among

This week, insider trades were seen among bigwigs, including Microsoft (MSFT), Netflix (NFLX), and Boeing (BA). The following transactions occurred between November 9 and November 13.

• Microsoft (MSFT) Chief Marketing Officer Takeshi Numoto sold 5,000 shares at $531 each for ~$2.66M. The

This lies behind the prime minister’s decision to open the door to the argument about rejoining the EU single market – along with the freedom of movement that would bring – and even the EU altogether.

But that longer-term ambition is dividing his cabinet and his party.

Some welcome his approach, including those with formerly Brexit-backing constituencies. Angela Rayner, for example, is understood to have been pushing former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to be bolder on Brexit since at least autumn 2022.

The housing secretary is said to have been insistent that Labour needs to stick to its manifesto red lines – not to return to the EU single market, customs union, or freedom of movement – but is open minded to changing those at the next election.

Another cabinet minister said: “The best thing you can do in politics is tell the truth. And the truth is that Brexit has been hugely damaging to Britain.

“We are not leading a public conversation here, we are racing to catch up with the public.”

But others are watching nervously at a strategy one former minister described as “high risk”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, for example, has struck a more cautious tone warning about the “costs and consequences” of rejoining the EU as well as staying out.

Jonathan Reynolds, the Business and Trade Secretary, is supportive of getting closer to the EU and discussing the UK’s long term relationship.

But he has previously warned against joining the EU’s customs union and is also unsure about the prospect of rejoining the EU, highlighting the uncertainty of what terms the UK would face, and what the bloc could look like in years to come with nationalist parties in the ascendancy in several European countries.

A voice from the past has a different set of concerns.

Lord Cameron told Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain that starting a conversation about rejoining would be “very long and painful”.

The former prime minister warned “flirting with rejoining” could also harm Burnham’s attempts to renegotiate the Conservative’s Brexit deal.

“If you start endlessly producing this idea that we’re actually on a path to rejoining, I think you’re in danger of getting a less good partnership deal because of course the EU countries will just think: ‘Well, these guys are gonna rejoin anyway, so what’s the point in giving them a good partnership deal’.”

Attitudes in Labour towards the prime minister’s approach don’t divide along predictable lines. One Scottish Labour MP, personally opposed to Brexit and with a heavily Remain-voting constituency, said it was a “real problem”.

“How can I argue to my constituents that we had a Scottish referendum in 2014 that settled independence for a generation. but then say the 2016 referendum isn’t settled? My view is you accept democracy.”

For now though, that opposition hasn’t broken out into public rebellion, although Labour MP Gareth Snell is one who has warned about reopening the debate.

The MP for Stoke-on-Trent, where the Leave vote was 69.4%, told the BBC’s Westminster Hour that doing so would “monopolise an awful lot of time inside parliament, inside government” when there are other things MPs should be doing.

Two Labour MPs among those most unhappy about Burnham’s openness to Europe insisted “there are no plans” for any organised criticism of the prime minister.

Despite their concerns, particularly about free movement, they described their current mindset as “wait and see”. That temporary truce is likely to fracture if the prime minister’s lead in the polls begins to slide.

AbbVie (ABBV) said Sunday that patients taking GLP-1 weight-loss medications reported improved satisfaction with their facial appearance following cosmetic treatments in two clinical studies conducted by its Allergan Aesthetics division.

The findings, presented at the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery’s annual

After Democrats delivered a once-in-a-generation midterm thumping of Republicans in the United States midterms, their current leader, Chuck Schumer, has expressed confidence he will helm his party’s larger-than-expected majority in the US Senate.

“I’ll be re-elected as majority leader,” the New York Democrat told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

But as calls for change reached a fever pitch among voters in this week’s pivotal elections, not every newly elected Senate Democrat is open to the idea of having Schumer, a 75-year-old stalwart of the chamber, reprise his role as the head of their agenda.

At least seven incoming Democratic freshmen have publicly suggested – or said outright – they will not commit to supporting Schumer in next month’s leadership vote:

• Illinois Senator-elect Juliana Stratton, through a spokesperson, said she will not support Schumer.
• Kansas Senator-elect Adam Hamilton told CNN in September: “I’m not supporting Schumer”.
• Maine Senator-elect Troy Jackson said on Monday he told Schumer he will “support somebody else”.
• Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed reiterated in an interview with CNN on Thursday that he will support his soon-to-be Democratic colleague, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, as leader.
• Minnesota Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan told reporters on Wednesday, “It is time for new leadership”.
• New Hampshire Senator-elect Chris Pappas said in an interview last week that “voters are hungry for … a new generation of leadership in the Senate”.
• Texas Senator-elect James Talarico has called for “new blood” in Washington, and since being elected, has indicated he wanted to “hear about [Schumer’s] vision” for the Senate before committing to back him.

