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The British government’s “Be Ready” campaign has caused a rush on tinned goods, bringing back memories of the COVID-19 pandemic when supermarkets ran dangerously low on toilet paper and online vendors were price-gouging on the internet.

In the 10 days since the campaign urging citizens in England and Wales to be ready for a national emergency was launched on October 22, sales of bottled water have risen by 67 percent; tinned and jarred food by 37 percent; and hand sanitiser by 83 percent, according to retail research firm Worldpanel by Numerator. Wind-up radios, torches and power banks have also sold out at several retailers.

British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, the campaign’s most prominent public face, says the government wants people to be “alert but not alarmed”. So what is Be Ready, why now, and is it really necessary?

What is ‘Be Ready’?

Be Ready is a three-year public information campaign being run by the Cabinet Office. Its launch on October 22 marked its first stage.

The government is asking households in England and Wales to make sure they would be able to cope on their own for 72 hours if electricity, water, phone and internet services all fail in the event of a national emergency. The idea is that emergency services can then focus on people who require more urgent assistance.

The campaign’s website features a checklist, starting with bottled water and long-life food that does not need to be kept in a fridge, such as tinned food, dried fruit and nuts.

It also recommends having a torch, spare batteries, a charged power bank and a wind-up or battery-powered radio, along with cash in case card payments go down, a first aid kit, medication, warm clothing and blankets to hand.

The new website covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland receive their own advice through Ready Scotland and NI Direct.

More than 500 organisations, including charities, businesses and faith and community groups, have signed up to spread the message.

Official household preparedness guidance has existed since May 2024. What is new is the push to get people to act on it.

What’s this all for?

Officially, the focus of the campaign is to ensure households can get through “everyday emergencies” such as storms, floods, wildfires and burst water pipes. The campaign follows months of heatwaves, drought and fires across the United Kingdom this summer.

The government also highlights how unprepared Britons say they are. In a Cabinet Office survey this year, only 13 percent said their household was largely or totally prepared for an emergency, while 84 percent wanted more advice from the government.

Independent research points the same way. A 2025 survey of 931 people by Bournemouth University’s Disaster Management Centre, part of its EM-PREPARE project, found that only 52 percent felt they understood the hazards they faced, and 21 percent said they were not aware of the risks at all. The same study found that 81 percent were willing to do more to prepare.

In September, the National Audit Office, the UK’s spending watchdog, warned of threats facing Britain’s food supply chain.

The security backdrop features, too. Ministers have linked the campaign to the risk of cyberattacks and hostile state activity against critical infrastructure. On Remembrance Day, Defence Minister Lord Coaker said the 13 percent figure was exactly why the campaign had been launched.

The UK is also catching up with its neighbours. The European Commission’s Preparedness Union Strategy, adopted in March 2025, recommends that people be able to cope alone for at least 72 hours. Sweden posted 5.2 million copies of its crisis-preparedness brochure to households in November 2024, and Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic run similar campaigns.

What has the response been?

Shoppers in England and Wales have acted fast and enthusiastically. Supermarket chain Iceland said sales of tinned products rose 40 percent over the first weekend. Tinned-food producer Princes reported particularly high demand for tuna, meat and vegetables.

Worldpanel found the equivalent of 400,000 extra people a day bought tinned meat immediately after the launch.

Meanwhile, Canned Food UK, part of the Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association, has launched a consumer campaign featuring TV chef and author Theo Michaels, who demonstrates how to use canned food in tasty recipes.

The rush has extended beyond the food aisles. Electronics retailer Maplin said torch sales jumped 284 percent; radios, 92 percent; and power banks, 106 percent, within days. Hardware store group Robert Dyas reported a 160 percent rise in radio sales, and at least seven wind-up radio models sold out across several outlets.

Criticism has focused on tone more than substance. On BBC’s Question Time, an audience member accused Streeting of “scaremongering”, warning that the advice would trigger panic buying. Streeting replied that the campaign was about everyday threats such as wildfires, flooding and frozen pipes.

Opposition figures have largely accepted the principle. Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat called the advice “a perfectly reasonable thing”.

Analysts and charities are split on who should carry the burden. The British Red Cross, a campaign partner, has backed it, saying simple preparation helps people support friends, family and neighbours.

But more than 180 experts, academics, farmers and community food leaders signed an open letter warning that 29 percent of Britons cannot afford a three-day food reserve. They urged ministers to set up national, regional and community food stores rather than rely on the resilience of individual households.

How ready are British households for an emergency?

On November 2, Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy took evidence on public preparedness. Among the witnesses was Lee Miles, professor of crisis and disaster management at Bournemouth University, who led the EM-PREPARE study of household resilience.

His research found that 75 percent of households had no major measures in place to cope with climate change, and about 69 percent were willing to spend no more than one day improving their preparedness.

Miles told the committee that the challenge was to move from raising awareness to helping people act. “The important thing about the ‘Be Ready’ campaign is turning it into a ‘Being Ready’ campaign,” he said.

Miles also warned that local resilience bodies would need proper funding if they were given more responsibility. “Otherwise, you set them up to fail in various aspects; they will not be able to deliver what they are supposed to,” he told MPs.

Is this all really necessary?

Supporters say the advice is modest and overdue. Having three days of supplies is standard across much of Europe, and the 2025 Iberian blackout showed how fast cash machines, card payments and mobile networks can fail.

That was when Spain, Portugal and parts of southwestern France were hit by a widespread power blackout that paralysed public transport, caused large traffic jams, delayed flights, and left residents unable to access cash from ATMs, as utility operators and the authorities scrambled to restore the electric grid.

With only one in eight Britons feeling prepared, they argue, a calm campaign now is better than a panicked one during a crisis. Retail data so far suggests most people have responded calmly.

