurovision Song Contest for a second year due to Israel’s participation.

The U.S. government set off conventional explosives inside a tunnel deep in the Nevada desert this week in a test designed to replicate a so-called “decoupled” nuclear detonation. Data collected is now being used to help improve methods for detecting this kind of nuclear testing. Just earlier this year, American authorities accused China of using decoupling to conceal new nuclear tests despite the country’s stated moratorium on such activities.

The test, which involved the use of chemical high-explosives and radiotracers, was conducted yesterday inside P Tunnel in Area 12 of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSA), according to a press release from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSS, which is situated within the boundaries of the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), is used for a wide variety of testing purposes today. An agency under the Department of Energy, NNSA’s main jobs are to oversee the development and production of nuclear weapons, as well as manage America’s nuclear deterrent stockpile.

“This experiment is especially focused on further enhancing the U.S. capabilities to detect a ‘decoupled’ explosion,” per NNSA’s release. “Data collected from the experiment will be used to validate scientific models and refine algorithms that are critical to U.S. nuclear explosion detection efforts.”

“Just as a stealth aircraft looks smaller on radar, decoupling can greatly muffle the signals detected by nuclear detection sensors, making a large explosion appear smaller,” the release explains. “In a conventional, or ‘coupled,’ underground nuclear test, a device is placed deep in a hole in close contact with the rock, allowing much of the explosion’s shockwave to reach sensors. In a decoupled test, by contrast, the device is detonated inside a large underground chamber, substantially reducing the explosion’s seismic signature.”

“In this experiment, researchers gathered measurements using a broad suite of advanced sensors, including accelerometers, seismometers, infrasound sensors, electromagnetic sensors, chemical and radiotracer samplers, and meteorological sensors,” it adds. ”Together, these measurements will improve scientists’ understanding of the signatures produced by underground explosions and strengthen the United States’ ability to detect and characterize nuclear explosive events.”

Overview of the NNSS

The U.S. already maintains a U.S. Atomic Energy Detection Systems (USAEDS) network, which is overseen by the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). USAEDS is made up of more than 3,600 sensors positioned around the world. USAEDS is also tied in with the International Monitoring System (IMS), which is managed by the organization responsible for overseeing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). AFTAC also supports the mission to monitor for potential nuclear testing globally using a fleet of specially configured WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft. In addition, those planes are used to help keep watch for unusual spikes in atmospheric radiation that could point to nuclear or radiological accidents or other incidents leading to the spread of potentially dangerous radioactive material.

Video 1: How CTBTO’s International Monitoring System works (subtitles)

With regard to the USAEDS network specifically, “once a disturbance is detected underground, underwater, in the atmosphere or in space, the event is analyzed for nuclear identification, and the findings are reported to command authorities,” according to AFTAC’s website.

As mentioned, the U.S. government has accused its Chinese counterparts of using decoupling to conceal new nuclear testing, and NNSA’s press release draws explicit attention to these allegations. At the annual Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland, in February, Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said that China had conducted at least one such test at Lop Nur on June 22, 2020. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) subsequently said the IMS had not detected an event matching that description at that location on that date. For its part, the Chinese government has denied the accusation.

The social media posts below include satellite imagery showing activity at Lop Nur that could point to new nuclear testing activities in recent years.

While China is a signatory to the CTBT, the country has never ratified it. The Chinese government last acknowledged a critical-level nuclear test in 1996, after which a self-imposed moratorium was put in place, at least publicly. As an aside, the United States has also signed, but never ratified, the CTBT, and has a similar self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. It is worth noting that the treaty does not ban so-called sub-critical testing, which involves fissile material, but does not result in a full-fledged nuclear reaction.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration has been holding new talks with the Chinese government regarding various aspects of the country’s massively and rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, including the testing allegations. That story immediately preceded a state visit by China’s President Xi Jinping to Washington, D.C., to meet with Trump.

“The discussions between American and Chinese officials have centered on measures to reduce nuclear risks and haven’t been aimed at negotiating a formal arms-control pact, an effort Beijing has sharply rebuffed in the past,” according to that report. “The Trump administration has begun to highlight the possibility of implementing new verification measures.”

“Independent experts say seismic instruments might be placed on or near test sites,” The Journal‘s story also noted. “Another possibility, which was floated during the Biden administration, is to install radiation-detection equipment at test sites.”

NNSA’s announcement about the test at the Nevada National Security Site is certainly an example of the development underway already of new means of verification that could be deployed at sites around the world.

The United States has separately accused Russia of conducting lower-yield nuclear testing in secret in the past. Russia is a signatory to the CTBT and had previously ratified it. In 2023, President Vladimir Putin revoked that ratification in line with the provisions of a law passed by the country’s parliament, or Duma.

President Trump has also floated the idea of the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in response to Russian and Chinese activities, though other U.S. officials have downplayed the possibility of doing so. The United States is otherwise in the midst of a huge nuclear modernization effort that impacts the air, sea, and land-based legs of the deterrent triad. American authorities are also now pursuing these efforts in an environment fully unbounded by relevant arms control agreements following the sunset of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) earlier this year.

The Russian government has said it is ready to conduct new nuclear tests if the United States pursues this course of action. The last official nuclear test in Russia came in 1990 right before the fall of the Soviet Union.

“It takes nuclear expertise to detect nuclear activities and experiments like these [to] ensure America remains unmatched in detection,” NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams said in a statement yesterday in light of the test in Nevada. “The Trump Administration has made it clear that the United States will lead from a position of strength. You cannot evade American innovation. With this experiment, we are sending a clear message: under this administration, America will never be outmatched.” 

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Up to 500 schools across France will be partially or totally closed on Monday after clashes between riot police and student protesters in recent days, the French education minister said on Sunday.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400 to 500” high schools as security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, Édouard Geffray said.

He also said 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the protests.

Thousands of students have been demonstrating over education standards and the protests, which started last week, have spread from Paris to other cities, including Montpellier, Nantes and Marseille.

High school pupils and others have objected to a lack of teachers, overcrowded classrooms and run-down buildings.

On Friday, French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 735 of France’s 3,700 schools had been affected “one way or another” by violent protests.

The education minister warned the number of schools potentially affected on Monday could be comparable to Friday’s figure but promised a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.

“There are activists – particularly from the far-left – who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence,” Édouard Geffray claimed.

“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he said. Geffray added that 78 staff members in education had been wounded, which he described as “something we have never seen before”.

On Friday 1,747 people were arrested, according to French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

Trilateral talks could happen this month in UAE or another US-proposed venue, says the president.

Ukraine is ready to hold trilateral talks with the United States and Russia this month, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

The Ukrainian president made the comments on Sunday during a news conference alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Kyiv. He said Ukraine supports a swift timeline for returning to talks to try to end the war fought for over four and a half years.

US efforts to broker a ceasefire have been paused since Washington launched its war on Iran. However, Washington is now pushing for technical-level talks by the end of October, Zelenskyy said.

He confirmed earlier reports that the United Arab Emirates, which has hosted previous talks, could again be the setting for a meeting.

