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BRAD PITT has revealed he was forced to rely on close friends for support during the lowest points of his bitter divorce from Angelina Jolie.

After 12 years together, the actress accused him of physical and verbal abuse while on a private jet with their six children in September 2016.

He denied the allegations and the FBI brought no charges, but a gruelling £300million, eight-year divorce battle followed.

Brad said: “When I think of the darker days, it was certainly my close relationships that I relied heavily on. Friends, dear close friends — a handful — close family, and was very open about my struggle.

“And being able to be that free with people who love you and have your back, and that you love back, is everything. It’s everything.”

Since working on his new movie, survival thriller Heart Of The Beast, Brad has realised just how he got through the losses and pain with the help of some of his A-list pals, including George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.

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In the film Brad plays a retired Special Forces veteran navigating a gruelling 60-mile trek through the Alaskan wilderness with his traumatised combat dog, Odin, after their seaplane crashes.

And it was the survival experts Brad worked with that truly opened his eyes to what he’d been through.

In a new interview from the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, Brad, 62, said: “The survivalists would tell us it’s all about little wins.

“You’re going to suffer losses, you’re going to suffer pain, but it’s just getting to the next little win.

“I thought that equated to life in that way, in the sense of when we are struggling and going through many challenges, just getting to that next little win, not thinking about the big picture, just that next little win.”

There have been plenty of wins in Brad’s career, including two Academy Awards, but his personal life has been marked by significant challenges.

After falling for Angelina on the set of action comedy Mr & Mrs Smith in 2004, he divorced actress Jennifer Aniston the following year.

The pair became known as “Brangelina” and married in front of their kids — Maddox, now 25, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 18-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox — in August 2014.

But two years later, following the heated row on a flight from their £45million Chateau Miraval in France to LA, Angelina filed for divorce.

No charges were filed by the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services closed their investigation with no finding of abuse.

In the aftermath, Brad gave up drinking for seven years, began therapy and attended Alcoholics Anonymous. He also leaned on those aforementioned friends, as well as ex-wife Jennifer.

Despite their split after four-and-a-half years of marriage, the pair were able to rebuild their friendship after Brad’s split from Angelina.

But his drawn-out divorce with the Maleficent actress, which was only settled in December 2024, caused a rift with his children.

Last month, his daughter Zahara followed in the footsteps of her siblings Shiloh and Maddox in legally dropping Pitt from her surname.

Vivienne has also filed to change her name, with the court hearing set for next month.

While Brad has declined to comment on the news, he appears to be in a good place after finding love with Ines de Ramon.

He was first linked to the 33-year-old jewellery exec in late 2022, when they were spotted at a concert.

By February 2024, Ines had moved into Brad’s California mansion and they were “happier than ever”.

And this summer, the couple were spotted attending Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s New York wedding.

Ines also accompanied Brad to the premiere of Heart Of The Beast in Nashville last month.

He says one of the greatest things about his new movie was starring alongside six-year-old German Shepherd, Uber.

Brad and the former search and rescue dog, who plays Odin, were given just three weeks to get to know each other before filming.

The actor would sit in Uber’s large kennel answering emails and making calls so the dog would get used to having him around.

Brad, who owns three dogs (Jacques, Blackout Superstar and a recent unnamed rescue), laughed: “Listen, spending a day with the dog just makes things a little better. It wasn’t without its complications. You know, there were days that amazed us.”

Despite being set in Alaska, the movie was shot on New Zealand’s South Island in 45 days.

For more adventurous scenes involving stunts, Odin was played by one of Uber’s three sons, but Brad primarily filmed with Uber.

He said: “We had a short time to shoot this film. We decided a plan of attack — whatever the dog does, we’re going to follow it. So some days, it was just incredible. I did have a really moving experience with Uber, we bonded quickly. We tried to make every day a play day for him.

“There were times he would do things that were just amazing that were not in the script.

“At the same time, there were days when the bees are buzzing and possums are coming down the hill, and things are just much more interesting in the woods than what’s going on here for my co-star.

“I had to be pretty adept at being actor-dog trainer-actor-dog-trainer in the middle of the scene. Thank God for editing!”

Brad’s secret weapon was boiled chicken, Uber’s favourite treat.

The star, who rescued a stray greyhound-mix while filming Seven Years In Tibet in Argentina in 1996, joked: “I can’t smell boiled chicken to this day. That was his favourite.”

While New Zealand’s glaciers, lakes and mountains provided a stunning backdrop, filming in such a rugged location had its drawbacks.

Brad and the crew had to spend 12-hour days outside in the wet and cold, with no heated trailers to rest in.

The actor would sit on logs between takes alongside Uber, who Brad insists is the real star.

He said: “He was pretty cool. He was first on the call sheet. He was priority number one, but he was pretty cool all the way through.

“Working with a dog was really kind of beautiful, it was kind of wonderful. And surprisingly easier than you would think.”

The presence of dogs on set brought welcome relief to an otherwise emotionally intense shoot.

Brad said: “Every day was fun. We tried to do the same thing. We’d roll up on set at six in the morning, and there is one of our dog whisperers just playing catch with Uber.

“It was just such a beautiful sight in the field.”

The story at the heart of the movie — of a man relying on the bond with his dog to get through his darkest days — left Brad with a broader message.

He said: “Yes, it’s a survival story, but ultimately it’s a love story.

“I think we could spend more time looking at where we are the same  — what binds us? What connects us?

“Then I think we could listen better through these divisional lines. But maybe just start taking care of the people around us and making sure they’re OK.

“And if everyone did that, I’d say that’s a good place to start.”

Alora, Spain – The train chugs steadily out of Malaga station, its rhythmic clatter carrying it inland towards the mountains of the Guadalhorce Valley, where whitewashed villages cling to hillsides.

Beyond the window, pomegranate trees grow close to the tracks. Palms and cypress trees stand alongside young orange saplings planted in neat rows and, farther out, olive groves whose leaves shimmer between green and silver in the breeze. Above the rugged mountains, small white clouds float across an immense blue sky, like pieces of popcorn.

Over the train’s rattle, an announcement in Spanish comes through the speakers: “The next station is Aljaima.”

The name derives from the Arabic al-khaima, meaning “the tent”, a small echo of another language, another time.

And then Alora, where the town rises around a rocky hill crowned by the remains of an old fortress. Some etymologists suggest the town’s ancient name may derive from the Arabic al-lawra, loosely translated as “the light”.

The railway station is quiet in the midday heat.

A large black pick-up truck rumbles into the station car park and stops. Henrietta Szovati, a British-Hungarian Muslim, steps out, having driven down from the mountains to collect provisions.

Dressed in a loose blue shirt and cream trousers, she offers a warm embrace. Silver earrings dangle beside her face, and a sea-blue scarf is wrapped around her hair like a turban. A pair of red-framed spectacles rests on top.

She apologises for the truck’s state. Dust has settled on the dashboard, and bits of dried grass have found their way inside. “It is a working vehicle,” she says, more accustomed to hauling things across farmland than ferrying visitors from railway stations.

For the past two years, she and her husband, Ajmal Masroor, a therapist and imam, have been transforming an old farmhouse and its surrounding land into the House of Andalus. The project aims to bring people closer to southern Spain’s Islamic history and the natural world.

Nearly 400 olive trees dot the 14 hectares (35 acres). She wants to plant more and make it a thousand-tree olive grove, she says with a smile, glancing out of the truck’s open window.

The road winds higher into the mountains. Wildfires, Henrietta says, swept through parts of the surrounding region at the height of summer, and the landscape still bears the season’s harshness. Reddish-brown earth gives way to patches of parched scrub and exposed rock, while slabs of silvery-grey stone jut sharply from the slopes.

“That’s slate,” Henrietta explains, pointing through the windscreen. The Spanish word is pizarra, she adds, the same name as the neighbouring town.

Oranges flourish here, as do figs and avocados. And mangoes that are better than those from South Asia, Henrietta emphatically declares.

As we drive further into the mountains, Henrietta gestures towards a neighbouring property. “That’s my neighbour, Juan Garcia.”

Henrietta buys lemons, avocados and honey from him. Sometimes he comes over to help with the olives. It’s this sense of community and neighbourliness she found harder to come by in Britain, where she has lived since 2001, marrying Ajmal a year later.

“I feel like an outsider there. I’m still not ‘one of us’ after more than 20 years.”

As a Muslim and as a European, she says, Spain feels familiar in a way no other place does. Hungary was never an option, she adds, describing its government as “racist and right-wing”. And in Britain, she says, being Muslim can feel unavoidably political, her faith viewed through headlines and public arguments about Islam.

In the mountains above Alora, she feels her neighbours meet her first as Henrietta: the woman who lives up the track and joins in village life.

“Practising Islam here is just easier,” she adds.

Yet Spain is not immune to the political currents sweeping across Europe. The far-right Vox party has made opposition to immigration and what it calls the “Islamisation” of Spain central to its campaigning, raising questions about how secure that sense of belonging might be.

With a sigh, Henrietta acknowledges that being Muslim can be difficult anywhere in the world today. But she prefers to focus on what she can build, rather than on political circumstances beyond her control. “Circumstances change, but community, connections and faith don’t,” she says.

For her, that means building relationships with neighbours, even when they hold different beliefs. A sense of community, she argues, is forged through everyday encounters rather than political rhetoric.

On a visit to Juan Garcia’s home, his 79-year-old mother, Maria, is curious about the scarf wrapped around Henrietta’s hair.

The women are standing in Maria’s living room, its shutters drawn against the afternoon sun. A portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall.

Henrietta explains that she is Muslim and that covering her hair is part of her faith, a way to feel closer to God. Maria is Catholic. The conversation turns to the Virgin Mary, who also covered her hair.

But Maria insists all that matters is being a good person. If you cannot be good, none of the outward signs of faith means very much.

There is no awkwardness between them, no need to defend or explain their beliefs. The conversation moves on.

It is such ordinary encounters that have made Andalucia feel like home, Henrietta says. But her connection to this part of Spain runs deeper than the friendships she is making. It also stems from a deep respect for a history that stretches back more than 1,000 years.

For British Muslim travel writer and historian Tharik Hussain, author of Muslim Europe, the fascination is understandable. Al-Andalus was the medieval Muslim-ruled territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal. Its heartland lay in the south, in what is now Andalucia, home to cities such as Cordoba, Seville and Granada, where surviving monuments still evoke a period when Muslims helped shape European civilisation.

Its eventual loss, he says, has given it an almost “Atlantis-like aura” in the Muslim imagination, a longing reflected in Muslim literature over the centuries, from the 17th-century historian al-Maqqari to the 20th-century poet Allama Iqbal.

For nearly eight centuries, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula, leaving behind palaces and fortresses with horseshoe arches, intricate zellij tilework, carved yeseria plasterwork, and curling Arabic calligraphy. Their legacy endured in irrigation channels known as acequias (from the Arabic al-saqiya), scholarship, language and traditions that continued to shape Spain long after the fall of Granada in 1492.

Britons have long headed to Andalucia in search of a place in the sun. But among those putting down roots here are Muslims drawn by something more: The chance to reconnect with a history in which Islam was part of Europe, and to build lives where their faith feels less like a defining difference.

Yet the Andalucia they are entering is not a vanished kingdom waiting to be rediscovered; it is modern Spain, with its own economic pressures, social divisions, and complicated relationship with the past.

What happens when the dream of al-Andalus meets the realities of living here?

Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – Fawza Awad, a 75-year-old widow, couldn’t hold back her tears as she described the living conditions she has endured since being displaced from the Tulkarem refugee camp in January 2025 – a result of an Israeli military operation that targeted refugee camps in the northern West Bank, forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

With little money, Fawza and her family found shelter where they could: a small, unfinished house in Tulkarem belonging to her daughter. She currently lives in a portion of the structure alongside her son, his wife, and their child.

The family previously relied on limited financial and food assistance provided by the World Food Programme (WFP), but has not received aid in the past five months.

The UN agency officially announced a 50 percent reduction in the number of food aid recipients in the occupied West Bank in September, citing “critical funding constraints”, the result of reduced funding from international funders. Food needs, conversely, have more than doubled since 2023, when Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, and increased attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

The WFP noted at the time that approximately 900,000 people in the West Bank are currently suffering from food insecurity.

In a statement given to Al Jazeera, the WFP confirmed that some families had stopped receiving aid before the official announcement in September.

Fawza and her family have been left to fend for themselves. There is no prospect of returning to her old home – she says that the Israeli army has completely demolished the structure, replacing it with a wide road to facilitate the movement of its military vehicles.

She added that one of her sons has been detained by Israel since 2024, while her other sons, who previously worked inside Israel, are now all unemployed.

“I suffer from asthma and high blood pressure, requiring monthly medication that costs at least 200 shekels ($64), an expense no one covers for me. We used to receive modest food aid barely enough for two or three people, but now that has stopped completely,” Fawza told Al Jazeera.

‘Not even bread’

Not far away, in the al-Muwahhad School building in the Thannabeh suburb of Tulkarem, more than 1,000 Palestinians displaced from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps are sheltering, having found nowhere else to go and unable to pay rent.

Among them are Rabab Qasim, 47, her husband Talib Abu Sarriya, 72, and their three children. For the second consecutive year, they have been living in a small, 30-square-metre (320sq-foot) room on the ground floor of the school, with no source of income and totally reliant on aid.

For the past three months, the family has received no aid whatsoever following the WFP food assistance cut.

“I suffer from a herniated disc in my back, requiring monthly treatment that costs 300 shekels ($96) – an amount I cannot afford,” Rabab said. “I also need physical therapy, which I have never been able to access because I cannot pay for it. I sleep on a worn-out mattress on the floor; all I wish for is to be able to buy a bed.”

Talib told Al Jazeera that the family are often unable to find bread or a meal, and frequently go to sleep hungry. It’s a far cry from their former life in the Tulkarem refugee camp, where he once owned a small vegetable stall. It was a modest livelihood, but one that gave them enough to get by.

Alone in the struggle

The WFP has blamed increasing Israeli pogroms and forced displacements in the West Bank for devastating livelihoods, deepening hunger, and pushing families into even more severe crises. The latest quarterly food security analysis conducted by the WFP indicates that 76 percent of Palestinian households in the West Bank have experienced a significant decline in income.

According to the analysis, 12 percent of the population has poor food consumption, and one-third of households cannot afford a healthy diet due to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions. Rural areas and the governorates in the southern occupied West Bank have been the hardest hit.

Said al-Amour, 61, a resident of Khirbet al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, told Al Jazeera that he and his 14-person family haven’t received any assistance from the WFP for the past seven months.

In April 2025, while confronting repeated attacks by settlers on the village, Said says he was shot by a settler. The injury resulted in the amputation of his leg and a permanent disability; he continues to face periodic assaults and beatings whenever he encounters the settlers – part of the ongoing pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“They are trying to steal our land. I refuse to let them take it, and I will continue to defend it, but I am paying a heavy price. Now, they have cut off the aid I used to receive that helped my family remain steadfast here,” he told Al Jazeera.

