attack

Jordan’s prime minister represents king at funeral for eight of the church attack victims as hunt for gunmen continues.

Thousands of mourners have gathered for the funerals of eight of the victims of a deadly attack on a church in southern Jordan, with Prime Minister Jafar Hassan also in attendance.

The burials on Sunday were beside St George’s Greek Orthodox Church in the village of Hamoud, southwest of the capital, Amman, two days after attackers opened fire during another funeral there.

Nine people were killed and dozens wounded in a rare attack on Jordan’s Christian minority, prompting three days of national mourning.

The ninth victim, Mohammed al-Qasous, is due to be buried on Monday, his family told the AFP news agency.

Coffins wrapped in Jordanian flags were carried through crowds gathered around the church in Karak province, as priests led prayers and security personnel stood guard.

Prime Minister Hassan attended the service alongside government ministers and senior military and civilian officials, according to Jordan’s state news agency, Petra.

Thousands of citizens also participated in the funeral procession, Petra said.

Among those caught in Friday’s shooting was Sahar al-Halsa, who told the Reuters news agency from her nearby home that she sheltered behind a pillar as gunfire erupted and people screamed.

When she rushed outside, she found her cousin Assem lying wounded.

“Assem, Assem, my darling, answer me,” she recalled calling to him. He briefly opened his eyes before dying, she said.

Father Yohanna Hamati told AFP that about 170 to 200 people were at the church for Friday’s funeral when firing began outside.

The mourners initially struggled to understand what was happening, he said, before people began rushing into the church to escape.

By Saturday, bullet holes remained in the walls and wooden pews, and windows had been shattered.

Church workers were cleaning away blood as villagers prepared to bury the dead. Jordanian authorities have described the attack as “extremist terrorism”.

King Abdullah, who visited some of the wounded in hospital on Friday, has promised a forceful response and the assailants are still being sought.

Officials say they have not established whether the attackers were connected to an armed group and no organisation has claimed responsibility.

The violence has also drawn expressions of solidarity across religious lines. Christians account for about 3 percent of Jordan’s largely Muslim population and AFP reported that Muslims were among those wounded.

Young volunteers visited a hospital in Karak with flowers and a message reading, “Our loss is one”.

The mourning reached Washington, DC, on Sunday, where members of the Jordanian community lit candles outside their country’s embassy.

Jordan’s ambassador to the US, Dina Kawar, told those gathered that efforts to stir religious division were “bound to fail”. Back in Hamoud, Father Hamati appealed for unity, stressing that Muslims had also suffered in the attack.

“We make no distinction between Muslim and Christian,” he told AFP.

Trump says the US is considering a possible attack on Iran as soon as Sunday, or it could reach a major deal with Tehran.

Global crude prices continue to climb, with Brent benchmark hitting $117.30 a barrel to build on four-year highs as market fears grow over a potential resumption of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Foes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate, are launching television and digital ads this weekend in early primary states that criticize the governor’s opposition to the proposed billionaire tax on California’s November ballot.

The ad, funded by backers of the wealth tax, castigates Newsom for opposing Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a 5% tax on California billionaires’ assets to offset federal healthcare funding cuts approved by congressional Republicans and signed by President Trump last year.

“We’re all struggling with the high cost of healthcare. In California, Democrats are championing a one-time tax on billionaires that would save coverage for millions,” a narrator says in the 30-second ad. “So why [has] presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom betrayed his own supporters by trying to sabotage the billionaire tax? Maybe it’s because the same billionaires who oppose Prop. 40 also gave millions of dollars to Newsom. Gavin Newsom turned his back on working Californians. Will he do the same to you?”

The ad specifically calls out billionaires Stewart Resnick, who owns several businesses including Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water and Justin Wines; crypto executive Chris Larsen; former Google leader Eric Schmidt; and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, all of whom have backed Newsom’s political ambitions.

Newsom has argued that, although he supports wealth taxes, they ought to be enacted at the national level, rather than a state-by-state patchwork that could drive the rich to leave California, a state with a volatile budget heavily dependent on the state’s wealthiest residents.

The primary funders of the ad are the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West, which crafted Proposition 40; Saikat Chakrabarti, a climate change warrior and political advisor who made his wealth in part as a founding engineer at Stripe; and Ross Boucher, an early engineer at Stripe.