The Bournemouth research highlights why the messaging could be critical. Households responding to that said they saw accidents at home as the hazard most likely to affect them – cited by 35 percent – while only 5 percent named war and conflict, and 4 percent terrorism.

Miles called for more targeted risk communication to the public, alongside education to help households build their resilience.

Just hours before Iran claimed it hit the United States military’s early warning radar system in Bahrain early on Friday, US President Donald Trump said he had told his country’s lead negotiator, Vice President JD Vance, that, “We don’t need a deal with Iran.”

Instead, Trump said, he has told Vance to focus on unearthing what the president says is corruption and crime in Democratic-controlled cities and states – after Democrats stunningly took over Congress in the midterm elections.

Vance is a known critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran. He has blamed Trump’s military strikes on Iran and the subsequent energy crisis and inflation in the US for the Republicans’ losses in Congress.

Meanwhile, several commercial vessels trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz have hit naval mines, or were struck by the Iranian military, over the past week – but Trump continues to claim that Washington controls the critical waterway nonetheless.

So, where is the war headed – and is Vance being sidelined by Trump?

What did Trump tell Vance?

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he had asked Vice President Vance “to focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.”

“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” he added. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”

The Trump administration has appeared increasingly divided on the foregoing arc of war on Iran since the midterm losses.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Washington’s economic pressure campaign against Iran is proving effective, so a resumption of large-scale military operations is unnecessary.

“The economic pressure on Iran is going to get even worse,” he added.

Trump has given mixed messages about his plans for the war. Despite threatening that he might “destroy” Iran last week, this week Trump has said that further strikes against Iran are “quite unlikely”.

What role has Vance played in talks with Iran?

Vance favours a deal with Iran, which Trump believes is not possible currently.

Vance led the US negotiations in April in Islamabad, where he helped secure the June memorandum of understanding with Iran. That quickly collapsed over glaring gaps in each side’s understanding of what had been agreed, however – particularly in reference to control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US vice president also led direct talks with Iran in Switzerland and is part of renewed diplomatic efforts, engaging Qatari and Pakistani mediators and seeking continued negotiations with Iranian officials.

On November 4, following sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections, Vance publicly questioned whether the war had been worth the political and economic costs. In a post on X, he wrote: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” endorsing diplomatic resolution as sound advice.

He added: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so.”

Political analysts say Vance’s rather blunt assessment is also an effort to distance himself from Trump’s war on Iran, when the president is facing his all-time low career approval ratings.

On June 17, speaking at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France – when both parties had just signed the Islamabad MoU – Trump told reporters: “This way, if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.”

The next day, Vance told reporters he believed the president was “joking”.

Where does the US-Iran war go from here?

It remains unclear.

On Friday morning, Tehran said it had attacked and destroyed an early-warning radar system belonging to the US military in Bahrain, in what it said was retaliation for an air attack on a telecommunications tower in southern Iran’s port city of Sirik.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Trump said Washington’s allies in the Middle East had asked him to hold off on renewed large-scale attacks against Iran. He added that the US could destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure, bridges and manufacturing facilities within three days, if it wanted to.

“Saudi Arabia has asked me to please just let it be the way it is now for a while,” he said at White House, adding that Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain preferred the current approach.

Asked whether he would have launched further attacks without those requests, Trump replied: “Yes, I would.”

Though Trump acknowledged that rising fuel prices caused by the war contributed to the Republicans’ defeat in the midterm elections, he defended his decision to attack Iran.

Meanwhile, Brigadier General Ali Reza Belaili, an adviser to the aerospace force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said an order by Iran’s supreme leader to strike “enemies” without geographical limits will be implemented “at the appropriate time”.

Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted him saying that “the more Americans persist, the more they will sink into this swamp they created themselves”.

What’s the latest on diplomatic efforts?

This week, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and top negotiator, told Al Jazeera that the Strait of Hormuz will “never return” to its status before the US-Israel war on Iran. That was when all commercial shipping was able to pass through the strait freely without having to pay tolls.

Iran in effect closed the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil supplies were shipped in peacetime, in early March following the start of US-Israeli strikes. That sent global energy markets into turmoil.

Ghalibaf said Tehran has sent a clear proposal for a ceasefire and for the reopening of the strait to Washington via Qatari mediators, laying out seven conditions, and added that Iran is now waiting for an official response from the US.

“The ball is now in the American court,” he said.

Iran’s conditions include an end to the US naval blockade of Iran’s ports, the lifting of economic sanctions, the release of Iranian frozen funds, ending fighting on all fronts, and an explicit announcement of an end to the war.

The US has previously refused to agree to these demands without an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme in place first. Iran wants to negotiate that separately.

Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera: “We are still in a situation which is ‘no war, no peace’, and it’s unlikely to move for the time being.

“Major strikes are unlikely to happen in the imminent days, but things are likely to shift one way or the other in the next couple of weeks,” she said. “The Gulf countries are not necessarily endorsing this as a new normal, even if they prefer this to the prospect of a renewed war.”

What’s the latest on US strikes and ships hit in Hormuz?

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ghalibaf said this week that “there are no ‘free waters’ [international waters] there, and the 1982 [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea] does not apply” to the Strait of Hormuz. The strait does, in fact, run solely through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.

“The regulations within the Strait of Hormuz are governed by the laws of the two littoral states that border it,” he added, reiterating Iran’s position that it is tightly controlling the waterway.

Tehran has said that multiple “offending” vessels – which it says have used an “illegal” route, referring to the southern corridor of the strait – have caught fire during attempts to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has previously told approved ships to use a northern route which passes closer to its own coastline.