Due to the amputation of his leg, al-Amour requires monthly medical treatment costing at least 1,200 shekels ($385), an expense that he cannot afford. He has no source of income other than a few olive trees, which settlers frequently attempt to seize.

Collapse of livelihoods

In cooperation with its partners, the WFP still provides assistance to 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank through cash transfers, food vouchers, direct food supplies, livelihood programmes, and nutritional services.

However, the WFP told Al Jazeera that it simply does not have the resources to cover the needs of all the families in the West Bank requiring assistance.

“The cessation of aid does not imply that a beneficiary is ineligible; rather, it is a broad decision affecting all current beneficiaries, regardless of the outcome of their individual assessment,” the WFP said. “It is possible that changes may occur, and aid could be reinstated for some beneficiaries; in such cases, they would be contacted and notified via text message.”

Economist and human rights activist Ubai Aboudi told Al Jazeera that the West Bank is facing a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the loss of the WFP food aid, as well as a financial crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel has completely withheld the customs revenues it collects on behalf of the PA since May 2025, leaving the authority unable to pay public sector salaries.

Aboudi noted other factors, such as the tens of thousands of Palestinians previously employed in Israel and illegal settlements in the West Bank who have been out of work since October 2023, when Israel stopped giving them work permits.

He also added that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian and international NGOs, including the suspension of registration for 37 international organisations and the closure of some local groups, have further limited the ability to provide humanitarian assistance.

“Around half a million Palestinian families need food assistance, while the actual need may be greater,” Aboudi said. “With aid declining from the World Food Programme and other sources, many families are unable to secure food.”

Taiz, Yemen – It was approaching 10:30am in the dialysis centre of the Republican Hospital in Taiz when a machine began filtering excess fluids, toxins and salts from the blood of Omar Mukhtar Hammoud.

The 16-year-old suffers from kidney failure and is one of 270 patients who regularly receive dialysis at the centre in the government-held city in southwest Yemen. But with essential medical supplies and fuel running critically low under the renewed Houthi siege, doctors fear they may soon be unable to provide the treatment that keeps their patients alive.

Dr Essam Mahyoub Dahan, the centre’s director, warned that a complete shutdown could happen within days.

“Because of the siege and the shortage of diesel and medical solutions, we have recently been forced to reduce dialysis sessions from four hours to just two and a half,” Dahan told Al Jazeera. “We know this is not adequate, but we have no choice if we are to keep the centre operating for as long as possible before it shuts down completely.”

Dahan said the centre’s remaining stocks of specialised dialysis solutions were also close to running out.

The supplies, which are expensive, are normally provided by the Yemeni Ministry of Health every three months. But the latest delivery which was due earlier this month  failed to arrive because of the Houthi siege on Taiz city. It began in the first week of October after Houthi advances in the Taiz countryside.

The city was previously under complete Houthi siege between 2015 and 2016, in the early years of Yemen’s ongoing war.

Across Taiz governorate, where battles are raging between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iranian-allied Houthi fighters, the number of patients at risk is far greater.

In an October 12 statement, the governorate’s health office warned that the continued siege and obstruction of essential supplies could endanger the lives of 1,110 patients with kidney failure. They depend on dialysis services in the governorate’s hospitals, which collectively provide about 210 dialysis sessions a day.

International humanitarian and health organisations have issued similar warnings about the impact of the siege on the already fragile healthcare system in Taiz.

On Thursday, Amnesty International called on the Houthis to immediately reopen vital roads into and around the city, warning that the closure of the main road between Taiz and the southern port city of Aden threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians with losing access to food, water and healthcare.

Fuel: A lifeline for hospitals

Taiz’s hospitals depend heavily on diesel-powered generators because much of the city’s electricity infrastructure was destroyed during the war that began 11 years ago and has not been restored.

The renewed Houthi siege has severely disrupted the entry of fuel, including the diesel needed to run hospital generators and lifesaving medical equipment.

Dr Shaheed al-Ameri, deputy director-general for technical affairs at the Republican Hospital, said the shortages have had a devastating impact on medical services.

“A very large part of this suffering is because of the shortage of diesel,” he told Al Jazeera. “We have no reserve diesel supplies. Our stocks ran out early in the siege and we are now buying it on the black market almost every day, at prices that have reached five times what they were before the siege.”

Al-Ameri warned that the longer the siege continues, the more prices will rise and the further medical services will deteriorate.

The hospital has already suspended operations in some departments, including essential units, he said.

“If this situation continues much longer, we fear we will reach a complete and comprehensive collapse of healthcare services,” he said.

The shortages are not confined to the Republican Hospital. On October 22, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that critical shortages of fuel, oxygen, medicines and medical supplies were threatening lifesaving healthcare throughout  Taiz governorate, with some hospital services already disrupted.

According to the WHO, 42 health facilities in Taiz city had reported severe shortages of essential supplies. Hospitals and ambulances require at least 156,000 litres of fuel a month to continue functioning.

The organisation also warned that diesel shortages threaten to disrupt oxygen production, water pumping, vaccine refrigeration and sanitation services, increasing the risks of disease outbreaks, particularly among displaced families and other vulnerable groups.

The United Nations has separately warned that the restrictions on supplies are bringing Taiz’s health system close to collapse and urged the Houthis to allow humanitarian assistance and essential goods to enter without obstruction.

Oxygen shortages deepen crisis

In its October 12 statement, Taiz’s health office warned that continued restrictions on fuel deliveries could lead to the shutdown of medical oxygen production plants, further endangering patients.

Taysir al-Samei, the health office’s media officer, said that would dramatically worsen the crisis.

“Many medical departments depend on oxygen, particularly operating theatres, inpatient wards, intensive care units and incubators for premature babies,” al-Samei said.

“Most hospitals have already suspended services in some units because of the shortage of diesel and the lack of necessary medical solutions, as well as shortages of medical staff who are struggling to get to work because of the lack of transport,” he added.

He warned that if conditions continued to deteriorate at the same pace, some hospitals could stop providing services in the coming days.

At the Republican Hospital, al-Ameri said that shortages were also affecting diagnostics and treatment. The availability of laboratory reagents had fallen to just 10 to 15 percent of previous levels, he said, while approximately half of the medicines normally available were now out of stock.

Prices for the remaining medicines had doubled, he said, placing them further out of reach for patients already struggling with Yemen’s worsening economic crisis.

The continued fighting and shelling around Taiz have increased the number of wounded people requiring emergency care – placing additional pressure on facilities already struggling with shortages of surgical supplies, anaesthetics and intravenous fluids.

Abdul Badi Abdulwuhab, 53, is another dialysis patient in the Republican Hospital, struggling to cope with the shorter dialysis sessions.

His voice was filled with desperation.

“Because of these measures, I suffer from weakness and I cannot bear the pain,” Abdul Badi told Al Jazeera. “Two and a half hours is not enough to remove all the fluids and toxins from my body.”

Dr Dahan said that the patient’s condition had deteriorated since his sessions were shortened.

“These measures are not effective for many patients,” Dahan said. “The only solution is to end the siege and return things to the way they were.”

The first Israeli elections in four years have brought with them a record number of first-time voters – most of whom are keen to make their voices count.

But while youth around the world are leaning to the left, young adults in Israel are heading in the opposite direction, according to recent polls.

The Israeli Central Elections Committee says more than half a million voters were added to the roll since the last elections in 2022. They are aged between 18 and 22 and polls show that 80 percent of them plan to vote in the October 27 legislative election.

Although their political activism and engagement in the public sphere are limited, a survey by the think tank, Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), found that a majority of young Jewish Israelis feel that the ballot box can influence reality and shape their country’s future.

But what does the future they hope for look like?

Around three quarters of Jewish first-time voters polled identified as “right or centre-right”, according to a recent poll for Israel’s Channel 12. That’s significantly higher than the rest of the Israeli population, which has already been shifting to the right for years.

Now the title “Generation Right” is being used to reference Israel’s Jewish youth – though not the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Mainstreaming far-right views

The first Israeli elections since the October 7, 2023 attack are contentious and polarising – and they will be decisive for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival and his right-wing approach.

Critics of the longest-serving PM in Israel’s history accuse him of supporting “far-right” politicians to stay in power. They say that his handing of key government positions to extreme politicians such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich helped empower those camps and make their policies mainstream.

In 2017, Smotrich laid out his position for the future of Israel where the Israelis are the only ones who will have self-determination, whereas Palestinians will have to emigrate, stay without political representation, or be treated as “terrorists” if they refuse either of the two options. In 2022 he secured a portfolio in the defence ministry where he facilitates land grabs and empowers the illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank.

Indeed, this incitement and view of Palestinians has become more prevalent.

A recent video published by the Israeli satirist Lior Schleien shows a young man saying he would kill Arabs in Israel.

Schleien, a left-wing activist, has been visiting schools and speaking with young people often before their army service. His videos are giving Israelis, and the world, a chance to understand the younger generation.

In the video, Schleien asks the student how he proposes to kill Arabs. The answer: “Give me a knife and I will do it.”

Schleien asks whether October 7 changed his views. “I’ve always been racist,” the young man answers, adding that Arabs shouldn’t be allowed to live in the state of Israel. Even though the young man’s face is slightly covered, shielding his identity, Schleien removed the video after a public backlash.

In another town hall meeting, Schleien addresses the question of whether there are innocent people in Gaza. When asked if Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, Schleien denies it, only for a female student to ask, “Do you think it should be done?”

Schleien looks unimpressed, but the student assures him that she is asking a serious question. Her friend, next to her, chuckles.

Speaking the language of the youth

At a recent meeting of young supporters of the left-leaning Democrats party in Tel Aviv, 18-year-old Gili told the AFP news agency that she believed Israeli society had abandoned the idea of peace.

She said the scars of October 7 instilled fear among people, making it hard for them to believe peace could ever be achievable.

While the October 7 attack may have accelerated the country’s push to the right and far-right, many say Israeli society has been heading this way for years.

A survey by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth shows more than 16 percent of new voters plan to cast their ballot for far-right parties.

From a large field in southern Israel, 18-year-old Amihai was wearing a shirt with far-right minister Ben-Gvir’s photo. The event he was attending called for the establishment of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.

Talking to other young activists from a place overlooking the destroyed parts of the Gaza Strip, Amihai said he plans to vote for Otzma Yehudit, a party led by Ben-Gvir, who himself lives in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Although Ben-Gvir did not pass the threshold of the 2020 elections, he was given a central position in the 2022 government of Netanyahu.

In the years since, the minister seems to have learned to speak the language of Israel’s youth. Despite having been convicted of supporting “terror” organisations as well as other criminal offences, Israeli surveys show that a chunk of his potential supporters in this election are first-time voters.

Ben-Gvir has also made sure to use his position to lobby for his “I am not mincing my words” policies.

As a minister, he often visits Israeli jails and detention centres to threaten Palestinian prisoners as well as international activists – all the while making sure that it is caught on camera.

His videos often go viral, a move that has earned him more youth support – and not just from his usual base of settlers, such as the violent “Hilltop Youth”, some of whose members have been sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom.

The IDI survey found that social media and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram are key sources of information – often exposing young people to political content through their feeds rather than through active searching.

It is a language Ben-Gvir understands.

Authorities warn of ‘destructive winds’ and urge residents to shelter as the storm passes the island’s northeast.

Typhoon Champi has struck Taiwan, killing one person and injuring at least 350 others, as authorities warned of “destructive winds” and instructed people to stay indoors.

The storm swept past the island’s northeast on Friday, toppling trees, shutting shops and schools, cutting power to thousands of households, and forcing more than 4,300 people to evacuate from their homes.

Champi is heading towards China and Japan, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights in the region.

“From tonight through tomorrow morning conditions will be very windy and stormy everywhere,” Central Weather Administration (CWA) forecaster Lin Ping-yu said in a briefing. “Please try to stay indoors.”

Champi was briefly a super typhoon with winds of nearly 300 kilometres per hour (186 miles per hour) but has since weakened. The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported maximum winds of 185km/h (115mph).

Worse is still expected to come on Saturday. Champi could drop up to 900mm (35 inches) of rain between Thursday and Saturday, with the northeast hit hardest, the CWA said. More than 400mm fell in Yilan County on Friday.

CWA forecaster Lu Kuo-chen said the typhoon could slow near the island’s northeastern tip, prolonging its impact.

About 8,400 households in Japan’s Okinawa islands were without power on Friday afternoon, according to the Okinawa Electric Power Company. Champi is forecast to hover near Okinawa and then China’s eastern coast before turning northeast towards mainland Japan.

Champi is the latest storm in a Pacific season supercharged by El Nino.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that El Nino, a natural cycle that warms the tropical Pacific, is heading off the charts.

“The current El Nino event could be unprecedented in strength. Literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

It is expected to peak in December, with its impact lasting into 2027 and beyond.

THEY scored a resounding victory for farmers everywhere when they won Britain’s Got Talent this year.

And now the Hawkstone ­Farmers Choir want to follow their success with a place on the Glastonbury main stage — and are calling for Emily Eavis to sign them up for next year.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, one of the choir’s leaders, Katryna Shell, told how the group have their sights set on the famous festival, saying: “Our dream is to play the main stage at Worthy Farm. We’re farmers, so it’s kind of meant to be, isn’t it?

“But we haven’t had the call yet. So Emily, if you’re reading this, we’re open, we’re here, we’re listening.”

There’s no doubt that the 32-strong choir would be right at home in the Glastonbury mud and puddles.

The singers — all of whom are working farmers in their day jobs — were brought together by Sun ­columnist Jeremy Clarkson last year when he put out a casting call for a group to sing the expletive-heavy lyrics of a song for his ­Hawkstone beer advert.

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But he could never have predicted the unlikely bunch of livestock and arable experts would go on to the final of the ITV talent show, where he cheered them on from the front row as they were declared winners.

James Florey, from Witney, Oxon, said: “Jeremy is always there supporting us — the same with Kaleb Cooper and all of the Clarkson’s Farm team.

“It’s really nice knowing they’ve got our backs.

“Last week, we performed at the British Farming Awards and Jeremy made the time to come along, even though he had to leave straight afterwards.

“And when we ­finished, I saw Kaleb standing on a chair going wild.

“The fact that Jeremy came all the way down for the final — and I don’t think Britain’s Got Talent is necessarily his thing — was great.

“But he came and met us outside before we went on stage, to encourage us.

“He said, ‘I can’t believe what you guys have done and how far you’ve moved this, and the difference you are making to people’s lives.’

“But by backing us, he is also helping to get our supportive message out there, so it’s a collaborative effort.”

And it turned out the ex-Top Gear host was no less enthusiastic when it came to helping the choir celebrate their BGT win, as they revealed he sank pints with them and show judge Amanda Holden in a pub until 3am.

Katryna, from Alnwick, Northumberland, said: “How did we celebrate? We went to the pub with ­Jeremy and Amanda.

“That was a really good night — we were all out till 3am.

“And we hadn’t eaten before the final because we were so nervous.

“Then we won and I was feeling a bit jittery — it was all the excitement.

And it got to about ­mid- night and I was starving. ­Someone came in with a kebab, and it was all I could smell.

“So we left the party in search of the kebab shop, which was about five miles away, got a kebab and then came back.”