“I confirmed to [the US] that our side is ready to support this timeline,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv is open to meeting in the UAE or “another country proposed by the American side”.

Washington had also been in touch with Moscow about the plan, Zelenskyy said. The Kremlin said last month that it did not rule out the possibility of three-way talks this month.

Despite suggestions of their willingness to discuss an end to the conflict, both Russia and Ukraine have also said they will ramp up long-range attacks on military and related targets.

Moscow has said it is targeting Ukraine’s energy sector as winter approaches. Last year, similar attacks knocked out power and heating for days on end as temperatures plummeted to minus 20C.

Zelenskyy on Sunday said he was “amazed” by Russia’s “savage desire to escalate the situation every day”.

He yet again accused Moscow of targeting “civilian infrastructure, including data centres and mobile network facilities”.

“Honestly speaking, I am not surprised by this approach to the war – by Russia’s hatred towards Ukraine – but I am surprised by the specific tactics used”, the Ukrainian leader said.

Alongside the return of the US to efforts to broker a ceasefire, India on Sunday said that it aims to step up its efforts to play a larger role in mediating an end to the conflict.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in New Delhi, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said his country had become more involved in recent months, specifically regarding shipping in the Black Sea, which has been plagued by mines and attacks on commercial vessels.

India was also “going beyond that,” said Jaishankar, including with discussions on grain and energy exports and “on non-attack possibilities,” he said.

After nearly seven years of waiting, Taiwan has received the first two aircraft from its long-delayed purchase of 66 new-build F-16C/D Block 70 fighters from the United States.

The two single-seat F-16Cs, serials 6727 and 6728, touched down at Chihhang Air Base near Taitung on October 2. They are the first factory-new fighter aircraft delivered to Taiwan in 25 years and mark the beginning of the aircraft acceptance and integration phase of the Republic of China Air Force’s (ROCAF) so-called Peace Phoenix Soaring project.

2架F-16V戰機飛抵台東|中央社即時影音

The two jets have also had an unusually eventful trip to Taiwan.

They began their journey to the island on August 17, flying from Lockheed Martin’s production facility in Greenville, South Carolina, to Hawaii. The aircraft were subsequently forced to remain there for more than a month after an unexpected issue prevented them from continuing across the Pacific as planned. The reasons for the delay have been the subject of considerable speculation, including weather and tanker availability.

The two jets finally departed Hawaii again on October 1, stopping in Guam before making the final leg to Taitung today.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said today that more of the aircraft will arrive before the end of the year, although he did not provide a specific number.

The 66-aircraft purchase is worth approximately $8 billion. Taiwan originally expected deliveries to begin much sooner, but production-line adjustments, supply-chain problems, and software issues contributed to delays. COVID, too, had an impact on the production line.

The program’s delivery schedule has slipped repeatedly. Defense Minister Koo said in March, May, and again through his deputy in June that the first aircraft were expected to arrive by the end of September. That deadline passed without an F-16 reaching Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense acknowledged in late September that development and production of the aircraft’s new electronic warfare self-protection system had also been a factor.

The Block 70s are being equipped with L3Harris’ AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield electronic warfare suite, and the system was not yet fully through its development and production process when the first aircraft were otherwise ready for delivery. L3Harris announced on September 3 that it had completed production of the first 35 Viper Shield systems, underscoring that the electronic warfare equipment was itself still moving into production as Taiwan’s fighters were approaching delivery.

Viper Shield Electronic Warfare System

Taiwan chose to acquire the AN/ALQ-254 rather than the AN/ALQ-257 electronic warfare system used on U.S. Air Force F-16s.

Lawmakers have questioned whether the system meets requirements associated with earlier work to modernize earlier F-16A/B Block 20 fighters to the F-16V standard. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Koo argued that those requirements applied to the earlier Block 20 upgrade rather than the new Block 70 purchase. Other international F-16 Block 70 operators are also using Viper Shield.

Taiwanese officials have defended the decision, citing the specific requirements of Taiwan’s F-16 fleet and associated procurement considerations. The system is intended to provide the new fighters with a modern electronic warfare and self-protection capability against increasingly sophisticated radar and missile threats.

There are also still questions about when the Viper Shield system itself will be fully ready.

Weapons deliveries have also not kept pace with the aircraft themselves.

Taiwan is receiving AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles as part of the F-16 package, with 200 ordered. The C-8 version incorporates upgrades from the U.S. Air Force’s Form, Fit, Function Refresh (F3R) effort, including new electronics and improved electronic-counter-countermeasures intended to make the missile more capable in a heavily contested electromagnetic environment. For Taiwan, the missile will provide the new F-16s with a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air weapon that can be cued by the aircraft’s AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), as well as other sources of targeting information through the F-16’s networked systems.

The AIM-120C-8 is particularly relevant as Taiwan fields more F-16s against China’s increasingly capable fighter fleet, which includes aircraft equipped with long-range air-to-air missiles such as the PL-15.

Taiwan’s F-16 Block 70s will also be armed with the AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), intended for attacks against enemy air defense systems. According to Roy Choo, a defense journalist and TWZ contributor, the first of the new AGM-88F (remanufactured from U.S. Air Force AGM-88B) missiles arrived in Taiwan back in 2022, for the F-16V fleet.

The major gap is the AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The precision glide weapon is intended to give Taiwan a longer-range strike capability against ground targets without requiring the launching aircraft to fly directly over heavily defended areas. According to the latest reporting from Taiwan, deliveries of the AGM-154C have been held up by delays on the U.S. production line and may not begin until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. Existing stocks of these weapons were also heavily used in Operation Epic Fury.

The two aircraft now sitting at Chihhang are significant for another reason. Unlike Taiwan’s existing F-16V fleet, they are new-production aircraft rather than older fighters that have been upgraded.

Taiwan received 141 F-16A/B Block 20s that were upgraded to the F-16V configuration under a separate modernization program completed in 2023. The new Block 70s incorporate many of the same technologies — including the APG-83 — but are built from the ground up as new aircraft.

The Block 70s will also bring a significant new passive-sensing capability to Taiwan’s F-16 fleet. Under a $328.5-million U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract awarded to Lockheed Martin in February, Taiwan is receiving the company’s IRST21 Legion-ES infrared search and track system. Designed specifically for the F-16, the long-wave infrared sensor can passively detect and track airborne targets without emitting radar energy. That gives the aircraft another way to search for and track threats while reducing its own electromagnetic signature. The IRST21 also gives the F-16s a passive way to detect and track low-observable targets, potentially providing another means of finding Chinese stealth aircraft without relying solely on radar.

In 2019, Lockheed Martin displayed a model of a Block 70 F-16 with what appeared to be a podded IRST system on one of its chin stations at the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in Taiwan:

The new fighters will therefore complement Taiwan’s upgraded F-16A/Bs while expanding the overall number of modern F-16s available to the ROCAF.