At least 12 tankers have been hit in the past 12 days, according to Iran.

The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) says it has been “working round the clock” to keep the strait open.

On Wednesday, CENTCOM claimed that at least 4,000 ships had crossed the waterway with the US military’s assistance, carrying more than 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil.

However, all maritime agencies continue to advise against travelling through the strait, and insurers have raised prices sharply for such journeys, or are refusing cover at all.

BONO gets emotional when he thinks about his bittersweet duet with Dolly Parton.

If like me, you adored the country icon and everything she stood for, you’ll also find it hard not to be deeply moved.

Their tender ballad Torn is the last track on U2’s new album, Carnaval De Luz, the Spanish for “carnival of light”.

It is also Dolly’s poignant final recording, her swansong if you like, in a career stretching back to childhood performances at the Grand Ole Opry in the Fifties.

“What a gift she gave us and what a blessing it felt like,” Bono tells me of his chance to work with her. “And I’m like you, Simon, I can hardly listen to that voice now.”

Completed in June, little more than two months before Dolly died aged 80, Torn is a tale of our times about a family divided by opposing political views.

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“Torn apart these loving hearts that beat and break the same,” she and Bono sing with voices intertwined, Dolly’s displaying a noticeable fragility.

And if Carnaval De Luz as a whole is a vibrant, punchy, forward-facing celebration of rock and roll, this song is an entirely fitting way for it to end.

“Dolly is the Queen of the Carnival. She’s the definition of it,” says Bono of the star noted for her billowing blonde wigs, physical enhancements and sequin-spangled outfits.

“She came from a one-room cabin on Locust Ridge Road (in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee) and real poverty, and she reminded us all that where you come from MUST not decide where you’re going in life.

“If you come from a tough neighbourhood or a broken family, you can still go all the way.”

I’m speaking to all four members of U2 as they celebrate 50 years since Larry Mullen Jr pinned up a handwritten note at Mount Temple School, Dublin: “Drummer seeks musicians to form band.”

Here they are before me, this seemingly unbreakable quartet of Sixtysomethings reclining on a sofa, from left to right, The Edge, Bono, Larry and Adam Clayton.

Even by their standards, this is a momentous year for U2, marked by their 16th studio album, two EPs themed around global turmoil and spirituality respectively, the big 5-0 anniversary and the announcement of next year’s mammoth world tour.

But first, let’s hear more of what Bono has to say about the incomparable Dolly Parton.

“I think what we loved about her was the lack of self-pity,” he says. “Years after she wrote about Jolene running off with her man, somebody asked her, ‘How do you feel about that song now?’

“She said, ‘When I look over and I see my man sleeping and catching flies out there on the porch, I think, ‘Come back Jolene and take him away!’

“There was always humour with Dolly and all our favourite people have that, don’t they? There’s no time for whining rockstars. Especially us, as we’ve been given so much.”

LARRY

Having not been around for a while because of injury, I’ve had a lot of time for reflection.

It was not a decision but a situation imposed on me. I couldn’t do my job and it was difficult to make my way through that. So it was good to have the opportunity to come back – because I missed everything!

And when I put my head in the studio again and started to play with these ideas, I felt, “Oh, this is where I’m meant to be. This is what I had hoped for”.

In our 50th year, it’s a great thing to celebrate the past and what we’ve done. But there’s nothing like looking at your 50 years and realise that there’s a future to be proud of, to be engaged with.

To still be moving forward, to have this record to take around the world, is exciting for us.

So how did U2’s collaboration with her come about? I ask.

“We wrote loads of songs that we tried to sell her,” says Bono

“But she said, ‘Well, I have a song I started that you may want to take in a different direction and it’s called Torn.’”

Dolly’s original concept followed a traditional country theme — a woman torn between two lovers — but now it focuses on a familiar U2 subject, how political divisions can destroy families.

Bono says: “Dolly stayed away from politics but she had two brothers that don’t speak to each other.

“They’re fighting about politics — and that doesn’t just happen in the red and blue states of America. It happens in the UK, it happens in Ireland, it happens all over the world, where families are at each other’s throats about the right way to go.”

He believes it’s time we give people with differing views to our own “a bit of slack” and listen to what they have to say and takes inspiration from Dolly’s approach.

“She always wanted anyone to be welcome at her show, whatever condition they arrived in,” he says, “And that’s the way it has to be for us on next year’s tour.”

ADAM

As teenagers in 1976/77, there was a lot of anger in the air. That was our go-to position, where we came from, our music. And the best way for a band to succeed was desperation. To have no plan B.

You had no choice but to keep going forward because your life depended on it.

Fifty years on, this band has allowed me to go from a position of great ignorance and arrogance – thinking I knew everything and could do anything – to realising that my relationship with these three other guys means I’ve been able to achieve way more than I could ever have expected.

The by-product is great humility and gratitude. I feel that we still have a lot to give . No matter where our lives have led us, the constant is mucking about in a studio, creating music together.

As for the sound of Torn, which bears the merest hint of country twang, Bono adds: “We did something similar with Johnny Cash. If you think about Larry’s drum part, it’s more of a sci-fi country landscape.

“I think he did her a favour by not doing the obvious but it was risky. If she didn’t run with it — and she’d have no problem telling you — then we’d have lost her.

“But she liked the direction we took it and her camp has a more traditional country version, which they’re going to put out.

“Hearing her voice in the context of Carnaval De Luz is a bit of a shock and a welcome one.”

Now it’s time to take a deep dive into the rest of the album, a freewheeling tour de force punctuated by The Edge’s most direct, driving riffs in years and blessed by an engine room — Adam on bass and Larry on drums — at the top of its game.