The ad buy is six figures but could grow, according to its backers. Among the states where the ad is expected to air are South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Earlier this month, Newsom stumped for candidates in New Hampshire, his latest foray to early presidential primary states.

The ad launch comes amid a contentious, expensive battle over the proposed wealth tax, which has divided Democrats and their allies. Although Newsom is among Democrats who oppose it, the ballot measure was endorsed by the state Democratic Party and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Voters are closely divided about the measure.

All injured individuals were immediately transported to hospitals, civil aviation says updates to come.

One person has been killed and eight injured in an attack on Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd International Airport in the eastern city of Dammam, the country’s civil aviation authority announced.

All of the wounded, whose injuries range from minor to critical, were transported to hospitals to receive medical attention, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) said in a statement on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, two people were killed after Saudi air defences intercepted a drone that was attempting to hit a facility at Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oilfield, the Ministry of Energy said.

It was the latest in a series of assaults on Saudi airports as conflict intensifies between Houthi forces and the Saudi-backed internationally recognised Yemeni government.

Last week, the kingdom reported that a projectile strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on October 11 killed one person and injured 11. On October 10, the civil aviation authority reported that a separate attack on the same airport claimed the lives of 12 people and injured more than 300.

On Wednesday, the US State Department ordered diplomats and family members to depart from its missions in Saudi Arabia amid the ongoing Houthi attacks. There are also plans to withdraw family members from a number of other US missions in the region, US officials told Reuters.

The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert on Wednesday about possible further attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Smoke seen rising near airport in Aden as Houthis say they attacked a military camp with a ballistic missile.

A powerful explosion has been heard in the city of Aden in southern Yemen, an Al Jazeera journalist and police official said.

A police official said on Wednesday that smoke was rising near the airport in Aden, which is controlled by the internationally recognised Yemeni government.

Reporting from Yemen’s Taiz, Al Jazeera’s Maha Ali said “the Houthi group targeted Aden airport with a ballistic missile”.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the group targeted the Saudi-led coalition’s “military operation room at the Badr Camp in Aden with a ballistic missile”.

He said that “the strike was precise and direct”.

More to come…

This autumn, the Supreme Court will consider a question with potentially far-reaching consequences for civil rights in the United States: Who gets to enforce them? On November 30, the justices will hear a case over whether employees of federally funded universities can sue under Title IX over alleged workplace sex discrimination. The Trump administration has urged the court to rule that they cannot, arguing that Congress never gave university employees a private right to bring such claims.

The dispute is the latest front in a broader legal push to restrict the ability of individuals and advocacy groups to take rights violations to court themselves. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a federal appeals court ruling that barred Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy organisation, from suing to enforce protections for voters who need assistance at the polls. Across a growing number of cases, Republican-led states and the Trump administration are advancing the same basic principle: Unless Congress has clearly authorised private citizens to sue, enforcement should largely be left to the government.

That may sound like an arcane legal argument, but its implications are anything but. If individuals and civil rights groups cannot go to court when laws protecting them are violated, the power to decide which rights are actually enforced increasingly rests with the very government that may be violating, ignoring or choosing not to enforce them.

A private right of action allows individuals, or groups acting on their behalf, to file lawsuits to enforce rights protected by law. These lawsuits can seek compliance with the law or compensation for past violations. Private rights of action are not automatic under US federal and state law. Congress and state legislatures sometimes explicitly authorise private lawsuits. Where they have not, courts have had to determine whether a law implicitly allows individuals or groups to sue, or whether enforcement rests solely with government authorities.

In practice, private litigation has been an essential part of enforcing rights throughout much of US history. As University of Virginia School of Law Professor George Rutherglen writes in a 2015 law review article (PDF):

“The long history of civil rights, dating back to Reconstruction, makes them quintessentially private rights, whose exercise and enforcement should depend primarily on the initiative of the individuals who bear those rights. Public enforcement no doubt remains necessary, and it has an equally long and distinguished pedigree in civil rights law, but it cannot entirely displace individual control over individual rights.”

Proponents of private rights of action, such as AARP, consider them an effective tool for vulnerable individuals and groups to protect their rights when government agencies are unwilling or unable to act. Critics, such as the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, however, argue that private lawsuits can encourage frivolous litigation.

