Explainer

On Friday, Israel killed at least 13 people, including two children, in the Damascus countryside town of Beit Jinn.

The latest air raids came after locals tried to repel an Israeli military incursion into Beit Jinn, leading to clashes.

Israel claimed it was going after members of the Jamaa al-Islamiya, Lebanon’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, rubbishing the Israeli claim, the group said it was not active outside Lebanon.

Here’s everything you need to know about the attack in Beit Jinn and the context behind it.

What happened?

The Israeli army’s 55th Reserve Brigade raided Beit Jinn in the early hours of Friday morning, ostensibly to take three Syrians who live there, claiming they were members of Jamaa al-Islamiya and that they posed a “danger to Israel”.

However, the incursion did not go to plan. Locals resisted, and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the resulting clashes, three of them seriously, according to the Israeli army.

Israel then sent in its warplanes.

“We were asleep when we were woken up at three in the morning by gunfire,” Iyad Daher, a wounded resident, told the AFP news agency from al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus.

“We went outside to see what was happening and saw the Israeli army in the village, soldiers and tanks,” Daher said. “Then they withdrew, the air force came – and the shells started falling.”

This was the deadliest of Israel’s more than 1,000 strikes on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime

Why were Israeli forces in Syria?

This was not the first time Israel raided Syrian territory.

Israeli officials and government-aligned media say Israel can no longer respect its enemies’ borders or allow “hostile” groups along its borders after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel has sought to use force in other countries to create buffer zones around itself, in the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon.

Since the fall of the Assad regime last December, Israel has launched frequent air raids across Syria and ground incursions in its south. It set up numerous checkpoints in Syria and detained and disappeared Syrian citizens from Syrian territory, holding them illegally in Israel.

It invaded the buffer zone that separated the two countries since they signed the 1974 disengagement agreement, setting up outposts around Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon in English).

The new Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, said it would abide by the 1974 agreement.

Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. A demilitarised zone was later established, but when President Bashar al-Assad was ousted, and his army was in shambles, Israel invaded to take outposts on Syrian-controlled land.

What did the Syrian government say?

That the attack is a war crime.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement, condemning “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn. The occupation forces’ targeting of the town of Beit Jinn with brutal and deliberate shelling, following their failed incursion, constitutes a full-fledged war crime.”

What is Israel claiming?

Israel’s public broadcaster said the operation was an “arrest raid” targeting Jamaa al-Islamiya members.

An Israeli army spokesperson said three people linked to the group were “arrested”.

Israel claims the group is operating in southern Syria to “recruit terrorists” and plays a role in what it calls the “northern front” – Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid reported from Syria that Israel has yet to offer any proof of the claim that the people it was after were involved with the group.

What is Jamaa al-Islamiya?

The group is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was founded in 1956 and has a stable presence in Lebanon, though it has never been as popular as some of its regional counterparts.

It has one member of parliament and was historically aligned with the Future Movement, founded by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

However, the group moved closer to Iran and Hezbollah politically in recent years. Its armed wing, the Fajr Forces, took part in some operations against Israel in 2023-24.

After Israel’s claims that it was involved in southern Syria, the group released a statement on Friday stating that it was “surprised” Israeli media had involved it in what happened in Beit Jinn.

Denouncing the attack, it said it conducts “no activities outside Lebanon”.

The group added that it has abided by and committed to the ceasefire agreement from November 2024 between Lebanon and Israel.

Has Israel claimed it was attacking this group before?

Yes.

In March 2024, Israel attacked al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon, killing seven emergency relief volunteers.

It claimed the attack targeted a member of the group, calling him a “significant terrorist”.

However, the alleged target was never named, the director of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps’ Ambulance Association told Al Jazeera.

Bamboo scaffolding, a centuries-old technique that was traditionally ubiquitous in Hong Kong, is under scrutiny for its role in the city’s deadliest fire in more than a century.

At least 55 people have died, and hundreds are still missing since scaffolding at a housing estate in Tai Po district caught fire on Wednesday, according to the latest government figures.

Bamboo is cheap, lightweight, and strong enough to withstand the city’s many typhoons and tropical storms. Hundreds of bamboo poles can often be seen lashed together on the side of a modern office tower.

But could one of Hong Kong’s iconic symbols also have served as the kindling for one of its most horrific tragedies in decades?

How is bamboo scaffolding used?

Buildings or housing estates – like the one in Tai Po district – encased in bamboo during significant renovation projects are not a rare sight in the city-state. Sometimes, the scaffolding can remain up for a year or more.

Bamboo scaffolding is built by speciality workers known as “spiders”. They lash together bamboo poles to build intricate grid-like scaffolding that is then typically covered in additional netting to catch construction materials.

While the use of bamboo has faded in other parts of Asia, it has been hard to replace it completely in Hong Kong, even with options such as metal scaffolding, said experts.

“It’s light, cheap and fast to build with,” Ehsan Noroozinejad, a senior researcher and construction expert at Western Sydney University, Australia, told Al Jazeera. “Crews carry poles by hand, cut them on site, and wrap awkward facades without cranes. That speed and flexibility keep projects moving and costs down.”

Because it is “light and easy to cut”, bamboo scaffolding also fits the narrow living environment of Hong Kong, said Xinyan Huang, deputy director of the Research Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

But there are other reasons, too, why bamboo is hard to replace.

“It [Hong Kong] has a long history, so it is a tradition, and it is not easy to change tradition,” Huang told Al Jazeera by email. “Any change in the construction industry will meet much resistance from current players.”

There are 4,000 bamboo scaffolding workers in the city, Hong Kong Free Press reported, citing union figures, although the industry is on the decline thanks to increased competition from metal scaffolding and an ageing cohort of workers.

Is bamboo scaffolding dangerous?

Prior to the fire, most concerns around bamboo scaffolding have focused on worker safety.

There were 22 fatal workplace accidents involving bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong between 2018 and 2024, according to government figures. Six accidents occurred while new scaffolding was being built, while the rest took place during repairs.

Besides the fact that bamboo is by its very nature combustible, it is also structurally weaker and less stable than steel, according to Huang. He told Al Jazeera that it should be phased out for larger projects.

“I think the bamboo scaffolding can be used for small-scale applications, such as installing an air conditioning unit and replacing a window of a room. However, the large-scale usage such as covering the entire building facade should be stopped. Perhaps, a maximum area of bamboo scaffolding can be defined in future regulation,” he said.

What role did bamboo scaffolding play in the Tai Po fire?

The fire is the deadliest in Hong Kong in more than a century, since a blaze in 1918 at the Happy Valley Racecourse in British Hong Kong led to the deaths of more than 600 people.

Bamboo scaffolding played a big role in spreading the fire, according to experts like Anwar Orabi, a lecturer in fire safety engineering at the University of Queensland, although it was helped by other materials in the estate.

The fire broke out on the scaffolding of one of the estate’s towers on Wednesday, but the speed with which the fire spread took many observers by surprise. Orabi said the design of the scaffolding made it difficult to keep the blaze limited to just a few floors.

“In my point of view, the scaffolding presented a path for the fire to spread vertically which compromised compartmentation. The fire ‘climbed’ the scaffolding, and ignited the multiple fuel sources in people’s homes,” he told Al Jazeera by email.

“Fire can break windows by imposing a strong heat flux [flow of heat] which heats up the glass and breaks it. It is also possible that many people left their windows open resulting in ingress of the fire. This resulted in a multi-storey fire,” he said. Heat radiation and embers from one building helped spread the fire to the next, he said, ultimately engulfing seven towers.

Hong Kong officials also say substandard construction materials were another contributing factor. The South China Morning Post reported that the netting placed over the scaffolding did not adhere to the fire code, citing local officials.

Senior police superintendent Eileen Chung said highly flammable Styrofoam boards had also been placed in windows in the housing estate’s lifts, public broadcaster RTHK reported, helping the fire spread.

Two directors and one engineering consultant from the company behind the construction have been detained, Chung confirmed.

Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee Ka-chiu, has promised that all housing estates undergoing significant improvements will now be inspected.

“The government has immediately arranged for inspections of all housing estates across the city undergoing major repairs, to examine the safety of scaffolding and building materials,” he wrote on Facebook.

At least 44 people have died after Hong Kong’s worst fire in 63 years tore through several high-rise buildings on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

Firefighters are still fighting the blaze in the Tai Po neighbourhood, and trying to reach people who are trapped inside.

By early Thursday morning, officials said they had brought the fire in four buildings under control, but firefighters were still working on three others more than 16 hours after the blaze started.

Here is what to know:

What happened in Hong Kong?

An apartment complex in Hong Kong’s Tai Po neighbourhood caught fire at about 2:51pm (06:51 GMT) local time on Wednesday.

The fire began on the bamboo scaffolding outside one of the buildings. This type of scaffolding, made from bamboo poles used by workers during repairs, burns very easily. Once the scaffolding caught fire, the flames quickly spread up the structure and into the building, and then to nearby towers.

The blocks were also wrapped in green construction netting all the way to the rooftops due to ongoing renovation work, which also caught fire, helping it spread faster.

According to local media, the fire intensified rapidly: By 3:34pm (07:34 GMT), it had reached a level four alarm, and by 6:22pm (10:22 GMT), it had reached a level five alarm – the highest alert level in Hong Kong.

The blaze is Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since at least August 1962, when a fire in the city’s Sham Shui Po district killed 44 people. A fire at the Garley Building on Nathan Road in Kowloon killed 41 people and injured 81 others in November 1996.

Since Monday, Hong Kong has been under a heightened fire alert as dry weather conditions made the risk of fire extremely high.

Where did the fire start?

The fire started at Wang Fuk Court, a housing estate in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district.

The complex, built in 1983, consists of eight high-rise buildings with a total of 1,984 flats. According to local media reports, seven of the buildings were affected by the fire. Of those, four have since been brought under control.

Tai Po is a suburb of Hong Kong near the border with mainland China, and is home to approximately 300,000 residents. It is part of the government’s subsidised home-ownership scheme.

Property records show that Wang Fuk Court has been undergoing major renovation work, costing about $42.43m.

How did the fire spread so quickly, and what caused it?

The fire spread very quickly because it started on the bamboo scaffolding around the building and spread to the green netting covering the structures.

Both the bamboo and the green netting burn easily, so once they caught fire, the flames shot up the outside of the tower and reached many floors.

Burning pieces then fell and set nearby buildings on fire within minutes. Wind and open areas from the renovation work likely made the flames grow even faster.

While the exact cause is still being investigated, officials say the flammable scaffolding, building materials, and the tall, closely packed towers all helped the fire get out of control.

Police also said they found mesh and other protective materials on the outside of the buildings that did not appear to be fireproof, as well as styrofoam materials on the windows.

“We have reason to believe that those in charge at the company were grossly negligent, which led to this accident and caused the fire to spread uncontrollably, resulting in major casualties,” Eileen Chung, senior superintendent at the Hong Kong Police Force, said.

Officers have arrested two directors and an engineering consultant, aged between 52 and 68, of a construction company.

Chung said police arrested them in the Tai Po, Ngau Tau Kok, and San Po Kong districts at about 2am on Thursday (18:00 GMT, Wednesday).

How many people died or are missing?

Authorities have confirmed the deaths of 44 people, including a firefighter. About 279 residents are still unaccounted for. As of 8am (00:00 GMT), at least 66 people had been admitted to hospital, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority told CNN. Of those, 17 were in critical condition, and 24 were listed as serious.

Four people died in hospital. About 900 people have sought shelter in community centres.

What is the latest on the ground?

It is now 9:42am (01:42 GMT) in Hong Kong, and according to local reports, firefighters are still fighting the blaze.

Earlier, the South China Morning Post reported that Derek Armstrong Chan, the deputy director of fire services, said extreme heat had prevented firefighters from accessing some upper-floor apartments. He added that crews would “keep trying” to reach them.

He also said that the “debris and scaffolding of the affected building are falling down, posing additional danger to our frontline personnel”.

Overnight, he said, it was dark, and that made the rescue and firefighting operation “more difficult”.

“In the hours of darkness, it will pose additional danger and difficulties to our operation, and up to this moment, the temperature inside the fire scene is still very high. So, we have difficulties proceeding to upper floors of two of the buildings.”

The Hong Kong Fire Services Department mobilised more than 1,200 fire and ambulance personnel to the site, officials said. Some in the area have returned to work and school.

Leading tech companies are in a race to release and improve artificial intelligence (AI) products, leaving users in the United States to puzzle out how much of their personal data could be extracted to train AI tools.

Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp), Google and LinkedIn have all rolled out AI app features that have the capacity to draw on users’ public profiles or emails. Google and LinkedIn offer users ways to opt out of the AI features, while Meta’s AI tool provides no means for its users to say “no, thanks.”

“Gmail just flipped a dangerous switch on October 10, 2025 and 99% of Gmail users have no idea,” a November 8 Instagram post said.

Posts warned that the platforms’ AI tool rollouts make most private information available for tech company harvesting. “Every conversation, every photo, every voice message, fed into AI and used for profit,” a November 9 X video about Meta said.

Starting December 16th, Meta will start feeding all your data to AI. This video is an instructional on how to turn these settings off. pic.twitter.com/BUJagaMr5b

— David Wolfe (@DavidWolfe) November 9, 2025

Technology companies are rarely fully transparent when it comes to the user data they collect and what they use it for, Krystyna Sikora, a research analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, told PolitiFact.

“Unsurprisingly, this lack of transparency can create significant confusion that in turn can lead to fear mongering and the spread of false information about what is and is not permissible,” Sikora said.

The best – if tedious – way for people to know and protect their privacy rights is to read the terms and conditions, since it often explicitly outlines how the data will be used and whether it will be shared with third parties, Sikora said. The US doesn’t have any comprehensive federal laws on data privacy for technology companies.

Here’s what we learned about how each platform’s AI is handling your data:

Social media claim: “Starting December 16th Meta will start reading your DMs, every conversation, every photo, every voice message fed into AI and used for profit.” – November 9 X post with 1.6 million views as of November 19.

The facts: Meta announced a new policy to take effect December 16, but that policy alone does not result in your direct messages, photos and voice messages being fed into its AI tool. The policy involves how Meta will customise users’ content and advertisements based on how they interact with Meta AI.

For example, if a user interacts with Meta’s AI chatbot about hiking, Meta might start showing that person recommendations for hiking groups or hiking boots.

But that doesn’t mean your data isn’t being used for AI purposes. Although Meta doesn’t use people’s private messages in Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger to train its AI, it does collect user content that is set to “public” mode. This can include photos, posts, comments and reels. If the user’s Meta AI conversations involve religious views, sexual orientation and racial or ethnic origin, Meta says the system is designed to avoid parlaying these interactions into ads. If users ask questions of Meta AI using its voice feature, Meta says the AI tool will use the microphone only when users give permission.

There is a caveat: The tech company says its AI might use information about people who don’t have Meta product accounts if their information appears in other users’ public posts. For example, if a Meta user mentions a non-user in a public image caption, that photo and caption could be used to train Meta AI.

Can you opt out? No. If you are using Meta platforms in these ways – making some of your posts public and using the chatbot – your data could be used by Meta AI. There is no way to deactivate Meta AI in Instagram, Facebook or Threads. WhatsApp users can deactivate the option to talk with Meta AI in their chats, but this option is available only per chat, meaning that you must deactivate the option in each chat’s advanced privacy settings.

The X post inaccurately advised people to submit this form to opt out. But the form is simply a way for users to report when Meta’s AI supplies an answer that contains someone’s personal information.

David Evan Harris, who teaches AI ethics at the University of California, Berkeley, told PolitiFact that because the US has no federal regulations about privacy and AI training, people have no standardised legal right to opt out of AI training in the way that people in countries such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom and South Korea do.

Even when social media platforms provide opt-out options for US customers, it’s often difficult to find the settings to do so, Harris said.

Deleting your Meta accounts does not eliminate the possibility of Meta AI using your past public data, Meta’s spokesperson said.

Google

Social media claim: “Did you know Google just gave its AI access to read every email in your Gmail – even your attachments?”  – November 8 Instagram post with more than 146,000 likes as of November 19.

The facts: Google has a host of products that interact with private data in different ways. Google announced on November 5 that its AI product, Gemini Deep Research, can connect to users’ other Google products, including Gmail, Drive and Chat. But, as Forbes reported, users must first give permission to employ the tool.

Users who want to allow Gemini Deep Research to have access to private information across products can choose what data sources to employ, including Google search, Gmail, Drive and Google Chat.

There are other ways Google collects people’s data:

• Through searches and prompts in Gemini apps, including its mobile app, Gemini in Chrome or Gemini in another web browser
• Any video or photo uploads that the user entered into Gemini
• Through interactions with apps such as YouTube and Spotify, if users give permission
• Through message and phone calls apps, including call logs and message logs, if users give permission.

A Google spokesperson told PolitiFact the company doesn’t use this information to train AI when registered users are under age 13.

Google can also access people’s data when they have smart features activated in their Gmail and Google Workplace settings (that are automatically on in the US), which gives Google consent to draw on email content and user activity data to help users compose emails or suggest Google Calendar events. With optional paid subscriptions, users can access additional AI features, including in-app Gemini summaries.

Turning off Gmail’s smart features can stop Google’s AI from accessing Gmail, but it doesn’t stop Google’s access to the Gemini app, which users can either download or access in a browser.

A California lawsuit accuses Gemini of spying on users’ private communications. The lawsuit says an October policy change gives Gemini default access to private content such as emails and attachments in people’s Gmail, Chat and Meet. Before October, users had to manually allow Gemini to access the private content; now, users must go into their privacy settings to disable it. The lawsuit claims the Google policy update violates California’s 1967 Invasion of Privacy Act, a law that prohibits unauthorised wiretapping and recording confidential communications without consent.

Can you opt out? If people don’t want their conversations used to train Google AI, they can use “temporary” chats or chat without signing into their Gemini accounts. Doing that means Gemini can’t save a person’s chat history, a Google spokesperson said. Otherwise, opting out of having Google’s AI in Gmail, Drive and Meet requires turning off smart features in settings.

LinkedIn

Social media claim: Starting November 3, “LinkedIn will begin using your data to train AI.” – November 2 Instagram post with more than 18,000 likes as of November 19.

The facts: LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, announced on its website that starting November 3, it will use some US members’ data to train content-generating AI models.

The data the AI collects includes details from people’s profiles and public content that users post.

The training does not draw on information from people’s private messages, LinkedIn said.

LinkedIn also said, aside from the AI data access, that Microsoft started receiving information about LinkedIn members – such as profile information, feed activity and ad engagement – as of November 3 in order to target users with personalised ads.

Can you opt out? Yes. Autumn Cobb, a LinkedIn spokesperson, confirmed to PolitiFact that members can opt out if they don’t want their content used for AI training purposes. They can also opt out of receiving targeted, personalised ads.

To remove your data from being used for training purposes, go to data privacy, click on the option that says “Data for Generative AI Improvement” and then turn off the feature that says “use my data for training content creation AI models.”

And to opt out of personalised ads, go to advertising data in settings, and turn off ads on LinkedIn and the option that says “data sharing with our affiliates and select partners”.

Slovenia is voting on whether to legalise assisted dying for some terminally ill adults after other European countries have made the change.

The parliament of the small European Union nation passed a euthanasia bill in July, but a citizens initiative, led by right-wing politician Ales Primc, forced the referendum on Sunday.

The law will be rejected if at least 20 percent of participating voters oppose the bill. Slovenia has an electorate of 1.69 million people.

Supporters of the bill said it will alleviate unnecessary pain. Those against said society should care for the sick, not help them die.

Several European countries – including Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland – already allow terminally ill people to receive medical help to end their lives.

What are the Slovenes proposing?

Under the disputed law, which was set to take effect this year, lucid but terminally ill patients would have had the right to die if their suffering had become unbearable and all other treatment options had been exhausted.

The legislation is similar to the assisted dying bill passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in June. Britain’s bill allows assisted suicide for terminally ill adults with less than six months to live, the approvals of two doctors, judicial oversight and self-administration of the medication.

Slovenia’s law would require the approval of two doctors but also cooling-off periods and self-administration of the medication.

About 54 percent of citizens back the legalisation of assisted dying, almost 31 percent oppose it and 15 percent are undecided, according to a poll published this week by the Dnevnik daily based on 700 responses. In June 2024, 55 percent backed the law.

What are supporters saying?

Prime Minister Robert Golob urged citizens to back the law “so that each of us can decide for ourselves how and with what dignity we will end our lives”.

Marijan Janzekovic, an 86-year-old who lives in the town of Sveti Tomaz near the capital, Ljubljana, also supports the bill.

His wife, Alenka Curin-Janzekovic, was in pain from diabetes-related illnesses before she ended her life at a suicide clinic in Switzerland in 2023.

“She was in a wheelchair … and in pain so bad my heart hurt just by watching her,” he told the Reuters news agency.

What do opponents think?

The main political group opposing the law, called Voice for the Children and the Family, has accused the government of using the law to “poison” ill and elderly people.

Opponents said the law is inhumane and violates Slovenia’s Constitution, which declares human life inviolable.

Elsewhere, Slovenian Catholic Archbishop Stanislav Zore said the state should focus on palliative care instead.

“Let’s care for the sick and dying but not offer them suicide,” he said. The Catholic Church is opposed to euthanasia.

What other countries practise assisted dying?

Assisted dying is already permitted in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, several states in the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

In Australia, New Zealand, Canada and several US states, assisted dying laws are generally framed around medical aid. These jurisdictions typically require that patients be terminally ill, mentally competent and assessed by two independent doctors.

In many of these countries, the patient must self-administer lethal medication rather than have a doctor provide it directly. These regimes prioritise patient autonomy and strict procedural safeguards, such as waiting periods.

In the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Portugal, the approach to assisted dying is permissive. Active euthanasia or doctor-administered treatment is legal under defined conditions of unbearable suffering, even if the patient is not terminally ill.

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, only assisted suicide is legally tolerated as opposed to active euthanasia. Switzerland is an outlier insofar as there is no dedicated regulatory regime for euthanasia, meaning nonresidents may access the service via organisations.

Which other countries are currently debating assisted dying laws?

In May, France’s National Assembly approved a “right-to-die” bill. The legislation would allow adults over 18 who are citizens or residents and suffer from incurable illnesses and “intolerable” physical or psychological suffering to request lethal medication.

Under the bill, a medical team must assess the patient’s condition before a mandatory reflection period before the prescription of a lethal substance. If the patient is physically unable to self-administer, a doctor or nurse may assist.

The proposal excludes people with severe psychiatric conditions or neurodegenerative disorders like advanced Alzheimer’s disease. The bill now has to go to the Senate and must return to the National Assembly for a second reading before it could become law.

Elsewhere, Britain’s lower house voted to legalise assisted dying in June. The House of Commons narrowly voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, marking a major step towards legalising assisted dying in England and Wales.

The bill would allow mentally competent adults with a prognosis of less than six months to live to request medical help to end their lives, subject to assessments by two doctors and a panel including a psychiatrist, a lawyer and a social worker.

The legislation is not yet law. It must still get through the House of Lords, where it will be further scrutinised and may be amended. If it does become law, the timeline for implementation may not be until 2029.

China on Friday took its feud with Tokyo over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Taikachi’s recent comments on Taiwan to the United Nations, as tensions between the East Asian neighbours deepened and ties plunged to their lowest since 2023.

“If Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression,” China’s permanent representative to the UN, Fu Cong, wrote in a letter on Friday to the global body’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, referring to the strait that separates mainland China from self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing insists belongs to China. Beijing has not ruled out the possibility of forcibly taking Taiwan.

The diplomatic spat began earlier in November when Taikachi, who took office only in October, made remarks about how Japan would respond to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those remarks angered Beijing, which has demanded retractions, although the Japanese PM has not made one.

However, the spat has now rapidly escalated into a trade war involving businesses on both sides, and has deepened security tensions over a contested territory that has long been a flashpoint for the two countries.

Here’s what we know about the dispute:

What did Japan’s PM say about Taiwan?

While speaking to parliament on November 7, Taikachi, a longtime Taiwan supporter, said a Chinese naval blockade or other action against Taiwan could prompt a Japanese military response. The response was not typical, and Taikachi appeared to go several steps further than her predecessors, who had only in the past expressed concern about the Chinese threat to Taiwan, but had never mentioned a response.

“If it involves the use of warships and military actions, it could by all means become a survival-threatening situation,” Taikachi told parliament, responding to an opposition politician’s queries in her first parliamentary grilling.

That statement immediately raised protests from China’s foreign and defence ministries, which demanded retractions. China’s consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian, a day after, criticised the comments and appeared to make threats in a now deleted post on X, saying: “We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us without hesitation. Are you ready?”