Bono is still finding an incredible vocal range, particularly noticeable through his falsetto on The Mirror Maker (Rosalia) and Superficiality.

As it’s U2, a number of words beginning with U spring to mind about the album — upbeat, urgent, unfettered, uncompromising.

The album begins with the pulsing adrenalin rush of Go (Carnaval De Luz) which segues in the glam-rock stomp of La Reina, which in this context means the carnival queen.

THE EDGE

I feel intense gratitude that I’m still able to make music with these guys, who are my friends as well as my creative partners.

That combination of trust and mutual respect and belief in one another, which is necessary for a band, is also incredibly hard to maintain.

The fact that we’re still here and still enjoying working together and still making great work is kind of mind-blowing.

For us, it’s about being exacting and going after it in an uncompromising way. The music will lead you on really circuitous routes before you get to the final version, but it’s important to never give up – that really comes above everything else, that’s the lesson.

I think it’s always the case with U2 that the music is the boss and the songs are the boss.

Of U2’s rekindled vigour, Adam says: “I suppose we’ve caught up with ourselves.

“Just as we were getting ready to go back to work after Covid, Larry couldn’t perform and had to have medical treatment.

“Now that he’s back in the band full-time, it’s full steam ahead. You can hear it on the record — it’s in the grooves.”

Larry says “it was a real thrill” to get back behind his drum kit in the studio.

“You never know what’s going to happen when you go into a room — it’s complicated,” he continues.

“But we captured a mood and what’s great about this record is that the mood continued.”

He believes that U2’s two EPs, the gritty Days Of Ash and the reflective Easter Lily, released earlier in the year, helped “us get something out of our system”.

“Something is stirring,” agrees Bono. “A disturbance in the force and we’re having fun with it.

BONO

Chemistry . . . there’s some humiliation involved in getting older and still your drug of choice is the perfect song or performance. It means you can be unhappy a lot of the time, because it’s just out of reach.

Further humbling comes, but it’s actually a gift, when you accept you can only achieve them with these three other people (he gestures to his bandmates).

You can’t become yourself without them – and I’ve tried.

I’ve been in other bands, as an anti-poverty activist and all that, but it’s something to realise you really need THESE people to be yourself. And, of course, Western – and Southern, Eastern, Northern – civilisation depends on us.

What would happen if we put out a shite U2 album? The whole thing would   collapse!

“We may have arrived with the right music at the right time — though that’s not necessarily a given. But Carnaval de Luz seems to have struck people the right way,” he adds, before acknowledging the U2 naysayers, “I’m sure there are plenty of people out there for whom it will not strike a chord.

“But for us, it is the sound of relief — and exuberance.”

As for The Edge, his blazing guitar is at the front and centre of the record and must be a source of satisfaction.

“It was a bit of a throw down because guitar hadn’t been at the forefront of contemporary music for a while,” he says.

“But now we’re seeing Fontaines D.C., Geese, The Lambrini Girls — all with fantastic sonics — and that’s what we need.

“It’s what I was searching for on this record. By the same token, it has to be in keeping with what Adam, Larry and Bono are doing.

“You can’t just play guitar for the sake of it. Riffs have to sit in the perfect context to make them great.”

One of the new songs, The Mirror Maker (Rosalia), is a sultry shout-out to shape-shifting Spanish singer Rosalia, who mixes flamenco with pop and hip-hop.

Her album Lux topped many 2025 end-of-year lists.

So I’m keen to find out what she thought of U2 singing about her.

“It was an awkward moment because she became so famous,” says Bono. “My daughter had seen her Motomami tour and I knew her music — but normally you have to be in jail or dead before we write a song about you.

“It was nice to find this incredible artist and celebrate her — but what if she wasn’t into it?

“I can tell you she’s been very kind and generous in our direction. Somebody asked the other day, ‘Would you have taken it off, if she thought it was s**t?’

“It was Edge who said, ‘No, we’d say it was about Saint Rosalia who lived in a cave in 12th Century Italy — at Monte Pellegrino, the same spelling as the sparkling water.’”

Edge says: “Rosalia has a healthy disrespect for staying in your lane, something that (Brian) Eno brought to our band early on.”

Moving on, I ask U2 about the flamboyant carnival concept behind their album.

“People forget that carnival was originally a religious festival,” says Bono. “And it came before BEFORE Lent, the period when people ask hard questions of themselves.

“Then Easter is supposed to arrive with the promise of transcendence — and we love a good rock and roll song with a bit of transcendence, you know Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire.

“That’s who we are and that’s what we love about music.

“But we got the protest songs and Easter Lily out of the way first and now it’s the carnival bit.”

This is the cue for Edge to implore people not to lose hope in straitened times. He says: “If you allow doomscrolling to dictate your mood, you’re never going to move forward.

“Without being in denial of the challenges facing us, the carnival is what we want to cling onto. It’s an act of defiance to hold onto joy and positivity in the face of everything that’s going on.”

He points to Donald Trump’s disastrous mid-term elections and alludes to authoritarian leaders being thrown out in places like Hungary and Serbia.

“Everyone was in shock at the number of authoritarian regimes springing up and now they seem to be on the back foot,” he says. “I think carnival is the right mood for this moment.”

Bono picks up the thread by adding: “Sometimes, dancing is the most revolutionary thing you can do.

“Think about it — people go to festivals, they want to dance, they want to move their bodies and they’ve got the freedom to do so.

“We’re not giving up that freedom. That’s what rock and roll is, and this is a moment to fight back by not letting somebody rob you of joy.”

That thought prompts him to consider next year’s The Greatest Show On Earth world tour, named after a Carnaval De Luz joint effort with long-time collaborator Eno.