The timing matters.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft operate around Taiwan on an increasingly routine basis, forcing the ROCAF to maintain a persistent air-defense posture. The additional F-16s will provide more aircraft for missions ranging from air defense and counter-air operations to maritime strike.

The F-16V fleet is also being tested for a more specialized intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance role. The ROCAF has recently been conducting flight and systems integration testing of the MS-110 advanced reconnaissance pod, part of its Phoenix Scout project. The service plans to acquire six pods to replace older reconnaissance equipment. Based on the DB-110 digital sensor architecture, the system combines visible-light and infrared imaging with long-range, day-and-night reconnaissance, and real-time image transmission, allowing imagery to be passed more rapidly to ground command and intelligence elements. Integrating the pod with the F-16 and associated ground systems will give Taiwan another means of monitoring activity around the island and its surrounding waters.

But Taiwan remains heavily outnumbered across the Taiwan Strait.

China is fielding an increasingly sophisticated combat aircraft fleet that includes the J-20 and J-35 stealth fighter, large numbers of advanced fourth-generation fighters, airborne early warning and other force-multiplier aircraft, and a growing variety of uncrewed systems.

And the F-16s will face the same fundamental problem as Taiwan’s other combat aircraft in a major conflict: staying operational.

China possesses extensive missile and air capabilities that could threaten Taiwan’s airbases, aircraft shelters, fuel supplies, command-and-control infrastructure, and other elements needed to keep fighters flying. You can read more about how the ROCAF would likely go to war with China in this previous in-depth feature.

Basing the new F-16s at Chihhang Air Base, operated by the 7th Tactical Fighter Wing, is significant, Choo told us.

“The basing of the aircraft at Chihhang allows the ROCAF to readily project air power south and eastwards, especially over the Bashi Channel, which is one avenue PLA can gain access to the Philippine Sea and beyond,” he explained. “Previously, ROCAF fighters from other bases maintain QRA detachments there”

The F-16 delivery today is only the beginning of a much larger effort to get all 66 aircraft into Taiwanese service.

According to the latest information from the ROCAF, 63 F-16C/D Block 70s remain in various stages of production and delivery in the United States, with some already moving through the handover process. The remaining aircraft will be delivered according to production, flight-test, and acceptance milestones before being ferried to Taiwan.

Once the full order is delivered, Taiwan will operate more than 200 F-16s when the new Block 70s are combined with its existing fleet.

That will give the ROCAF a considerably larger force of modern F-16s, with substantial commonality between the upgraded F-16V fleet and the new-production Block 70s.

The aircraft will still need to go through Taiwan’s acceptance procedures, while pilots and maintenance personnel complete the necessary conversion and training work. The new jets will then be progressively incorporated into the ROCAF’s operational units.

Remarkably, the arrival of the first Block 70 fighters today marks the first delivery of new fighters to Taiwan since 2001, when the last of the 150 F-16A/B Block 20s were delivered.

“The ROCAF’s surviving fleet of 139 F-16s, 53 Mirage 2000s, and 129 F-CK-1s was largely inducted in the 1990s, when Taiwan held the upper hand in the cross-Strait air-power balance,” Choo explained. “Even then, there remained a requirement for additional fighters, prompting the island’s first formal request to purchase 66 F-16C/Ds during the 2006 Monterey Talks.”

“By the late 2000s, these fighters were approaching the limits of their combat effectiveness as the PLA air fleet expanded in both size and capability. Fortunately, substantial upgrades began to be rolled out to the F-CK-1s and F-16s from the 2010s.”

In the wake of the 2019 acquisition of the F-16C/D Block 70s, questions arose over the aircraft’s asymmetric value as the Taiwan military increasingly focused on developing a plan for asymmetric capabilities in response to the PLA’s growing combat power.

“However, developments in recent years have underscored the continued importance of a capable fighter fleet not least for policing Taiwan’s airspace amid the PLA’s sustained gray-zone air operations around the island,” Choo added.

The timing of today’s arrival is also notable.

The aircraft reached Taiwan just days after U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. The delivery comes amid questions in Taipei about the future pace of U.S. arms transfers, after Trump said in May that a proposed $14-billion Taiwan arms package was being held in abeyance. He had approved an $11-billion package in December 2025.

Washington continues to say that its policy toward Taiwan has not changed.

Beijing, for its part, continues to oppose U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and regards the island as part of Chinese territory.

It has taken nearly seven years to get the first two F-16C/D Block 70s, to Taiwan. But their arrival marks the first step in a major modernization of the ROCAF’s F-16 fleet, adding new-production fighters with improved radar, electronic warfare, sensors, and weapons to a force that is already operating upgraded F-16Vs.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

As Israel prepares to mark three years since the October 7 attacks and with less than a month to go to parliamentary elections, one topic is dominating the electoral agenda.

Media reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by the United Arab Emirates before the attacks have put his alleged responsibility back in the spotlight.

“Did he know?” is the question on everyone’s lips.

Listening to the accusatory choir, one might think that Israeli society finally is acknowledging the real meaning of October 7. Yet the opposite is true.

Instead of giving a platform to a reckoning, the elections function to scapegoat Netanyahu for his alleged role in facilitating Hamas’s attack while absolving Israeli society and the Zionist movement of its collective responsibility for the preceding violence and ensuing genocidal aggression.

For example, it does not insist on investigating whether the “Hannibal Directive” was deployed as part of the Israeli military response on October 7 and whether it killed Israeli citizens and how many.

It does not scrutinise subsequent Israeli military operations or whether they put the Israeli hostages in danger or how many were killed by Israeli bombs.

There is no questioning of why key Palestinian negotiators were attacked during ceasefire and hostage negotiations, including Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief negotiator, in July 2024 in Tehran and Hamas’s negotiating delegation in September 2025 in Doha.

There is no debate about why the Israeli government repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals that could have brought the hostages back much earlier.

There is little attention paid to the fact that Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

None of these made the cut. Why?

The answer lies in the psychological state of Israeli society. For many Israelis, October 7 became a psychological rupture, making it difficult to reconcile their sense of humanity with their complicity in the criminal reality that followed.

The problem, then, is not that Israelis are in denial or misinformed. It is that a large portion of the society is complicit in criminality and actively avoids reckoning with it.

The absence of Gaza and Palestinians more broadly from Israeli political discourse is because of their complete dehumanisation by Israeli society.

How else could one explain the absence from the election rhetoric of questions about, and subsequent accountability for, actions against the Palestinian people?

Why has the Israeli military killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians? Why has it carried out mass and arbitrary detentions, torture and enforced disappearances of Palestinians?

Why has it targeted journalists, medical workers and academics? Destroyed and occupied hospitals? Wiped out ancient landmarks and irreplaceable cultural heritage sites?

Why has the sadistic and often sexually deviant celebration of destruction, subjugation, ethnic cleansing and death by Israeli soldiers been allowed?

What’s more, there is also little interrogation of the consequences of bombing and invading Lebanon, killing nearly 9,000 people since October 2023. Or bombing Syria and Yemen.