That post by Xue also raised anger in Japan, and some officials began calling for the diplomat’s expulsion. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara protested to Beijing over Xue’s X message, saying it was “extremely inappropriate,” while urging China to explain. Japan’s Foreign Ministry also demanded the post be deleted. Chinese officials, meanwhile, defended the comments as coming from a personal standpoint.

On November 14, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador and warned of a “crushing defeat” if Japan interfered with Taiwan. The following day, Japan’s Foreign Ministry also summoned the Chinese ambassador to complain about the consul’s post.

Although Taikachi told parliament three days after her controversial statement that she would avoid talking about specific scenarios going forward, she has refused to retract her comments.

How have tensions increased since?

The matter has deteriorated into a trade war of sorts. On November 14, China issued a no-travel advisory for Japan, an apparent attempt to target the country’s tourism sector, which welcomed some 7.5 million Chinese tourists between January and September this year. On November 15, three Chinese airlines offered refunds or free changes for flights planned on Japan-bound routes.

The Chinese Education Ministry also took aim at Japan’s education sector, warning Chinese students there or those planning to study in Japan about recent crimes against Chinese. Both China and Japan have recorded attacks against each other’s nationals in recent months that have prompted fears of xenophobia, but it is unclear if the attacks are linked.

Tensions are also rising around territorial disputes. Last Sunday, the Chinese coastguard announced it was patrolling areas in the East China Sea, in the waters around a group of uninhabited islands that both countries claim. Japan calls the islands the Senkaku Islands, while Beijing calls them the Diaoyu Islands. Japan, in response, condemned the brief “violation” of Japanese territorial waters by a fleet of four Chinese coastguard ships.

Over the last week, Chinese authorities have suspended the screening of at least two Japanese films and banned Japanese seafood.

Then, on Thursday, China postponed a three-way meeting with culture ministers from Japan and South Korea that was scheduled to be held in late November.

‘Symbol of defiance’

On November 18, diplomats from both sides met in Beijing for talks where the grievances were aired.

Senior Chinese official Liu Jinsong chose to wear a five-buttoned collarless suit associated with the rebellion of Chinese students against Japanese imperialism in 1919.

Japanese media have called the choice of the suit a “symbol of defiance.” They also point to videos and images from the meeting showing Liu with his hands in his pockets after the talks, saying the gesture is typically viewed as disrespectful in formal settings.

The Beijing meeting did not appear to ease the tensions, and there seems to be no sign of the impasse breaking: Chinese representatives asked for a retraction, but Japanese diplomats said Taikachi’s remarks were in line with Japan’s stance.

What is the history of Sino-Japanese tensions?

It’s a long and – especially for China – painful story. Imperial Japan occupied significant portions of China after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), when it gained control of Taiwan and forcefully annexed Korea. In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Amid strong Chinese resistance, Japan occupied parts of eastern and southern China, where it created and controlled puppet governments. The Japanese Empire’s defeat in World War II in 1945 ended its expansion bid.

The Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious in 1949 in the civil war that followed with the Kuomintang, which, along with the leader Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan to set up a parallel government. But until 1972, Japan formally recognised Taiwan as “China”.

In 1972, it finally recognised the People’s Republic of China and agreed to the “one China principle”, in effect severing formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. However, Japan has maintained firm unofficial ties with Taiwan, including through trade.

Japan has also maintained a policy of so-called “strategic ambiguity” over how Tokyo would respond if China were to attack Taiwan — a policy of deliberate ambivalence, aimed at leaving Beijing and the rest of the world guessing over whether it would intervene militarily. The stance is similar to that of the United States, Taiwan’s most powerful ally.

How important is trade between China and Japan?

He Yongqian, a spokesperson for China’s commerce ministry, said at a regular news conference this week that trade relations between the two countries had been “severely damaged” by PM Takaichi’s comments.

China is Japan’s second-largest export market after the US, with Tokyo selling mainly industrial equipment, semiconductors and automobiles to Beijing. In 2024, China bought about $125bn worth of Japanese goods, according to the United Nations’ Comtrade database. South Korea, Japan’s third-largest export market, bought goods worth $46bn in 2024.

China is also a major buyer of Japan’s sea cucumbers and its top scallop buyer. Japanese firms, particularly seafood exporters, are worried about the effects of the spat on their businesses, according to reporting by Reuters.

Beijing is not as reliant on Japan’s economy, but Tokyo is China’s third-largest trading partner. China mainly exports electrical equipment, machinery, apparel and vehicles to Japan. Tokyo bought $152bn worth of goods from China in 2024, according to financial data website Trading Economics.

It’s not the first time Beijing has retaliated with trade. In 2023, China imposed a ban on all Japanese food imports after Tokyo released radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific. Beijing was against the move, although the UN atomic energy agency had deemed the discharge safe. That ban was lifted just on November 7, the same day Taikachi made the controversial comments.

In 2010, China also halted the exports of rare earth minerals to Japan for seven weeks after a Chinese fishing captain was detained near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

EXPLAINER

At least five people killed in deadly earthquake close to the capital city Dhaka on Friday.

A powerful earthquake shook Bangladesh close to the capital city, Dhaka, on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring many others, the government said.

Here is what we know so far.

What happened?

An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 hit Bangladesh at 10:38am (04:38 GMT), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The shaking lasted for 26 seconds.

Dhaka resident Shadman Sakif Islam told Al Jazeera that “small ripples” he noticed in his coffee were followed by a “massive shake that started occurring without any warning” as the earthquake took hold.

“My chair and the table started shaking wildly, and I was stuck there 10-15 seconds without processing what was going on,” he added.

“I never felt anything like this in my whole life … I felt like riding on a boat, riding massive waves one after another,” he added.

Where in Bangladesh did the earthquake hit?

The tremor was felt near the city of Narsingdi, which is 33km (16 miles) from Dhaka. Many buildings in Dhaka sustained damage from the resulting quake.

The epicentre was in Narsingdi’s Madhabdi district, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

The tremors were felt as far away as in the neighbouring Indian city of Kolkata, more than 325km (about 200 miles)  from the epicentre. No casualties have been reported there.

Narsingdi is famous for its textile craft and garment industry.

What do we know about the casualties?

According to government figures, at least five people have been killed and roughly 100 people have been injured.

Local media has reported higher death toll figures, but these have not been confirmed.

On Friday, Dhaka-based DBC Television reported that at least six people had died in the capital – three when a building roof and wall collapsed and three pedestrians who were struck by falling railings.

Are earthquakes common in Bangladesh?

Earthquakes do not take place in Bangladesh very frequently, despite the country being close to the boundaries of the Indian, Eurasian and Burmese tectonic plates and thus, seismically vulnerable.

In 2023, an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck near Sylhet in northeastern Bangladesh, according to the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). There were no reports of casualties or major damage from the quake.

In 2021, a magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit the border between India and Myanmar. Tremors were felt in Bangladesh’s Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. There were no confirmed deaths in Bangladesh.

Magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale, meaning for each whole-number increase on the scale, the magnitude is increased by a factor of 10.

Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said, “It was one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history and was very close to the capital city. The entire city was in panic. Social media videos have shown buildings shaking.”

United States President Donald Trump has distanced himself from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying the former friends had severed ties more than a decade before his 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.

But one Democrat is using newly released documents from Epstein’s estate to assert that the two remained friends after Trump first became president in 2016.

Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois, highlighted one email exchange and said in a November 12 post on X: “Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017.”

Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017. pic.twitter.com/1CU51k8yl4

— Sean Casten (@SeanCasten) November 13, 2025

He attached an image of emails dated November 23, 2017 – Thanksgiving Day – between Epstein and NEXT Management Cofounder Faith Kates, which read:

Epstein: hope today is fun for you.

Kates: Fun!!! When are you back in NYC?

Epstein: all next week

Kates: Ok dylan will want to see you I always want to see you. Where are you having thanksgiving?

Epstein: eva

Faith Kates: That means glenn check out his red hair!!!

Epstein: berries color for holiday

Kates: He’s such a snooze who else is down there?

Epstein: david fizel. hanson. trump

Kates: Have fun!!!

Casten has not responded to a request for comment. “Those emails prove literally nothing,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email.

News reports, photos, videos and White House releases show Trump spent that 2017 Thanksgiving in Mar-a-Lago. PolitiFact, however, did not find any proof that he met Epstein that day.

There are different accounts of when Trump and Epstein had their falling out, with periods ranging from 2004 to 2007. The Miami Herald reported that Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in October 2007, a decade before the Thanksgiving Day in question.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Two of the three people Epstein mentioned in his 2017 email as being “down there” are people who had property in South Florida at the time. It is unclear who he was referring to when he mentioned “Hanson”. It is possible Epstein was not foretelling a specific Thanksgiving Day plan but answering another New Yorker’s question about who among the people in their social circle would also be in the Florida area during that period.

Trump arrived in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 21, 2017, and stayed there for several days, according to the president’s public schedules documented in Roll Call’s FactBase.

On Thanksgiving morning, he spoke to members of the military via video conference and visited coastguard members at the Lake Worth Inlet Station in Riviera Beach, Florida. The White House published transcripts of Trump’s remarks to both groups. Trump also issued a Thanksgiving message to the country and went to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Photographers for The Associated Press news agency, The Palm Beach Post and Getty Images, among others, captured photos of Trump’s activities.

A CNN report said Trump held an “opulent” dinner at the Mar-a-Lago members-only club. PolitiFact did not find reports listing who was in attendance, but the White House told CNN the first family would be having “a nice Thanksgiving dinner with all the family”.

Trump was also active on social media. In a November 22, 2017, post on X, then known as Twitter, he said he “will be having meetings and working the phones from the Winter White House in Florida [Mar-a-Lago]”. He did not specify whom he would be meeting. On Thanksgiving morning, he said in part: “HAPPY THANKSGIVING, your Country is starting to do really well.”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, your Country is starting to do really well. Jobs coming back, highest Stock Market EVER, Military getting really strong, we will build the WALL, V.A. taking care of our Vets, great Supreme Court Justice, RECORD CUT IN REGS, lowest unemployment in 17 years….!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2017

Trump left Mar-a-Lago and returned to the White House on November 26, 2017, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

One month before he opened this year’s United Nations climate summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva helped open a new mega-factory at the site of a former Ford car manufacturing plant.

The new plant, in Brazil’s Camacari, Bahia, is one of many being built around the world by China’s BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars.

BYD’s presence is also being felt at the ongoing COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Belem, where it is a cosponsor alongside GWM, another Chinese electric carmaker.

The sponsorship is just one of many ways that China’s investments in green technology are being felt at the UN’s top climate meeting, where the Chinese official delegation of 789 people is second only to Brazil’s 3,805.

It is a stark contrast to the United States, whose federal government has not sent an official delegation. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has accused US President Donald Trump of “handing the future to China” and leaving states like California to pick up the slack, in a speech at the summit.

“ China is here. Only one country’s not here: United States of America,” Newsom said. Trump has called concerns over climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”.

But the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 is not the only event where the diverging paths that China and the US are taking on addressing the climate crisis are being felt.

Back in the US, and in neighbouring Canada, trade barriers aimed at punishing Chinese electric vehicles have made them far costlier than what the manufacturers want to sell them for.

These tariffs are a legacy of former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and place North America as an outlier at a time when Chinese EVs otherwise dominate the global market.

How dominant is China in EVs?

Joel Jaeger, a senior research associate with the World Resources Institute, told Al Jazeera that Chinese EVs have “really upended the car market” in recent years.

China has gone “from basically not a major player five years ago” to becoming “the number one exporter of cars globally in terms of the units”, says Jaeger.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China manufactured 12.4 million electric cars in 2024, more than 70 percent of the 17.3 million electric cars manufactured globally last year.

Of these, China exported about 1.25 million cars, representing 40 percent of global exports, while the remaining Chinese-made cars — the vast majority — were sold domestically.

This dominance has been built on the back of “subsidies that China’s put in place to develop its industry, which I think is a very strategic thing that China has done, both for its own economic growth as well as decarbonisation”, Jaeger said.

But on the streets of the US or Canada, Chinese EVs are still relatively rare.

Why are Chinese EVs less affordable in the US and Canada?

According to Jaeger, “prohibitive” tariffs mean that Chinese EVs are almost impossible to buy in the US and Canada.

“In the last year, the US and Canada both put on basically completely prohibitive tariffs on EVs [of] over 100 percent in both places,” he added.