“We want to go out and make it the best night of anyone’s life — and of our own lives.”

He stops in his tracks and adds with self-deprecating humour: “That sounds completely insincere and a sales job.

“I warn you I am also a salesman, but I’m not being insincere. U2 have to go on stage and believe each night can be the one.

“In these times, it had better be the one. People are paying for tickets, coming with their mates and families — and we are very proud to say that Wolf Alice are joining us.”

U2 are no strangers to carnival atmosphere and remember being taken by Quincy Jones to the Brazilian state of Bahia, the spiritual home of carnival.

“We also went to the Rio carnival and we’ve been to samba schools,” continues Bono. “There’s a reason South Americans are good at football — they’ve got rhythm and they’re better at being in their bodies than Irish people.” Edge and Bono riff off each other and the former says: “They say the Irish have a Latin sensibility but we didn’t get carnival when we were growing up. We got — as in the UK — pancakes.

“So when we discovered what was going on in Spain, South America and Mexico, it made a lot of sense to us.”

This brings us to barnstorming La Reina, on the surface a tribute to a carnival queen but also serving as a reminder that coming together is an antidote to loneliness.

Its mention prompts Bono to make a plea: “When we come to the UK next summer, people can tell us who they want for Carnival Queen and we’ll put them on a float.

“Usually, they came from a small town and weren’t posh but became queen for a day. I love the idea of finding our queen. They don’t have to be U2 fans, just someone U2 fans admire.

“We all have saints and angels walking around us. One works in the pub, one in the emergency room — and no doubt the odd hairy bloke dressed in a crown.

“La Reina is going to be a fun moment and great to hear Edge swagger it out on glam-rock guitar.”

I leave you with a lyric from stripped-back ballad If The World Is At War We Better Not Be. “I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for you to happen to me,” intones Bono.

In this case, “you” means meeting the three people who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him for 50 years — and they called themselves U2.

U2

Carnaval De Luz

★★★★★

AFTER finally securing his match on a dating app, a young man attempts to craft the ‘perfect’ message to show he’s an alpha male, a provider, and the best sex she’ll ever have. 

He types out a message saying “I know women find it hard to make a decision, but you should hook up with me tonight for great sex”, but before it sends, AI flags it as potentially inappropriate and he gets a message from the app, saying: “Are you sure you want to send? Think twice – your match may find this language disrespectful.”

It’s the first time the young man has been confronted with the idea that his ‘manosphere’ rhetoric – typically used to promote aggressive masculinity and anti-feminist messages – might cause upset.

He deletes the inflammatory and types out “Hi, how are you? What’s your ideal date?”

The AI is trained to pick up words and phrases that are known to be offensive, and as of March 2026 it now recognises harmful tones of messages. It also has a “does this bother you” counterpart which asks the recipient of a dodgy message how they are doing.

And this is exactly how Georgia Harrison, 31, wants all social media apps to work – putting the safety of women and girls first while challenging the impact of toxic online views.

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Data from Match Group shows that more than 700 million harmful messages haven’t been sent since 2021 after receiving the prompt, and one in five users rewrite their message after getting an are you sure message.

“It’s so powerful,” she tells The Sun. 

“The app is subconsciously questioning them on some things they are saying which are misogynistic. 

“This might be one of the first times that a lot of these young men have actually been questioned on the wording that they’re using. 

“It’s not only preventing the young woman from receiving a message that could offend her.

“It’s making them question how they speak to women and what is the best way to speak to women and how they want to be spoken to and treated.

“I’ve been told by Match Group a significant number of people rewrote their messages after seeing the prompts. So they actually deleted that and changed the way they speak. 

“And that could change the way that they view the way that they use their terminology in their entire future.

“I think that’s a really powerful tool and something that really stood out for me as a campaigner for women.”

Former The Only Way Is Essex star Georgia has vowed to take on the manosphere with the Georgia Harrison Foundation, which will aim to tackle the toxic online culture that the younger generation is growing up with.

Match Group’s Spark Report, a survey of adults dating online, found that a third of Brits didn’t meet anyone new in person in the last month and spend 4.7 hours each week doing their socialising through a screen, her mission is more important than ever. 

Georgia, who gained widespread fame on Love Island, is asking social media to take more responsibility for the content posted on their apps – just like Match Group is. 

The company, which also runs Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish among others, has brought in verification requirements for all users to increase trust. 

As of this year, the verification process requires users to take a video selfie to show that they’re a real person, not a deepfake or borrowing someone’s pictures.

Then, the app uses facial geometry to confirm that your photos match the video you have submitted. Two screenshots from the initial video are held on file to ensure future photos are of the person who made the account. They are deleted once the account is closed.

Their recent Spark study of 3,007 single adults found that the majority of people meet their romantic partner online. 

It also found 69 per cent of singles would feel more confident meeting up with matches if they have a verified profile.

When dating sites and apps first launched, there were limited ways to verify who you were talking to, until you met in person. 

Something scam artists and serial predators happily took advantage of. 

Scot Christopher Harkins found multiple victims to defraud and in some cases abuse on Tinder and other dating apps, even at one point changing his name.

Scam alerts are now live across the Match Group platform and prompts will pop up when a conversation shows signs of a scam such as asking for money, or a push to swap contact details off the platform.

He was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail in July 2024 for defrauding his victims of more than £214,000, as well as charges including rape, assault, and physical abuse.

Known as the Tinder Swindler, Simon Leviev also used Tinder to pose as a wealthy playboy and is alleged to have defrauded singletons out of an estimated £7.4million. He is banned from all Match Group platforms. 

Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said: “It’s incumbent upon us to apply technology and resources to make our apps as safe as possible. 