Since their win in May, the choir have been inundated with messages of support from fans both inside and outside of the farming community.

After the release of their debut ­single Absolution last month, their new album, This Is Home, follows on November 20 — and they have a UK tour beginning in March next year.

There is also the small matter of performing in front of royalty, when they take to the stage at the Royal Variety Performance next month.

But the members confirmed they won’t be undergoing a glow-up ahead of the big night and are happy to tread the boards of the Royal Albert Hall in wellies and jeans.

They also insist there is no chance of them letting fame go to their heads — because hours after rehearsing for a performance they could be back drilling crops or mucking out livestock.

“This is our glow-up,” said Katryna, gesturing to the group’s clean jeans and shirts.

“I auditioned for BGT in boots that smelled of manure. A guy interviewing me for a video was like, ‘What’s that smell?’”

She continued: “Someone asked me, ‘Do you think the fame will go to your head?’ And I said, ‘No, because every time I come away from whatever we’re doing, I’m thrown right back into farm life, mucking out ­livestock and so on.

“I’ve got three young children as well, so I’ll be looking after them.

“It is challenging and we’re all leaning on friends and family to keep everything working and safe, but we love what we do.”

Fellow farmer Ben Brooke, from March, in Cambridgeshire, said: “It has been hectic, juggling the choir and our normal day jobs. I’m an arable farmer, and I’m lucky as I have my dad in the business too, so he can step in while I’m away.

“At the moment, we are drilling the crops that will be harvested next summer.

“And then there’s running the ­people who work for us — we used to have 50 and now we have four.

“I’m trying to get involved as much as I can without going off singing all the time. That’s the main job.

“But is also so important for us to keep doing what we are doing, because it is bigger than us.

“Farming is inherently super- isolating, and it’s also quite an old-school industry, so no one seems to open up.

“For other farmers to see us having conversations and supporting each other goes a long way.

“We’ve had lots of people opening up to us online, sending us messages, and it’s important they know they are not alone. We want to have these conversations because we want to make a difference.”

James, who says he has struggled with mental health problems in the past, adds that for him joining the choir has been “like therapy”.

And he said it is more important to support farmers’ mental health now than ever before.

He went on: “It is a difficult time for farmers, and there is huge pressure because it is not the sort of industry you can just step away from and say, ‘Actually, you know what, this isn’t profitable at the momen’.

“There’s so much legacy and so much family history behind it. And people will often feel the pressure of that weighing down on them as well as all the financial burdens.

“You don’t want to be that generation that fails or lets things slide.

“Coming together as part of this group has been like therapy because everyone here understands what you are going through.

“And sharing some of our own ­stories and challenges has made ­others aware they are not alone.

“For me, this is one of the best things we’ve ever done, and you never know where it might lead. But hopefully it will be to the top of the charts.”

•  The Hawkstone Choir’s debut album This Is Home is out on November 20 and their UK tour begins in March next year.

More than 400 people are expected to gather outside the United States embassy in London on October 31 in the latest act of mass defiance against the British government’s ban on the Palestine Action group.

Protesters plan to hold placards reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” and campaign group Defend Our Juries said a parallel action will take place outside the US consulate in Edinburgh, Scotland.

More than 3,850 people have been arrested for publicly backing Palestine Action since the United Kingdom’s government proscribed it as a “terrorist” organisation in July 2025, Defend Our Juries said.

The timing of the demonstrations is calculated. In June, the Court of Appeal sided with the government and overturned a High Court ruling that had found the proscription unlawful.

On November 4 and 5, the UK Supreme Court will hear an appeal by Palestine Action cofounder Huda Ammori.

‘Arrested again and again’

Among those Al Jazeera spoke to at the group’s previous action outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court was Teresa, a former teacher-turned-activist who has been arrested multiple times for protesting against the proscription.

“It’s a badge of honour, to be able to do this for Gaza” she told Al Jazeera.

She is not alone. Those arrested at recent actions include Massive Attack’s Rob del Naja, 94-year-old human rights barrister Margaret Owen, former government adviser Jonathan Porritt and the Reverend Sue Parfitt.

Why the US embassy?

Organisers want to raise the possibility that the UK move to ban Palestine Action came under pressure from US President Donald Trump.

The proscription followed an incident in which activists spray-painted Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland. The US president labelled the action “terrorism” on his Truth Social platform and praised then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response.

During the legal challenge, it emerged that Trump and Starmer had spoken by phone twice about Palestine Action in March 2025. Starmer had requested updates from Police Scotland on the arrests and briefed Trump on developments.

The US president’s son Eric Trump also met Scottish First Minister John Swinney before the ban was announced, and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showed the Turnberry protest was discussed.

The Halloween protests will also come three days after a hearing in the trial of the Turnberry protesters at the High Court in Glasgow. Prosecutors are now seeking to have the seven defendants sentenced as “terrorists”, a move critics called “completely disproportionate”.

The same week that the prosecutors made that call, Washington designated Palestine Action a “terrorist organisation”.

Defend Our Juries said the resulting sanctions have blocked Ammori from crowdfunding for her Supreme Court challenge.

Growing opposition

This week, actors Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley and Susan Sarandon along with broadcaster Gary Lineker signed a letter published on the cover of the New Statesman magazine urging Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government to drop the “draconian” legislation.

Campaigners said the ban on the group has also in effect halted UK sales of books by the Irish novelist Sally Rooney, a Palestine Action supporter.

However, when author Sarah Helm, wife of National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, publicly declared her support for Palestine Action, the Metropolitan Police took no action. Defend Our Juries said that exposes a ban that cannot be enforced evenly.

Shami Chakrabarti, a senior figure in the ruling Labour Party, has urged the home secretary to lift the ban.

Speaking to the LBC radio station, the former shadow attorney general said it “makes a mockery” of counterterrorism law and the power to proscribe should be exceptional and kept under constant review.

“I’d better be careful what I say, or I’ll be arrested,” she added.

The government’s case

The government argued that Palestine Action’s campaign of break-ins and criminal damage at defence sites, including those linked to Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems, meets the legal threshold for proscription. The Court of Appeal described it as a covert organisation operating through secret cells.

Defend Our Juries insisted its own protests are entirely peaceful.

“This mass defiance and the mass arrests expected to follow will lay bare the fundamental rights to free expression at stake in the Supreme Court hearing just days later,” a spokesperson said.

“WE’D known each other for 60 bloody years. It was a hell of a shock.” 

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi is still coming to terms with the loss of his brother in arms, Ozzy Osbourne. 

“The night before he passed, I was talking to him — and the next day he was gone,” says the affable guitarist in his soft Brummie tones. “God, that was strange.” 

As members of the hard-rocking trailblazers, Iommi became “The Godfather Of Heavy Metal” and Ozzy “The Prince Of Darkness”. 

They came from humble backgrounds with precious little cash but a combination of inspiration and perspiration carried them to phenomenal global success. 

Recalling their first gigs together in the late Sixties, Iommi says: “We could just about afford enough petrol to get us home in the van — and to share a bag of chips. 

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“It’s mad when you think about it, but I’m so proud of what we did because we stuck to what we believed in.” 

It was Iommi, the only ever-present member, who laid the foundation on which Sabbath — and a whole new genre of music — was built. 

His immense, doom-laden riffs adorned songs like Iron Man and Paranoid, providing a platform for Ozzy’s manic vocals and wild stage antics. The best part of six decades later, Sabbath are no more but Iommi is still creating vibrant new variations on his signature sound. 

He is releasing an album under his own name filled with some of those immense riffs, called From The Dark. 

He has done it by assembling an ace band including Norwegian singer Jorn Lande, who, with his flowing locks and beard, looks every inch a Viking marauder. 

In the words of the guitarist himself, “It rocks!” 

I find myself speaking to Iommi a few days after he had visited Windsor Castle to receive his MBE from Princess Anne. 

“I don’t know how she does it,” he says of the redoubtable royal. “She was really nice, professional and relaxed.” 

For Tony, it was official recognition of not only his guitar and songwriting heroics but also of his unstinting support for hospital charities in Birmingham. 

Having been treated for lymphoma in 2012, he says “it’s been lovely to give something back” to the health sector “because they work hard and were so good to me”.  

As our chat moves back to music matters, it’s clear that the events of last summer are still very much on his mind. 

On July 5, 2025, he and fellow Sabbath founders Geezer Butler (lyrics, bass) and Bill Ward (drums) joined ailing Ozzy for one last hurrah at Villa Park in their hometown. 

The momentous Back To The Beginning shindig featured a who’s who of hard rock royalty paying their respects — Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Alice In Chains among them. 

Next Tuesday, a concert film opens in Birmingham cinemas, and the next day, it goes nationwide. 

A mere 16 days after that momentous show, Iommi phoned Ozzy for what turned out to be the last time. The next evening, on July 22, came the sad news that his bandmate had passed away aged 76. 

Describing the call, he says: “Ozzy was going, ‘I’m really tired. I just can’t seem to pull myself together’.  

“I said, ‘You’re bound to feel like that — it’s been a tough few weeks’.” Iommi adds that when Sabbath convened for the Back To The Beginning rehearsals, he wasn’t prepared for his bandmate’s declining health.. 

Poor Ozzy had been battling Parkinson’s as well as the effects of injuries caused by his quad bike accident in the UK and a fall at his LA mansion. 

Iommi says: “The last time I saw him was when we did the Commonwealth Games together (in 2022). I didn’t fully realise quite what he was going through. 

“When he was back in LA, we’d talk on the phone every other week but I didn’t get to physically see him. 

“He’d be telling me he had this pain here and that pain there — and I sort of took it with a pinch of salt. 

“I’d be saying to him, ‘Well, I’ve got a pain in my neck. I’m suffering, too’. That would be the extent of our bloody conversation!” 

Iommi recalls the moment he, Butler and Ward set eyes on Ozzy again: “We were all shocked — and it went very quiet in the room.” 

But thankfully their time rehearsing in an Oxfordshire studio proved to be a life-affirming chance to catch up and indulge in a trip down memory lane. 

Iommi says: “We sat down on the couch, the four of us, and we were having a laugh and taking the piss out of each other. 

“It felt like the old times, but then Ozzy would get tired and lose concentration.” By that stage, however, Black Sabbath were on course to perform four of their best-loved, bone-shaking numbers, War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid. 

It’s important to note that Iommi needed persuading to take part. He says: “When I was first asked to do the show, I said I didn’t want to do it.  

“We’d done a tour called The End in 2017 — and to me it was the end. 

“But then Bill (Ward) wasn’t on that tour and we hadn’t played with him for 20 years. Then they said the show was for charity, so I said, ‘Of course I’ll do it’.” 

When it came to finally appearing on stage, Iommi, Butler and Ward had to deal with a new dynamic — Ozzy stuck on a big black throne adorned with skulls and a huge bat. 

Iommi says: “It was really strange for myself, Geezer and Bill because we had Ozzy in front of us in that chair. 

“We couldn’t see him! In the past, we would watch him running around.” 

Despite that, the band played their socks off and gave their final bow after Paranoid had ended with a spectacular pyrotechnic display. 

Iommi continues: “When we came off, there was a big, chaotic backstage and I went to my dressing room and Ozzy to his. 

“But as Ozzy was leaving, they wheeled him into mine. He said he was so pleased we did it, that he’d even been able to do it and that he’d enjoyed it. 

“I thought he did an incredible job, given the state of his health.” 

If that night truly marked the end of Sabbath, Iommi had already been keeping his hand in by working on new music that is eventually appearing on From The Dark. 

There is also the not-so-small matter of the barnstorming first track on Robbie Williams’ latest album Britpop called Rocket, which Iommi co-wrote and played on. 

“That was something I never expected but really enjoyed,” he affirms. “It was so different for me to do that. 

“Robbie was great, asked a lot of questions — but he was always honourable and polite. 

“He actually asked me if I’d join him on stage when he played Birmingham but I was away at that time.” 

Iommi has another connection with Robbie in the shape of Karl Brazil, the singer’s studio and touring drummer. 

He plays on From The Dark along with bassist Becky Baldwin and the aforementioned singer Lande, who reminds Iommi of Sabbath’s other great vocalist aside from Ozzy, the late Ronnie James Dio. 

Recommended by Mike Exeter, co-producer of the album, Brazil turns in a powerhouse performance. 

“Karl’s a good player and he loves doing what he does,” says Iommi. “That’s the thing with this album — I wanted people who enjoy playing.” 

As for Lande, he worked with Iommi on sessions as far back as 2005, as well as a Ronnie James Dio tribute concert in 2010. 

“I liked Jorn’s voice and he is a nice person to get on with,” he says.  

“I had him in mind for a while so he was the obvious choice when I decided not to make an instrumental album but use a vocalist.” 

It was up to Lande to provide lyrics to songs such as the searing opener, Over The Violent Sun, and next track, Black Times, both informed by the dangerous times we live in. 

Iommi says: “When Jorn first sent me the lyrics, I was, like, ‘Blimey! This is what’s happening in the world, isn’t it?’  

“It reminded me of old Sabbath stuff like War Pigs, which was about the Vietnam War but could be about today. 

“I was happy for Jorn to do his own thing — and he came out with real power and feel.” 

This brings us to bassist Baldwin, who, like Iommi and Brazil, is from Birmingham. 

“Apart from Jorn, I wanted to keep things as local as I could. First, I asked Geezer if he wanted to play on the album but he was away so Mike (Exeter) suggested Becky.  

“The good thing is she’s a fan of Geezer. She’s got his playing style.” 

Iommi reports that Sabbath bassist and chief lyricist Butler has given his new album his seal of approval. 

“We always keep in touch and as soon as the single (World Alone) came out, Geezer emailed to say he really liked it.” 

The cinematic video for the song includes black-clad Iommi playing guitar against a backdrop of menacing black clouds. 

“To be honest, I don’t like being in videos,” he says.  

“I’m a guitar player, not an actor, and I always feel uncomfortable.” 

But he adds that the video makers were a “good bunch” and “great to work with”. 

“And all they wanted me to do was ‘just stand there and play’.” It’s fair to say that of all From The Dark’s ten tracks, World Alone has the most upbeat guitar passages. 

Iommi smiles and says: “When I started writing this album, the immediate thing for me to do was come up with a doomy riff.  

“Then I’d come up with another doomy riff, and another one — so I had to do something up-tempo to give it a break.” 

Rather than call on several of his high-profile musician mates from down the years, there’s just one special guest on From The Dark. 

He is Iommi’s close friend — Queen’s legendary guitarist, Sir Brian May, who applies an epic solo to standout track Death Wake. 

“Brian comes up to see me when he’s got time and we sit and play,” Iommi says. 

“When I told him about the album, he brought his guitar and played on Death Wake, which was really great. 

“After that, I said, ‘Play on another one’. Brian went, ‘Oh no, it’s your album and your solos are good!’” 

Iommi says he first met May more than 50 years ago “and we hit it off from day one”. 

“He’d be in a studio. When Freddie (Mercury) and everyone left and he was on his own, I’d go round to keep him company. 

“Then when I’d be doing some Sabbath stuff, Brian would come and sit with me.  