These are not isolated abuses. They are symptoms of a system of theft and domination driven by greed and sustained through psychological conditioning, segregation, fear and rewards for aggression. In line with the “Wired to Steal” model, dehumanisation helps produce consent for aggression while escalation following acts of resistance leads to normalisation of further expansion and robbery.

Thus, this election is not about a reckoning with October 7 or its horrifying aftermath. It is a lens onto a fascistic settler society engaged in denial and dehumanisation of an Indigenous “other” as a means of evading and normalising its own ongoing genocidal actions. Although Netanyahu may become the scapegoat, replacing him does not address the underlying machinery of domination and may instead serve to entrench it further.

That machinery remains firmly in place. The continuity between the violence unleashed since October 7 and the longer history of Zionist colonial expansionism is striking, with no lessons learned other than how to improve and grease the machinations of genocide. Fear, victimhood and the construction of a permanently besieged “us” against a dehumanised “them” continue to produce consent for further aggression and expansion.

October 7, therefore, has become not an occasion for genuine reckoning but another means of avoiding one. Netanyahu seeks to focus responsibility for the attacks on questions of what he knew and when while leaving the much broader record of what Israel has done since largely outside the electoral debate. His opponents, meanwhile, have their own complicity and ambitions to answer for. Thus, there is little political interest in a genuine reckoning with October 7. The fixation on Netanyahu allows the wider political establishment and Israeli society to avoid confronting the system of domination in which they remain invested.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The British Museum has announced changes to how visitors see the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition after concerns over long queues and overcrowding.

The measures include plans for longer opening hours, as well as an audio guide, additional seating and clearer signage.

A museum spokesperson said the public response to the 11th Century embroidery had been “extraordinary”, but acknowledged that some visitors had waited longer than they would have wanted.

Some people reported waits of up to two hours, while hundreds of ticket holders were reportedly turned away due to backlogs when the museum closed early last week due to a private event.

Some ticket holders took to social media to complain about the disruption.

One disappointed visitor said the trip had been a “big event” they had looked forward to, while another wrote she had been waiting since she was seven to see the Bayeux Tapestry, and bought tickets only to be turned away after queuing.

The museum later apologised to those who had been unable to enter and said they would be issued refunds and priority booking slots for a rearranged time.

From Monday, visitors will be offered an audio guide with more information about the embroidery, while additional signage and seating will be provided for those queuing to reach the main exhibition.

The museum said it planned to introduce longer opening hours to prevent queues building during the day and allow people with later bookings more time to view the exhibition.

Details of the extended hours have not yet been disclosed.

Nico Hulkenberg – 7/10

Missing Q2 was disappointing but he responded with a strong recovery on Sunday. Climbed from 15th on the grid to finish just outside the points and comfortably ahead of Audi team-mate Bortoleto after the Brazilian’s penalty.

Lance Stroll – 6.5/10

A much more competitive weekend for Aston Martin generally. Stroll joined Alonso in Q2 and kept himself out of trouble through a chaotic race to finish 12th, even if his team-mate ultimately extracted more from the opportunity.

Franco Colapinto – 7/10

Started 21st due to grid penalties, so 13th represented a very respectable recovery. Kept things clean after his costly mistake last time out and made up plenty of ground in difficult conditions.

Oliver Bearman – 5/10

Another fairly anonymous weekend for Haas. Knocked out in Q1 and although he gained a couple of places during the race, 14th was about all there was to show for it.

Esteban Ocon – 5/10

Frustrated with Haas’ qualifying run plan after going out in Q1 and never really recovered from there. Great start and was fighting well inside the top 10. Ultimately finished behind Bearman and was unable to make the changing conditions work sufficiently to threaten the points.

Pierre Gasly – 5.5/10

Qualifying ninth was an excellent start but Sunday unravelled almost immediately. Nearly lost the car on slicks during the formation procedure and ultimately fell all the way to 16th as Alpine’s gamble failed to pay off.

Carlos Sainz – 6/10

Williams struggled for pace throughout the weekend but 13th represented a good qualifying. His race was then further compromised by contact with Bortoleto, for which the Audi driver was penalised, so 17th doesn’t tell the whole story.

Gabriel Bortoleto – 4.5/10

There was plenty to like about reaching Q3 in the Audi, but the race undid that good work. Contact with Sainz earned him a penalty and left him 18th after starting inside the top 10.

Sergio Perez – 4/10

Qualified last and never looked likely to make meaningful progress even amid all the chaos. Reaching the chequered flag was at least something for Cadillac, but 19th completed another difficult weekend.

George Russell – 8/10

A far better race than his eighth place in qualifying suggested. Made an excellent start, ran inside the top three for virtually the entire afternoon and, even if he couldn’t match Mercedes team-mate Antonelli, was heading for another podium before a power-unit failure stopped him with five laps remaining.

Alex Albon – 4.5/10

Williams lacked pace from the outset and qualifying 20th left him with an enormous amount of work to do. His eventual retirement was caused by a gearbox problem rather than a driving error, but there had been little sign of any kind of meaningful challenge before then.

Valtteri Bottas – 3.5/10

A weekend to forget. Qualified ahead of Cadillac team-mate Perez but admitted his decision to run slicks was a risk before spinning into the gravel on lap nine and triggering the first safety car.

Major bridges in Kyiv have been hit by Russian drone strikes for four consecutive days, as Moscow ramps up attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital.

Two people were injured when the Pivnichnyi (Northern) Bridge was struck on Sunday morning for the second day in a row, while the Pivdennyi (Southern) Bridge was hit multiple times earlier in the week.

The latest attack came as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a surprise visit to Kyiv in a show of support against Russia’s continuing full-scale invasion.

Russia’s military said it would be intensifying strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions. It earlier said it had hit the two bridges used to transfer Ukrainian troops.

Video footage of Sunday’s strike, verified by the BBC, shows cars moving on Pivnichnyi Bridge as a drone crashes into it before exploding, creating a ball of fire. A cloud of black smoke can be seen rising above the bridge.

Other videos and pictures have emerged on social media showing a gaping hole in the middle of a traffic lane on the bridge.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were injured in the latest Russian attack. He earlier said that the Pivnichnyi Bridge’s roadway was hit.

Kyiv’s eight bridges across the wide Dnipro River link the western (right) and eastern (left) parts, and many of the capital’s estimated three million residents rely heavily on the metro lines and trains to travel across the city.

Some 500,000 vehicles use the bridges every day.

The two struck bridges are still standing – but the damage and restrictions to traffic and public transport have caused gridlock in parts of the capital at times.

“To get from the left bank to the right one and back – it’s just hell,” Kyiv resident Roman told the BBC on Sunday.

Large numbers of commuters cross the river, especially on weekdays. Repair teams are working to fix the damage and officials say they are planning temporary pontoon bridges, ferry services and even a tunnel under the river to keep Kyiv connected.

Klitschko also said a separate Russian drone strike had damaged a heating main, adding that there would be a temporary lack of hot water in the north-eastern Desnyanskyi district as a result.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy said on Sunday morning Russian drones had also attacked a warehouse in the north-eastern region of Sumy, killing one person.