“We’ve done that through photo verification to confirm users are a real human and you match your photos. 

“We also share ‘bad actor bans’ between our apps. This means someone who is a scammer, a fake profile, an organised crime group or someone who caused harm to someone on or off platform using Tinder will be banned on Hinge and Match.com and vice versa.

“My daughter uses our apps, so have my brother and sister. It’s a family affair. Keeping users safe is so important.”

Bad actors are people that can be flagged by AI or users to Match Group who will then investigate, and if required create the ban of a certain person across the portfolio of dating apps.

Alongside facial recognition, users can report people for on-platform harm, such as abusive or aggressive messages, as well as off-platform harm including behaviour on dates or when messaging outside the dating app. 

Spencer added: “If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing to improve society and our business results, it would be to make men behave better. That’s what we’re hoping to do with the Are You Sure? feature.”

He also told The Sun his team works closely with law enforcement across the globe when there are reports of dangerous behaviour. 

Georgia said: “Younger people find it really hard to meet people the way we used to. 

“But dating apps shouldn’t feel like they could be dangerous. If anything it should be safer. 

“Women should feel safe knowing that whoever they’re messaging isn’t a catfish. That they’re not going to be a victim of sextortion because this person is verified that they are who they say they are to be on the platform. 

“I’ve had messages on Instagram of people who have become victims of financial fraud and sextortion after meeting someone online.”

“This can be avoided with something as simple as verification. Dating is meant to be fun, not something that you’re scared or worried about.”

Georgia met her partner Jack on a dating app back in 2024, and the couple now share daughter Sahara. 

He’s been by her side during her campaigning journey against intimate image abuse initiated by her own experience.

In 2023, Georgia’s ex-boyfriend Stephen Bear was sentenced to 21 months and handed a five-year restraining order after sharing sexually explicit photos without her consent. 

Then in August this year, he was jailed again for 16 months after repeatedly breaching the restraining order by harassing and posting about Georgia on social media. 

Back in 2023 Georgia struggled to get the video taken down from OnlyFans and other sites, leaving her determined to get change for future victims of intimate image abuse. 

And while she’s got a long way to go, she’s hoping big companies will take their cue from Match Group. 

“Over my experience campaigning for the last five years, I’ve just felt like so many tech platforms are more concerned about their traffic and their numbers rather than their actual users,” she said. 

Match Group say they have stood firm on safety measures despite the company seeing a drop in user numbers since introducing photo verification. 

Georgia said of the company: “I really hope that a lot of other tech platforms take the same approach and make sure that their users are more important by far than just a spreadsheet.”

New Delhi, India – India has exempted an Israeli phone-hacking company from New Delhi’s own rules, allowing it to sell phone-extraction products and surveillance technology to government agencies and sparking concerns and criticism from rights groups and activists.

An investigation by the digital-rights group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) found Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, a close confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signed off on exemptions from “make in India” procurement rules, clearing the way for government forensic institutions to buy at least 422 items of foreign technology, including products made by the Israeli firm Cellebrite.

Modi’s federal government and state governments ruled by his Bharatiya Janata Party are not the only ones who bought this Israeli technology. States governed by the opposition Indian National Congress party, including Himachal Pradesh, Keralam and Karnataka, also purchased similar phone-extraction and cloning tools.

A review of documents revealed that India’s expansive surveillance capabilities extend far beyond just cloning phones and extracting data without passwords to accessing cloud-based data from social media platforms – such as Instagram, X and Tinder – as well as data from connected devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.

Experts argued that India’s current laws offer no guardrails against overreaching surveillance and the data extractions happen in a legal grey zone.

“It is clear that there is an expansion of India’s surveillance capabilities and it is becoming both wider and deeper,” said Vrinda Bhandari, a lawyer in the Supreme Court who works on digital rights and privacy issues.

“It’s now easier to conduct mass surveillance rather than targeted, specific surveillance and also possible to do more intrusive surveillance,” she told Al Jazeera. “[Today,] surveillance gives you a richer picture of an individual’s life.”

The IFF reviewed a letter also seen by Al Jazeera from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs dated January 7 in which Shah signed off on a wide-ranging, one-year waiver of “make in India” rules to clear a path for buying at least 422 forensic items.

Under “make in India” procurement rules, preference must be given to eligible Indian manufacturers over foreign suppliers in awarding government contracts. However, the rules allow exemptions with the approval of the minister in charge of the procuring department.

Another letter by the ministry dated January 20 showed Shah permitted the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to buy Israeli company Cellebrite’s Premium Tool on a three-year licence for about 50 million rupees ($529,947).

In specifications demanded by the government that were revealed in a review of tender bids, “solution” software must be capable of using login tokens recovered from seized phones or computers to access more than 100 cloud services. Login tokens are in effect digital keys that keep users signed in to online accounts.

Although an exemption for a company does not confirm whether a certain product was purchased by any government agency, it points to the range of forensic capabilities that opened up for procurement by Indian agencies.

From the 422-item exemption list, the IFF identified 118 items under digital and multimedia forensics, including Israeli company Cellebrite’s Pathfinder, Inseyets On-Prem Pro and Inseyets Offline.

Cellebrite’s tools have been used against journalists and activists in countries like Serbia, Jordan, Kenya and Russia.

Other products included tools from foreign digital-forensics companies like Magnet, MSAB, Oxygen Forensics and Belkasoft as well as software for open-source intelligence, dark-web monitoring and cryptocurrency investigations.

Al Jazeera reviewed a request for a bid proposal by the Delhi Police for software for its National Cyber Forensic Laboratory, which comes under the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, an initiative of the Home Ministry.