These critics, often from the political right, have attempted to restrict private litigation through legal arguments against private causes of action. An example is the 2001 Alexander v Sandoval decision, in which a Supreme Court majority led by Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that Title VI did not provide a private right of action to enforce regulations prohibiting policies or practices with a disparate impact on protected groups – discrimination that can occur without clear evidence of intent.

The legal push against private rights of action has intensified in recent years. Republican-led states have increasingly challenged the doctrine of implied private rights of action, arguing that courts should reject private suits to enforce various types of rights. The Trump administration has also adopted this stance. When the court decided a 2021 voting rights case, Justice Neil Gorsuch submitted a one-paragraph concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, questioning whether “the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action,” despite that issue not being raised in the case itself.

The conservative push to restrict private rights of action has extended to a variety of areas. In June, the Supreme Court ruled against Falun Gong practitioners who accused Cisco Systems of helping the Chinese government develop surveillance technology used to facilitate their persecution, concluding that they could not pursue those aiding-and-abetting claims under the federal laws they had invoked.

One of the most consequential implications of restricting private rights of action is the threat to voting rights. In the Arkansas United case, the Eighth Circuit ruled that the immigrant advocacy organisation did not have the right to sue on behalf of non-native English speakers over the right to have language assistance in the voting booth. The ruling concerned Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But it extended a much broader argument already adopted by the Eighth Circuit: that private individuals and advocacy organisations cannot sue to enforce key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s refusal in June to hear Arkansas United left that ruling in place.

This argument has also been pushed by Republican-led governments in two redistricting and vote-dilution cases: Board of Election Commissioners v NAACP in Mississippi and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v Howe in North Dakota. In May, the Supreme Court vacated judgments in both cases and sent them back for reconsideration in light of its ruling in Louisiana v Callais, without resolving the private-enforcement question. That decision sharply raised the bar for some racial vote-dilution claims, endangering the voting power of Black, Hispanic and Native American communities across the US. At the same time, conservative-controlled governments are attempting to deny members and advocates for these communities the right to even bring some of these cases before the courts, arguing that only the Department of Justice can initiate action over such voting rights violations.

The broader danger is that, as private rights of action are curtailed, enforcement of federal law increasingly depends on decisions made by the executive branch.

The Trump administration is now pursuing a different means of restricting private enforcement. The Clean Air Act explicitly gives private citizens the right to bring certain lawsuits, yet the Justice Department has sought to intervene and dismiss a case brought against xAI over allegations that gas turbines at its power facility in Southaven, Mississippi, are violating federal environmental law and polluting surrounding communities. The facility powers xAI’s Colossus 2 data centre in nearby Memphis. In September, the Justice Department appealed to the Fifth Circuit and sought to halt the case. The department has argued that allowing the suit to proceed would threaten national security and the US pursuit of global leadership in AI. Here, the issue is not whether Congress created a private right to sue – it did – but whether the executive branch can nevertheless step in to stop such a case when it conflicts with its priorities.

Relying solely on the Justice Department to pursue such cases at the federal level is a particularly dubious proposition under the current administration. The department has also been weaponised to target political foes of President Trump. Its Civil Rights Division has been steered away from defending the rights of racial and ethnic minorities and refocused on cases brought by white plaintiffs alleging so-called “reverse discrimination”.

The Justice Department’s current politicisation may be reversed under a future administration. But even then, the erosion of private rights of action would leave the enforcement of civil and political rights increasingly dependent on a federal agency with limited resources and subject to political direction. For example, as Democracy Docket noted in 2024, of the 216 active voting rights and redistricting cases it was tracking at the time, only five were cases brought by the Justice Department. As Professor Rutherglen noted in his article, to rely primarily on government actors to enforce rights “is to transform the nature of those rights: from private to public, from individuals to groups, from legal control by plaintiffs to political control by administrators.”

Private rights of action are now being eroded, case by case. Politicians, civil liberties advocates and organisations must challenge this trend before more avenues for enforcement are closed off. Otherwise, protections won over decades may become increasingly dependent on the willingness of government authorities to uphold them, leaving those whose rights are violated with fewer ways to seek redress.

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

“LAUGHING” Russell Brand sexually assaulted a radio worker in a “violent, sloppy and frenzied” attack as his entourage stood by and watched, a court heard.