Notably, the steep import taxes on Chinese EVs in the US were introduced under Biden, a Democrat, who championed renewable energy, in contrast to Trump, who has pledged to fight it and “drill, baby, drill” for oil.

A month after the US introduced 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs in September 2024, Canada brought in identical tariffs of its own.

It means that a car that a Chinese EV manufacturer might be selling at $30,000 actually costs at least $60,000 in the US or Canada. This makes it hard for even cheaper Chinese models to compete with the higher-end US electric models, which on average retail for approximately $55,000.

These tariffs, along with other US policies, have meant that Chinese manufacturers have yet to set up shop in the US.

In Canada, Addisu Lashitew, an associate professor of business at McMaster University, told Al Jazeera that the steep tariffs conflict with targets set to transition fully to electric cars by 2035, but are also complicated due to Canada’s close trading ties with the US.

“The problem is that one, we are going through a very complex trade talk with the US now,” said Lashitew. “And two, our supply chain has also [been] very much integrated. Many of the American manufacturers are here, and Canadian firms are mainly suppliers.”

But while it is almost impossible to buy a cheap Chinese electric car in the US, Jaeger says this does not mean that North America is completely missing out on importing new Chinese technology.

“The US, for example, imports a lot of batteries from China. It’s actually the second-biggest importer of lithium-ion batteries behind Germany in the world, from China. So, they’re using them in US-made EVs,” he said.

Where can you buy cheap Chinese electric cars?

In contrast with the US and Canada, said Jaeger, many other countries have been more open to China’s EV market.

“You see different reactions from different countries, depending on their relationship with China, but mostly depending upon their domestic auto manufacturing presence,” he said.

Lashitew told Al Jazeera that Chinese exporters, including BYD as well as some smaller firms, are “targeting many emerging and developing countries”.

“Ironically, we’re in a situation where in the transportation sector, the energy transition is happening much faster in the Global South than in North America, at least.”

Chinese electric cars have also continued to sell well in many European countries, says Jaeger, despite those countries also imposing some tariffs, though lower than the US and Canada, “for what they see as unfair competitive practices in China”.

Still, while BYD has built factories in Japan, Hungary and India, as well as Brazil, its biggest presence remains in China, where the company was founded in Shenzhen in 1995. A majority of the 4.27 million electric cars that BYD sold in 2024 were bought by Chinese consumers. BYD also has a manufacturing presence in Lancaster, California, where it builds electric buses and batteries, but not cars.

In China, the local market has grown in part due to incentives from the government, which also saw electric cars as part of its strategy to bring down air pollution in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Customers in China have benefitted from the government’s approach, including through access to new technology. For example, a new battery, which BYD announced in March with the promise of charging for 400km (about 250 miles) of travel in just five minutes, is first being made available for preorder to customers in China only.

How expensive are EVs?

They used to be costlier than cars that run on petrol or diesel. But according to the IEA, the cost of owning an electric car over the vehicle’s entire lifetime is now less than fossil fuel-powered cars, due to the reduced costs of fuel and maintenance.

Buying an electric car is still often more expensive, though.

That is where China’s subsidies to manufacturers help. The IEA has found that prices for electric cars in China are similar to petrol and diesel cars, with half of all electric cars being sold for less than $30,000 and a wide range of lower-priced models available.

By contrast, in the US and Europe, “the range [of available EVs] was skewed towards higher-end models with higher prices”, according to the IEA.

Under Biden, the US tried to boost its domestic electric vehicle industry, while also trying to get the sector to reduce dependence on China.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced incentives for US manufacturers that did not use any Chinese parts. The IRA also introduced subsidies for consumers who bought EVs, though these have largely been overturned by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which became law in July.

Nevertheless, even with the Biden-era incentives, only one in 10 cars sold in the US in 2024 was electric, while more than half of all new cars sold last year in China were electric.

Not just cars

While electric cars grab most headlines on sustainable transport, people are also increasingly turning to electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, buses and even trains in many parts of the world.

Even in the US, says Jaeger, there has been a significant growth in the number of electric scooters and two-wheelers imported from China.

According to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), the US imported $1.5bn worth of electric two-wheelers from China in the 12 months up to September 2025, an increase of $275m — or more than 20 percent — from the previous year. Experts say that is because scooters are cheaper than cars, and because US tariffs on Chinese electric scooters are also lower than on electric cars.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the government has said it will ban petrol-powered motorbikes in the centre of its capital, Hanoi, from July next year, as part of a plan to tackle local air pollution.

According to the IEA, some 40 percent of bus sales are now electric in European countries, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway.

There have also been increases in electric bus sales in Central and South America. In Mexico, for example, “close to 18 percent of all bus sales were electric in 2024, up from just above 1 percent in 2023”, according to the IEA.

Still, the US continues to struggle here, too. Electric bus sales declined in 2024, according to the IEA, after the leading electric bus manufacturer went bankrupt and a second company stopped manufacturing in the US market after suffering sustained financial losses.

On Monday, the UN Security Council passed a US-sponsored resolution which backs US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending Israel’s war on Gaza.

Among the clauses was one that supported the creation and deployment of an international stabilisation force (ISF) to provide security and oversight of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

In theory, this security body will work with Israel and Egypt to “demilitarise” the Gaza Strip and will reportedly train a Palestinian police force.

Despite the passing of a resolution that “acknowledges the parties have accepted” the Trump plan, Israeli air strikes on Gaza continued, including on areas on the Palestinian side of the yellow line.

So what is the ISF, and what does it mean for Gaza? Here’s what you need to know:

What is the ISF?

The ISF is envisioned as a multinational force that would deploy to Gaza to help train police, secure the borders, maintain security by helping demilitarise Gaza, protect civilians and humanitarian operations, including securing humanitarian corridors, among “additional tasks as may be necessary in support of the Comprehensive Plan”.

Essentially, the force would take over many of the security responsibilities that have been managed by Hamas over the last 19 years.

Since 2006, Hamas has been in charge of governing the Gaza Strip, including managing its social and security services.

Trump’s Comprehensive Plan was formulated with no input from Palestinian parties.

Who makes up the force?

That is still unclear, though under the resolution, the forces will work with Israel and Egypt and a newly trained Palestinian police force that will not be under Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

A senior adviser to Trump said Azerbaijan and Indonesia had offered to send troops.

He also said Egypt, Qatar and the UAE were in talks about contributing, though a senior Emirati official, Anwar Gargash, said his country would not participate. Reports have said Egypt could lead the force.

In October, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country was ready to provide support to Gaza.

But as tensions have heated up between Turkiye and Israel, the latter’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Israel would not agree to Turkish troops on the ground in Gaza.

And how did the vote go?

It passed with a 13-0 vote.

But Russia and China abstained, expressing concern over the lack of Palestinian participation in the force and the lack of a clear role for the UN in the future of Gaza.

Russia had earlier proposed its own resolution that was “inspired by the US draft”.

Russia’s version requests that the UN secretary-general be involved in identifying potential options to participate in the international stabilisation force for Gaza.

It did not mention Trump’s so-called “board of peace” that would act as a transitional administration in Gaza.

What was Hamas’s response?

They rejected the resolution. The group released a statement on social messaging app Telegram, saying the vote “imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip”.

Under Trump’s plan, Hamas would have no role in Gaza and would be disarmed, with its personnel offered two options: either commit to coexistence or be granted safe passage out of Gaza.

Hamas has repeatedly said it would give up governance but is not willing to give up its arms.

For his part, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, recently that the war “has not ended” and that Hamas would be disarmed.

What did Israel say?

Israel focused on the disarmament of Hamas, with its UN envoy Danny Danon saying his country would “demonstrate … determination in ensuring that Hamas is disarmed”.

In Israel, the resolution led at least one opposition party to lambast Netanyahu’s government.

“What happened tonight at the UN is a result of the Israeli government’s failed conduct,” Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist politician who leads the Yisrael Beytenu party, wrote on X.

“The decision led to a Palestinian state, a Saudi nuclear [programme] and F-35 planes for Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”

In recent days, as the United States House of Representatives approached a potential vote about releasing the Epstein files, President Donald Trump pivoted on the hot-button topic.

Trump and members of his administration had sought to undermine efforts to release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And Trump has been dismissive of the push to make the files public, calling the case “pretty boring stuff” in July and repeatedly referring to it as a Democratic “hoax.”

Then, on November 16, he told House Republicans to vote in favour of the release.

His shift came after lawmakers cleared a significant hurdle on November 12, netting 218 signatures on a petition to force a vote on a bill to release the files within 30 days. The House is expected to vote on that bill this week. Previously, it was considered unlikely the legislation would pass in the Senate; it remains to be seen whether Trump’s latest statement will cause senators to reconsider.

Epstein moved in the same social circles as Trump in the 1990s, including attending parties at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Palm Beach, Florida, club. The two were photographed together in social settings multiple times. They later had a falling out, a rift that some reporters dated to late 2007.

Palm Beach County prosecutors investigated Epstein after reports that a 14-year-old girl was molested at his mansion. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges related to soliciting prostitution from someone under 18. He received preferential treatment during the criminal investigation and served about a year in jail, largely on work release.

In 2018, The Miami Herald published an extensive investigation into the case, and the next year, Epstein was arrested on federal charges for recruiting dozens of underage girls to his New York City mansion and Palm Beach estate from 2002 to 2005 to engage in sex acts for money. He was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, and investigators concluded he died by suicide.

We asked the White House why Trump changed his stance on releasing the files. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files for years – by releasing tens of thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request” and calling for investigations into “Epstein’s Democrat friends”.

Here’s what Trump has said in 2024 and 2025 about releasing the Epstein files.

While campaigning in 2024, Trump said he would release the files

In June 2024, Fox and Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy asked Trump if he would declassify various files, including those related to 9/11 and former President John F Kennedy.

“Would you declassify the Epstein files?” Campos-Duffy said.

“Yeah, yeah, I would,” Trump said.

The clip spread on social media, and Trump’s campaign account also shared it.

🚨 President Trump says he will DECLASSIFY the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files pic.twitter.com/JalLWFkRDZ

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) June 3, 2024

During the same interview, Trump also said, “I guess I would.” He added, “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phoney stuff in there because there is a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world, but I think I would.”

On a September 2024 episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, during a discussion about releasing some of the Epstein documents, Trump said, “Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it.” He added that he’d be “inclined” to do it and said, “I’d have no problem with it.”

In 2025, Trump was dismissive of the Epstein files

Early in the second Trump administration, Trump officials –  including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who became the FBI director – said they supported releasing the files.

In late February at a White House event, Bondi released what she called the “first phase” of “declassified Epstein files” to conservative influencers. It largely consisted of documents that had already been made public.

In a July 12 Truth Social post, Trump expressed frustration about the Epstein files. Speaking to reporters on July 15 on the White House lawn, Trump said the files “were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden.” We rated that claim Pants on Fire.

Trump said the FBI should focus on investigating other issues, such as voter fraud, and that his administration should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”.

In a July 16 interview with Real America’s Voice, a conservative outlet, Trump said, “I think in the case of Epstein, they’ve already looked at it and they are looking at it and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible. But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years.”

On August 22, a reporter asked Trump if he was in favour of releasing the files.

“I’m in support of keeping it open,” he said. “Innocent people shouldn’t be hurt, but I’m in support of keeping it totally open. I couldn’t care less. You got a lot of people that could be mentioned in those files that don’t deserve to be, people – because he knew everybody in Palm Beach. I don’t know anything about that, but I have said to Pam (Bondi) and everybody else, give them everything you can give them because it’s a Democrat hoax.”

On September 3, a reporter asked Trump a question about efforts to release the Epstein files and if the Justice Department was protecting any friends or donors.

Trump said it was a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and “we’ve given thousands of pages of files”.

This month, Trump called for releasing the files

Trump came out in support of releasing the files after it became clear the House was headed in that direction.

The House Oversight Committee, on November 12, released about 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate.

Trump directed prosecutors to investigate Democrats and told Republicans to vote in favour of releasing the files.

Trump has often noted Epstein’s ties to former President Bill Clinton. In a November 14 Truth Social post, Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s involvement with Clinton.

Typically, prosecutors do not release files during an ongoing investigation, so Trump’s announcement raised questions about whether the Justice Department will withhold certain files even if Congress votes to release them.

When a reporter asked Trump on November 14 about releasing the files, he said, “I don’t care about it, released or not.”

Two days later, in a November 16 post, Trump said, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’’

More than half a million Filipinos rallied in the capital Manila on Sunday to demand accountability for a government corruption scandal that has triggered a series of protests since August.