Consider the capabilities the police department was seeking in its request: software that bypasses passwords on Apple’s macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems; recovers internet activity, browser histories, deleted files and identifies traces of VPNs; bypasses screen locks; performs full file system extractions; decrypts backups; and extracts information from messaging applications.

The Delhi Police demanded another “all-in-one” system to access more than 100 cloud services, including Google, Apple, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Discord and dating platforms such as Tinder, Grindr and OkCupid or platforms like Slack and OnlyFans using account credentials or login tokens recovered from devices. Its specifications also sought the extraction of data from drones, wearable devices and devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Al Jazeera reached out to officials at the NIA, the Home Ministry and home departments of opposition-ruled states of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Keralam for comments. The Delhi Police reports to Shah’s mInistry.

None of them had responded to Al Jazeera by the time of publication.

‘How did they get inside my phone?’

For some, the lack of transparency in the surveillance capabilities of India’s security agencies is not just a theoretical concern.

Last month, when Modi’s government faced street protests demanding the election chief resign, popular YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, a Modi critic, landed in New Delhi to participate in the demonstrations.

On the morning of the protest, he was detained by Delhi Police while still at home. His phone was taken from him. Speaking on a podcast later, Rathee said he believed police had tried to clone his iPhone using Israeli company Cellebrite’s tools but the attempt may have failed because his device was running a newer version of the iOS operating system than what the tool was capable of tricking.

Al Jazeera could not verify Rathee’s account, but Rathee is not alone in this suspicion.

Mohammad Aslam Hussain, a reporter with the newspaper Siasat Daily, told Al Jazeera that he was detained with a cameraperson on October 10 in New Delhi and his phone was confiscated at the scene.

“When I got my device later in the evening, all recorded footage of our reporting had been selectively deleted from the device,” Hussain said. The reporter uses Samsung’s Android-operated Galaxy S24 secured with a pattern lock and fingerprint authentication.

Hussain added that he cannot say conclusively what tools the police used to bypass his phone’s authentication requirement. “But it raises several questions with no one willing to respond to them,” he added. “How did they get inside my phone?”

The Indian government has faced accusations that it has used sophisticated spyware against journalists, activists, lawyers and political opponents during Modi’s years in power.

In 2019, WhatsApp disclosed that the Pegasus spyware, developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, had been used to target Indian journalists and human rights defenders. Forensic examinations by Amnesty International later confirmed Pegasus infections on the phones of journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Anand Mangnale. The government has denied allegations of unauthorised surveillance.

Bhandari told Al Jazeera that another problem in holding overarching surveillance to account is identifying the affected party. Often, she pointed out, the person placed under surveillance “does not know about it, so what does one do?”

‘Friction for surveillance’?

The central legal gap identified by digital rights group IFF is that India has no statute or protocol that specifically authorises or regulates the forced unlocking and full extraction of data from a mobile phone seized by law enforcement agencies.

Existing seizure powers under criminal law do not explicitly address bypassing passcodes, copying an entire file system, harvesting login tokens to access cloud accounts or establishing rules for the retention and deletion of extracted data.

The Supreme Court in a 2017 judgement recognised privacy as a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The judgement established that any state intrusion into privacy must have a legal basis, pursue a legitimate state aim and be proportionate to that aim.

Bhandari told Al Jazeera that when the government agencies “deploy these capabilities without any proper meaningful oversight, the net of surveillance is cast wider and deeper and a lot more people are affected without either legislative, parliamentary or judicial oversight”.

Bhandari noted that while some countries like the United Kingdom or Germany “have some element of either parliamentary oversight or judicial oversight, India only has an internal review mechanism in executive oversight”.

“The whole point of having any oversight is to create a friction for surveillance,” she said, “so that it’s not easy for the government to just target everybody.”

“The current legal framework fails in this safeguard,” Bhandari said.

Israel’s war on Lebanon has damaged the country’s wheat production and harmed the lives of farmers, experts told Al Jazeera.

For the last three years, Israel has been waging a war on Lebanon, where it has occupied large parts of the south and destroyed homes and infrastructure, in what some experts have said is a deliberate effort to make the land uninhabitable.

Repeated Israeli attacks have created havoc on the country’s wheat production, particularly in the south and in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where lands abandoned due to the impacts of war have increased to around 24 percent.

“They’re disrupting entire ecosystems,” Munira Khayyat, author of A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “[Israel is] advancing the possibilities of drought and desertification, basically weakening the capacity of this land to hold life.”

Farmlands damaged

Since 2023, Israel has been attacking large swaths of southern Lebanon, including using chemicals like white phosphorus, in what analysts and locals said was an effort to make the ground sterile or uninhabitable. A ceasefire was brokered in 2024 by France and the United States, but Israel never stopped attacking targets in Lebanon.

On March 2, Israel escalated its war on Lebanon for the second time in under two years. Hezbollah had attacked Israel following Israel’s assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two days earlier. The group also said it was in response to near-daily ceasefire violations by Israel.

Since then, Israel has reinvaded southern Lebanon, taking land up to 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) inside the country. Beirut and Tel Aviv signed a US-brokered framework agreement in June, which was supposed to put into motion so-called “pilot zones”. Under these pilot zones, Israeli troops would withdraw to be replaced by the Lebanese Armed Forces, who would also work to disarm Hezbollah.

Instead, Israeli troops have continued to level destruction in southern Lebanon, detonating homes and crucial infrastructure, including farmland.

“The South [of Lebanon] experienced the highest average losses [in wheat-growing areas], reaching 47 percent in 2023-2024 and 61 percent in 2024-2025,” Mariam Ibrahim, a researcher with Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research [CNRS-L] and author of a recent paper called “Wheat in Crisis” that tracked Lebanon’s wheat struggles from 2017 to 2025, told Al Jazeera. “The Bekaa plain, which accounts for approximately 64 percent of Lebanon’s national wheat production, was also significantly affected, losing around 43 percent and 57 percent of its wheat area during the two respective seasons.”