“It became a really good friendship.” 

So would they ever make an album together? I venture. 

“Do you know how many years we’ve spoken about that?” laughs Iommi.  

“Then, of course, he gets busy and I get busy. We’ve gone on and on about it for so long that it’s become a joke.” 

For now, metal fans the world over will have to make do with Iommi’s From The Dark, guest starring Brian May. 

It’s got plenty of those epic “doomy riffs” we’ve come to expect from The Godfather Of Heavy Metal. 

TONY IOMMI 

From The Dark 

★★★★☆

Taiz, Yemen – As Houthi fighters tighten their siege on the government-held southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz, women who initially organised food deliveries for soldiers defending the city have begun raising money to buy weapons and ammunition.

The initiatives have emerged spontaneously since the resumption of fighting in early September in the western countryside of Taiz governorate, between Saudi-backed forces of the internationally recognised government and the Iran-backed armed group.

At first, women volunteers came together to bake cookies for fighters on the front lines.

The aim was “to strengthen the relationship between the supportive social base and the members of the national army and pro-government popular resistance forces stationed at the front lines in defence of their besieged city, which is subjected to daily shelling in preparation for an invasion,” said Amira al-Saghir, an activist involved in the campaign.

The cookie-making initiative attracted widespread participation among women volunteers, drawing encouragement and support on social media. It coincided with a broader community campaign to supply fighters with food and other basic necessities, as well as weapons, with people contributing from districts and villages across the governorate.

In Yemen, a conservative country and the poorest in the Middle East, the vast majority of women do not participate in active fighting in the civil war, which began in 2014. Instead, these initiatives allow women to take part in what they see as the defence of their city against an invading force, and support for the men who are fighting.

After nearly four years of relative calm following a United Nations-brokered truce in April 2022, Houthi forces launched a major ground offensive in western Taiz in early September. The armed group rapidly captured territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the strategic port city of Mocha on September 10 , expanding its presence around Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital shipping route.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, Arabic for Supporters of God, subsequently advanced towards other parts of Taiz governorate, taking control of key routes into the provincial capital and effectively surrounding the city. Government forces have since launched counteroffensives, with control of some areas remaining contested.

The renewed siege has severely restricted the movement of people and essential supplies into the city, triggering shortages of food, fuel, and medicine.

From cookies to weapons

As the fighting intensified, the women’s initiatives expanded. What began with baking cookies and organising food convoys to supply arms kitchens gradually evolved into efforts to buy ammunition for fighters.

Women involved in the initiatives told Al Jazeera that they felt they had been “forced” to act because of the risk of their city falling to the Houthis.

The change began as more rural districts began falling to the Houthis, leading to some donors making their contributions conditional on part of the money being used to buy ammunition for fighters.

Al-Saghir believes the shift was encouraged by information and criticism circulating on social media suggesting that government fighters in Taiz lacked sufficient ammunition to continue defending the city and surrounding front lines.

The initiatives soon took off, encouraging more women to get involved. Among them was Huriya Wabel, a humanitarian activist.

“After we saw that those [Houthi] militias … are waging a war of extermination against our city, we felt that we had to take a serious stand to support the army, not just with food and clothing, but with weapons as well, especially since a siege has been imposed on Taiz and supplies can no longer reach it easily,” Wabel told Al Jazeera.

“We also found many civilians who wanted to participate in the fighting alongside the army in defence of the city, but they did not have weapons,” she added. “So it became incumbent upon us to help by focusing more of our activities on this aspect at this stage.”

Defending their city

For Khadija al-Majidi, the move from providing humanitarian supplies to delivering military equipment is a response to the growing threat facing Taiz.

“When the enemy reaches the gates of your city and imposes a complete siege on it in preparation for storming it by force, and everyone in it – including you, your children, and members of your family – is threatened with being killed, captured, or displaced … then what do you expect from us?” the activist told Al Jazeera. “Did you expect us to carry flowers for the criminal who came from the farthest reaches of the country to destroy our city and kill us?”

When Al Jazeera spoke to al-Majidi, she had just returned from the fighting around Jabal Sabir, the mountain overlooking Taiz from the south.

It was al-Majidi’s second trip to the front that day, delivering ammunition and other military supplies, which she valued at $3,000, to the commander on the front, along with winter clothing, shoes, food, and other necessities.

She said that after more than 10 years of living through Yemen’s devastating war, she no longer felt afraid to visit active battlefronts.

“Repeated visits to the front lines play a major role in removing fears, given what we see on the ground of the heroes’ courage and bravery in defending the city and their confidence in victory,” she added.

As fundraising expands, the women’s department of Taiz’s Supreme Council for Popular Resistance launched a campaign on October 8 , aiming to equip 10,000 pro-government fighters with rifles and ammunition.

The council has called for contributions from Yemenis across the country and abroad to support the initiative.

The campaign reflects the state of the fighting in Taiz, with government forces facing daily Houthi attacks, as they try to conduct their own counter-attacks.

But the longer the siege continues, the more difficult the military and humanitarian situation becomes in the city.

Al-Saghir and al-Majidi both explained that while many of the donations they receive come from Yemenis living abroad, people on the ground are also giving whatever they can, despite the humanitarian crisis in Taiz.

Al-Saghir said one woman whose husband was fighting in the army donated a wedding ring, while al-Majidi recounted stories of other women donating their gold jewellery.

Al-Majidi recalled a woman arriving at her home carrying envelopes containing Yemeni and Saudi currency.

The woman had written on the envelopes, “God willing, we will win. Buy ammunition for the heroes with this.”

Beirut, Lebanon – After her husband died from COVID-19 in 2020, Lena Kouyoumjian moved back to her parents’ house in Mazraat Yachouh, a village 20 minutes’ drive from Beirut. For Lena, energetic and outgoing, the move was difficult, but she accepted that she needed help to care for her 20-year-old daughter, Vana, who is autistic and non-verbal.

Lena first noticed her daughter’s symptoms when she was two years old. Vana is still unable to communicate verbally how she feels, but her mother does her best to understand her.

Like many autistic individuals – and neurodivergent people in general – Vana needs a supportive and stable environment, alongside a structured routine, to feel well.

Lebanon has been engulfed in war since October 2023, with bombings across the country and an economic crisis continuing to impact all Lebanese, particularly neurodivergent people.

When Israel escalated its attacks on southern Lebanon in March, as a trainer for children with disabilities, Lena understood that this could impact her autistic daughter.

“Any sudden change in routine, loud noises, fear, or uncertainty can increase their anxiety and make them feel unsafe,” Lena told Al Jazeera.

“I can see this in my daughter. Since the situation became more difficult, she has become more anxious and sensitive to the changes happening around her.”

Challenging a social stigma

The symptoms of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) vary depending on the person and condition, but they frequently include sensory issues and emotional dysregulation. ADHD and autism often occur together, combining to make AuDHD, where traits from both conditions can be seen.

People with these neurodevelopmental conditions are often stigmatised by societies that do not fully understand them, including in Lebanon.

While the pressures caused by Israel’s war on Lebanon and mass displacement have led to psychological issues for many, neurodivergent people are more vulnerable due to their need for consistent support and routine.

“Being a parent of an autistic child isn’t something every parent can handle. A challenge I often face is deciding the amount of time and energy I should allocate to my child,” said Lena.

Lebanon’s Autism Awareness Association (AAA) has provided support for both mother and child. Vana has attended classes at AAA, a nonprofit based in Antelias, outside Beirut, for the past six years, which serves as an alternative school for young autistic people.

But rising costs in Lebanon during the war have prevented Vana from attending classes regularly. “Even transportation to her centre became very difficult, especially with the increasing financial challenges. At times, it became impossible for her to go, so she had to stay home,” Lena said.

Ghada Hayek Makhoul, who co-founded AAA with other parents of autistic children in 2015, said the group has made constant efforts to increase awareness about the condition in Lebanon.

“Many people don’t know what autism really is. They don’t know the spectrum; how it can vary from mild to moderate to severe,” Ghada told Al Jazeera.

Sensory overload

Ghada’s son, Anthony, is a calm 27-year-old autistic, non-verbal man who relies heavily on helpers. Although he is unable to speak, his mother said it is clear when he is distressed, putting his hands over his ears when he is in pain due to sensory discomfort.

Autistic people can be more sensitive to noises than neurotypical people. During the war, people in Lebanon have been subjected to a harrowing range of sounds, from Israeli bombs exploding on the ground to the sonic booms of warplanes flying overhead.

“So, imagine the drones all the time [for autistic people], the bombs, and the vibration of the bombs … all of this that we were hearing, so of course it affected him a lot,” Ghada said.

“My son can’t listen to the TV any more due to the news. He switches it off and removes the remote control. It’s too triggering for him.”

Anthony’s mother said he senses tension and anxiety, even if his understanding of what is being said or happening is limited.

“[It affects] all the senses, everything. He doesn’t want to go into a pool any more. He used to love the water. And now, he doesn’t want to go into the pool any more,” Ghada said.

“I don’t know what changed. Because it’s outside? Because of the sound? I don’t know.”

Mental health support as a luxury

Israel’s war on Lebanon has had a direct economic impact on the AAA and other organisations providing neurodivergent or psychological support.

Lebanon’s economic crisis, with inflation potentially reaching 17 percent this year, has also led to a brain drain of professionals who could support neurodivergent people.

AAA is a crucial support base for families with autistic children. But it comes at a significant cost of $700 per month for children attending five days a week. With 80 percent of the population living in poverty, few can afford such services.

“We need more trained staff, and we also need to keep the staff that are leaving the country. So, we need to have better salaries, but we cannot afford it, because we will have to increase the load on the parents,” said Ghada. “Things are in crisis mode for everybody during the war.”

The same thing is being seen with other mental health services. While many nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) provide free therapy, private consultations can cost more than $100 for a single 50-minute session.

Nour Toukan, a public health researcher at Enmaeya, a media platform focused on sustainable development, told Al Jazeera that care for people with autism or even for ADHD is “very much an out-of-pocket expense.”

While the government did launch a National Disability Allowance in 2023, with funding from the European Union and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the allowance of $40 per month is not enough to cover even the basics in Lebanon. People with autism can get a personal disability card, issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs, making them eligible for support, but those with ADHD cannot.

Lebanon’s National Mental Health Programme, established in 2014 by the Ministry of Public Health, is trying to bridge gaps in support caused by economic and geographic variables.

Dr Rabih El Chammay, the founder and director of the programme, told Al Jazeera a national mental health strategy for children and teenagers is being finalised.

“National studies addressing autism and ADHD have also been conducted, providing evidence to inform this work. We are meeting with several organisations, particularly organisations representing families of persons with autism, to understand priorities and build momentum for further coordinated action,” Dr Rabih said. “War makes this work more difficult because it can increase support needs while disrupting the services people depend on.”

Developmental regression

Displaced people have been the most impacted, but all of those in Lebanon whose schooling and routines have been disrupted are affected.

Adham Faraj, a 23-year-old psychology student at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, who was diagnosed with ADHD in 2024, said that when his classes moved online due to the war, he found himself staying at home more and more.

“It’s less engaging, especially if you struggle with attention. You’re less motivated to go out, so you just attend classes from bed,” Adham said.

Adham said the intensity of Israeli air strikes in Lebanon unsettled him, along with concerns about the rising price of medicine.

“There’s always a cheaper alternative, but it depends on people’s social class. Maybe an $11 box of medication is affordable for some, but not for everyone,” he said.

Rim Ajjour, a psychologist and psychotherapist in Beirut, whose work focuses on young people with autism, has seen that many of the skills neurodivergent people learned before the war are now being lost.

“With the limited resources available in Lebanon and the shift in people’s priorities, there has been more limited access to therapy,” she said.

Rim said that her clinic and others are doing their utmost to keep therapy accessible by freezing consultation fees, even when their own expenses are increasing.

With Israeli attacks continuing in southern Lebanon, which remains occupied by Israeli forces, in violation of a US-brokered June ceasefire, many fear the impact on their work in case of a return to full-scale war.

“I don’t know how we’ll be able to take it again,” Rim said.

Bitupan Deka was out shopping for a “gamusa” (traditional scarf) with his mother in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya when he noticed something unusual.

“Every shop selling the scarf had the same handful of patterns repeated over and over,” he told Al Jazeera over the telephone from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

“When I asked around, I found that weavers in Sualkuchi [district in neighbouring Assam state] are paid a one-time fee of roughly 2,000 rupees [$21] for each design they develop, instead of royalties. Cutting down the number of designs they produce was a cost-saving practice followed by the manufacturers.”

This discovery prompted Deka, an assistant professor of computer technology at Shillong’s MIT University, to create a system that can produce infinite new designs for such fabrics.

“My work isn’t meant to replace the traditional designers. I hope, instead, that it will become a tool in their hands to create new and modern motifs more easily, so the consumers can have variety,” Deka said.

Once the patent, which is being applied for under the research and development department of his university, comes through, Deka plans to monetise the system by making it a commercial designing service that the textile industry can avail.

In India’s varied textile traditions, patterns and motifs carry the memory of a place and the mythology of its people – sometimes even the history of migrations.

The designs are imagined by weavers from things that exist around them, and then painted with locally available colours, mostly using carved clay and wooden frames. These weavers do not simply reproduce a pattern; they inherit it. Their hands hesitate where their grandmother’s did, and they know why a particular flower must face left.

A computer has no such inheritance or hesitation. It learns by analysing pictures and repeating them in endless variations. And yet, as Deka’s system shows, the computer can now draw and weave the same flower.

The Rekh Sanganeri Dataset is a similar system developed for hand-block printed Sanganeri textiles from the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It includes high-resolution images of printed patterns, annotated down to ink bleed and slight misalignment – the imperfections that are the hallmark of the handmade work.

Its developer, Reddy Sai Nivas C, says it should be used as a resource for research and art, not as a substitute for artisans.

But the disclaimer is the paradox: Tools built to preserve a craft are making its visual language easier to digitally reproduce without involving the craftsperson.

Dinesh Chhipa comes from one of the oldest Chhipa families, an artisan and merchant caste renowned for dyeing and block printing. He is a Bagru designer – a block printing technique from Bagru town in the western state of Rajasthan – and a textile businessman.

“Traditional craft is slow to produce. Even if someone offered us a fortune, we wouldn’t be able to produce these pieces in mass numbers, so I don’t fault those using digital technology and AI to fill the gap,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But don’t borrow craft and regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri [named after the capital city of Rajasthan]. These designs and motifs were born out of a culture and necessities of the communities they come from.”

Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

India has been digitising its textile memory for years – from the Botanical Survey of India’s historical collections to the Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh, a national portal built by the state-run National Institute of Fashion Technology and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Without documentation, the fragile traditions and knowledge could disappear. But digitisation also allows the same archive to be used by an AI system seeking to reproduce these crafts at scale.

At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February this year, Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) showcased Bridgital Loom, an AI system that converts textile designs into loom-ready instructions. LED lights on the loom guide a weaver through the thread sequences of intricate Banarasi and Kanchipuram patterns – named after the cities where these iconic arts grew.