Jackson has openly questioned Schumer’s ability to connect with working-class voters, while Flanagan’s staff has said the senator-elect wants “a progressive champion” who will shepherd Democrats through the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency and into 2028.

New members, like El-Sayed, may not be won over after Schumer backed the former public health official’s opponent, Haley Stevens, in Michigan’s Democratic primary.

Schumer, the first Jewish Senate leader, has often found himself at the centre of brewing cultural and foreign-policy debates within his party.

In remarks that were posted online in February, Schumer told Jewish leaders in New York City one of his core duties was “to fight for aid to Israel”.

“We delivered more security assistance to Israel, our ally, under my leadership than ever, ever before”, he said. “We will keep doing that.”

Schumer has also faced fierce criticism for not doing enough to block Trump’s cabinet members from being confirmed. Some have even chastised the leader for retreating during last year’s government shutdown after he backed a Republican bill to reopen federal agencies without getting anything in return.

Critics in his party, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, called that a “capitulation” that abandoned key Democratic priorities, like healthcare subsidies. Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said Schumer should have stepped down as leader over the matter.

The Democratic leader said on Wednesday the party’s new Senate plan would include launching investigations into the Trump administration, challenging the president’s agenda and ending his war in Iran.

However, that’s not good enough for some current members, like Van Hollen, who recently told Bloomberg that Democrats should not commit to Schumer without promises of a “bold agenda”.

Before Tuesday’s election, a senior campaign staff member for Senator Jon Ossoff, who was easily re-elected to his seat, would not say whether the Georgia Democrat would back Schumer.

“I do not have an answer,” the Ossoff source told Al Jazeera. “We can do all the fantasy football stuff later.”

When Democratic lawmakers return to Washington next week, voters and Democratic-aligned groups will likely pressure them to support an alternative candidate.

After calling for new leadership after the election, Indivisible, a progressive US-based organisation that bills itself as a movement “to stop the rise of authoritarianism”, released a memo on Thursday detailing their opposition to Schumer.

“Everyone with a Democratic senator – including those with newly-elected senators on their way to DC – should be demanding a contested leadership election, not a cleared field for Schumer”, the memo read.

“Any Democrat who is considering business as usual, or unwilling to fight at a level that matches the public’s demand for action – is not qualified to lead the party at this moment. Who leads the party in this era must be an open question, not a coronation. It’s time to define what the next era of the Democratic Party will be.”

Al Jazeera asked Schumer’s office how he plans to address those concerns and whether he is speaking with frustrated Democrats, but it has not yet responded.

To be re-elected, Schumer needs a simple majority of the Democratic Senate caucus, projected to comprise 54-56 members, and Schumer, who previously served as majority leader during the duration of former President Biden’s term in office, still has allies he can count on.

One of those is Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who told ABC on Wednesday that he commended Schumer’s handling of the midterms, saying he delivered “one of the most historic sweeps” for the party.

“We’re gonna have a family discussion,” Booker said. “But I think America should give … Chuck Schumer his due for what we were able to achieve.”

When asked Wednesday about building criticism of his leadership, Schumer demurred, saying Tuesday’s elections were “not about” him.

“This is about the American people and what they want and what they need and what we can do to help them. Plain and simple”.

In Rome, sources at Fiumicino airport told the BBC police bomb disposal experts carried out standard security protocols to ensure the safety of all passengers and crew.

Inspections of the passengers, luggage, and the aircraft yielded negative results, and the alert has since been cleared.

One plane which landed in Murcia, southern Spain – a Ryanair flight coming from Manchester – was also found not to have any explosives on board, Spanish authorities said.

One passenger later said she was unaware of the bomb threat until after the plane landed.

“We weren’t told anything during the flight,” Sarah told BBC Radio 5 Live. “The plane stopped quite suddenly and then we were kept on the runway for around 30 minutes.”

“Then the fire engines turned up, the bomb squad turned up and we were asked to evacuate,” she continues.

Sarah said the plane had not been on the ground a minute before it was “surrounded by fire engines and police and a bomb squad”. All the passengers were then escorted by police, leaving all their belongings.

“We were only later told that it was an actual threat, a bomb threat to the plane itself,” she added.