Meanwhile, in the central city of Dnipro, six people were injured after a communications facility was struck, he said.

Ukraine’s Air Force said that overnight Russia had launched 135 drones, including 52 jet-powered ones. It said that 125 projectiles had been shot down.

As emergency services responded to the incidents, Germany’s Merz met Zelenksy in Kyiv. They laid wreaths to Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed in the war.

Merz reaffirmed his country’s support for Ukraine, writing on X: “Ukraine is facing decisive weeks. That is why I travelled to Kyiv today with the message: You can rely on us.

“Germany’s security also depends on the outcome of this war. That is why we are helping out of our own self-interest as well.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry says reopening the strait has been its main goal, while the US continues to focus on nuclear talks.

The Strait of Hormuz is going to remain closed until the United States accepts Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the waterway, Iran’s top negotiator and parliament speaker has said.

Iranian state-linked news agency Nournews, quoting ⁠Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, reported on Sunday that Washington made “some proposals through a mediator” days after the US replied ⁠to Iran’s diplomatic proposal.

The US should know “that the era of wasting time and dictating unilateral demands is over”, Ghalibaf said, adding Iran’s position remains “clear and definite”.

He emphasised that “the Strait of Hormuz will not open until our seven conditions based on the Islamabad memorandum are met”, and that Iran is “present on the military battlefield and will confront them with new surprises”.

He added that Iran was neither “excited” nor “intimidated” by the latest US proposals and would “both fight and negotiate”.

US President Donald Trump ruled out an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz last week, hours after Iran put forward a roadmap to reopening the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil and natural gas is shipped during peacetime.

Last month, Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran in his speech on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign ⁠Minister Abbas Araghchi also said Iran is “serious about finding diplomatic solutions just as we are serious about defending ourselves”.

Speaking to foreign ambassadors and diplomats in Tehran, Araghchi said Iran had clearly explained ⁠its conditions for reopening the strait and ⁠that Tehran hoped Washington would choose diplomacy and accept its proposal.

However, Araghchi warned that if the US takes military action again, Iran is “more prepared than before and will take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves”.

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei added that Tehran used the UNGA platform last month to provide world leaders with its position on ending the US-Israel war on Iran.

He said the US has continued to focus on nuclear talks, while reopening the strait has been Iran’s main goal.

“We are at this stage mainly focusing on the strait, and our principal concern is to reach a solution and to have peace and stability restored within this waterway,” Baghaei said.

The Strait of Hormuz has been largely blocked and disrupted for more than seven months, since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, driving one of the worst maritime shipping disruptions in decades.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied across Spain as protests have spread since the conservative-dominated parliament rejected a bill proposing measures to tackle a housing crisis.

Parliament on Friday voted down two decrees proposed by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority left-wing coalition government that were intended to address the housing crisis.

The protests erupted late last month after an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her home of 70 years in the capital, Madrid. Maria del Carmen Abascal’s eviction came after an international investment fund bought her building and hiked the rent.

Local media reports have suggested that Sanchez could call snap elections for as early as November after watching the strength of Saturday’s protests across the country. Spain’s current legislative term is set to end next summer.

Will the housing crisis trigger snap elections? Here’s what we know:

What happened on Friday in parliament?

The emergency measures proposed by Spain’s leftist government to tackle the country’s housing affordability crisis failed to pass on Friday.

The government had proposed two measures to protect renters in the country. 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.

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 before the voting.

But his government’s proposed measures were shot down by the majority of ⁠the 350-seat lower house of parliament.

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.

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

“If they really wanted to protect people, collar the vulture funds, and reactivate housing, they would have already done it. They’ve had eight years,” she added on X, referring to Sanchez’s government.

Health Minister Monica Garcia said on X that the right-wing parties “have voted for a feudal economy in which a minority extracts the salary from a majority that works for their luxuries. And they do it against their own voters, who also suffer increasingly high rents, live in fear that the contract will end and can even be evicted.”

“Today the right has given rent-seeking a parliamentary majority that it doesn’t have on the street, but it’s going to pay for it sooner rather than later,” she added.

Before the parliamentary vote, Marta Soler Gallart, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Barcelona, explained that neither of the two decrees addressed the housing problem in the medium or long term.

“Models such as Vienna’s with its low rents are cited in support of these decrees, but it is overlooked that the Vienna model and others have low rents because of their long history of creating and maintaining public social housing,” Soler Gallart told Al Jazeera on September 30.

“In Spain, however, public funds are invested in social housing which, after a while, the recipients sell at market price.”

Soler Gallart also said the new measures disadvantage landlords with small or few properties by extending five-year tenancy agreements by a further two years and by providing an indefinite extension of their leases.

“However, these extensions are not compulsory if the landlord can prove that they need the property for their own use,” she said.

Why are people protesting across Spain?

Protests erupted across Spain in late September after 87-year-old Abascal was evicted from her home. The investment fund that bought her building hiked her rent by more than 200 percent to roughly $1,880 a month, a move aimed at pushing out the long-term tenant to make way for lucrative tourist apartments.

In recent years, Spain has seen protests against mass tourism, which has been linked to the housing crisis and soaring cost of living. Spain is the second most visited country in the world, attracting 97 million tourists last year.

While Abascal has returned to her home, according to her representatives, she has become the face of the country’s housing crisis, and people across Spain have been demanding the government address the issue.

Angered by parliament’s rejection of the government measures, tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

“It’s a shame,” Nando de Anguulo, 26, who joined Saturday’s protest in Madrid, told the Reuters news agency.

“It only proves that it is us, the people, who have to adapt to the political parties and not the politicians to what the people want, and this can’t go on like that.”

While the protests were mostly peaceful, in the southeastern city of Valencia, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to break up demonstrations. About 30 protesters managed to get inside the City of Arts and Sciences, a landmark cultural building, before police removed them.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, Spanish police arrested three members of a far-right group and fired rubber bullets on Saturday night.

Far-right activists, some of whom performed Nazi salutes, tried to reach demonstrators camped out in the Puerta del Sol, a central square in the Spanish capital, the Spanish government said.

Valeria Racu, a spokesperson for the Tenants’ Union, said Saturday’s rallies revealed “a new energy that we haven’t seen in a long time and energy that is showing that eight days of people’s power can achieve more than eight years of progressive government”.

“Now begins real politics – politics which has always belonged to the people and which will return once and for all to the streets,” Racu added.

Could the housing crisis lead to snap elections?

Housing is a sensitive issue in Spain because it impacts how people vote. The average rent in the country 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.

In an October 1 article for Vanity Fair, Spanish journalist Jorge Dioni Lopez noted that after eight years in power, housing is what is causing Sanchez to lose support among educated young people, children of the middle classes.

“The government faces a difficult situation. Firstly, because most of the relevant powers lie with other levels of government. Secondly, because Spain is a nation of homeowners. Unlike in other European countries, almost all the public housing that has been built has ended up in private hands, and historically, homeownership has been more attractive than renting,” he wrote.