The comedian, 51, is accused of forcing six women into sexual acts and kissing and groping them in an “obsessive” campaign to sleep with 5,000 women.

On the fifth day of his trial, jurors heard from a woman who was in her 20s working at a radio station in the mid-2000s when Brand allegedly sexually assaulted her.

She told Southwark Crown Court Brand was a “perfect stranger” to her at the time and said his alleged assault was “violent”, “sloppy” and “frenzied”.

Describing the alleged attack, she added: “It was hard, I would say it was sloppy, he kissed my mouth, he just was kissing me and it was hard, it was very hard.

“He was kissing me all down my neck, his hands at the same time were all over me.”

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Asked about where his hands were, she said: “He touched my bum, he touched my breast, he had his hand on my waist and his other hand was just pinning me against the wall, and his body was just pressed up against me.”

The woman added: “It was rough, it was very, very rough. It was hard, I would say that his whole body was pressed against me, the kisses were hard and sloppy, going down my neck

“The reason I used the word frenzied is because it was just, it was violent.”

She said four members of Brand’s entourage including a woman were in the room at the time but “did nothing”.

The woman wept as she told jurors: “I wonder why those people didn’t do anything to stop him.”

She also told the court she had locked eyes” with the other woman and was “pleading with her” to stop what was allegedly happening.

The woman said she was “stunned” and “in a haze” but managed to push Brand away and told him to “f*** off”.

She added: “I remember he made like a sound, that was like funny – ha ha – like that.”

Jurors heard Brand allegedly preyed on the complainants between 1999 and 2009 in a bid to satisfy his “voracious” sexual appetite.

One of the women was allegedly raped in a hotel room in Bournemouth in 1999 after a Labour conference.

The woman said Brand had suddenly “changed” from being “camp, friendly, and effeminate” to “monster-like”.

Jurors were also shown pictures that Brand allegedly made one of the women take moments before he raped her.

The images – released by police – show the comedian topless in a pair of white trousers blowing a kiss to the camera.

She told police she remembers feeling “frightened” after Brand forced her to take the pictures of him on her camera.

She added: “I took pictures of him on my camera – he made me take them.

“I was frightened. I remember feeling ‘what on earth have I got myself into’ – and then he did rape me.

“He pushed me onto the bed. He did take my trousers off.”

She previously claimed he emerged topless from the toilet and “was prancing around the room, a bit like an ostrich, doing silly walks like Basil Fawlty”.

The woman later added: “I found his body quite snake-like and disgusting. It made me feel sick, if I’m being honest.”

Another alleged victim who claimed she was targeted by Brand while working at MTV in 2001 also gave evidence.

At the time he was the flagship presenter at the video music channel, jurors heard.

The woman said Brand was “pleading” for her to join him in the toilet before he “grabbed me by the arm and started to pull me in, saying ‘come on, come in with me’.”

She described Brand as a “wild-eyed maniac” during the alleged assault and said she was left “bewildered” and “confused”.

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC dubbed the comedian a “sexual predator” who was “ruthless, calculated and manipulative”.

She also said women have told police he was “childlike in his expectation that his every desire should be met”.

The court heard the alleged offences took place when Brand’s “public profile was taking off”.

He allegedly prayed on women in a number of locations – including workplaces, a toilet cubicle in a bar and at his home address.

The fifth alleged victim met Brand after seeing his show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London with a friend in 2009.

He allegedly told her his age range was from “16 to death” before she was invited to a backstage bar where they kissed and had a threesome.

The woman claims she went to his home the next day where Brand told her: “Your hair smells funny”.

He then made her take a shower and wash her hair while he watched through a glass shower cubicle, it was said.

Ms Karmy-Jones said once in the bedroom, they had consensual sex but afterwards Brand “flipped” the woman on to her front and on all fours and allegedly penetrated her anally.

Afterwards, jurors heard the comedian told her to “clean up the mess you have made”.

The sixth woman worked for Channel 4 when she met Brand while he was filming a project.

She said she was informed Brand was “unhappy” and the situation would not improve unless she gave him a massage, jurors were told.

The woman claimed he walked up to a chair she was sitting on and placed his head directly into her groin area.

Brand has denied three counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault against six women.

The trial continues.