TCS says the technology helps weavers execute complex designs faster and with fewer errors, and is meant to be a bridge between the artisans and technology. A pilot project that uses the loom is already under way at Kanchipuram, a town in southern Tamil Nadu state.

In an interview with the online platform Digit at the New Delhi summit, the head of AI strategy at Bridgital Loom, Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan, pointed out that a new weaver takes more than 15 years to master the art.

“With the technologies we have in hand … the younger weaver who has just entered the skill can become a master much sooner,” she said.

Technology flattens the master-apprentice hierarchy of traditional knowledge systems. The weaver no longer has to conceptualise or remember patterns, colours and codes; he blindly follows the machine’s instructions, handing creativity and memory to AI.

Nellaiappan said that since a large percentage of India’s looms are non-electronic, TCS has ensured its system works with handlooms as well and that it was essential for scaling up the technology.

But digital looms also raise another question: Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

For generations, India’s textile knowledge sat outside intellectual property systems. It lived in community memory, passed from master to apprentice with no certificate of ownership. Kanchipuram, Mekhela-Sador, Sanganeri and Banarasi are names for places that these textiles helped shape, not merely emerged from.

Now, this knowledge is entering generative models that owe nothing to these traditions.

For designers and manufacturers, the possibilities are seductive: Motifs combined at will, colours changed with a command, and thousands of designs generated instantly. The machine offers abundance.

The artisan, on the other hand, has always lived with scarcity: Of money, bargaining power, or recognition.

Ananthalakshmi Vadivel, a third-generation weaver and owner of Vadivel Silk Looms in Kanchipuram, says their venture is already competing in the market with cheaper Kanchipuram sarees produced on electronic looms.

“Perhaps, with AI, these sellers can create trending designs faster and cheaper to attract mass consumers. But these imitations can never replace the original,” she told Al Jazeera.

“There will always be a market for authentic Kanchipuram and handcrafted textiles, no matter how much technology makes the imitation cheaper. True Kanchipuram weave, colour, and designs can only be created by hand, and discerning buyers know this.”

Then again, the question is no longer whether AI can recreate a textile. It sure can. The question is: Who gets paid when it does?

Legal gaps

In December 2025, the federal government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade floated a statutory “blanket licence” – a system where AI developers could train models on lawfully obtained copyrighted material without seeking permission from each rights holder. Once commercialised, those systems would owe royalties to copyright owners at rates set by the government.

But intellectual property (IP) laws assume a traceable work with a traceable author. A motif, on the other hand, is communal property, its technique passed down through generations with no single originator.

In such cases, who is entitled to royalty and copyright? The artisan who first created the design? The photographer who documented it? The researcher who assembled the dataset? The developer who built the tool? India’s laws offer no clear answers. The artisan whose name never appeared on a label may once again be missing from the paperwork.

Meanwhile, the government is planning a dedicated AI-handloom research department under the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the capital, New Delhi. Inaugurated in August, the $1.4m facility aims to modernise India’s handloom sector by combining traditional weaving heritage with contemporary technology.

The government also plans to register thousands of weavers and fit their handlooms with sensors that convert weave patterns into digital data, and issue QR-coded tags to trace provenance. Maharashtra’s Vingatha system does something similar at the state level by authenticating handloom sarees such as Paithani and Karvat Kathi.

The idea is simple: If a saree can tell you where it came from, the person who made it becomes harder to erase.

While these measures cannot stop AI-enabled design and mass production, they may give artisans more visibility and turn each piece into an archive.

In art galleries, the traditional textiles are increasingly shedding the label of craft for the more lucrative category of contemporary art.

Gurjeet Singh, an artist from Chandigarh city, recently hosted a textile-based solo show in New York. His work transforms discarded fabrics, buttons and embroidered scraps into sculptures that explore queer identity and social prejudices surrounding gender and sexuality.

Sayan Chanda, an Indian artist based in London, works with cut and rewoven vintage Bengali quilts to question fixed notions of cultural belonging. Gurugram-based artist Sumakshi Singh uses delicate embroidery and suspended thread structures to reconstruct the architectural fragments of vanished homes, gardens and personal histories. There are many more.

In New Delhi, 20 such artisans and craft-led collectives featured last month at an art show celebrating the traditional textile crafts.

“Our aim is to present these traditional crafts as living practices that continue to evolve through contemporary artisans, rather than as heritage to be archived. Kanmai Payun, one of the artists featured in the show, for example, is the last practitioner of Fulor Saneki, a flower pattern used by Assamese weavers. We encouraged her to teach her 17-year-old son so the craft outlives her,” Aparupa Ray Ganguly, the curator of the show, told Al Jazeera.

But as textiles gain value in art galleries, their makers do not necessarily gain automatic control over their work.

In April, another art exhibition in New Delhi, titled No ‘One’ Maker, saw artisans missing from the show’s preview, exposing how traditional textiles are aestheticised, but the people who carry that knowledge remain unrecognised.

“You cannot separate the names from the community. Call your mass-produced work digital prints and leave the traditional names to the original artisans,” says Chhipa, the artisan and merchant from Rajasthan.

Athens, Greece – Tonia Katerini, a 69-year-old architect, leaned into her computer, scrolling through the property contracts that she said are remaking her neighbourhood.

Across Exarchia, the Athens district long known for its radical left-wing politics, flats are being bought up and turned into short-term rentals, pushing out the people who live there.

For months, Katerini and a group of neighbours have been digitally mapping foreign purchases using public records, marking them with red dots.

She zoomed out from her street on the map; it was a sea of red.

The balcony doors of her flat, where she has lived since 1986, were open and noise from the cafes below drifted in past the plants and stacks of architectural plans.

Her group says much of the money behind the rentals is Israeli; by their count, more than half of the area’s new company-run hotels and rentals .

In a neighbourhood where Palestinian flags hang from balconies and solidarity slogans cover the walls, that has caused friction.

On her own cobbled street, where the noise of arriving tourists rolling their suitcases wakes her in the morning, Israeli investors have bought two buildings, she said. The flat below hers belongs to one such company.

“They are nice guys we have downstairs,” she said. “It’s an Israeli company.”

A few streets away, a residential building is streaked with black paint.

“Airbnbs leave us homeless,” reads one slogan across its facade. “Zionists not welcome,” reads another.

Such buildings are easy to spot. Instead of residents’ names, the buzzer panels show only numbers and a keypad by the door releases keys for Airbnb guests.

Across the neighbourhood, activists have splattered keypads and facades with red paint.

They say short-term rentals are driving an aggressive gentrification that is pricing out locals and erasing the area’s identity.

Foreign money has poured into Greek property in recent years: non-residents invested a record 2.75 billion euros ($3.2bn) in Greek real estate in 2024, according to the Bank of Greece, before easing last year.

No official figures break down foreign buyers in Athens by nationality. But an annual survey of completed sales by the agency network RE/MAX Hellas found that Israelis were the largest group of foreign buyers in Attica, the region around the capital, ahead of buyers from Turkiye and Lebanon, reported the Greek weekly To Vima.

Exarchia’s political activism runs deep. In 1973, students at the nearby Athens Polytechnic rose up against the US-backed military government, which fell the following year.

In 2008, police shot dead Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old Greek student, in Exarchia, provoking protests that spread across the country. It came, Katerini said, like “fire on dry land”.

As Greece’s debt crisis deepened, that anger on the streets helped propel the left-wing Syriza party to power in 2015.

‘Tenants displaced, apartment blocks emptied’

Chrysoulla Papageorgiou, a schoolteacher who has lived in Exarchia for 24 years, is a familiar face on its streets. Earnest and straight-talking, the 46-year-old remembers it as “a neighbourhood of solidarity”.

The change came slowly, then quickened. At first, small owners rented out a spare room. After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies began buying entire blocks.

“Overnight, tenants were displaced and apartment blocks emptied,” she said.

Bars opened, spilling tables and chairs across pavements on streets that had once been quiet.

Rents rose and migrants and low-income families, many living in basements and on the lower floors, were the first to go. Schools lost pupils and old bookshops, traditional cafes and grocers closed.

For years, Exarchia residents sheltered refugees in occupied buildings. Sitting on prime real estate, they were among the first buildings police emptied and then sold, Papageorgiou said.

“Half were squats,” she said. “Now we have only one.”

That last building is draped in painted sheets declaring solidarity with the families inside. Neighbours help make sure the children get to school.

Since 2022, Exarchia Square, long the heart of the neighbourhood’s protests, has been a fenced-off construction site for a new metro station that many residents fought against. Riot police, Papageorgiou added, are now a daily presence.

The aim, she believed, is to turn central Athens into somewhere “purely touristic”.

In recent years, buyers have been “almost only Israeli”.

Near the square hangs a large Palestinian flag. Tourists sometimes scrawl anti-Palestinian messages on its white stripe, and activists paint it white again.

Foreign buyers, Katerini said, see Greece as a safer place for their money than Israel itself, and in Athens “the government is very friendly with Israel”. In August, Athens signed a missile deal with Israel worth $3.5bn.

‘A very good opportunity’ for investors

Vagelis Lazaridis, a stocky real estate agent who heads a branch of the Athens-Attica Real Estate Agents’ Association, talks about his trade with passion. He said the reasons for the investments were purely practical.

Exarchia “was a run-down area” which made it “a very good opportunity”, he said.

It is beside the centre, close to the metro and to universities full of students from abroad. Unlike Plaka, beneath the Acropolis, it has few building restrictions.

Once a handful of buyers arrive, he said, others follow.

Greece to become ‘far less appealing’ for Israeli buyers

The government is now trying to cool the market.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced last month that the transfer tax for homebuyers from outside the European Union would rise from 3 percent to 15 percent from next July.

“The party is over in Greece,” The Jerusalem Post wrote in a recent report. “The country, which in recent years has become a preferred destination for Israelis seeking real estate investments at reasonable prices and with attractive yields, is about to become far less appealing.”

Lazaridis said agents’ associations oppose the plan, which has yet to become law. It “may not take effect, or may be postponed”, he said.

Agents expect some non-EU buyers to speed up purchases before the deadline, reported the Greek news site in.gr.

‘Fewer Airbnbs’

Not everyone in the trade sees an unstoppable tide.

Iryna Rondyak, who is originally from Ukraine, runs her own estate agency near Exarchia. She said that when Israeli buyers began arriving about a decade ago, they made up about 60 percent of her foreign clients, many buying whole office buildings to turn into hotels.

Until around 2024, foreigners accounted for about 70 percent of her sales, she said.

This year, it is about 30 percent, as state-backed mortgages for young Greeks, under a scheme called “Spiti mou” (My Home), attract local buyers back.

She credits new rules for the turnaround.

No new short-term rental licences are being issued in central Athens, including Exarchia, and in September the freeze was extended to the end of 2027, reported To Vima.

Properties bought under Greece’s “golden visa” residency scheme can now only be let long-term. While a cheaper route into the scheme, at 250,000 euros ($280,000), rewards investors who convert empty office buildings into flats.

“Anyone living in Greece couldn’t find a home in the centre. Everything was on Airbnb,” she said. “Now there are far fewer.”

It is “a little better,” she said, but “the problem still exists”.

Rents remain high, at 10 to 15 euros ($12 to $17) per square metre, even in the southern suburbs, she said. Many flats sit empty because owners find renting them out is not worth the tax bill.

Residents are less convinced.

The rental freeze is temporary, they say, and investors with enough money can still find ways in. Nor does it undo what has already happened: many of the neighbourhood’s buildings are already short-term rentals.

Back in Exarchia, Papageorgiou counts herself lucky.

Her landlady, whose family has lived in the area for generations, refuses to raise the rent as an “act of resistance”.

Papageorgiou said jokingly that her landlady’s accountant has told her she is ruining the market.

AN explosive sexting scandal almost wrecked Christian Horner’s marriage to pop royalty – and a year later, his F1 career was in tatters.

The multi-millionaire racing tycoon, married to ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, was sacked by Red Bull with a £76million payoff after sending hundreds of texts to an attractive aide, pestering her for pics and sexy chat.

Geri was left heartbroken and humiliated by the WhatsApp messages, leaked in 2024 — a day after Horner was cleared of inappropriate, and controlling behaviour towards the woman in an independent probe.

Loyal Geri stood by her man, but Red Bull’s track performance took a hit amid the damning claims.

Now Horner, 52, has written an extraordinary new memoir, Drive, out on Thursday, which is essentially a grovelling, 320-page love letter to his wife of 11 years.

In it, he swerves the awkward reason his marriage nearly hit the skids.

Instead, he praises Geri for steering him through the darkest days of his life — while glossing over the aide who complained about his conduct.

The former Red Bull chief executive was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, and his book does not link the embarrassing scandal to his sacking after 20 years in the top Formula One job.

Instead, he blames a series of poor results on the race track, and does not attempt to explain or justify why he sent the flirty messages.

Yet Horner DOES recall his wife heroically mustering every ounce of Girl Power as the crisis erupted.

Initially baffled by the allegations levelled against him, Horner writes: “What was going on?

“The lawyer, presumably aware that a wrecking ball was being aimed at my life, explained the situation as my sense of bewilderment rose.

“Geri knew by my face that something was very wrong.

“She fell silent as she listened. We both understood the implications immediately. She looked at me. ‘Just tell your truth’, she said.

“‘That’s all I can do’, I replied.

“She reassured me that everything would be all right.

“Her resilience was remarkable.

“Our lives had been turned upside down, yet she found the strength and conviction to support me through an immensely difficult period, one that was undoubtedly challenging for her as well.

“Her belief in me gave me the determination to move forward. At a time when my confidence was being tested, Geri provided the perspective and stability that I needed most.

“Without her support, I’m not sure I could have navigated those months in the same way.”

Days after Horner was cleared of behaving inappropriately in 2024, Red Bull suspended his accuser on full pay. The woman, who was not named, then agreed to leave Red Bull for a £3million settlement and dropped her claims.

She signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevents her from talking about the scandal.

Her appeal over the outcome of the probe into Horner was thrown out.

Despite landing another job in motor racing, she was dismissed less than a year later amid “trust issues”.

The other glaring omission in Horner’s carefully-curated life story is the bitter feud with his parents.

Garry and Sara Horner were so horrified when their son hooked up with Geri that they refused to attend the wedding.

Christian and his previous partner, pub landlady Beverley Allen, had a baby daughter, Olivia, who was 19 months at the time of the nuptials.

In Drive, his relationship with Beverley, who died from cancer aged 58, is dispatched in a couple of swift sentences, and he describes falling for Geri like something out of a cheesy romcom.

He says marrying the singer at Woburn Abbey, Beds, in 2015 was the happiest day of his life.

“It was obvious that Beverley and I were drifting apart,” writes Horner.

“Our relationship was now more of a loving friendship than anything else, and it was clear that what had once brought us together was no longer there. We had never married, though we had a daughter, Olivia, and although our relationship had faded, we remained amicable.

“The following year, my relationship with Geri began. She had a natural warmth and confidence, and she treated everyone the same, whether they were royalty or a road sweeper.

“It was clear there was something between us.” Their controversial courtship and Beverley’s heartbreak are skipped entirely, along with him being such a workaholic that he once missed Olivia’s birth.