Sunday’s protest is part of a three-day rally organised by the Philippine sect Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ). The show of force on Sunday by the influential religious bloc, popularly referred to by its acronym INC, is a complete reversal from its support of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, whom it endorsed in the 2022 presidential race.

Central to the ongoing protest is the church’s demand for a “proper and transparent” investigation into the alleged misuse of multibillion-dollar funds for flood control projects under Marcos’s watch.

But it also exposes the escalating fight for political power between Marcos and his former ally and running-mate, Vice President Sara Duterte, whom the religious group continues to support. Marcos and Duterte had a dramatic falling out just several months after their landslide victory.

The corruption scandal has only turbocharged the political feud between the country’s two highest elected leaders and turned into calls for Marcos’s removal before his term ends in 2028.

The removal movement is being led by supporters of Duterte as well as some elements of the INC and other groups. The INC insists it is not joining calls for Marcos’s removal, but the presence of its members on the streets of Manila means they are a formidable force to reckon with.

Why are people protesting in the Philippines?

The outrage over so-called ghost infrastructure and flood control projects has been mounting in the Southeast Asian country since Marcos put the issue centre stage in a July state of the nation address that followed weeks of deadly flooding.

Government engineers, public works officials and construction company executives have testified under oath in Congressional hearings that members of Congress and public works officials took kickbacks from construction companies to help them win lucrative contracts by rigging the bidding process.

According to government data, the equivalent of $26bn was spent on flood control and mitigation programmes over the last 15 years. Of that amount, officials testified that at least 25 to 30 percent has been funnelled as kickbacks.

So far, the government has only managed to freeze $3bn in assets suspected of being linked to the huge bribery scheme.

A series of televised investigations and Congressional hearings detailing the alleged corruption further heightened public anger.

Many have criticised Marcos for acting too slowly to stop the corruption, if not for tolerating those deals carried out by his political allies, including his cousin, the once-powerful Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Last week, a former congressman and a deputy of Romualdez, who fled the country after being implicated over millions of dollars in missing infrastructure funds, released a video claiming Marcos himself was involved, something the administration has derided as “wild speculation”.

What has been the toll of the floods?

Sunday’s protests come on the heels of two powerful typhoons that left more than 250 people dead, many due to flooding and failed flood control infrastructure.

They also come just days after Marcos promised arrests in the corruption case before Christmas.

What is the INC?

The INC, which claims nearly three million members, was founded in 1914 in the Philippines by Felix Manalo, a former devout Catholic and Methodist convert.

In comparison, the predominant Catholic Church has an estimated 86 million followers.

Unlike mainstream religious groups, which adhere to the principle of the division of church and state, the INC endorses candidates during elections and encourages its members to vote as a bloc, making it a potent political force.

In 2022, it endorsed the Marcos-Duterte tandem during the elections. In 2016, its leadership also endorsed Rodrigo Duterte before his win.

When the Marcos-Duterte alliance broke up, the INC sided with Duterte.

In January this year, the INC held a huge rally in Manila opposing Vice President Duterte’s impeachment, which was seen as having the silent endorsement of Marcos.

During the almost 20-year rule of Marcos’s father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, the INC was also seen as a supporter of his presidency.

Despite their political differences, Marcos declared a special non-working holiday to celebrate the INC’s 111th founding anniversary on July 27, 2025, demonstrating what observers point to as the group’s enormous political clout.

“The influential Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) is not missing a beat,” political analyst Alex Magno wrote in a recent column in the Philippine Star newspaper.

What are the demands of the INC-led protest?

The INC-led protest, which has been scheduled for three days from Sunday, November 16 to Tuesday, November 18, is demanding “proper and transparent” investigation of the corruption scandal and “better democracy”.

“A lot of people are getting flooded because of the corruption, and as a result people are dying,” Edwina Kamatoy, one of the protesters, told Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo, who is reporting from Manila.

Aries Cortez, another protester, complained that the government investigation so far is being selective and “is not going anywhere”.

The protest is being held at the Quirino Grandstand by the Manila Bay in the Philippine capital.

As of 08:00 GMT on Monday, the second day of the protest, an estimated 300,000 protesters have gathered at the park, according to the Manila risk reduction and management office.

On Sunday, the Philippine National Police said they are deploying at least 15,000 personnel throughout the duration of the protest.

The protesters say they are not demanding the ouster of Marcos. But many in their ranks have openly expressed their disdain for the Marcos presidency, particularly after the ICC arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Who are the other groups currently protesting against Marcos?

About 2,000 people, including retired generals, held a separate anticorruption protest late on Sunday at the “People Power” monument in suburban Quezon City.

The smaller group of protesters, many of whom are identified as Duterte supporters, are calling for the outright resignation of Marcos from the presidency.

According to the police, up to 30,000 anti-Marcos protesters are expected at the site on Monday afternoon. But as of 08:00 GMT on Monday, only 3,000 protesters have showed up, according to News 5 television channel.

The centre-left political bloc and their civic and religious allies have pointedly skipped the rally, wary that it would only lead to the return of Duterte to power.

On Sunday, they held a separate “Run Against Corruption” protest at the University of the Philippines. Their group have also been staging smaller marches every Friday.

The previous protest in September, which also attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters, was mainly led by that centre-left bloc that called itself the “Trillion Peso March Movement”.

A separate and smaller group of protesters also managed to stage its own march near the presidential palace that day, leading to a violent police crackdown that resulted in at least one death, several injuries and dozens of arrests.

In recent days, the Catholic Church has also issued a statement calling for transparency in government, but warned against “unconstitutional” means to achieve justice.

How is the government reacting to the protest?

In a radio interview on Monday, Presidential Spokesman Dave Gomez dismissed as “a very small group” those who want Marcos to be kicked out of office, adding that those calling for the president’s resignation are likely to be implicated in the ongoing probe.

Gomez also said the government is monitoring people who are seeking to destabilise it.

He dismissed the recent allegations of former Congressman Zaldy Co, who directly implicated the president in the bribery case.

“As the president said, he will not even dignify the accusations,” Gomez added, pointing to the “numerous loopholes” in them.

Late on Monday, the Palace announced that Marcos’s executive secretary and budget secretary had resigned, after both officials were accused of having links to the bribery scandal.

How will it affect Marcos Jr’s government?

While Filipinos are united in anger towards the Marcos administration, they are sharply divided on the calls for the president’s removal.

Some are wary that a takeover by Vice President Sara Duterte would not lead to any substantive change, given that she is also facing allegations of corruption.

A wide philosophical disparity between the two opposition forces, however, has prevented them from uniting against Marcos. More often, the centre-left bloc has emerged as fiercely more anti-Duterte than anti-Marcos, putting them in a sometimes awkward political position.

In a statement before the INC-led protest, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner Jr also made it clear that the military will not support any efforts to subvert the constitution, making Marcos’s removal from office unlikely.

What’s next?

Meanwhile, the so-called Trillion Peso March Movement, which organised the September 21 anticorruption rally in Manila, has announced that it will hold its own rally on November 30.

The group said it aims to “transform a prayer rally into a movement” for the prosecution of all those involved in the ongoing corruption scandal.

The group is seen as a defender of the 1987 Constitution that helped pave the way for the restoration of democracy in the country of more than 110 million people.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is heading for a sweep in the legislative assembly elections in the eastern state of Bihar.

The election in India’s third-most populous state, with 74 million registered voters across 243 assembly constituencies, has been viewed as a key test of Modi’s popularity, especially among Gen Z: Bihar is India’s youngest state.

Vote counting concluded on Friday after two phases of voting on November 6 and November 11.

Here is more about the election results and what they mean.

What was the result of the Bihar election?

As of 5:30pm (1200 GMT) on Friday, the NDA had won two seats and was leading in 204 out of 243, while the opposition Mahagathabandhan, or the Grand Alliance, with the Indian National Congress and the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as the main parties, was leading in just 33 seats, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is currently not part of either alliance, was leading in one seat. The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), another party that does not belong in either major alliance, had won or was leading in the remaining five seats.

BJP and allies

• Within the NDA, the BJP had won or was leading in 93 seats with a 20.5 percent overall vote share. 
• The regional Janata Dal (United) or JD(U), a key NDA constituent, had won or was leading  in 83 seats, with 19 percent votes overall.
• Another local NDA ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) or LJPRV, had won or was ahead in 19 seats.
• The Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RSHTLKM) was leading in four seats.
• The Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), or HAMS, had won or was leading in five seats.

Opposition alliance

• The Congress, India’s main opposition party, had won or was leading in five seats with 8.7 percent of the overall vote.
• The Grand Alliance’s biggest party, RJD, had or was leading in 26 seats with 22.8 percent of the vote.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation), or CPI(ML)(L), was leading in one seat.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), was ahead in one seat.

How are Tejashwi Yadav and Maithili Thakur doing?

As votes were being counted, two of the most watched constituencies were Raghopur and Alinagar.

Raghopur has long been an RJD stronghold. But for some time during counting, Tejashwi Yadav, the son of RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and the party’s de facto chief now, was trailing behind BJP candidate Satish Kumar in the Yadav family bastion. This had switched to a 13,000 vote lead for Yadav by 1200 GMT, with most votes counted. If Yadav were to still lose, it will be a historic defeat for what was, many years, the first family of Bihar. He previously won the seat in 2015 and 2020. His father has also won from Raghopur twice in the past, while his mother, Rabri Devi, has won it three times.

Popular folk singer, Maithili Thakur, representing the BJP, was leading in the Alinagar seat, with the RJD’s Binod Mishra trailing by 8,588 votes — another close contest.

What is driving the results?

Female voters

Political analysts attribute the gains for the key governing party in this election to the appeals Modi’s party has made to female voters.

In September, the BJP transferred about $880m to 7.5 million women – with 10,000 rupees ($112.70) paid directly into their bank accounts – under a seed investment programme called the Chief Minister’s Women Employment Scheme. Modi’s office said: “The assistance can be utilised in areas of the choice of the beneficiary, including agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts, tailoring, weaving, and other small-scale enterprises.”

Women make up nearly half of all eligible voters in Bihar, where women’s political participation is on the rise. Female representation in the state has historically been low. But in 2006, Bihar reserved 50 percent of seats on local bodies for women, which has boosted their political representation.

Female voter turnout in the state has often surpassed that of men since 2010. The turnout among women this time was 71.6 percent, compared with 62.8 percent for men.

Voter ID checks

The opposition has also accused the ECI of deliberately revising the official voter list to benefit the BJP via a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls over the past few months. Registered voters were required to present documents proving they were Indian nationals and legal residents of the constituency in which they voted.

As Al Jazeera reported in July, however, many of the poorest people in Bihar do not hold any of the several documents that the ECI listed as proof of identity.

The opposition argues, therefore, that this new requirement could disenfranchise poor and vulnerable groups, including disadvantaged castes and Muslims, who typically vote for the RJD-Congress alliance.

In September, the ECI removed 4.7 million names from Bihar’s rolls, leaving 74.2 million voters. In Seemanchal, a Muslim-majority area, voter removals exceeded the state average.

What is the significance of these results?

Bihar is India’s third most populous state, home to 130 million people. It sends the fifth-highest number of legislators to parliament.

The latest vote has been viewed as a key popularity test for Modi, who was sworn in for his third premiership after he won the national elections in June 2024.

But the BJP failed to secure a majority in the national election on its own, forcing it to rely on regional allies such as the JD(U) to form the government.

Since the national election, the BJP has won most major state elections, and the streak seems to be continuing in Bihar.

Zohran Mamdani will be the first Muslim-Indian mayor of New York City when he takes up the post in January 2026, following an election which has gained global attention.

Mamdani, 34, will be the city’s youngest mayor since 1892. Having entered the race as a largely unknown candidate, he won the Democratic nomination and campaigned on a promise of affordability for New Yorkers, including rent freezes, free buses and universal healthcare, gaining huge popularity among young voters.

The mayor-elect, who will be formally inaugurated on January 1, 2026, has also been a beacon for a large number of those in the city who come from immigrant backgrounds.

During a Democratic primary debate in June, his opponent for the nomination – former Democratic Mayor Andrew Cuomo – mispronounced his name several times.

“The name is Mamdani, M-A-M-D-A-N-I, you should learn how to say it because we’ve got to get it right,” he told Cuomo in the televised debate.

But what does Mamdani mean, and what is the significance of his full name, Zohran Kwame Mamdani?

Where is he from?

Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents who have citizenship of Uganda and the US. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, was born in Mumbai (then known as Bombay), India and is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a professor of anthropology, political science and African studies at Columbia University, New York. His mother, Mira Nair, is a film director who was also born in India. The family moved from Uganda to South Africa when Mamdani was five, and then to New York when he was seven.

By 2018, Mamdani had become a naturalised US citizen but also retained his Ugandan citizenship. The mayor-elect still regularly visits Uganda with his family, and most recently travelled there to celebrate his wedding to the American illustrator, Rama Duwaji, in July this year.

What does Mamdani’s name mean?

Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a name which reflects his multicultural identity.

His surname, Mamdani, is a common Gujarati name for Khoja Muslims, a sect of Islam.

Etymologically, Mamdani roughly translates to “Mohammadan”, a name for followers of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

His first name, Zohran, has both Arabic and Persian origins and carries several meanings, including “light”, “radiance”, and “blossom”.

His middle name, Kwame, is a traditional name of the Akan people, from the ethnic Kwa group who live primarily in Ghana as well as in parts of the Ivory Coast and Togo in West Africa.

Mamdani’s father is known to be a great admirer of the Ghanaian freedom fighter, Kwame Nkrumah, who led the fight for independence from British rule and served as the newly independent country’s first president from 1957.

What is the significance of his middle name, Kwame?

Kwame literally translates to “born on Saturday” in the language of the Akan people. It also means “wisdom” and “leadership”.

Outside of its literal definition, however, the name is strongly connected with the Ghanaian revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah, who led his country’s independence movement. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence from British rule in March 1957. Nkrumah served as its first prime minister and, later, its first president until he was overthrown in a coup in 1966.

He was influential across the continent as an advocate of pan-Africanism, an ideology which promotes unity across the African continent and within its diaspora in defiance of the imperialistic division of African nations under European colonial rule.

Under his administration, which was both nationalist and predominantly socialist, Nkrumah oversaw the funding of national energy projects and a robust national education system which also promoted pan-Africanism.

After he was overthrown in a military coup in 1966, Nkrumah lived his life in exile, settling in Guinea where he died in 1972.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) begins on Monday in the Brazilian city of Belem. About 50,000 people from more than 190 countries, including diplomats and climate experts, are expected to attend the 11-day meeting in the Amazon.

Delegates are expected to discuss the climate crisis and its devastating impacts, including the rising frequency of extreme weather.

The hosts have a packed agenda with 145 meetings planned to discuss the green fuel transition and global warming as well as the failure to implement past promises.

Andre Correa do Lago, president of this year’s conference, emphasised that negotiators engage in “mutirao”, a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous word that refers to a group uniting to work on a shared task.

“Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy,” do Lago wrote in his letter to negotiators on Sunday. “We can change. But we must do it together.”

What is COP?

COP is the abbreviation for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty adopted in 1992 that formally acknowledged climate change as a global threat.

The treaty also enshrined the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, meaning that rich countries responsible for the bulk of carbon dioxide emissions should bear the greatest responsibility for solving the problem.

The UNFCCC formally went into force in 1994 and has become the basis for international deals, such as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, designed to limit global temperature increases to about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

The first COP summit was held in the German capital, Berlin, in 1995. The rotating presidency, now held by Brazil, sets the agenda and hosts the two-week summit, drawing global attention to climate change while trying to corral member states to agree to new climate measures.

What’s on the agenda this year?

Brazil wants to gather pledges of $25bn and attract a further $100bn from the global financial markets for a Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), which would provide financing for biodiversity conservation, including reducing deforestation.

Brazil has also asked countries to work on realising past promises, such as COP28’s pledge to phase out fossil fuel use. Indeed, the Brazilian government’s overarching goal for this COP is “implementation” rather than setting new goals.

“Our role at COP30 is to create a roadmap for the next decade to accelerate implementation,” Ana Tonix, the chief executive of COP30, was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper.

At a summit last week before COP30, Brazilian President Lula Inacio Lula da Silva said: “I am convinced that despite our difficulties and contradictions, we need roadmaps to reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels and mobilise the resources necessary for these objectives.”

In a letter to negotiators released late on Sunday, Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said the 10-year-old Paris Agreement is working to a degree “but we must accelerate in the Amazon. Devastating climate damages are happening already – from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, super typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines to a tornado ripping through southern Brazil.”

Not only must nations do more faster but they “must connect climate action to people’s real lives”, Stiell wrote.

COP30 is also the first to acknowledge the failure to so far prevent global warming.

Who will participate?

More than 50,000 people have registered to attend this year’s COP in Belem, including journalists, climate scientists, Indigenous leaders and representatives from 195 countries.

Some of the more prominent official group voices will include the Alliance of Small Island States, the G77 bloc of developing countries and the BASIC Group, consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

In September, United States President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that climate change was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, based on “predictions … made by stupid people”.

Trump’s aggressive approach to deny the climate crisis has further complicated the agenda at the conference, which will have no representation from Washington. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement twice – once during his first term, which was overturned by former President Joe Biden, and a second time on January 20, 2025, the day his second term began. He cited the economic burden of climate initiatives on the US. Trump has called climate change a “hoax”.

The US historically has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas than any other country. On an annual basis, however, the biggest carbon polluter now is China.

COP30 organisers have been criticised for the exorbitant prices of hotel rooms in Belem, which has just 18,000 hotel beds. Brazil’s government has stepped in, offering free cabins on cruise ships to poorer nations in a last-minute bid to ensure they can attend.

As of November 1, only 149 countries had confirmed lodging. The Brazilian government said 37 were still negotiating. Meanwhile, business leaders have decamped to host their own events in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has also been slammed for clearing forest to build a new road to reach the conference venue.

What progress has been made since last year’s summit?

Renewables, led by solar and wind, accounted for more than 90 percent of new power capacity added worldwide last year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Solar energy has now become the cheapest form of electricity in history.

Meanwhile, one in five of new cars sold around the world last year was electric, and there are now more jobs in clean energy than in fossil fuels, according to the UN.

Elsewhere, the International Energy Agency has estimated that global clean-energy investment will reach $2.2 trillion this year, which would be about twice as much as on fossil fuel spending.

At the same time, global temperatures are not just rising, they are climbing faster than ever with new records logged for 2023 and 2024. That finding was part of a study done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27C (0.49F) each decade, almost 50 percent faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2C (0.36F) per decade.

The world is now on track to cross the 1.5C threshold by 2030, after which scientists warn that humanity will trigger irreversible climate impacts. Already, the planet has warmed by 1.3C (2.34F) since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

At the same time, governments around the world spend about $1 trillion each year subsidising fossil fuels.

At a preparatory summit with dozens of heads of state and government, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees.”

“Science now tells us that a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5 limit – starting at the latest in the early 2030s – is inevitable. We need a paradigm shift to limit this overshoot’s magnitude and duration and quickly drive it down,” he said on Thursday.

“Even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past irreversible tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions and amplify threats to peace and security.”

How did climate change affect the world in 2025?

The India-Pakistan heatwave began unusually early, in April this year. By June, temperatures had reached a peak of about 48C (118.4F) in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Hundreds of lives were lost, and crops were decimated.

Europe also faced extreme heat this year. Over the summer, the region endured a heatwave that pushed cities like Lisbon past 46C  (114.8F). In London, a prolonged period of elevated temperatures in late June caused an estimated excess 260 deaths.

At the same time, Mediterranean wildfires ravaged large tracts of Southern Europe with more than 100,000 people evacuated and dozens of deaths.

Turkiye suffered one of its worst droughts in decades, hitting agricultural areas. Rainfall dropped by up to 71 percent in some areas compared with the previous year, stressing ecosystems and energy and food production.

On Monday, Egyptians will head to the polls in the first of a two-phase process aimed at electing a new House of Representatives. Expatriates already voted on November 7 and 8.

Egypt has taken an increasingly proactive role regionally as of late, joining Qatar as a key negotiator for the ceasefire in Gaza. The country has also deployed Foreign Ministry representatives to Lebanon in recent weeks.

The elections for the House come on the back of last year’s Senate elections and are expected to be the final elections in President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s third term.

So why is this significant? Read on, and find out.

What is happening?

Monday will see the start of voting for the 596-member House of Representatives.

Of those seats, 284 are individual seats, while another 284 are filled via a closed party list system. Twenty-eight more members are appointed by presidential decree. A quarter of the seats must be held by women.

There are 70 counting committees, and voting will be conducted across 5,606 polling stations, according to Egyptian media. Fourteen governorates vote in the first phase and 13 vote in the second.

Results for the voting may not be fully known before the end of December.

Phase one includes the governorates of Alexandria, Assiut, Aswan, Beheira, Beni Suef, Fayoum, Giza, Luxor, Matrouh, Minya, New Valley, Qena, Red Sea, and Sohag.

Phase two includes Cairo, Daqahlia, Damietta, Gharbia, Ismailia, Kafr El-Sheikh, Menoufia, North Sinai, Port Said, Qalyubia, Sharqia, South Sinai, and Suez.

Phase one results will be announced on November 18.

If phase one requires run-offs, voting will be held internationally over the first two days of December and then in Egypt on December 3 and 4, with results announced on December 11.

Phase-two voting for Egyptians abroad will take place on November 21 and 22. Voting inside Egypt will take place on November 24 and 25, with results announced on December 2.

In case of phase-two run-offs, voting will take place on December 15 and 16 abroad and 17 and 18 inside Egypt, with the final results announced on December 25.

Who is running?

First, voting has to be broken down by “party-list constituencies” and individual candidates. Each group is competing for 284 seats.

The party-list constituencies in Egypt divide the country into four areas. Cairo and the Central and Southern Delta has 102 seats. North, Central, and South Upper Egypt has 102 seats. The Eastern Delta and Western Delta have 40 seats apiece.

Then, individual candidates are running for another 284 across 143 constituencies.

The electoral lists are closed, meaning that parties must be approved to run.

The current lists include 12 political parties plus the Coordination Committee of Parties’ Youth Leaders and Politicians, who will compete for the 284 party-list seats. The National List for Egypt, the Generation List, the Popular List, Your Voice for Egypt List, and the Egypt Call List are seen as some of the bigger parties running.

How did expat voting go?

Ahram Online reported that it went smoothly.

A total 139 electoral committees were set up in 117 countries. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry also set up 24-hour operation rooms in every mission to coordinate with the National Elections Authority in Cairo.

The round two vote is still set to take place in late November.

How long will House members serve?

Members of the House of Representatives serve five-year terms.

The current House was elected in late 2020 for a five-year term that expires in January 2026.

Why is this vote important?

President el-Sisi is in his third and, constitutionally, final term. In 2019, the Parliament of Egypt changed the constitution to allow him to serve until 2030, and there’s a widely held belief that Parliament could once again amend the constitution, allowing el-Sisi to extend his mandate.

In recent years, el-Sisi has worked to reshape Egypt by liberalising the economy, but many Egyptians are struggling with a rising cost of living and will likely be heading to the polls with the economy in mind.

Other important issues expressed by Egyptians include health and medical care, and a new rental law that threatens to evict millions living in rent-controlled properties.

Analysts say these elections could play a significant role in the country’s future, especially after the end of el-Sisi’s term.

“[T]he 2025 parliament will serve as both a legal and political instrument through which the Egyptian authorities channel key post-2030 decisions,” Halem Henish, a legal associate at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, wrote in October. “The composition of that parliament will directly reflect the Egyptian authorities’ intentions for the future.”

The United Kingdom’s government is considering an amendment to immigration rules modelled on Denmark’s controversial policy amid pressure from the far-right groups, who have attacked the Labour government over the rising number of refugees and migrants crossing into the country.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last month dispatched officials to study the workings of the Danish immigration and asylum system, widely considered the toughest in Europe. The officials are reportedly looking to review the British immigration rules on family reunion and limit refugees to a temporary stay.

The Labour government led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been under immense pressure amid growing public opposition to immigration and the surge in the popularity of the far-right Reform UK, which has centred its campaign around the issue of immigration.

So, what’s in Denmark’s immigration laws, and why is the centre-left Labour government adopting laws on asylum and border controls championed by the right wing?

What are Denmark’s immigration laws?

Over the last two decades in Europe, Denmark has led the way in implementing increasingly restrictive policies in its immigration and asylum system, with top leaders aiming for “zero asylum seekers” arriving in the country.