In what may be one of the most comical self-owns in recent politics, the esteemed attorneys of the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that despite the extravagant and terrifying misuse of their investigative power under the Trump administration, they have so far been able to identify only 28 people in all of California who may have voted illegally.

“The announcement today by the United States DOJ makes the point that there is no widespread voter fraud,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said after the news conference announcing the results of “Operation Protect the Vote.”

Twenty-eight people out of about 23 million registered voters in the state — and not all of them even tried to vote, according to the feds. That’s about 1 in 820,000 folks allegedly registering or voting illegally, a rate that roughly matches how often people in the United States get struck by lightning in a given year.

So much for Trump’s endless claims that there is a vast, organized conspiracy between Democrats and undocumented people to have them vote in large numbers to steal elections. I’ll point out here that none of those charged Monday have been accused of colluding with one another or with Democratic overlords.

All the power of the government — investigative, technological, legal — has been thrown at finding these mysterious, diabolically clever ballot baddies. And now, thanks to Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and his colleagues across this great state, we now know that all 28 of them will be held accountable, if the government can prove wrongdoing. And let’s be clear — people who vote illegally should be held accountable.

But wait, there’s more, because this election-stealing plot by immigrants certainly doesn’t stop at the state line. Seamus Hughes of Court Watch, an excellent site that tracks federal litigation, reported Monday that since the start of this administration, 169 people have been charged federally with illegally registering or voting.

That number includes the new California cases, so it means an additional 141 potentially illegal voters have been charged across the U.S. — all told about 1 in 1.25 million registered voters being accused of illegally registering or voting, making this crime slightly less likely than guessing a six-digit pin code on the first try.

There. Is. No. Election. Stealing.

But that’s where the funny part ends, because this attack on California elections is serious and just getting started.

The federal government, you’ve probably read, is suing California, claiming it gave the state a janky thumb drive with 20,000 names of registered voters that it sort of strongly suspects maybe aren’t legal voters. Important note here: The government has been very careful not to claim that these people voted illegally, just that it might be so based on questionable data, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The feds gave the state a silly 48-hour deadline to agree to change constitutional law, dump common sense and sequester these 20,000 ballots, if they were even returned, to double-check they were cast by valid voters.

When California rightfully refused — because elections are run by states, not the federal government — the federal government sued on the thinnest of legal grounds. It basically claimed that voting illegally is illegal, and if California doesn’t do exactly what Trump wants, it could be violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by impeding the feds from enforcing the crime of voter fraud.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli speaks at a news conference Monday at which officials announced that 28 people in California had been charged with voter fraud.

(David Butow / For The Times)

Which is basically arguing that if the state government fails to stop voter fraud using the flawed methods Trump likes, then the state is somehow stopping federal authorities from prosecuting voter fraud themselves. But didn’t they just enforce it with 28 cases?

Get ready, because “state-facilitated voter fraud,” is a new right-wing thing.

California is “being complicit in non-citizens voting in our elections, and as they were warned last week, not only is it a civil violation, but they could also face criminal consequences,” Essayli said, which if it happened would give Trumped-up charges a whole new meaning.

Essayli said state officials are not being “good faith actors,” but I’ll argue that shoe is on the other foot. The list of 20,000 alleged, suspected, maybe-maybe-not illegal voters was likely drawn from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, created by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, if you can remember that unfortunate relic.

It sought to draw data from more than a dozen government databases that were not only not compatible with such information sharing, but which had been kept separate until now for privacy reasons. Americans in general did not want the government collecting unified, know-all records of every citizen.

Luckily for us, I guess, the SAVE system can’t actually create reliable, unified records. It confuses people, convolutes them, merges records of people with similar names, and in general has been deemed unreliable by data experts.

In September, the good folks at the UCLA Voting Rights Project joined with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights to sue the federal government over its use of that system to target naturalized citizens for removal from voter rolls. Turns out, the government appears to be targeting immigrants who are now citizens with these voter fraud accusations.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, naturalized citizens make up about 1 in 10 eligible voters, and nearly a quarter of them live in California. But they also live in swing states such as Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed may draw such voters, and in other places such as Georgia and Nevada where races might be decided by only a few votes.