Months after he began dating Geri, he proposed while hiking up Mount Fuji in Japan, and became a second father to Bluebell, her daughter from a previous relationship with screenwriter Sacha Gervasi.

He says: “Geri was the woman I wanted to marry. I knew it almost from the moment we started going out. Our connection was undeniable; I had never experienced anything like it before. I had totally fallen for her.

“Within twelve months, we were engaged. I wasn’t planning to propose at the ­time — the thought of buying a ring hadn’t even occurred to me — but the occasion seemed too perfect.

“The sun was dipping behind the mountain, the shadows were lengthening, so I grabbed the moment, and Geri, to my relief, said yes.

“With the emotion of the proposal beginning to sink in, we hitched a ride on a passing dustcart and rode to the bottom, laughing.

“Geri and I later married at a beautiful service. Daniel Ricciardo drove us in a vintage Rolls-Royce to the reception; Daniil Kvyat chauffeured the bridesmaids. Geri’s father had sadly passed away when she was in her twenties, so her daughter, Bluebell, walked her down the aisle.

“I knew that when I married Geri, I’d be taking on responsibility for Bluebell, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the arrangement.

“It was one of the happiest days of my life.” Geri slotted into Horner’s life in the Cotswolds and took to wearing prim, all-white outfits as she embarked on her luxurious role as lady of the manor.

She said in 2019 that her plain wardrobe freed up time and brain space: “I was at a moment in my life when I just needed simplicity.

“Also, if you only wear white, everything matches.”

Within a year of marrying, she was pregnant with their son Monty.

And now, following Horner’s astonishing Red Bull payoff, which was revealed this month, they are considering upgrading their £9.2million Oxfordshire mansion.

They recently viewed Edgcote House, Notts, a sprawling, £45million estate with a private racecourse which featured in the BBC’s Pride And Prejudice. Love-struck Horner might still be unemployed, but he insists the marriage has been all smooth sailing, raving: “I couldn’t have imagined anyone better to spend my life with.

“Geri was unswervingly supportive of what our family wanted to do. In a relationship where both parties were exposed to public scrutiny, she was able to deal with the pressure like it was irrelevant.

“Clearly, years spent at the centre of global fame had given her an extraordinary sense of composure.

“In moments of stress, she had the capacity to compartmentalise the negative emotions and focus on the positives.

“I learned so much from her about how to handle the never-ending stress and cutthroat politics of Formula One.” Horner also bats off the backlash that came his way following his appearances on Netflix’s Drive To Survive.

Last year, he was booed by an angry crowd at the O2 Arena. He was previously dubbed a “Karen” for incessantly complaining about Lewis Hamilton and other teams.

He recalls: “Overnight, Formula One’s audience had grown beyond the traditional fanbase, and with it came a level of scrutiny I’d never experienced before.

“Every comment, every expression and every disagreement became part of the story. In creating a bingeable show, Netflix filmed hundreds of hours of footage and naturally presented the juiciest material, which I ­understood.

“But the fact that Red Bull were going up against Lewis, a national treasure in the UK, meant we were sometimes cast as the villains.

“Before long, I had become Drive To Survive  ’s equivalent of Darth Vader.

“Fortunately, Geri understood the fickle nature of public perception better than I ever could. Really, I should have expected it. It wasn’t pleasant, but I accepted it.

“’It doesn’t matter if they boo’, she said. ‘Booing means they care. It’s only a problem when they ignore you’. Fair enough, I thought. To enjoy the rewards of success, I also had to accept the scrutiny that sometimes came with it.”

Horner admits Beverley’s death last summer was tough on their daughter. “As it became obvious that the end was drawing closer, I talked through the situation with Olivia. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

“For the past few years, her mum had been in and out of hospital, and she was growing weaker.

“There was no getting away from what was coming. It all seemed so unfair. I had only recently turned fifty and was lucky enough to still have both my mother and father. I felt upset Olivia wouldn’t have the same experience.

“No little girl should have to go through this, I thought. I wanted to do everything that I could to help.

“But I couldn’t do the one thing she needed most of all. I couldn’t save her mum.”

• Drive by Christian Horner is published on Thursday by Penguin Random House.

Hasanat al-Rashid, 48, has lived with diabetes for 15 years, and the three-and-a-half-year civil war between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has worsened her situation. Finding the treatment she needs has become a daily struggle.

When the war broke out in April 2023, she was forced to flee south from her home in Haj Yousif in Khartoum North to Umm Daw Ban in Khartoum State.

During her displacement, she went for days without medication and was forced to eat foods unsuitable for her condition, such as asida, a traditional Sudanese porridge.

She underwent operations on her foot twice when she developed complications of diabetes, including a severe infection.

She moved between hospitals in Gezira State south of Khartoum, seeking treatment in Rufaa, Wad Madani and Al-Hasahisa. When fighting spread to these areas in December 2023, she fled again, arriving in Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea that was less affected by the war.

Her condition has worsened to the point that she now has to use insulin every day and with this comes added costs, something that forces diabetes sufferers in Sudan to choose between medicine and other essentials, such as food.

“The doses vary depending on whether my blood sugar is high or low,” she told Al Jazeera.

The war has pushed income levels in Sudan back to those last seen in the 1990s, according to the United Nations Development Programme. This means Hasanat and other diabetes sufferers are struggling to afford the medicine they need to treat the condition.

Hasanat’s doctor recommended she use an insulin pen, a device used to inject insulin under the skin. She would need one or two of the devices a month, but the cost at 70,000 Sudanese pounds ($8) is more than she can afford up front, so she opts for a vial of insulin.

This is cheaper at 17,000 Sudanese pounds ($1.80), but there is the additional cost of buying ice every day to keep the insulin cool. She spends 180,000 pounds ($20) a month on ice to preserve the medicine. But she is able to spread these costs out through the month, making the vials her only viable option even if the overall costs are higher than an insulin pen.

“It may last a month or less, but the challenge is that I don’t have a refrigerator, so I struggle to store the insulin properly,” she said.

She also needs painkillers and vitamins on a regular basis to manage complications caused by the diabetes.

The rising cost of treatment

Fatima Adam, 75, is among the patients at Port Sudan Hospital struggling to afford the medicines she needs to manage her hypertension and a thyroid condition.

She was admitted to the hospital with complications caused by high blood pressure, which has started to impact her heart. Too unwell to speak to Al Jazeera herself, her daughter, Aisha, described how the rising cost of treatment has affected her whole family.

Before the war, Fatima received medicine through the National Health Insurance Fund. She paid a quarter of the cost while the fund covered the rest. But when the war started and the economy collapsed, the medicines she needed were no longer covered by the scheme.

“My mother takes six different medicines because hypertension has affected her heart in addition to her thyroid medication. The war has made things harder because the prices of these medicines have gone up,” Aisha told Al Jazeera.

The responsibility for paying for Fatima’s treatment and supporting her and her daughter falls on her son, who works as a casual worker. With no fixed income, he goes to the market every day in search of work but sometimes returns home empty without any luck.

“Sometimes, when my brother finds work, we buy enough medicine to last a month. Other times, we have to buy smaller quantities and take the medicines intermittently,” Aisha said.

She bought a month’s supply of her mother’s medication a few days ago for 160,000 Sudanese pounds ($17.80), a substantial expense for a family whose income depends on day labour but essential to treating Fatima’s condition.

War damage

The war has caused an estimated $500m in losses to medicine stocks, infrastructure and transport fleets, dealing a major blow to Sudan’s pharmaceutical supply system, the National Medical Supplies Fund told Al Jazeera.

The National Medicines and Poisons Board estimated that only eight of the 30 pharmaceutical factories in Khartoum that shut down during the conflict have resumed operations despite the security situation in the capital recently improving.

This has increased Sudan’s reliance on imported medicines, but the subsequent depreciation of the Sudanese pound has driven up the costs of pharmaceutical procurement and production.

Hossam al-Naeem, who works as a pharmacist in Port Sudan, said customers with diabetes and hypertension require regular painkillers and vitamins to help their overall condition.

“I feel deeply saddened when I see the expressions on some patients’ faces as they ask about the prices of medicines and discover how much they have increased because of the depreciation of the Sudanese pound,” Hossam told Al Jazeera.

The currency’s collapse has created added challenges for pharmacists. Before the war, a dollar traded for roughly 600 Sudanese pounds. Now black-market currency traders are quoting rates of 9,300 pounds to the dollar, meaning higher costs for most goods in Sudan.

Sometimes Hossam incurs losses himself when he finds that the prices of drugs have risen sharply, and keeping essential medicines stocked is becoming difficult.

“I used to sell a strip of cold and flu tablets for 6,000 Sudanese pounds [70 cents]. But when I went to buy new stock, I found that the supplier’s price was also 6,000 pounds per strip. That means I made no profit, not even enough to cover the pharmacy’s operating costs,” he said.

The struggle to afford heart medication

Huda Mahmoud, 58, lives in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state in south-central Sudan, where drone attacks and other violence remain a problem while the military is making advances towards the city.

Huda has lived with heart problems for more than 12 years and described the impacts of the war as being physical, financial and emotional.

“I take five different medicines. There was a time when they weren’t available, and I suffered a lot. Sometimes, I had to ask people in Wad Madani, Sennar or Port Sudan to send them to me,” she told Al Jazeera. “The medicines were extremely expensive, costing me 300,000 Sudanese pounds [$33.30] a month.”

Taking medication has become a carefully managed routine with each pill tied to a specific time of day.

“I’ve become tied to my pills: this one before eating, that one afterwards. If I forget one, my heart starts beating very fast,” she added.

In March, Huda was forced to travel from el-Obeid to Omdurman. Following her strict treatment regimen has become increasingly difficult during repeated periods of upheaval.

She has now returned home to el-Obeid, where her regular medicine is priced at 151,000 Sudanese pounds ($16.80) a month, something she can barely afford.

Her greatest fear is running out of medicine or being unable to afford her next supply, which would put her at risk of a blood clot.

“I’m afraid of becoming incapacitated. I used to be responsible for the whole household, but now I need help. I feel like I’ve become a burden on my family,” she said.

New Delhi, India – A 19-year-old woman was detained by police during the youth-led antigovernment protests in the Indian capital over the weekend.

The young woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of further reprisals from the authorities, said she was detained on Sunday as thousands of people congregated in central New Delhi. They were demanding the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over alleged irregularities in electoral rolls, which saw the removal of 133 million people from the voter lists.

After the woman’s detention, she and several other demonstrators were taken on a police bus to a location about 50km from the protest site. With no cash and her phone battery drained, the woman spent nearly an hour wandering along a dark road, trying to figure out what to do next.

A car pulled up and the driver asked if she needed any help.

“I was frightened and completely lost. When those volunteers finally helped me get back safely, it felt like a miracle. I had never imagined that someone I had never met would come forward to help me like that,” she told Al Jazeera.

For a young woman in New Delhi, notoriously referred to as the “rape capital of India”, being alone in the middle of the night and getting into a car with strangers is not an easy decision. The city records an average of three rapes a day.

But the young protester said she immediately recognised one of the volunteers in the car. She had seen his videos online, in which he had asked the detained protesters whether they needed help. Recognising a familiar face reassured her that the people offering the ride could be trusted.

The woman was rescued using an AI-assisted tool developed by 25-year-old Rajiv Choudhary, who is helping protesters get home safely after being detained and dropped off by the police far away.

Called the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana, the initiative combines a digital dashboard with a network of volunteers who track information about police buses carrying detainees and arrange transport for those left stranded.

“Gharwapsi” in Hindi means “to return home”. It is also a play on a campaign by India’s right-wing Hindu groups which want to bring the country’s Muslims and Christians back into the Hindu fold, claiming that their ancestors converted to “foreign” religions from Hinduism. “Yojana” means a plan.

Since the beginning of this month, India has seen near daily protests over alleged electoral fraud by Kumar and his commission. Led by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a number of left-leaning student groups as well as the main opposition Congress party, the protests have seen tens of thousands of people hitting the streets in New Delhi and other cities.

In response, authorities in the Indian capital have imposed a sweeping crackdown, blocking roads, closing metro stations and detaining thousands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces the biggest challenge to its power after 12 years of rule.

Choudhary said his network’s primary focus was to help minors, elderly people and women, mainly first-time protesters.

The initiative operates through a private digital dashboard that uses AI-assisted data processing, live mapping and information shared by volunteers on the ground. Volunteers send details, including police bus numbers and locations, through WhatsApp, helping the team coordinate assistance and rides home.

Choudhary said he and his associate, journalist Meghnad, who goes by a single name, initially worked with a small group of volunteers to connect detainees with transport, legal assistance and medical support. The network has since expanded to more than 130 volunteers, who have offered their time and resources to assist detained demonstrators.

“For people caught up in these demonstrations, the ordeal doesn’t end with detention. They can be taken far from the protest site and left trying to find their way home from unfamiliar locations, often struggling to contact friends or arrange transport,” he said.

The idea grew out of Choudhary’s experience during an earlier protest called by the CJP at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in New Delhi that has now been denotified by the authorities. Initially, he helped organise supplies and volunteers.

As demonstrations continued, he recognised that protesters needed more systemic support, particularly those who were detained by the police and left fending for themselves far from the city limits.

As renewed protests began on October 2 , Choudhary built a digital system around the same volunteer network using AI tools. It began with a simple spreadsheet.

“The whole aim behind the application was that I had to systemise things that are not systemised,” he said. “We just wanted to become a support system that could help our people in their fight for their demands.”

Choudhary recalled receiving a distress call from a woman who had been detained in central New Delhi and released on the outskirts of the city. Stranded alone near a railway station, with metro services shut and no clear way to get home, she was frightened and unsure which way to turn.

She reached out to Choudhary’s network for help and he arranged for a nearby female driver to take her home safely. “It is heartbreaking to see people left helpless in an unfamiliar city, frightened and unsure of how they will get home,” he said.

For now, the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana operates only in New Delhi, but Choudhary plans to expand it to other cities.

“I am overwhelmed by the response from volunteers and drivers who have come forward to help without charging anything. They are offering their services for free because they want to support the protesters,” he said.

The 19-year-old woman who was helped by Choudhary’s team described the initiative as “a lifeline for protesters”. She said the team not only arranged her return, but also offered reassurance and emotional support.

“I cannot thank them enough. As long as we have people like them in our society, no authority can stop us from demanding our rights and protesting peacefully,” she said.

MOVE over Brad and Angelina – Hollywood has another bitter custody war on its hands, and this one is about to get even messier, with a 13-year-old boy preparing to give evidence against his own parents.

Oscar-winner Halle Berry and her ex-husband Olivier Martinez are locked in an explosive legal battle over their son Maceo after allegations of physical abuse plunged their already turbulent relationship into fresh crisis.

Today Maceo will appear in court to give evidence in a hearing over a restraining order sought by his dad, who has accused 60-year-old Halle of attacking the teenager during an argument at her home in September.

The judge has ruled that Maceo will testify, despite Halle’s objections, although his evidence is limited to the restraining order request and he will appear in a closed courtroom.

It marks a dramatic new chapter in a custody battle that has dragged on for years since the couple’s disastrous marriage collapsed in 2015 after just two years.