First, Denmark has made family reunions tougher, keeping the bar of conditions comparatively higher than it is in allied countries. Those who live in estates designated as “parallel societies”, where more than 50 percent of residents are from so-called “non-Western” backgrounds, are barred from being granted family reunion. This has been decried by rights groups as racist for refugees’ ethnic profiling.

In Denmark, a refugee with residency rights must meet several criteria for their partner to join them in the country. Both must be age 24 or older, the partner in Denmark must not have claimed benefits for three years, and both partners need to pass a Danish language test.

Permanent residency is possible only after eight years under very strict criteria, including full-time employment.

Christian Albrekt Larsen, a professor in the Political Science department of Aalborg University in Denmark, told Al Jazeera that successive Danish governments’ restrictive policies on “immigration and integration have turned [it] into a consensus position – meaning the ‘need’ for radical anti-immigration parties has been reduced”.

Noting that “there is not one single Danish ‘model’”, but that the evolution has been a process of adjustments since 1998, Larsen said, “In general, Denmark’s ‘effectiveness’ lies in being seen as less attractive than its close neighbours, [including] Germany, Sweden, and Norway.”

Copenhagen is more likely to give asylum to those who have been targeted by a foreign regime, while those fleeing conflicts are increasingly limited in remaining in the country temporarily.

However, Denmark decides which country is safe on its own. For example, in 2022, the Danish government did not renew permits for more than 1,200 refugees from Syria because it judged Damascus to be safe for refugees to return to.

In 2021, Denmark also passed laws allowing it to process asylum seekers outside of Europe, like negotiating with Rwanda, though putting this into practice has been controversial and challenging.

Denmark has reduced the number of successful asylum claims to a 40-year low, except in 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic’s travel restrictions.

How do these differ from the UK’s current immigration laws?

The UK allows individuals to claim asylum if they prove they are unsafe in their home countries. Refugee status is granted if an individual is at risk of persecution under the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. Refugees are usually granted five years of leave to remain, with the option to apply for permanent settlement afterward.

Most migrants and refugees can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) after five years, followed by eligibility for citizenship one year later. Requirements include English proficiency and passing the “Life in the UK” test.

The UK system currently does not impose an age limit beyond 18, but requires a minimum annual income of 29,000 British pounds ($38,161), and is subject to a rise pending a review, for sponsoring partners.

Asylum seekers are excluded from mainstream welfare and receive a meagre weekly allowance. However, once granted protection, they access the same benefits as British nationals.

The UK under the previous Conservative government passed controversial legislation to enable deportation to Rwanda, but the policy has not yet been implemented due to ongoing legal challenges.

Before September this year, the UK Home Office allowed spouses, partners, and dependents under 18 to come to the UK without fulfilling the income and English-language tests that apply to other migrants. That is currently suspended, pending the drafting of new rules.

Why is the Labour government changing the UK’s immigration laws?

Facing heat from the opposition over the rising arrivals of migrants and refugees by boats, Prime Minister Starmer in May proposed a draft paper on immigration, calling it a move towards a “controlled, selective and fair” system.

As part of the proposal, the standard waiting time for migrants and refugees for permanent settlement would be doubled to 10 years, and English language requirements would be tightened.

The Labour Party, which advocated for a more open migration model, has been on the back foot over the issue of immigration.

From January through July of this year, more than 25,000 people crossed the English Channel into the UK.

The opposition has seized on this issue.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK party, has accused Labour of being soft on immigration. Farage has pledged to scrap indefinite leave to remain – a proposal Starmer has dubbed as “racist” and “immoral”.

Successive British governments have tried unsuccessfully to reduce net migration, which is the number of people coming to the UK, minus the number leaving. Net migration climbed to a record 906,000 in June 2023. It stood at 728,000 last year.

Starmer’s administration has framed the new immigration rules as a “clean break” from a system they see as overreliant on low-paid overseas labour.

A survey released by Ipsos last month revealed that immigration continues to be seen as the biggest issue facing the country, with 51 percent of Britons mentioning it as a concern. That is more than the economy (35 percent) or healthcare (26 percent).

However, at the same time, a YouGov poll found only 26 percent of people said immigration and asylum was one of the three most important issues facing their community.

Concern about immigration is a “manufactured panic”, a report published by the Best for Britain campaign group noted.

The group’s director of policy and research, Tom Brufatto, said that “the data clearly demonstrates that media exposure and political discourse are fanning the flames of anti-immigration sentiment in the UK, causing the government to lose support both to its right and left flank simultaneously.”

Is there opposition to the change within the Labour Party?

The left-leaning leaders of the Labour Party have condemned the “far-right”, “racist” approach of the British government’s moves to adapt the Danish model.

Labour MPs urged Home Secretary Mahmood to dial down her plans for a Danish-style overhaul of the immigration and asylum system.

Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that she thinks that “this is a dead end – morally, politically and electorally”.

“I think these are policies of the far right,” she said. “I don’t think anyone wants to see a Labour government flirting with them.”

Whittome argued that it would be a “dangerous path” to take and that some of the Danish policies, especially those around “parallel societies”, were “undeniably racist”.

Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, said: “Denmark’s Social Democrats have gone down what I would call a hardcore approach to immigration.

“They’ve adopted many of the talking points of what we would call the far right,” Lewis said. “Labour does need to win back some Reform-leaning voters, but you can’t do that at the cost of losing progressive votes.”

Meanwhile, members of Parliament from the traditional “Red Wall” constituencies, where the Reform UK party has a support base, are receptive to Mahmood’s plans.

The fissures grew more apparent after Lucy Powell, who won the Labour deputy leadership contest last month, challenged Starmer to soften his stance on immigration.

“Division and hate are on the rise,” Powell said last month. “Discontent and disillusionment are widespread. We have this one big chance to show that progressive mainstream politics really can change people’s lives for the better.”

How do immigration laws vary across Europe?

European countries differ widely in how they manage immigration. Some are major destinations for large absolute numbers of migrants and refugees, while others have adopted restrictive legal measures or strong integration policies.

In 2023, the largest absolute numbers of immigrants entering European Union countries were recorded in Germany and Spain, over 1.2 million each, followed by Italy and France, according to the EU’s latest Migration and Asylum report.

These four countries together accounted for more than half of all non-EU immigration to the EU.

EU member states operate within EU migration and asylum rules, and Schengen zone rules where applicable, and are bound by international obligations such as the UN Refugee Convention. But individual states apply national legislation that interprets those obligations, and in recent years, public sentiment has turned against immigration amid a cost-of-living crisis.

YouGov polling conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden found that respondents believe immigration over the past decade has been too high. In Britain, 70 percent of those surveyed said that immigration rates have been too high, according to the survey released in February.

On the other hand, countries like Hungary, Poland, and Austria, in addition to Denmark, have formed immigration policies focused on building border fences and restrictive family reunification rules, alongside expedited deportations and limits on access to social benefits.

Austrian and German ministers have referenced the Danish model as a source of inspiration for their own domestic policies.

Several EU states have also tried a version of externalising asylum processes, including Italy with Albania, Denmark with Rwanda, Greece with Turkiye, Spain with Morocco, and Malta with Libya and Tunisia.

Rights groups have criticised the EU for immigration policies that focus on border control and for policies to transfer refugees to third countries.

A months-long siege on the Malian capital, Bamako, by the armed al-Qaeda affiliate group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has brought the city to breaking point, causing desperation among residents and, according to analysts, placing increasing pressure on the military government to negotiate with the group – something it has refused to do before now.

JNIM’s members have created an effective economic and fuel blockade by sealing off major highways used by tankers to transport fuel from neighbouring Senegal and the Ivory Coast to the landlocked Sahel country since September.

While JNIM has long laid siege to towns in other parts of the country, this is the first time it has used the tactic on the capital city.

The scale of the blockade, and the immense effect it has had on the city, is a sign of JNIM’s growing hold over Mali and a step towards the group’s stated aim of government change in Mali, Beverly Ochieng, Sahel analyst with intelligence firm Control Risks, told Al Jazeera.

For weeks, most of Bamako’s residents have been unable to buy any fuel for cars or motorcycles as supplies have dried up, bringing the normally bustling capital to a standstill. Many have had to wait in long fuel queues. Last week, the United States and the United Kingdom both advised their citizens to leave Mali and evacuated non-essential diplomatic staff.

Other Western nations have also advised their citizens to leave the country. Schools across Mali have closed and will remain shut until November 9 as staff struggle to commute. Power cuts have intensified.

Here’s what we know about the armed group responsible and why it appears to have Mali in a chokehold:

What is JNIM?

JNIM is the Sahel affiliate of al-Qaeda and the most active armed group in the region, according to conflict monitor ACLED. The group was formed in 2017 as a merger between groups that were formerly active against French and Malian forces that were first deployed during an armed rebellion in northern Mali in 2012. They include Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and three Malian armed groups – Ansar Dine, Al-Murabitun and Katiba Macina.

JNIM’s main aim is to capture and control territory and to expel Western influences in its region of control. Some analysts suggest that JNIM may be seeking to control major capitals and, ultimately, to govern the country as a whole.

It is unclear how many fighters the group has. The Washington Post has reported estimates of about 6,000, citing regional and western officials.

However, Ulf Laessing, Sahel analyst at the German think tank, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), said JNIM most likely does not yet have the military capacity to capture large, urban territories that are well protected by soldiers. He also said the group would struggle to appeal to urban populations who may not hold the same grievances against the government as some rural communities.

While JNIM’s primary base is Mali, KAS revealed in a report that the group has Algerian roots via its members of the Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

The group is led by Iyad Ag-Ghali, a Malian and ethnic Tuareg from Mali’s northern Kidal region who founded Ansar Dine in 2012. That group’s stated aim was to impose its interpretation of Islamic law across Mali.

Ghali had previously led Tuareg uprisings against the Malian government, which is traditionally dominated by the majority Bambara ethnic group, in the early 1990s, demanding the creation of a sovereign country called Azawad.

However, he reformed his image by acting as a negotiator between the government and the rebels. In 2008, he was posted as a Malian diplomat to Saudi Arabia under the government of Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure. When another rebellion began in 2012, however, Ghali sought a leadership role with the rebels but was rebuffed, leading him to create Ansar Dine.

According to the US Department of National Intelligence (DNI), Ghali has stated that JNIM’s strategy is to expand its presence across West Africa and to put down government forces and rival armed groups, such as the Mali-based Islamic State Sahel, through guerrilla-style attacks and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Simultaneously, it attempts to engage with local communities by providing them with material resources. Strict dress codes and bans on music are common in JNIM-controlled areas.

JNIM also destroys infrastructure, such as schools, communication towers and bridges, to weaken the government off the battlefield.

An overall death toll is unclear, but the group has killed thousands of people since 2017. Human rights groups accuse it of attacking civilians, especially people perceived to be assisting government forces. JNIM activity in Mali caused 207 deaths between January and April this year, according to ACLED data.

How has JNIM laid siege to Bamako?

JNIM began blocking oil tankers carrying fuel to Bamako in September.

That came after the military government in Bamako banned small-scale fuel sales in all rural areas – except at official service stations – from July 1. Usually, in these areas, traders can buy fuel in jerry cans, which they often resell later.

The move to ban this was aimed at crippling JNIM’s operations in its areas of control by limiting its supply lines and, thus, its ability to move around.

At the few places where fuel is still available in Bamako, prices soared last week by more than 400 percent, from $25 to $130 per litre ($6.25-$32.50 per gallon). Prices of transportation, food and other commodities have risen due to the crisis, and power cuts have been frequent.

Some car owners have simply abandoned their vehicles in front of petrol stations, with the military government threatening on Wednesday to impound them to ease traffic and reduce security risks.

A convoy of 300 fuel tankers reached Bamako on October 7, and another one with “dozens” of vehicles arrived on October 30, according to a government statement. Other attempts to truck in more fuel have met obstacles, however, as JNIM members ambush military-escorted convoys on highways and shoot at or kidnap soldiers and civilians.

Even as supplies in Bamako dry up, there are reports of JNIM setting fire to about 200 fuel tankers in southern and western Mali. Videos circulating on Malian social media channels show rows of oil tankers burning on a highway.

What is JNIM trying to achieve with this blockade?

Laessing of KAS said the group is probably hoping to leverage discontent with the government in the already troubled West African nation to put pressure on the military government to negotiate a power-sharing deal of sorts.

“They want to basically make people as angry as possible,” he said. “They could [be trying] to provoke protests which could bring down the current government and bring in a new one that’s more favourable towards them.”