“Housing is our savings system and also the primary means of transmitting wealth between generations,” he added.

After Spain’s parliament rejected the government’s housing reform bills on Friday, the leader of the centre-right People’s Party, (PP) Alberto Nunez Feijoo, urged Sanchez to “call elections as soon as possible”, claiming he had the support of “neither the streets nor parliament”.

While Sanchez has not officially announced new elections, the Spanish online news site El Diario has reported that elections could take place as early as November 29. Spain’s general elections are currently scheduled for July 2027.

Voters cast their ballots for a dizzying number of officials across multiple tiers of government.

Polls have opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a general election to choose new leaders at the national and regional levels, in a vote that could affect the country’s European Union membership bid.

On Saturday, about 3.4 million voters are choosing the three members of the country’s multiethnic presidency, lawmakers for the national Parliament and heads of institutions for the country’s two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and Republika Srpska, which is dominated by ethnic Serbs.

Bosnia’s complex web of governing institutions was created by a United States-brokered peace agreement in 1995 in an effort to manage the ethnic divisions between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats that gave rise to the 1992-95 war.

The major parties’ repeated focus on war-era rhetoric and division was frustrating for some voters, activist Adi Selman of the Karton Revolucija protest group told the AFP news agency.

“I don’t think these new elections in Bosnia will change anything,” the 34-year-old said in the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla, ahead of the vote.

“The choice is limited to political parties that have already been around for 30 years and basically pick up votes by harping on about war, tensions, divisions and the past.”

“Bosnia and Herzegovina is dead; it is an impossible country,” Republika Srpska’s former president, Milorad Dodik, told the final rally of his right-wing Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) in the entity’s capital Banja Luka late on Friday.

EU membership bid

In the FBiH, Bosniak parties are pushing for a stronger central state, with incumbent Bosniak presidency member Denis Becirovic pledging a renewed path to the EU and NATO.

The EU granted Bosnia candidate status in December 2022, but accession negotiations scheduled for 2024 were delayed as Brussels demanded the country pass stronger anticorruption laws and reform its judicial system.

Croat nationalist parties are also pushing for electoral reform, demanding a greater say in choosing the Croat member of the presidency in the entity they share with the more numerous Bosniaks.

Meanwhile, Russia is accused of slowing down the country’s path towards joining the EU, while also holding close ties with the SNSD, which favours secession for Republika Srpska.

This general election is the first in the country in which new electronic tools are being used to scan ballot papers and carry out biometric fingerprint verification in a move to reduce fraud during the election.

Polls close at 7pm (17:00 GMT) and first results are expected later on Sunday.

Maysa Abu Daoud and her daughter Mary al-Najjar among five Palestinians killed in Gaza City attack.

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has expressed his “deep sorrow and grief” over the “tragic” killing of two Christian women in an Israeli air attack on Gaza City.

Maysa Abu Daoud and her daughter Mary al-Najjar were among five Palestinians killed in the attack that hit the ground floor of a building in the Remal neighbourhood on Saturday, in the latest Israeli violation of a United States-brokered “ceasefire” agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas.

In a statement, the patriarch extended his “heartfelt condolences” to the loved ones of the two women and to the Christian community in Gaza.

Their funeral took place on Saturday at Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City’s Old City.

The two women were Palestinian Christians from Gaza City who devoted their time to helping parishioners and displaced people sheltering at the Holy Family Church, according to Palestine’s Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs.

The committee’s chairman, Ramzi Khoury, described their deaths as a “painful loss” for their families, the church and its parishioners.

Mary’s son, 14-year-old Fouad al-Najjar, told the Anadolu news agency the strike hit the building at about 1:30am (22:30 GMT).

“My grandmother and my mother died. May God have mercy on them,” he said.

Al-Najjar appealed for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, saying Palestinians were losing their loved ones every day.

“We are exhausted by this war and have endured so much,” he said. “For almost three years, we have been living through the same destruction, the same grief and the same war.”

Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, who serves in Ramallah and directs the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, wrote on X: “The genocide continues in Gaza.”

The Gaza Strip is home to fewer than 1,000 Christians. The community was already small before the war, and many of its members have been killed since then in attacks on their homes and churches throughout the war that began in October 2023.

On October 19, 2023, an attack on the Saint Porphyrius Church compound killed at least 18 people. Two months later, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said an Israeli sniper shot dead a woman and her daughter inside the Holy Family parish compound in Gaza.

An Israeli strike on the Holy Family Catholic Church compound on July 17, 2025 also killed three people and wounded others, including parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli.

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed at least 74,228 people, including at least 1,445 since the start of the “ceasefire” in October 2025.

Seven companies are said to now be in the running to develop a lower-cost and highly modular drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. Though the field has some well-established entrants and some far lesser known names, the inclusion of Otto Aerospace in this group is particularly unexpected and interesting to examine. Otto has made bold, but still unrealized pronouncements about disrupting the aviation industry with potentially revolutionary high-efficiency designs that could have civilian and military applications. TWZ has been steadily tracking the company’s developments since we first reported on the existence of the Celera 500L aircraft back in 2017.

Air & Space Forces Magazine first reported on Wednesday that Otto Aerospace (previously Otto Aviation), as well as Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero, had “made the cut” for the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) program, citing anonymous sources. The MMA effort formally kicked off in July, and the Air Force is now aiming to have a fleet of at least 500 of these drones by 2032.

An industry source has also told us that these seven companies are moving ahead in the MMA program. The Air Force has not yet offered an official confirmation.

“The Air Force’s partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit is accelerating requirements development and rapid prototyping by leveraging commercial innovation and reducing timelines,” a spokesperson for the service said when we asked for more information. “We continue working with industry to inform requirements and assess potential solutions as we shape the future MMA capability.”

TWZ has also reached out to all of the companies on the list for more details.

As mentioned, it is unexpected and especially interesting to see Otto named here in the context of MMA. The company’s core design philosophy centers around what is called laminar flow. Broadly speaking, this refers to liquid or gaseous “fluids,” including air, flowing in smooth, regular layers across a surface with little to no mixing between them. In aviation, optimization for laminar flow translates to reduced drag and improved aerodynamic efficiency. This, in turn, can offer a host of benefits, including when it comes to fuel economy, extended range, and overall performance, as well as reductions in operating costs.

With this in mind, all of the designs that Otto has shown to date, starting with the Celera 500L, have been based around teardrop-shaped fuselages to maximize laminar flow benefits. Many of them also feature long, slender glider-like wings. The sudden and unannounced appearance of the very exotic and futuristic-looking Celera 500L at the Southern California Logistics Airport in 2017, at which time nothing was known about the aircraft or its manufacturer, caused a stir in the broader aviation community. TWZ was the first to report on the plane and then unmasked its identity.

The Celera 500: Technology Demonstrator with a Lasting Impact

On top of the laminar flow-optimized shaping, the Celera 500L was a pusher-propeller design powered by a single high-efficiency, turbocharged, multi-fuel V12 piston engine. A relevant patent held by Otto also describes a novel exhaust system with a heat exchanger that provides an additional boost in thrust.