And while French actor Olivier insists his son deserves to have his voice heard, Halle claims the boy has been “coached and manipulated”.

The latest showdown erupted after Olivier, who is also 60, obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Halle this month, accusing her of physically abusing Maceo on September 26 this year.

In the court filings, he alleged she jumped on their son, put her hands around his neck and choked him.

He claimed the row erupted after Halle called Maceo “stupid” over a game involving virtual reality glasses, and that afterwards a “traumatised” Maceo begged Olivier to pick him up.

Halle has vehemently denied the allegations, insisting the pair were “roughhousing”.

She says the incident arose as she tried to enforce boundaries, claiming Maceo had been ­physically aggressive towards her.

In a statement, she said: “I have never physically, emotionally, or otherwise abused Maceo. I am a victim of domestic violence, and I help ­victims of domestic violence . . . I am not a perpetrator of violence. I would never hurt our child.”

Halle has found a fierce ally in 18-year-old Nahla, her daughter by former partner Gabriel Aubry, who leapt to her mum’s defence in a sworn declaration.

She said: “I have never seen my mom hit, slap, choke, grab or physically abuse Maceo in any way.

“I have never seen my mom place her hands around Maceo’s neck, put him in a choke hold, restrict his breathing or engage in any conduct remotely resembling the allegations that have been made against her.”

Nahla described Halle as a “loving and devoted parent”.

It is a far cry from how it all began.

Halle and Olivier met in 2010 in South Africa on the set of the horror film Dark Tide, shortly after she had split from French-Canadian model Gabriel.

They got engaged in 2012 and married in France in July 2013, and Halle gave birth to Maceo that October.

For a time they appeared to have found happiness together, with Maceo’s arrival completing the family.

Now Halle’s lawyer Marina Beck has branded the court filing “entirely meritless and deliberately misleading”.

She claimed Olivier had repeatedly violated court orders, “misconduct for which Mr Martinez has already been legally sanctioned”, and alleged he has a ­history of “erratic, possessive and ­violent behaviour”.

Halle also accuses Olivier of ignoring evidence which she says contradicts his version of events, including statements from her now-fiancé Van Hunt, who was present, and what she describes as contemporaneous video evidence.

Her filing reads: “Van Hunt was physically present during the incident and is the only adult third-party eyewitness to the events at issue.”

She argued that Maceo has “a ­personal interest in minimising his own conduct”, claiming he has behaved similarly at school.

Halle told the court that making him testify would place him “directly in the middle of a highly contentious dispute between his parents” and risk harm to his wellbeing.

She added that he has spent the past two weeks mainly in Olivier’s care, discussing the allegations and the litigation.

But Olivier has launched a blistering counter-attack, insisting his son is the real victim.

His lawyer Patrick Baghdaserians said: “We vehemently deny such ­allegations. The child is the primary victim here. Victims of abuse should be able to testify regarding the abuse inflicted upon them.”

He added: “We are not surprised that the opposing party does not want the child Maceo to testify.

“The opposing party is seemingly scared of what the child will say.”

Olivier said Maceo “was concerned that no one will believe him over his mother” and “wants to speak with the court to provide his side of the story”.

He continued in his declaration: “Given that our son is 13 years old, I believe it would certainly be in his best interest for him to address the court.

“I believe that our son’s testimony will be the key to the Court learning the full truth about the events that occurred on September 26.

“I am the parent who wants the truth to come out. I am the parent who does not want to suppress Maceo’s voice.”

Mr Baghdaserians warned that if their son was stopped from speaking, Olivier “fears that [Maceo] would be dissuaded from reporting problems or potential abuse in the future”.

The team also expected Halle “will try to prevent Maceo from addressing the court directly”.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Shelley Kaufman ruled that “the minor child shall not be coached” and reminded both parents that existing orders remain in force, including not discussing custody issues or court papers with him.

But Olivier has hit back by asking the judge to block Nahla from testifying, claiming she is “unquestionably biased” and has “no significant bearing” on the case.

He said it was not appropriate for Halle to “insert her daughter into ­litigation that does not involve her”.

The hearing is set to be an ­agonising showdown for two exes who have been trading blows in court for years over how to raise Maceo.

The marriage was short-lived. The couple’s wedding took place in France on July 13, 2013, but cracks soon began to show.

In January 2015, showbiz news ­service TMZ reported that Olivier had appeared to push a worker at Los Angeles airport with a child car seat as photographers closed in.

He was named a suspect in a battery investigation but no charges followed.

By October 2015 the couple had confirmed their split, saying in a joint statement they were divorcing “with a heavy heart” and wished each other “nothing but happiness in life”.

Yet the bitter legal wrangling ­rumbled on for the best part of a decade, with their divorce not ­finalised until August 2023.

The settlement required Halle to pay £6,000 a month in child support, cover Maceo’s private school tuition and contribute more than £41,500 towards Olivier’s legal fees, with the pair sharing joint custody of Maceo.

But the courtroom clashes did not stop there. In 2024 the pair were back in front of a judge over co- parenting therapy, with Halle accusing Olivier of trying to delay it by taking “the summer off” to travel.

She then sought sole custody, claiming Maceo had “serious behaviour and learning problems” and that Olivier refused to get a tutor because it could interfere with their son’s football schedule.

Olivier disputed the claims. Halle also said she had spent more than £150,000 trying to “work with” her ex, and swiped at him over child support.

“As Olivier has advised this court, he lives off my child ­support,” she wrote.

Now Olivier has filed for sole custody and has been granted primary custody, along with a restraining order barring Halle from coming within 100 yards of him.

She has been given two days a week of court-ordered visitation and every other weekend with Maceo.

She has also completed a court-mandated parenting programme.

For now, the battle lines are firmly drawn, with Halle fighting to protect her reputation and relationship with her son, while Olivier insists Maceo’s account of events must be heard.

And with Maceo due to take the stand today, the latest chapter in one of Hollywood’s most vicious ­custody disputes is set to unfold in a courtroom far removed from the glitz and glamour of the world that the former couple once shared.

The Sun has approached representatives for both Halle and Olivier for comment.

‘A major failure’

A round-faced man with dark-rimmed glasses, a moustache and short-trimmed hair, Ismael came to the US when he was only five years old.

Southern California became his home, and as an adult, he qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, which offered temporary protection against deportation.

He lost his DACA status, however, in 2015 after a conviction for driving under the influence.

His family remembers him as a caring son and uncle, always willing to buy his niece and nephew new clothes or school supplies.

“Ismael was always looking after his siblings. He just had a big heart,” said his brother, Jose Miguel Ayala. “He was very protective of not just us, but my mum and dad too.”

He was 39 years old when he was brought to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

Two weeks after his arrival, Ismael told his family that he developed a high fever and a painful sore on his backside.

On September 18, 2025, workers at Adelanto initiated a Code Blue alert for Ismael, signalling a life-threatening medical emergency. Medical staff rushed him from his dorm to the infirmary in a wheelchair.

ICE documents show that Ismael was given pain medication, an ointment and a fibre supplement.

But according to Physicians for Human Rights’ Cuneo, who reviewed the case, Ismael should have received a physical examination and antibiotics.

“That is a major failure,” Cuneo said.

That weekend, hours after Lucia’s visit, Ismael’s condition worsened. Just after midnight on Sunday, ICE records say he was vomiting, shaking and sweating.

According to ICE documents, he was later sent to an intensive care unit, where he went into cardiac arrest within minutes of his arrival and subsequently died.

“I believe Ismael’s death could have fully been prevented by timely care,” Cuneo said. “It was a simple abscess that was not treated in a timely manner.”

Fault Lines obtained a coroner’s investigation that reveals Ismael was critically ill when he first arrived at the hospital, a fact that was left out of ICE’s public report on his death.

The coroner’s report also contradicts ICE’s timeline for Ismael’s death. It indicates Ismael went into cardiac arrest early on September 21, nearly a full day before he passed away. Medical staff, however, managed to restore his heartbeat after intubating him.

That conflicts with ICE’s report, which only notes his pulse stopping once: shortly before his death was announced on the morning of September 22. ICE described his condition on September 21 as “calm and cooperative”, but it signalled no heart problems.

“If they had given him the medical care and what he needed, maybe he would be here with us,” Lucia said.

In a statement about Ismael’s death, ICE said detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” throughout their time in custody.

But California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta told Fault Lines that his office found “the exact opposite” during its inspections of the state’s detention centres.

“We’ve gone to these facilities. We’ve gone into Adelanto. We have done our own physical inspections,” Bonta explained.

“If what the ICE spokesperson said was true, Mr Ayala-Uribe would be with us today.”

An internal mortality review committee also found that the care provided to Ismael at Adelanto “deviated beyond safe limits of practice”, according to a document obtained by US media earlier this year.

It also suggests that medical staff delayed responding to calls about Ismael’s declining health in the days leading up to his death.

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – For 11 days after giving birth last month, Rania Fadel could not hold her newborn son.

The 24-year-old gave birth to twin boys, Ilyas and Yahya, on September 25.

While Yahya was born healthy, Ilyas was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, where he remained for nearly two weeks.

Born prematurely, Ilyas weighed just 1.4 kilogrammes (3 pounds) at birth, according to his mother. He had medical issues affecting his blood and lungs, she said, and needed specialised care in an incubator.

Rania herself was recovering from a Caesarean section when her son was taken into intensive care. For days, she could not hold him.

“When they called me to hold him, I rushed over,” she recalled. “I was in a hurry to get to him. It was such a feeling.”

As Ilyas’s condition improved and he moved from intensive care to the hospital’s neonatal care unit, Rania was able to hold him against her bare chest, introducing her to a form of care for low-birthweight newborns known as kangaroo mother care, part of a newly-launched programme at the hospital.

It involves prolonged skin-to-skin contact between a caregiver – ideally the mother – and baby, with exclusive breast milk feeding, and has been shown to have important health benefits for premature and low-birthweight babies.

“I was so happy. It was such a beautiful feeling,” Rania said.

During the session, a nurse helped Rania position Ilyas against her chest, with his skin touching hers. Rania said he remained there for about 90 minutes.

“He started breastfeeding from me, and he stayed a little longer,” she said. “I felt he was improving.”

For Rania, the contact also brought a sense of closeness after days of separation.

“The baby feels that his mother is there,” she said. “He feels safe. Honestly, it makes me very happy.”

Skin-to-skin

Kangaroo mother care involves placing a baby against a parent’s bare chest for skin-to-skin contact, alongside breastfeeding and appropriate medical care.

For premature and low-birthweight babies, it can help regulate body temperature, support breastfeeding and improve health outcomes.

World Health Organization (WHO) guidance says that kangaroo mother care has been shown to reduce neonatal mortality by 32 percent, and mortality by six months of age by 25 percent, compared with conventional care.

At Nasser Medical Complex, Khawla al-Madhoun, director of nursing at the hospital’s maternity and neonatal departments, described it as an integrated approach to newborn care that supports growth and strengthens the bond between mother and baby.

“When we place a baby on the mother’s chest, it helps the baby grow,” she said.

“We have seen babies who were unwell or underweight begin to grow faster with kangaroo care. This can help them leave the hospital sooner.”

The hospital has begun introducing kangaroo care through a pilot programme supported by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The agencies announced the initiative at Nasser Hospital in September, but the practice is being introduced gradually in its external neonatal care unit, where babies stay with their mothers, and in maternity wards after delivery.

Al-Madhoun said the team was also preparing a dedicated room and seeking equipment to make the sessions more comfortable.

The team aims for longer periods of skin-to-skin contact – WHO recommends at least eight hours per day – although its immediate target is at least two hours, depending on each family’s circumstances.

At Nasser, the team is currently prioritising babies who are medically stable and do not require oxygen support. Nurses monitor their vital signs and assess them throughout the process.

Al-Madhoun stressed that the technique cannot replace an incubator or other treatment when a baby needs intensive care.

“It can help babies grow, gain weight and leave the hospital earlier, but some babies need other interventions, such as respiratory support,” she said. “Those babies still need the incubator and the care it provides.”

Shortage of neonatal equipment

The need for specialised newborn care comes as Gaza’s health system continues to struggle with damaged facilities, shortages of equipment and overcrowded neonatal units.

Before Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, Gaza had eight neonatal intensive care units with a total of 178 incubators, according to UNICEF.

By November 2024, three of those units had been destroyed by Israel, and the number of available incubators had fallen to about 54, a reduction of 70 percent. The shortage of equipment, compounded by limited supplies of fuel and electricity as a result of Israeli restrictions, put premature newborns at serious risk.

Israeli strikes have continued since an October 2025 “ceasefire”. Despite this supposed truce, and despite the delivery of some new equipment, the shortage of incubators and other equipment has persisted.

In May, UNICEF said it and its partners had supplied incubators and ventilators to hospitals in Gaza, while warning that neonatal units were still managing large numbers of fragile infants with limited equipment, space and power.

The war in Gaza has worsened living conditions for pregnant women with economic hardship, food shortages, poor nutrition and the harsh realities of displacement, including cooking over open fires and carrying water.

“These conditions have contributed to the rise in premature births and babies born with low birth weight who need specialised neonatal care,” al-Madhoun said.

Meanwhile, repeated displacement and overcrowding have placed further pressure on hospitals, including Nasser Medical Complex, which is already struggling with limited space and shortages of incubators and other essential neonatal equipment.

Newborn in a tent

Linda Abu Nasira’s baby girl is only three days old.

The infant initially developed a fever, which has since subsided, according to 23-year-old Linda.

As her daughter was being treated and breastfed, Linda was learning how to hold her against her chest under the guidance of the medical team.

The sessions were brief. Linda said she held her daughter against her chest for about 30 minutes at a time, repeating the process roughly every two hours, according to the instructions she had received.

“She is a little better than yesterday,” Linda said. “Little by little.”

Away from the hospital, Linda lives in a tent in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis, where she is raising her two older children – aged three and two – while caring for her newborn.

She described the conditions as difficult, particularly when it comes to securing food and drinking water.

“We try to manage,” she said. “But it is not like before, or like the conditions you would expect when giving birth.”

She does not know how long the baby will need to remain under observation in the hospital’s external neonatal care unit.

“As a mother, it means a lot to me to feel that I am helping my daughter recover,” Linda said. “I hope she will recover and be discharged as soon as possible.”

Forces aligned with Yemen’s government on Thursday said that they had intercepted a drone headed towards Medina in Saudi Arabia, and a missile fired towards Riyadh, amid escalating fighting between them and Yemen’s Houthi group.

Fighting between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iran-aligned Houthi rebels has intensified along the country’s western Red Sea coast, along with expanding Houthi attacks on oil facilities and airports in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, Yahya Saree, the military spokesman for the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah or Supporters of God, said the group’s forces had conducted “a high-quality military operation targeting Aramco in Dhahran”, as well as strikes on Riyadh airport and a refinery in the capital.

He added that operations “will continue in the coming days, targeting Saudi enemy airports and oil facilities”.