Two flights heading to Warsaw were also affected, including one from London Heathrow.

The Heathrow flight was originally meant to land at the Polish capital’s main airport, Chopin, but was diverted instead to the smaller Modlin airport, briefly forcing its closure.

A Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw-Chopin landed as planned.

Later on Tuesday, Bulgarian Transport Minister Georgi Peev said there were bomb threats against two planes travelling to the country’s capital Sofia.

He told the state-owned Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) the flights were from the northern Italian city of Bergamo and Ireland’s capital Dublin.

The flights into Sofia were not diverted and no explosives were found when the planes were checked, Peev said.

Bulgaria’s border police said in a statement sent to the BBC that at around 10:35 (08:35 GMT) it had received an email about “the presence of an improvised explosive device on a flight returning from Bergamo”.

“Standard procedures for such incidents were immediately activated, and an operational headquarters comprising representatives of various institutions was convened,” the statement said.

The border police added that the same email also reported a “similar threat against aircraft arriving from Dublin”.

More than 350 sportspeople – including Olympians Dina Asher-Smith and Tom Daley – have signed a letter to the prime minister calling on him to meet former sprinter Beth Dobbin and commit to increased funding towards ME research.

Dobbin, 32, recently revealed in an interview with BBC Sport she had been diagnosed with “life-decimating” ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) and as a result spends more than 22 hours a day in bed.

ME is a chronic, fluctuating disease, causing symptoms such as sleep problems, issues with thinking and memory, pain, and severe persistent fatigue that does not improve with rest, and more. It has no known cure or specific treatment.

More than 400,000 people in the UK are thought to have ME, though the true figure could exceed one million, with severity ranging from people able to work or study to those requiring round-the-clock care and tube feeding.

On 21 October, Dobbin wrote to the prime minister but did not receive a response – and she has now been backed by athletes across sport.

“For many of my team-mates, I dropped off the face of the earth four years ago when I developed severe ME,” she said.

“I’ve been taken aback and extremely touched by how many of them – and so many others in the sports world – have jumped at the chance to help by signing this letter. It means so much to me.

“I hope that, with all of them behind me, Andy Burnham is listening and will commit to doing what’s needed to deliver real change for a community that has been neglected for so long.”

Among the 360 sporting figures to have signed the letter are Everton manager David Moyes, his United States women’s counterpart Emma Hayes, and former Chelsea and England centre-back Millie Bright. Athletes Laura Muir, Eilish McColgan and Adam Gemili are among 114 Olympians and Paralympians to have added their support.

The letter calls on Burnham to “level the playing field” for funding into ME research with that for other illnesses “to give hope to the many affected that something is being done about this life-destroying, much-ignored illness and its spiralling impact”.

It says: “The disease has received extremely low levels of research funding compared to other conditions. Between 2019 to 2024, UK government research funders committed just £6.6m in funding for research into ME, compared to £79.1m for Parkinson’s and £496.4m for dementia.

“Prior to this, biomedical research funding was almost non-existent. As a result of the lack of research funding, there are no approved treatments.”

England duo Zoe Harrison and Megan Jones are among four nominees for World Rugby Women’s 15s Player of the Year award.

They are nominated alongside Canada’s DaLeaka Menin and New Zealand’s Kaipo Olsen-Baker for the award, which recognises exceptional performances during the 2026 season.

Fly-half Harrison, 28, scored 88 points from the tee for England this year while Red Roses captain Jones, 30, is nominated for a second year in a row – missing out to Canada’s Sophie de Goede in 2025.

The World Cup-winning pair played important roles in England claiming their eighth successive Women’s Six Nations title in May, part of a 41-match unbeaten run ended by back-to-back defeats by Canada this month.

The winner will be announced following this weekend’s final WXV Global Series matches, with England facing the United States on Friday (21:15 GMT).

Elsewhere, England’s Abi Burton has been shortlisted for Women’s 15s Try of the Year for her try against Australia in the WXV Global Series in September.

Multiple significant insider purchases in Cleveland-Cliffs, Dynex Capital, PepsiCo, and Applied Digital, often at substantial personal cost and sometimes after recent price declines, indicate executives perceive value or future upside potential in these companies.

MISSION VIEJO — Twenty years after the GOP last won a state-level election in California, few Republican voters believe this will be the year.

But they can hope.

“I’m praying, praying, praying that people will come out of the woodwork and show up and just vote for Steve,” said Annette Owens, a 65-year-old Orange County resident and longtime special education teacher.

Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host originally from the United Kingdom, faces Xavier Becerra, a longtime Democratic politician who is heavily favored to win the Nov. 3 election to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The 2026 elections are looking particularly grim for California Republicans, whose statewide influence over the past two decades has atrophied to super-minority levels. Redistricting from Proposition 50 removed some key GOP seats in Congress. And nationally, the party is struggling with high prices, fallout from the war in Iran and polls showing President Trump’s popularity at all-time lows.

While she is “doubtful” Hilton or any other Republicans running statewide will beat their Democratic opponents, Owens says “if anyone’s going to do it,” it’s Hilton.

The candidate had just spent nearly 40 minutes addressing several dozen Orange County moms in Mission Viejo, a hilly and affluent enclave speckled with golf courses and Spanish colonial architecture.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton visits patrons at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood, which hosted a watch party for the CNN debate between him and Xavier Becerra.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Sipping mimosas in a glass-walled event space overlooking the city’s verdant public course, women — and a couple of tagalong husbands — listened as Hilton and local Republicans argued for a change after 16 years of Democrats controlling California government.

“We can make this a place where people follow their dreams and build their lives, and that’s the ultimate test: That people are moving back to California after my first four years in government,” Hilton said.

Rachel Darvish drove from her home in Pacific Palisades to support the gubernatorial candidate. In the aftermath of the January 2025 fires, Darvish was captured on viral video angrily confronting Newsom as he toured the wreckage. She joined the Republican Party after the fires.

“I considered myself an independent up until the day I realized we had no choice,” Darvish, wearing a Hilton campaign T-shirt, said. “I think this is really the first election that the R or the D really does matter, and there is an obvious difference.”

Hilton and other Republicans acknowledge the math. Democrats outnumber GOP voters nearly 2-to-1 in California, and no-party-preference voters largely side with Democrats in statewide contests.

Hilton, who is endorsed by Trump, often declares to supporters that the race against Becerra, a President Biden-era U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former state attorney general, “is going to be really difficult to win, but not impossible.”

As he calculates his chances of victory, the former Fox News host considers three sets of facts. The “establishment polls,” as he calls them, conducted by widely trusted pollsters, including the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Public Policy Institute of California, have shown him more than 20 percentage points behind. His internal polls also have him losing, albeit by smaller margins.

Then there are the people who come to his events.

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks at a rally Thursday in Bakersfield.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“Every single day I get all these people saying, ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m voting for you because we got to have some balance, we got to have a change,’” he said in an interview on the golf course patio following his event. “A lot of them say, ‘But I’m not telling anyone.’”

Midterm elections are historically more difficult for the incumbent president’s party. While never popular in California, Trump’s approval rating recently fell to a record low of 27% in a Berkeley IGS poll.

Fierce headwinds for GOP in California

Political operatives expect anti-Trump sentiment to intensify the headwinds Republicans face in California. More than half of likely Democratic voters, and 37% overall, said a top motivator in this election is pushing back against the administration‘s policies.

“I’m not really anticipating Republicans winning for anything statewide,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative writer and former executive director of the California GOP. “If somebody’s anticipating that, then they don’t know how to do math.”

He doesn’t expect Republican turnout to drop, but “Democrat turnout could be enhanced over what it normally is. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Some Republicans are frustrated by the Democratic-only choices in the high-profile race for Los Angeles mayor, as well as the down-ballot contest for state insurance commissioner.

Darvish, who supported conservative Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor in the primary, described the runoff between incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman as a choice between “Satan and Lucifer.”

“I’m going to have to vote for Karen Bass,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to say that,” but she does not want Raman or any candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win.

Some Republicans say they won’t vote for insurance commissioner, the only statewide race between two Democrats: Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor, and state Sen. Ben Allen.

Fleischman described the DSA-endorsed Kim as “nuts” and Allen, who represents Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Beverly Hills and other cities, as “an extreme liberal” who “has enthusiastically supported virtually every Gavin Newsom policy I dislike.”

While Trump and Republicans will likely suffer midterm losses, many Democrats are “massively unpopular as well,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. “All politicians are underwater right now. Voters are in a pretty bad mood.”

Hilton concedes it would be easier to run a midterm race with a sitting Democratic president, but believes the Trump endorsement is not as toxic to his campaign as it might seem.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton enjoys a light moment with a woman who was happy to get gas for $3 a gallon at a gas station in Los Angeles on Oct. 8.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It doesn’t come up in really any of the meetings,” he said. “People really are asking about gas prices.”

Republican candidates and party officials are making the case that California’s longstanding homelessness and cost-of-living woes have little to do with the president.