Otto conducted an extensive test campaign with the Celera 500L, taking the aircraft up to an altitude of 15,000 feet and to a speed of 250 miles per hour. The company posited that this would translate to a cruising speed of around 460 miles per hour at the design’s intended operating ceiling of 50,000 feet.

Development focus at the company has since shifted to the jet-powered Phantom 3500, which has a much revised design compared to the Celera 500L. Otto has said previously that it expects this aircraft to burn just 115 gallons of fuel per hour, further underscoring the benefits of its laminar-flow-centric approach. Comparably sized business jets like the Bombardier Challenger 350, Cessna Citation Latitude, and Embraer Praetor 500 consume around 300 gallons per hour, according to the company, citing data from Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).

It is also worth noting here that Otto has already developed a drone with a “highly laminar-flow efficient airframe” for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company announced the successful completion of a flight test campaign in May. The pusher-propeller design has a teardrop-shaped main body, a glider-type main wing, and a T-tail at the end of a boom that extends to the rear of the aircraft. DARPA plans to use that drone to demonstrate laser-based power beaming technology that could be used to relay electricity to forward operating locations. The technology could also dramatically extend the endurance of an electrically-powered drone, potentially allowing it to stay in the air indefinitely.

Otto Aerospace DARPA EOS Flight Test

The drone for DARPA is far too small to meet the Air Force’s MMA requirements. However, “the program leveraged Otto’s aerodynamic expertise to design and flight-test an unmanned vehicle that could inform design parameters for future energy-relay systems or more extremely fuel-efficient, long-endurance platforms,” per a press release Otto put out in May.

TWZ has highlighted in the past how the general range, fuel economy, and other advantages inherent to Otto’s designs could be even more pronounced in a configuration that does not need to support a human crew. Furthermore, Otto has previously shown militarized concepts, crewed and uncrewed. As we’ve written in our earlier coverage of the Celera 500L:

“Though primarily aimed at civilian and commercial operators, Otto’s new website also highlights the potential for the Celera 500L to use its long-range and high fuel economy to support military missions, including transporting personnel and cargo, as well as conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. A version of the aircraft, possibly unmanned, equipped with any number of sensor suites could be an impressive persistent surveillance and communications relay platform able to orbit over particular areas for very long periods of time and cover a wide swath of the battlefield from its high perch. It could also be able to reposition itself quickly and transit to its tasking area at jet-like speeds.”

While we have yet to see an explicit MMA proposal from Otto, a laminar flow-optimized drone could be a very attractive offering, given the program’s focus on reducing costs while having an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles, among other capabilities. A more efficient design could further translate to a drone that needs less fuel to meet range and other requirements, which, in turn, could allow for a smaller and/or cheaper design overall. Weight and physical space savings afforded by reduced fuel demand could be used to increase ordnance and other payload capacity, too. You can read more about what is known about the MMA requirements here.

There are more companies beyond Otto in the running. With the Air Force aiming to buy hundreds of MMA drones in the coming years, there will be stiff competition.

General Atomics, which developed and produced the MQ-9A, has publicly put forward its own proposal for a successor, called Wildfire. The new drone draws heavily on experience with the Reaper, as well as other drones in the company’s portfolio, and you can read more about what is known about that design here. General Atomics declined to offer additional comment in response to questions regarding the current state of the MMA program. As an aside, General Atomics is also now on contract to build higher-end FQ-42 Vengeance drones for the Air Force, one of two designs intended for higher-end air combat the service is acquiring under its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program.

The other company building CCA drones for the Air Force is Anduril, with its FQ-44 Fury, and it has now also been named in relation to the MMA effort. Anduril has unveiled two other very different tactical drones since 2025, the twin-engine hybrid-electric tail-sitting Omen, designed primarily for surveillance and reconnaissance, and Thunder, an armed tiltrotor pitched as an uncrewed companion for crewed rotorcraft. Neither of those uncrewed aircraft would seem to directly align with the stated MMA requirements, but might serve as a starting place. Anduril also has a history now of developing new uncrewed platforms and other systems discreetly, and sharing them with the public only when they have become relatively mature.

What design Shield AI might be offering is unknown. The MMA requirements would seem to sit between the company’s V-BAT drone, which is in service with several armed forces today, including in the United States and Ukraine, and the much higher-end X-BAT that is now in development. Shield AI has been working to expand on the V-BAT design, including plans to integrate air-launched munitions. Both V-BAT and X-BAT are also vertical-takeoff and landing designs. Beyond drones, Shield AI remains a major developer of artificial intelligence-driven autonomy packages for the U.S. military and others.

Unveiling the Future of Defense Tech: Shield AI’s V-BAT Teams for Autonomous Missions

X-BAT: Earth Is Our Runway

Earlier this month, newcomer Swarm Aero unveiled a new drone with performance and capabilities that align with the stated MMA requirements earlier this month. Called Gamera, the design has a single propeller at the front of a small central fuselage, together with sponsons holding large fuel cells on either side and a twin-boom tail configuration broadly reminiscent of the OV-10 Bronco light attack aircraft, as TWZ previously reported on in more detail.

Meet Gamera: A New Category of Group 5 Strike and Sensing UAS

Grid Aero is publicly developing a twin-engine cargo drone called the Lifter Lite, in part with funding from AFWERX, the Air Force’s internal technology incubator. Whether the company might work to adapt the Lifter Lite, which has been undergoing testing at least on the ground, to meet the MMA requirements or has proposed something entirely different is not known.

The last firm on the list, Chaos Industries, does not appear to show any drone designs on its website at the time of writing. It is primarily known as a developer of radar systems, especially for use in counter-drone systems. The company declined to comment in response to TWZ queries regarding the MMA program.

To reiterate, the Air Force still has not confirmed the full list of MMA program contenders. Otto’s participation would be a standout, but the field as it is understood now features a number of very established drone makers, as well as emerging start-ups, all vying for a very lucrative opportunity. On top of the potential just to supply hundreds of drones upfront, those uncrewed aircraft look set to be a key part of the Air Force’s force structure for years to come, and will need to be supported throughout their lifecycles. The MMA requirements put heavy emphasis on modularity and open-architecture systems to allow for the rapid integration of new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line.

The Air Force has also previously raised the possibility of selecting multiple vendors to produce designs under the MMA program, or to pursue follow-on rounds of competition to help meet its operations requirements. This is exactly how the service has been running the CCA program, and has already led to the aforementioned production contracts with General Atomics and Anduril. In addition, the Air Force is targeting a base $10 million unit cost for each MMA drone, a price point that would help make losses more tolerable, and could open the door to acquiring a fleet of far more than 500 examples.

It is also important to remember that the Air Force has tried and failed on several occasions to develop and field an MQ-9A replacement. As TWZ has previously explored in great detail, the service’s view of what that drone should be has also evolved over time, with the current MMA program squarely focused on a more affordable option that does not put a heavy premium on survivability. The Air Force has acknowledged potential budget and other hurdles to its new effort. At the same time, heavy continued operational demand for Reapers, coupled with dozens of losses in the course of the war with Iran, as well as other operations in and around the Middle East in recent years, have put major new emphasis on finally finding a successor.