A Saudi Ministry of Energy official confirmed that a building belonging to Aramco in Dhahran was hit, resulting in a “limited fire” but “no casualties or fatalities”. Dhahran is home to Aramco’s headquarters, a vast complex comprising numerous buildings and residential compounds.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition launched strikes against the Houthi stronghold in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which the armed group seized in 2014 and has held ever since. The coalition fought the Houthis, who also seized large quantities of Yemen’s military assets, until a ceasefire was agreed in 2022. That ceasefire has broken down in recent months.

Reporting from Sanaa, Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry said the war has become a tit-for-tat exchange of blows. The Iran-backed group “will continue to launch these air strikes and … its goal is to meet fire with fire – air strike for air strike, capital for capital, airport for airport, and energy facility for energy facility”.

Which sites have the Houthis targeted in Saudi Arabia?

Recent Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia have mainly targeted key infrastructure on the outskirts of Riyadh, but they appear to be edging closer to the city centre.

Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport over the weekend killed 14 people and wounded more than 300 others. Houthi attacks have also been reported on other airports, including Abha international airport in southern Saudi Arabia, where two people were killed, and on Saudi Aramco energy facilities.

Authorities say Riyadh airport will remain shut at least until Saturday as several airlines cancelled flights, emptying the skies over the kingdom’s capital.

Al Jazeera’s Mawry said Saudi Arabia “has much more to lose” from tit-for-tat attacks disrupting air traffic, as Sanaa international airport has been closed for many years due to the damage it has sustained over the years of civil war. There are currently no Yemeni airliners at the airport.

Additionally, by disrupting security, the Houthis are signalling that Saudi Arabia will suffer mounting economic costs for its involvement in Yemen. Earlier this year, the Houthis similarly began launching strikes on Saudi-linked shipping in and around the Bab al-Mandeb strait at the entrance to the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on this shipping route for oil exports since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in March, under fire from the United States and Israel.

The kingdom is set to host a major investment conference in Riyadh later this month, dubbed “Davos in the desert”, but it is now unclear whether the event will go ahead amid the attacks.

Organisers of the Six Kings Slam tennis tournament, originally slated to begin next week in Riyadh, have announced the event will be pushed to December.

Saudi Arabia is also preparing to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from the Qatari capital, Doha, said, “These military hits by the Houthi forces are meant to create a pressure campaign that is also having knock-on economic effects.”

“The Gulf Cooperation Council has become a place where these enormous events have been playing out over the past year, and if they carry on, the international implications for the global economy will continue to be negative,” he added.

What’s the situation on the ground in Yemen?

Yemeni government forces are currently engaged in a major counteroffensive operation, called “Dawn of Yemen“, to retake coastal territory seized in recent weeks by the Houthis near the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital maritime trade chokepoint.

The Saudi cabinet pledged in a meeting led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week that it “will not allow its security or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait to be threatened”.

On Wednesday, Yemeni government forces said they had carried out 2,309 “targeting operations” against the Houthis as part of their “Dawn of Yemen” military campaign.

The forces’ spokesperson, Majeed al-Nuzaili, said the operations were conducted using combat aircraft, drones, artillery and rocket launchers, and destroyed 460 Houthi military vehicles.

Government forces say they have retaken areas in Sabr al-Mawadim and al-Sarari in Taiz governorate and have repelled a large Houthi attack west of Taiz city in southwest Yemen, a government-held city that was besieged by Houthi fighters earlier this month. Taiz governorate includes the flat, western coastal region on the Red Sea, which contains the port city of Mocha and the Bab al-Mandeb. Much of the governorate also lies within Yemen’s highlands while its capital, Taiz, is nestled between mountains.

Al Jazeera’s Mawry said fighting has been so intense in the area because of its strategic value. “Whoever controls the altitude and gains control of the mountains controls the landscape. They control the Red Sea coastlines and even the city of Taiz,” he said.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government has been calling for more reinforcements as well as Saudi air attacks on the positions recently taken over by the Houthis, mainly in the district of al-Misrakh, south of Taiz, and the district of at-Turbah, which are the gateways to the city of Taiz.

Mawry reported that while the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial strikes are forcing the Houthis to withdraw and retreat, allowing government forces to advance, they have not been able to gain a full hold over some of those positions.

“It is then followed by another counter-military offensive by the Ansar Allah group to retake the area. And this is sort of the routine that we have been seeing since early September,” he said.

The Houthi siege of Taiz has resulted in civilian casualties and severe shortages of fuel, gas and other supplies. On Wednesday, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported that wheat flour stocks have been nearly exhausted.

The Red Cross said front-line hospitals in areas including Marib, Taiz and Yemen’s Red Sea coast ⁠are registering unprecedented numbers of weapon-wounded patients, with some facilities admitting more than ⁠700 casualties in a single week.

Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Every day, Fuad Abu Salam sips his morning coffee outside his rented home in the Thinnabeh suburb, gazing at every detail of the sprawling Tulkarem refugee camp in front of him. This West Bank camp he can see in the distance once housed a two-storey building comprising four apartments, each measuring 300 square metres (3,229sq feet), in which he and his extended family lived.

After he was displaced from the camp, he, his wife, his four children, and his mother were confined to a small, rented apartment no bigger than 100sq metres (1,076sq feet) in Thinnabeh. His home in Tulkarem was partially destroyed when he left the camp.

Everything changed for Fuad and his family on January 21, 2025, when Israel launched a military assault in the occupied West Bank dubbed “Iron Wall”, initially targeting the Jenin refugee camp. A week later, the operation expanded to include the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps in the city of Tulkarem.

Israeli forces forcibly displaced the entire populations of the three camps during January and February 2025 and continue to prevent their return, the United Nations has said.

Mass displacement

Data from UNRWA cited in a report titled, Destruction of Palestinian Refugee Camps in the Northern West Bank, stated that 33,362 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced from the three camps. By October 2025, 52 percent of structures in the Jenin camp, 48 percent in the Nur Shams camp, and 36 percent in the Tulkarem camp had been destroyed or damaged.

The Israeli operation has affected hundreds of homes, roads, and infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, while humanitarian aid to the camps has been cut off.

Israeli forces killed 102 Palestinians, including 21 children, during the period covered, according to the report. This represents 46 percent of the total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank during this period.

On Sunday, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to provide a timeline for the return of displaced people to the three camps, setting November 23 as a deadline for a response.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich rejected the ruling, warning that the return of residents could allow for the reconstruction of what he termed “terror infrastructure”. He called on the government not to implement the decision.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz opposed the court’s intervention, asserting that the army’s continued presence in the camps was a security decision and stating his intention to maintain a military presence there.

Fuad, 42, a greenhouse installer, found himself forced to flee with all the camp’s other residents and more than 40 family members. But he and his neighbours carried with them the hope of returning home.

They moved between the homes of relatives, enduring harsh living conditions, until he finally settled in the Thinnabeh suburb of Tulkarem.

The neighbourhood, which overlooks the camp, has “restored his spirit” because he can see his home even if it’s from afar. Although he is unable to reach the building, he can gaze at it and imagine a time when he can return.

“If a decision were issued right now allowing us to return, I would go back immediately without a moment’s hesitation,” he said.

But his home is no longer what it used to be. It was partially demolished and set on fire by Israeli soldiers, rendering more than 80 percent of the apartment block uninhabitable. Fuad plans to use the rubble to rebuild his home.

“I will never waver in my resolve to return, even if it means pitching a tent over the ruins and living there,” he declared.

Mohamad Ararawi, 18, from the Jenin refugee camp, also saw his home razed to the ground with a wide road replacing it.

He told Al Jazeera that his family of 40, who had lived in a five-story building in the al-Damaj neighbourhood, all fled the camp when the Israeli military operation began, seeking shelter in homes belonging to other relatives.

“My mother, father, five sisters, and I took refuge in my brother’s unfinished apartment. We endured harsh conditions, suffering through biting cold and scorching heat, before gradually completing the construction until it became somewhat habitable,” he added.

Returning is all that matters to them, and they refuse to live anywhere but the camp, even if it lacks basic amenities.

A near-impossible return

Returning the displaced back to their homes is not merely an issue of clearing roads for residents. Returning would mean living in a camp in which infrastructure has been damaged and hundreds of homes destroyed, all amid a lack of necessities.

Nihad Shawish, a member of the Nur Shams Camp Popular Services Committee, told Al Jazeera that the scale of destruction makes the residents’ return fraught with immense difficulties, despite their will to go back to their homes.

Approximately 400 homes, most of them three to four stories high, were destroyed, he said, while about 100 homes were burned down during the Israeli army’s presence in the camp.

Even the ones that survived are not necessarily habitable; they sustained severe damage affecting doors, windows, and interior facilities. The collapse of some buildings has also damaged neighbouring homes.

Approximately 10,900 camp residents remain displaced, including families staying in private homes and others at a school in the Thinnabeh suburb.

Faisal Salameh, an official with the Tulkarem Camp Popular Committee, told Al Jazeera that more than 2,000 housing units were completely destroyed, while approximately 90 per cent of the camp’s homes sustained partial damage, rendering them uninhabitable.

“Israel has turned the camp into an environment that drives residents away, given the widespread destruction and the ban on reconstruction in certain areas that have been converted into roads,” he noted.

Despite these conditions, Salameh said that displaced residents are eager to return to the camp as soon as a decision by the Israeli government permits them to.

The camp was home to approximately 15,000 people. The majority of the displaced currently live in rented homes or with relatives, while others have sought shelter in schools, mosques, or makeshift tin shacks.

Israeli rejection

While the Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling opens the door to discussing the return of displaced persons to camps in the northern West Bank, its rejection by Israeli government ministers raises questions about whether it will be implemented. Until then, the lives of the displaced families remain in limbo.

Mohamad Halaseh, an expert on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli right-wing isn’t just trying to alter the structure of the judicial system, but also seeking to undermine its legitimacy and exert pressure on judges.

He explained that the effect of political stances is evident in the disregard for Supreme Court rulings. He cites the issue of Palestinian prisoner visitations, a case in which the state failed to comply with the court’s decisions, as one example of this.

“The continued disregard for court rulings undermines the judiciary’s ability to compel the government to act when judicial decisions conflict with the stance of the political leadership,” he said.

Several precedents make the implementation of court rulings on the camps unlikely, he said. This is particularly distressing for residents who also face strong Israeli political opposition to the return of Palestinians to the three camps.

“Declared political stances set a limit on the extent to which executive institutions comply with judicial rulings,” he said.

New Delhi, India — India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has returned to the streets of central New Delhi, leading dozens of members of parliament demanding the election chief’s resignation, as protests gather momentum.

Gandhi, heir to India’s most influential political dynasty, is seeking to turn a summer youth uprising into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade-long dominance of Indian politics, putting the Hindu nationalist government under growing pressure.

In a press briefing on Monday, Gandhi said the Modi government had put the capital city “in jail”.

The youth-led “Cockroach” movement that forced out the education minister in July has also threatened to protest on Tuesday if it is not allowed to rally at Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, which was the focus of summer demonstrations.

Joining Gandhi’s Congress party, other opposition forces and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) are thousands of students from left-wing organisations. As the government braces for further protests, security forces have been detaining thousands of students every day, with allegations of custodial violence casting a climate of fear over the capital.

‘No constraints on Modi’

India’s Election Commission, a supposedly autonomous body tasked with overseeing the world’s largest electorate, has been criticised after revelations that its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, frequently overruled concerns raised by the other two election commissioners about the integrity of changes to the voter database.

For months, India’s opposition parties have argued that the election commission is compromised, sabotaging elections at the behest of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its electoral benefit. The BJP denies the allegations.

Since June last year, the commission has been revising and updating statewide voter lists. It has since removed more than 130 million names, which critics say has disproportionately deprived minorities and other vulnerable groups in India of the right to vote.

Gandhi has called for the Chief Election Commissioner to be tried for treason. “We will not spare you,” he said, referring to Kumar, at his Monday press briefing.

Opposition politicians allege that protest rallies by leaders including Gandhi have been met with violent and brutal force, as seen in videos showing them being detained.

“[The protesters] came with love in their hearts, not hatred or anger,” Gandhi said, referring to a  protest on Saturday. “They were beaten, both by cops and BJP goons.”

“Narendra Modi … cannot silence India’s voice. These cowards cannot intimidate us. They will have to step aside,” he wrote on X, calling on people from all walks of life to join the protest on Monday.

Analysts say circumstances this time around are starkly different to the summer protests, when CJP-led demonstrators demanded the resignation of then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Asim Ali, a political analyst in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the mobilisation of the wider opposition would not stop, but the Modi government was unlikely to back down.

“The crackdown this time on students is making it apparent that it would be tougher for young protesters this time, and students can’t get beaten up and dragged violently daily,” he said. “Going forward, the opposition parties stand to be the front face of the protests, and they need to lead from the front.”

Since 1975, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of national emergency suspending civil liberties, “India saw more civil politics grow into mainstream, where opposition parties were allowed space,” Ali said.

He added that after five decades, “those democratic gains have vanished – and there are no constraints on this government by independent institutions.”

Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said he has seen New Delhi at the centre of “several big opposition political rallies, held in areas near the parliament, hosting hundreds of thousands of people,” when the police did not interfere, unlike the crackdowns this year.

Kidwai said that the violent detention of members of parliament, in particular, was worrying.

“We are seeing a big change from when politicians were more tolerant of dissent,” he added.

Cat-and-mouse chases

With an unprecedented security deployment in central New Delhi designed to prevent protest, youth leaders are turning to new tactics.

Neha Bora, the president of All India Students’ Association (AISA), a left-wing group affiliated with the Communist Party of India, has often tricked Delhi police in order to stage protests.

Bora, a post-doctoral student of theatre, came to national prominence for her fiery speeches in the July protests, becoming a leading face of the Gen Z movement challenging Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics.

Aditi Thakur, a 23-year-old student in the capital, has turned on notifications for all of Bora’s posts on social media. “A call to protest can come anytime, anywhere,” she told Al Jazeera.

Bora does not reveal when or where she is going to stage a protest until just 30 minutes before, to avoid detentions by the police. Her supporters are alerted via social media to join her at a given location in the capital.

On Sunday, she picked a congested street near central Delhi — and was able to jump several barricades to reach the heavily secured Parliament Street, before being chased down and dragged into a police van.

Even Thakur couldn’t catch her, she told Al Jazeera, laughing. “These are guerrilla times, but peacefully. If the government cracks down on us, we also need to adapt,” she said. “It is a fun cat-and-mouse chase every day. I’m hooked on it.”

The Gandhi-led Congress is also adopting similar measures, holding flash rallies at unannounced venues, then running away from police.

The mood is changing

A defining feature of the July protests – a watershed moment for wrestling concessions from the government – was Gen Z’s humour in the face of police brutality.

Now, protesters are prepared for a more serious confrontation, even if demonstrations remain peaceful, say analysts.

“We are seeing that humour changing more into anger this time,” Asim Ali said.

The biggest challenge for the government is disruption in central New Delhi, which, Ali said, the government cannot allow on a daily basis. The area is home to most federal government offices, as well as being a major business hub.

Protesters know that too, and that gives them leverage.

“We are seeing this movement grow into a bigger anti-government, anti-Modi movement,” Ali said.