Ochieng of Control Risks noted that, in its recent statements, JNIM has explicitly called for government change. While the previous civilian government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (2013-2020) had negotiated with JNIM, the present government of Colonel Assimi Goita will likely keep up its military response, Ochieng said.

Frustration at the situation is growing in Bamako, with residents calling for the government to act.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, driver Omar Sidibe said the military leaders ought to find out the reasons for the shortage and act on them. “It’s up to the government to play a full role and take action [and] uncover the real reason for this shortage.”

Which parts of Mali is the JNIM active in?

In Mali, the group operates in rural areas of northern, central and western Mali, where there is a reduced government presence and high discontent with the authorities among local communities.

In the areas it controls, JNIM presents itself as an alternative to the government, which it calls “puppets of the West”, in order to recruit fighters from several ethnic minorities which have long held grievances over their perceived marginalisation by the government, including the Tuareg, Arab, Fulani, and Songhai groups. Researchers note the group also has some members from the majority Bambara group.

In central Mali, the group seized Lere town last November and captured the town of Farabougou in August this year. Both are small towns, but Farabougou is close to Wagadou Forest, a known hiding place of JNIM.

JNIM’s hold on major towns is weaker because of the stronger government presence in larger areas. It therefore more commonly blockades major towns or cities by destroying roads and bridges leading to them. Currently, the western cities of Nioro and gold-rich Kayes are cut off. The group is also besieging the major cities of Timbuktu and Gao, as well as Menaka and Boni towns, located in the north and northeast.

How is JNIM funded?

For revenue, the group oversees artisanal gold mines, forcefully taxes community members, smuggles weapons and kidnaps foreigners for ransom, according to the US DNI. Kayes region, whose capital, Kayes, is under siege, is a major gold hub, accounting for 80 percent of Mali’s gold production, according to conflict monitoring group Critical Threats.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gi-Toc) also reports cattle rustling schemes, estimating that JNIM made 91,400 euros ($104,000) in livestock sales of cattle between 2017 and 2019. Cattle looted in Mali are sold cheaply in communities on the border with Ghana and the Ivory Coast, through a complex chain of intermediaries.

In which other countries is JNIM active?

JNIM expanded into Burkina Faso in 2017 by linking up with Burkina-Faso-based armed group Ansarul-Islam, which pledged allegiance to the Malian group. Ansarul-Islam was formed in 2016 by Ibrahim Dicko, who had close ties with Amadou Koufa, JNIM’s deputy head since 2017.

In Burkina Faso, JNIM uses similar tactics of recruiting from marginalised ethnic groups. The country has rapidly become a JNIM hotspot, with the group operating – or holding territory – in 11 of 13 Burkina Faso regions outside of capital Ouagadougou. There were 512 reported casualties as a result of JNIM violence in the country between January and April this year. It is not known how many have died as a result of violence by the armed group in total.

Since 2022, JNIM has laid siege to the major northern Burkinabe city of Djibo, with authorities forced to airlift in supplies. In a notable attack in May 2025, JNIM fighters overran a military base in the town, killing approximately 200 soldiers. It killed a further 60 in Solle, about 48km (30 miles) west of Djibo.

In October 2025, the group temporarily took control of Sabce town, also located in the north of Burkina Faso, killing 11 police officers in the process, according to the International Crisis Group.

In a September report, Human Rights Watch said JNIM and a second armed group – Islamic State Sahel, which is linked to ISIL (ISIS) – massacred civilians in Burkina Faso between May and September, including a civilian convoy trying to transport humanitarian aid into the besieged northern town of Gorom Gorom.

Meanwhile, JNIM is also moving southwards, towards other West African nations with access to the sea. It launched an offensive on Kafolo town, in northern Ivory Coast, in 2020.

JNIM members embedded in national parks on the border regions with Burkina Faso have been launching sporadic attacks in northern Togo and the Benin Republic since 2022.

In October this year, it recorded its first attack on the Benin-Nigeria border, where one Nigerian policeman was killed. The area is not well-policed because the two countries have no established military cooperation, analyst Ochieng said.

“This area is also quite a commercially viable region; there are mining and other developments taking place there … it is likely to be one that [JNIM] will try to establish a foothold,” she added.

Why are countries struggling to fend off JNIM?

When Mali leader General Assimi Goita led soldiers to seize power in a 2020 coup, military leaders promised to defeat the armed group, as well as a host of others that had been on the rise in the country. Military leaders subsequently seizing power from civilian governments in Burkina Faso (2022) and in Niger (2023) have made the same promises.

However, Mali and its neighbours have struggled to hold JNIM at bay, with ACLED data noting the number of JNIM attacks increasing notably since 2020.

In 2022, Mali’s military government ended cooperation with 4,000-strong French forces deployed in 2013 to battle armed groups which had emerged at the time, as well as separatist Tuaregs in the north. The last group of French forces exited the country in August 2022.

Mali also terminated contracts with a 10,000-man UN peacekeeping force stationed in the country in 2023.

Bamako is now working with Russian fighters – initially 1,500 from the Wagner Mercenary Group, but since June, from the Kremlin-controlled Africa Corps – estimated to be about 1,000 in number.

Russian officials are, to a lesser extent, also present in Burkina Faso and Niger, which have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with Mali.

Results in Mali have been mixed. Wagner supported the Malian military in seizing swaths of land in the northern Kidal region from Tuareg rebels.

But the Russians also suffered ambushes. In July 2024, a contingent of Wagner and Malian troops was ambushed by rebels in Tinzaouaten, close to the Algerian border. Between 20 and 80 Russians and 25 to 40 Malians were killed, according to varying reports. Researchers noted it was Wagner’s worst defeat since it had deployed to West Africa.

In all, Wagner did not record much success in targeting armed groups like JNIM, analyst Laessing told Al Jazeera.

Alongside Malian forces, the Russians have also been accused by rights groups of committing gross human rights violations against rural communities in northern Mali perceived to be supportive of armed groups.

Could the Russian Africa Corps fighters end the siege on Bamako?

Laessing said the fuel crisis is pressuring Mali to divert military resources and personnel to protect fuel tankers, keeping them from consolidating territory won back from armed groups and further endangering the country.

He added that the crisis will be a test for Russian Africa Corp fighters, who have not proven as ready as Wagner fighters to take battle risks. A video circulating on Russian social media purports to show Africa Corps members providing air support to fuel tanker convoys. It has not been verified by Al Jazeera.

“If they can come in and allow the fuel to flow into Bamako, then the Russians will be seen as heroes,” Laessing said – at least by locals.

Laessing added that the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso, in the medium to long term, might eventually have to negotiate with JNIM to find a way to end the crisis.

While Goita’s government has not attempted to hold talks with the group in the past, in early October, it greenlit talks led by local leaders, according to conflict monitoring group Critical Threats – although it is unclear exactly how the government gave its approval.

Agreements between the group and local leaders have reportedly already been signed in several towns across Segou, Mopti and Timbuktu regions, in which the group agrees to end its siege in return for the communities agreeing to JNIM rules, taxes, and noncooperation with the military.

Zohran Mamdani has won the election to be the next mayor of New York City, knocking out political heavyweight Andrew Cuomo. In less than a year, Mamdani has gone from being a little-known state assemblyman to becoming one of the most high-profile politicians in the United States.

How did he do it, and what could happen now? Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains.

This episode features:

Joseph Stepansky | US reporter, Al Jazeera Digital

Christina Greer | associate professor of political science at Fordham University and cohost of the FAQ NYC podcast

Andres Bernal | lecturer at the School of Labor and Urban Studies of the City University of New York

On Tuesday, voters in the largest city of the United States, New York, will choose a new mayor in a race that has stirred debate across the country and drawn global interest.

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assembly democratic socialist who surprised many with his June win in the Democratic Party’s primary, is facing former Governor Andrew Cuomo, now running as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination. Republican Curtis Sliwa is among the other candidates in the race.

Here is what we know:

What’s happening on Tuesday?

Voters on both coasts of the US will cast ballots in a series of elections: gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, the New York City mayoral race, and a vote in California on a redistricting measure.

But of these electoral battles, it is the New York mayoral vote that has grabbed the most attention .

Who are the candidates in NYC?

The three leading candidates are Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa.

Zohran Mamdani

The Democratic nominee is running on a platform focused on affordability, calling for rent freezes, universal childcare, cheaper public transport, and a raise in the hourly minimum wage to $30. An immigrant, Muslim, and democratic socialist, his popularity has surged during the campaign, with nearly 370,000 early ballots already cast, and appealing strongly to young voters.

Mamdani, whose parents have Indian roots, was born in Uganda. If elected, he will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first to be born in Africa, and the first of South Asian descent.

Andrew Cuomo

Cuomo served as New York state’s governor from 2011 to 2021 and resigned after a state inquiry confirmed sexual harassment allegations by 13 women. He lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani (56 percent to 44 percent), but stayed in the race as an independent.

Curtis Sliwa

At 71, Sliwa has resisted pressure to withdraw from the race amid concerns he could split the anti-Mamdani vote. Known for his trademark red beret, he rose to prominence as the leader of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime-fighting group that became famous for its patrols of the New York subway system.

Who is leading in the polls?

The latest RealClearPolitics average shows Democratic nominee Mamdani leading the mayoral race with 46.1 percent , giving him a 14.3-point edge over Cuomo (31.8 percent ) and a 29.8-point lead over Sliwa (16.3 percent ).

US President Donald Trump and businessman Elon Musk backed Cuomo late on Monday. Whether that high-profile, last-minute support will shift voter sentiment remains uncertain.

What time do polls open and close in New York?

Polling stations across the city will open on November 4 at 6am local time (11:00 GMT) and voting will continue till 9pm (02:00 GMT on November 5).

Early voting took place from October 25 to November 2.

When will we know results?

In New York, mayoral races are usually called quickly.

This time, however, with two candidates vying for the support of the city’s mostly Democratic voters, it may take longer to determine the outcome.

The 2021 mayoral race ended quickly – Democrat Eric Adams was declared the winner soon after the polls closed.

What are the main issues and what’s at stake?

Being the US’s most diverse city, known around the world for its business and culture, makes picking a new mayor an especially important occasion.

New York’s election campaigns have mirrored the bigger national debates in the US, over identity, religion, political beliefs, and the country’s future.

Some of the key issues include:

Cost of living: The city is facing one of its tightest housing markets in decades. In 2023 the city had a vacancy rate of 1.41 percent , which means that only 14 out of every 1,000 housing units were unoccupied; 9.2 percent of all rental housing was described by city authorities as “overcrowded”. The number of new housing permits issued fell in 2024 compared with 2023.

This has made housing cost and availability a dominant issue. After a slate of California cities, New York is the costliest urban hub in the US to live in.

“Most of us are working multiple jobs, can’t make rent or rents are going up,” Tom Grabher, a city voter, told Al Jazeera.

Law and order: Serious crimes in the city, including murder, have gone down from their 17-year high in 2023. However, lower-level offences, such as shoplifting, remain higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, adding to public worries about safety and disorder.

Migration: The city has long been a magnet for people from around the world, from its historic role as a gateway for immigrants to the recent influx of asylum seekers that critics say has placed new strains on the city’s resources.

Israel and Gaza: The ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict and the city’s large Jewish and Muslim populations have made foreign policy a key issue in this race.

What has Trump said about the race?

A former New Yorker, Trump has loomed over the mayoral race for months, threatening to arrest Mamdani, deport him, and take control of the city if he wins.

On Monday, Trump urged the city’s voters on his Truth Social platform to back Cuomo, saying they had “no choice” but to vote for the former governor.

When the federal government shut down in October, Trump put on hold roughly $18bn in federal funds, although $187m from New York’s security funding has since been restored. Trump has threatened to withhold more federal aid for the city if Mamdani wins.

What other elections are taking place?

Virginia governor

All eyes are on Virginia, a state next to Washington, DC, that has been directly affected by Trump’s spending cuts and the recent government shutdown.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger is facing off against Republican Lieutenant-Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

New Jersey governor

In New Jersey, the governor’s race has centred on concerns about affordability. Although Democrats hold a voter advantage, Republicans are optimistic that Trump’s rising popularity in the state could lead to a surprise win. Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is up against Republican Jack Ciattarelli , a former state assemblyman.

California

In California, a proposed ballot measure would redraw congressional districts in a way that could benefit Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers say they introduced the plan in response to Trump’s earlier push for Texas to reshape its districts to give Republicans an advantage in five seats currently held by Democrats. If approved, the measure would effectively eliminate five Republican-held districts in California.