These arrests and lawsuits while voting is already underway in the midterms are a not-subtle form of voter suppression. Imagine being a naturalized citizen in the Central Valley, where ICE is driving rampant fear and where Republican Rep. David Valadao is running against Democrat Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd Congressional District — one of the nation’s most closely contested races.

Would you consider sitting this election out just in case your ballot draws the frightening eye of the federal government? Even knowing that your vote is legal, what if you lived in a mixed-status household? Would it be worth risking voting if it meant a knock at the door from immigration checking on your status, and maybe finding that family member who lacks it?

Why take the risk?

“Basically, what they’re doing now is just completely harassing and intimidating naturalized citizens who are legally eligible to vote through these actions,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the Voting Rights Project.

And if the vote isn’t suppressed enough to give Trump the results he wants, these prosecutions and lawsuits feed the beast of conspiracy, giving Trump fodder to claim the results are fake, the election stolen.

And round and round we go, reckoning with Trump’s claims that lightning is striking everyone, everywhere, all at once, because the vote didn’t go his way.

United States President Donald Trump has announced his official endorsement of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election campaign after previously refusing to endorse anyone.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that Netanyahu had been a “great warrior prime minister and an even greater partner for peace”, adding that Iran had been “systematically destroyed both militarily and financially, and unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job.”

“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Trump wrote.

“Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself. Despite all of that, he has endured and, in fact, he has thrived!”.

The president added that normal men and women would have “wilted” under the pressure that Netanyahu was under, but the Israeli prime minister “got stronger”.

“This is the kind of Partner that the United States of America is demanding of Israel, a Country for which it has done so much. Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel. BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”, he added.

The Israeli election will be on October 27 . According to Israeli news outlet Haaretz’s tracker, as of Sunday, the opposition alliance led by the Yashar party of Gadi Eisenkot is expected to win the most seats, at 52, with Netanyahu’s Likud party-led coalition taking 51 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

So far, no party is projected to secure an outright majority.

But Trump’s endorsement comes after he had previously shied away from fully backing Netanyahu’s election campaign.

Earlier this month, when asked twice by TIME magazine if Netanyahu should be given another term, Trump pivoted to his own popularity in Israel and Washington’s actions supporting Israel.

When asked on Thursday by the right-wing US news outlet, Newsmax, if he was planning to get involved in the Israeli elections,  Trump said: “They’d like me to be. Yeah, they’d like me to be”.

When asked whether he trusted Netanyahu, Trump replied, “I don’t trust anybody, honestly”.

Still, Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East North Africa programme at the British think tank Chatham House, explained that Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu was “politically significant” because it comes after months of tension between the two leaders.

“It allows Netanyahu to reinforce his claim that he is indispensable to Israel’s relationship with Washington,” Vakil told Al Jazeera.

“However, its electoral impact should not be overstated. Israeli voters remain divided over Netanyahu’s leadership and the outcome of the Iran war. The endorsement may help consolidate his existing support, but it does not resolve the wider questions surrounding his record,” she added.

Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at the school of security studies at King’s College London, said that Trump’s endorsement was a “political gift” to Netanyahu, whose electoral campaign is struggling.

But like Vakil, he cautioned against treating Trump’s endorsement as a game-changer.

“Netanyahu’s problems are structural, involving fragmented right-wing parties, disillusioned ultra-Orthodox voters and the legacy of October 7. Trump may mobilise reluctant Likud voters, potentially worth a seat or two in a close contest, but he cannot manufacture the coalition majority Netanyahu currently lacks,” Krieg told Al Jazeera.

What the endorsement means for the Iran war

Much of Trump’s endorsement has been heavily focused on the Iran war, at a time when many analysts suggest the US president might be looking to restart attacks, either before or after the midterm elections in early November.

The conflict, which began in February after the US and Israel launched attacks across Iran, is currently at a standstill.

The Strait of Hormuz, which once transported 20 percent of global crude, was effectively shut by Iran after the war started. A US naval blockade of Iranian vessels followed, as each country struck ships passing through the waterway that they accused of not complying with its orders. Oil traffic last month through the strait picked up to pre-war levels as the US Navy shepherded an increasing number of tankers. But a spate of Iranian attacks on vessels early this month has again hit crude exports through Hormuz.

On Monday morning, Brent crude futures stood at $107.57 a barrel, down slightly after reaching their highest since May 19 on Friday, when they briefly touched $110 a barrel.