“I can’t think of anything less relevant” than Trump, said Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles Republican Party. “We are drowning in high taxes and high costs. Anyone trying to make this election about who the president is — and who will only be president for two more years — has a screw loose and also doesn’t have much of anything to offer.”

Hilton doesn’t engage in voter fraud allegations

Federal authorities this week charged 28 people in California with illegally registering and casting ballots as part of a broader fight to exert more control over elections, which are run by states.

Having just won an election primary in June, Hilton walks a line when discussing claims of electoral fraud. He takes issue with rules like ballot harvesting and a seven-day, post-election deadline for mail ballots to arrive, but he does not believe there is systemic fraud or cheating.

“We mustn’t let ourselves believe that every time we lose an election, it’s because they cheated,” he said when a supporter made the accusation during a Modesto town hall in August. “We lose the elections [because] we don’t win enough votes, right?”

Viewers attend a watch party at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood during the debate between gubernatorial candidates Democrat Xavier Becerra, left, and Republican Steve Hilton earlier this month.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

That’s why he is trying to reach independent voters and Democrats who “can’t stand President Trump” but “are desperate for something to change in California,” he explained as applause rippled through the heavily Republican crowd.

Hilton is counting on voters like Summer Behan, a former Democrat, to not only vote for him but persuade other disenchanted voters.

“My car got broken into 14 times in a year and a half,” Behan told Hilton during the Modesto event. “Our homeowners insurance went from $180 to $860, so we had to sell our house.”

She drives more than two hours to her nonprofit job in San Francisco.

“It’s sort of an exhausting way to live,” Behan said after the town hall. Families from her children’s schools have moved to other states, but she wants to stay. “California is beautiful, and it’s just got so much to offer people, so I want to try and stick it out and see what it looks like with different leadership.”

Several Palestinians have been injured by Israeli settlers, and farmers have been arrested by Israeli forces during Israeli pogroms across the occupied West Bank.

Four women and a child were among six people injured on Saturday when Israeli settlers attacked residents in Ma’in village in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

In the town of Deir Ammar, west of Ramallah, Israeli forces opened fire on farmers picking olives, forcing them to leave their land, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

In the same area, Israeli settlers shot and injured two Palestinians. In the village of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, Israeli forces fired on a Palestinian civilian vehicle.

‘Part of campaign’

In the village of Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah, settlers raided a farm at dawn and killed about 20 sheep, Mayor Najeh Rustum told Al Jazeera.

He added that Israeli forces had raided the village the previous night as well, firing tear gas canisters that ignited a fire in a house and caused material damage.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said settlers destroyed olive trees across the Beit Furik plain, east of Nablus, in the northern West Bank while Israeli forces arrested landowners and olive pickers.

In the village of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, she said, settlers under army protection fired live ammunition at farmers in the al-Hariq area to prevent them from completing the harvest and forced them off their land. Settlers also smashed the vehicle of international activist Jonathan Budlak in the village and threw stones at a farmer’s vehicle.

In the village of Burqa near Ramallah, Israeli forces and settlers prevented farmers from picking olives, Odeh said, adding that settlers attacked farmers in the Wadi al-Sha’er area, southeast of Salfit.

“What we see, whether it’s in Beit Furik, Kafr Malek, Deir Jarir or elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, is part of a campaign,” Odeh said.

She said settlers have become increasingly emboldened, publicly advertising attack campaigns on social media platforms.

“There have been 300 documented attacks since the beginning of October, and that has had a devastating impact on a very important season for Palestinian farmers,” she said, adding that danger comes from soldiers and settlers alike as military forces routinely intervene to protect settlers and attack Palestinians defending their land.

Prominent rabbi justifies attacks

The attacks follow a religious edict issued by Rabbi Dov Lior, a prominent rabbi for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and a leading authority among the Hilltop Youth, which is a religious Zionist group devoted to seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank.

In the edict, Lior stated that harvesting olives in the Holy Land is entirely permitted and carries an added virtue, given security dangers.

He wrote that Jews are permitted to harvest olives even in areas far from Jewish communities to publicly display ownership of the land and fulfil God’s commandment of conquering it. He claimed the land belongs to the Jewish people and Palestinians did not buy or rent it.

Odeh said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplays pogroms and no concrete action is taken to stop them.

“It is a matter of debate among politicians, but no one is stopping these settlers, whose names, locations and homes are known,” she said, adding that politicians permit the violence to continue because “it is politically expedient” and secures votes before elections on October 27.