Overall, beyond what is already known about potential MMA offerings, it will be very interesting to see what Otto and the other contenders put forward to finally succeed the iconic Reaper.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Australian authorities are investigating the links between the country and a Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to take control of a plane travelling to Israel.

The co-pilot is alleged to have attacked the captain with a crash axe during a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv before passengers managed to overpower him and successfully take control of the plane.

The Australian authorities have not identified the co-pilot, who has been named by multiple media outlets including Reuters, CNN and The New York Times as Hamam al-Hammami.

The prosecutor in the UAE has said it is investigating the incident and any possible motives.

In a statement to the BBC, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) confirmed its investigation into “the man’s links to Australia”.

The investigation involves state police and the country’s security agency, it said, adding that an update would be “provided at the appropriate time”.

Sources familiar with the case, who have spoken to Australian media, have said the co-pilot was issued a student visa in 2014, and studied in Australia between 2015 and 2017, until he left the country.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said the co-pilot’s student visa was cancelled in 2019 as he was no longer enrolled in a course, making him ineligible for it.

Counter-terrorism officials will look at whether the man was radicalised in Australia, the ABC reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he was an Omani national.

The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on 30 September was carrying more than 170 passengers to Israel.

Two and a half hours into its journey, the plane plunged 17,000ft (5,200m) when the Omani co-pilot attacked the pilot with a crash axe, the United Arab Emirates prosecutor general has said.

The pilot flying the plane, Capt Smit Machchhar, described how he was lying on the floor injured when he realised the plane was sinking and he had to act, explaining: “I told myself to go for one last push to open the door from inside”, which allowed the passengers in.

Two reserve pilots then landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

We have a significant update on the fast-moving world of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) out of Mojave, California today. Northrop Grumman’s Talon Blue, which now has the official designation YFQ-48A, has taken to the skies for the first time. The existence of Talon Blue was first officially disclosed in December of 2025 at a media event in Mojave that we attended.

The uncrewed aircraft took to the skies over Mojave Air and Space Port, home of famed ‘bleeding0edge’ airframer and Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites, which built the aircraft. A release from Northrop Grumman reads:

“MOJAVE, Calif. – Oct. 3, 2026 – Northrop Grumman’s (NYSE: NOC) YFQ-48A Talon Blue completed its first fully autonomous flight, including taxi, takeoff, in-flight maneuvers, and landing. Developed through company investment, Talon Blue combines modular design and advanced manufacturing to lower cost and support faster production without compromising mission capability. The flight builds on Northrop Grumman’s seven decades of autonomy experience and more than 500,000 autonomous flight hours, with lessons from Talon Blue informing future autonomous systems. 

Details on YFQ-48A Talon Blue:  

• Talon Blue is part of Northrop Grumman’s internally-funded Project Talon portfolio focused on accelerating the development of mission-ready autonomous airpower capabilities.  
• Manufacturing and design innovations cut part count and overall weight, lowering cost and enabling faster production to meet growing demand for autonomous systems.  
• Designed with flexible operational concepts in mind, Talon Blue’s high air intake, wide wheelbase and integrated weapons bay support a wide variety of mission needs for U.S. and allied partners.

Craig Woolston, vice president and general manager, research and advanced design, Northrop Grumman: “Our customers made it clear they need autonomous systems that can be fielded faster and more affordably without sacrificing mission effectiveness. We listened. Talon Blue’s first flight is one step toward a new generation of autonomous capabilities. Every flight and lesson strengthens our broader autonomy work and sharpens what comes next.” 

While the Talon Blue aircraft draws most of the attention, Northrop Grumman has put great emphasis on its back-end autonomy development ecosystem, which includes its purpose-built Model 437 demonstrator aircraft, now under the Talon IQ badge (formerly Beacon).

Talon Blue is entering a growing field of CCA offerings, with extremely intense competition, that are primarily aimed at equipping the USAF with its next CCA acquisition of hundreds of aircraft known as Increment 2, for which the requirements remain undefined. Currently, the USAF has moved its YFQ-44 from Anduril and its YFQ-42 from General Atomics, both of which are deep in flight testing, into production. Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat is another serious CCA contender and perhaps the most mature of all, while Lockheed Martin has its tailless Vectis, and on the lower end, Kratos’ FQ-58 Valkyrie continues to evolve and rack-up flight hours. Many more types are on the horizon, including those from new players and globally from foreign manufacturers.

With the loss of the F/A-XX next-generation naval fighter program to Boeing, Northrop Grumman winning a contract from the U.S. services for Talon Blue has become more important. Doing so would get the company back into the Pentagon’s tactical air combat portfolio. As we have discussed for years, advanced uncrewed tactical systems are set to be less risky and potentially more lucrative than traditional fighter programs as air combat rotates to predominantly uncrewed capabilities and mass production of them. Beyond U.S. needs, the demand for CCAs is likely to explode internationally in the coming years, so programs like Talon Blue could find success elsewhere if the Pentagon goes another direction, but getting the U.S. armed services’ stamp of approval and the scale of production that comes with it would surely help there too.

Author’s note: A big thanks to our friend @Task_Force23 for providing us with great photos for this story.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has scrapped controversial plans to curb some jury trials.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government had introduced proposals to allow judges to make the sole decision on cases that would lead to a sentence of less than three years.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said only complex fraud and financial offences would be judge-alone – and it proposes that thousands of medium-level crimes should stay with volunteer magistrates, who sit without a jury.

Justice Secretary Alex Norris said he had changed course came after hearing the “strength of feeling”. Criminal lawyers have welcomed the decision and the Conservatives say it is a “major victory” for those who fought to defend trial by jury.

Former Justice Secretary David Lammy first announced the plans in December following a recommendation in a major review of the court system in England and Wales.

The series of radical reforms, including scaling back jury trials, were presented as the best way of turning around record backlogs which, in turn, were exacerbating the prison population crisis.

The backlog – which has led to record delays for defendants and victims – currently stands at nearly 81,000 cases – having rocketed largely thanks to cuts before the pandemic and court closures during the national lockdowns. Official projections have estimated it could reach 100,000 before the next general election and, in a worst case scenario, climb to double that number by 2035.

There are, however, indications the backlog is now stabilising after the government committed unlimited funding to pay for more judges to sit in courts that were otherwise being unused.

Under the original plans, Lammy had wanted to reserve jury trials for the most serious “indictable” offences – meaning cases that are always sent to Crown Court, including murder and rape.

Less serious offences, where the sentence would be no more than three years, would be decided without a jury in the Crown Court by a judge alone. Even less serious offences would stay in magistrates’ courts, abolishing defendants’ right to ask for a trial by jury when they feel that is their best chance of beig cleared.

The proposals triggered an outcry across many parts of the criminal justice world, with many opponents saying that eroding the 800-year-old right to trial by jury would not solve the backlogs.