Last month, Iran presented a proposal to Washington to reopen the waterway within seven days, but negotiations failed after the US did not address Tehran’s seven conditions, which included the lifting of sanctions and the ending of its naval blockade.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian media outlets on Sunday that the proposal remained on the table and, if Washington accepts Tehran’s conditions, the strait could reopen within six days, with talks resuming the following day.

At the same time, Araghchi, in a post on X on Sunday night, accused Netanyahu of wanting to restart attacks on Iran with the US to “stay out of jail”.

“Last time you wanted to ‘finish the job’, Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too,” he wrote.

“Netanyahu is driving America into another war to stay out of jail, whatever the consequences for Israel – let alone POTUS,” he added.

Krieg said Trump was prioritising the use of “coercive leverage” through his endorsement of Netanyahu but not necessarily “war over diplomacy”. 

“The naval blockade is hurting Iran considerably and Washington believes time is working in its favour. Trump’s calculation is that Iran will eventually accept nuclear concessions and reopen Hormuz, without Washington having to offer significant concessions first,” he argued.

“His endorsement reinforces the military threat underpinning that strategy. But it does not mean diplomacy is finished. Trump still wants a deal he can present as a victory. The danger is that Tehran increasingly believes it must escalate to improve its bargaining position.”

What is next?

Vakil explained that, while Trump’s declaration of support for Netanyahu had signalled renewed political alignment with Israel and left the door open for future joint military action, it also makes it “harder for Trump to distance himself from the war or portray the US as having been reluctantly drawn into it”.

“He is explicitly taking ownership of the partnership and its military campaign against Iran. However, the endorsement does not necessarily mean that the two leaders have agreed on another operation, nor does it settle the question of who initially pushed hardest for war,” she said.

Vakil added that for Tehran, the statement will reinforce the belief of Iranian leaders that there is “little meaningful distinction between US and Israeli objectives.”

“At the same time, Trump’s suggestion that he is reluctant to confront Iran without Netanyahu could be interpreted as evidence of the limits of Washington’s appetite for another war.”

Meanwhile, while Trump has said that he would not attack Iran before the November midterms, several US media outlets have reported that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to relaunch attacks before voters head to the polls.

Last week, US news outlet Axios reported, citing both US and Israeli officials, that both Trump and Netanyahu had spoken about launching a major new operation against Iran ahead of the elections in both countries.

For Krieg, the likelihood that the US and Israel launch an attack on Iran remains low, assuming there is no Iranian strike that forces a response.

“The more dangerous window opens after November 3 [US midterms], when those electoral constraints disappear. Both militaries are preparing for that possibility. The greatest immediate risk is an uncontrolled escalation in Hormuz that forces Washington’s hand before either leader is politically ready,” he said.

The Trump administration has asked Israel to stop settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This comes amid outrage over a savage settler attack on Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine on Friday.

Fires reported on three tankers in Strait of Hormuz and Sea of Oman, as masked settlers attack European politicians in occupied West Bank.

Just visiting a page or refreshing an app can be enough to fall victim to a malware attack in which your personal data is stolen from a laptop or phone, researchers have found. You are not even required to “click” on anything.

An Israeli spyware firm has been found to be behind the first-known instance of “zero-click” targeted advertising in which fraudsters or spies can steal private data and send it to external servers, with Al Jazeera journalists among the victims.

In June 2025, 45 devices used by Al Jazeera staff – including several who reported on sensitive subjects – were targeted with spyware which installed itself without the need to open or download any files.

An investigation by the Canada-based academic research unit Citizen Lab, prompted by Al Jazeera’s initial internal probe into the issue, discovered that the Israeli company Candiru was behind the attacks.

Analysts say the findings are “incredibly concerning”, as they confirm the existence of a new global security threat. “We knew we were headed in this direction and now it is out in the public,” Remesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, US, told Al Jazeera.

“This is the next level, because people are being microtargeted,” he said. “This is the point we’ve come to when it comes to surveillance.”

How ‘zero-click’ malware works

Al Jazeera’s in-house technology team first discovered unusual patterns on devices used by some journalists in 2024. Analysis of network logs provided to the Citizen Lab by Al Jazeera in 2025 provided a clear temporal signature of how the attack was executed.

Malicious advertisements were bought by Discover-Tech, an Israeli company presenting itself as a legitimate advertising firm, but which actually operates as a facilitator for mercenary spyware partners.

Its advertisement network identified Al Jazeera staff, then quietly redirected them to an infected server belonging to Candiru. The spyware firm was blacklisted by the US government in 2021, when Citizen Lab found it was responsible for the illegal hacking and surveillance of at least 100 activists, journalists and political activists across 10 countries.

Al Jazeera Media Network has condemned the targeting of its staff members’ devices and called for those responsible to be held accountable.

Cybersecurity analyst and author Eddy Willems said the advertisements used automatically infect devices the moment they pop up on the screen, but there is an important technical nuance. “Executing code inside the browser does not automatically give an attacker full control over the computer,” Willems told Al Jazeera.

“To escape the browser’s isolated environment – the ‘sandbox’ – the attacker may need a second vulnerability,” Willems said, adding that an advanced spyware operation can combine several vulnerabilities.

“The attacker attempts to exploit vulnerabilities to bypass security boundaries. This is precisely what makes this type of attack so dangerous,” the analyst said.

Once the device is infected, the malicious software is designed to collect a wide range of sensitive data, including files, documents, and browser data such as cookies, bookmarks, and saved credentials.

It can also capture keystrokes, take screenshots, record microphone and webcam input, and extract emails and messages from popular communication platforms. To avoid triggering security mechanisms, the spyware often uses encrypted communication channels and breaks up stolen data into smaller chunks sent over time.

Advertising: A new global security threat?

Analysts say Citizen Lab’s findings point to the escalation of an existing threat, which expands the scale and reach of traditional cyberattacks and makes them much harder to detect.

While “zero-click” attacks are not completely new, the findings outline a new technique through which online advertisements are used as a route to infection.

Stephen O’Shaughnessy, a lecturer in cybersecurity at the TU Dublin Blanchardstown campus in Ireland, explained that when a user opens a website or app, an automated auction sells the advertisement space in a fraction of a second. That auction shares data about the victim, including the device ID, IP address, rough location and the app or site they are on.

“Discover-Tech posed as an ordinary advertiser, used that data to find their target and win the auction for that person’s screen,” O’Shaughnessy told Al Jazeera. “Anyone with a phone or browser that shows ads can be reached, without the attacker needing their phone number or email.”

“Because no message or link is involved, there is almost nothing for the victim to notice,” he added.

Discover-Tech appeared on lists of “certified” and “approved” vendors maintained by Google and advertising industry association IAB Europe, and has served advertisements via major networks such as Google, Yandex and Beeswax.

In its report, Citizen Lab said this illustrates the structural flaws in the online advertising system, which essentially failed to detect or prevent the abuse.

Discover-Tech advertisements have popped up on devices used by personnel in national-security-sensitive networks around the world, including those of various ministries of defence, armed forces, national cyber agencies, intergovernmental organisations and media outlets, Citizen Lab found.

The research unit said these advertisements have also appeared on networks used by the United Nations, NATO, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union’s General Secretariat.

‘Almost nobody was watching’

Government networks have also been targeted in at least 24 countries, including the United States, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Russia, Mexico and Israel itself. Networks of media organisations have also been targeted, mainly in Australia, Denmark and Sweden, according to Citizen Lab.

In a separate report, New York-based advertising security firm Confiant said its own investigations had found that some of Discover-Tech’s advertisements also appeared in critical networks used by the Pentagon, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Criminal Court.

O’Shaughnessy said infection has not been confirmed there – only profiling of users. “But that alone is concerning, he said. “The ad system was built to send code from strangers to billions of screens with pinpoint targeting. Almost nobody was watching it from a security angle.”

The analyst said the risk remains low for most people as these attacks are expensive and aimed at specific targets. “For individuals at high risk, like journalists and officials, the best first defence is to install an ad blocker, switch off their advertising ID through their phone’s privacy settings, keep everything updated, and turn on Lockdown Mode or Android’s Advanced Protection,” he said.

Precautions also need to be taken within the industry and at government level. “To combat this, the ad industry needs to properly vet who’s buying ads,” O’Shaughnessy said, while “regulators need to stop personal data being sprayed out to thousands of unknown bidders in every auction.”