In areas like the border town Bint Jbeil, 100 percent of cropland was destroyed, while in the Baalbeck district to the east, the study says approximately 32 percent of cropland was destroyed.

Wheat price influences

Ibrahim said the Russian-Ukrainian war led to an increase in bread prices and incentivised some domestic Lebanese production.

“The depreciation of the Lebanese pound meant that farmers could potentially generate higher revenues and profits in local currency when selling their wheat, as wheat prices were increasingly influenced by international market prices,” she said. “This provided an additional economic incentive to expand wheat cultivation, and our results showed that Lebanon’s wheat cultivation area reached its peak [during] the 2022-2023 season.”

However, experts said that since 2023, Israel’s war on Lebanon led to the proportion of land that had been used to grow wheat that was now left fallow increasing from 9 percent to 24 percent, mostly in the south and the Bekaa Valley.

Elias Ghadban, a food security expert with the independent Beirut-based consultancy firm AgriDev, told Al Jazeera that the destruction of land used to farm wheat has not made a “significant difference” at the national level, but it has had a damaging effect on southern wheat farmers who “lost their livelihoods”.

Ghadban also pointed to the fact that the cost of living has increased in Lebanon while salaries have failed to match that increase. “The expenditure on basic needs went up,” he said.

The economic crisis, followed by three years of war, has devastated many farmers, particularly as much of southern Lebanon’s farmland is largely unindustrialised. Experts warn that the destruction caused by Israel’s war could prevent many farmers from rebuilding their livelihoods, even after the fighting ends.

“All those small farmers who have made southern Lebanon what it is today and have been able to hold that land through their attachment to it, through their farming of it, through their existential need to be on that land in order to make their lives viable, that’s going to be broken,” Khayyat said.

DESCRIBED as “ruthless, calculated and manipulative”, the depravity of Russell Brand has appalled the nation as every chilling detail of his sex attacks played out in court.

By his own admission, he was a “hedonist” and “an exploiter of women” who used his celebrity status and every emotional tool in his arsenal to achieve what he considered to be “my birthright” – having an “orgasm”. 

Brand, who was jailed for 10 years and six months this week, said he had “dedicated a lot of [his] life” to “beyond reckless philandering” – acts that saw him be “persuasive, seductive, begging and flirting” and even pretend to be gay to sleep with women. 

Now, in the wake of him being convicted for three sexual assaults and one rape, more questions have emerged about this master of manipulation and what else he sought to control. 

It has been speculated that even his romances may have had a calculated nature behind them – apparently benefiting his career, status, wealth or a combination of them all.

Most notable in this theory is his relationship with Katy Perry. Before dating and then marrying the popstar, all within the space of 10 months, an ex-girlfriend claimed Brand told her his aim was to find a world-famous girlfriend in order to make him a global superstar. 

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At the time in 2010, Brand was famous in the UK for his stand-up specials, hosting Celebrity Big Brother spin-off Big Mouth and had parodied himself in films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him To The Greek and St Trinian’s. 

But the comedian was barely known stateside and no doubt, a relationship with Perry – who was quickly becoming the world’s most famous popstar thanks to mega hits I Kissed a Girl, Hot N Cold and Teenage Dream – would help him to achieve that. 

Brand himself admitted that he “pushed to get married early” due to feeling “inadequate and insecure” and according to Perry, he longed to be “an equal” both in their relationship and to be seen as one by the outside world. 

But this determination to be considered on the same level manifested itself in a dark way. It led him to “mock her and be mean behind her back,” according to one source, who claimed he “just couldn’t cope with her star eclipsing his”.

It also led him to share a deliberately unflattering, make-up free photo of Perry to his 1.8million followers on Twitter, now known as X, in 2010 – an act decreed as “cruel”, “mean” and “disrespectful” by fans. 

While Brand deleted the snap within 48 minutes of posting, it had already gone viral and exposed his wife to bile from online trolls across the globe, who eagerly branded her “ugly” among other hurtful comments. 

A source who knew the couple told The Times that Brand “found himself resenting her success” while “her career rocketed” and his was waning – most notably after his film Arthur, which he had been “given full rein on”, flopped at the Box Office in 2011.

Brand would later admit he “didn’t handle [their] marriage very well” due to his insecurity and loneliness while Perry was “pursuing her dream of … becoming the world’s most famous pop star”. They divorced in 2012. 

Yet the romance with Perry wasn’t the only time Brand has faced claims of having weaponised his love life for fame and financial gain.

Back in 2006, Brand’s career was still in its early days. He was a BBC Radio host, presenter on Big Brother Efourum – later known as Big Mouth – and had appeared on shows like Richard & Judy, Kings of Comedy and The Bill. 

That soon changed after he was photographed with world-renowned supermodel Kate Moss following a one night stand and the subsequent war of words in the love triangle involving them and Libertines frontman Pete Doherty. 

The publicity from those snaps coupled with the attention garnered from fuming Doherty calling him a “hairy t***” and “no replacement”, gave Brand’s star a huge bump. 

A year on from their romp, Brand had made a whopping 19 appearances on TV shows including on The Royal Variety Performance, The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year and Soccer AM.

He had also presented The BRIT Awards and released his first memoir My Booky Wook.

Brand would also capitalise from the Moss tryst by boasting about it in his second autobiography, My Booky Wook 2, where he described Moss as like “an angel of my own devising”.  

Prior to those feats, Brand seemed keen to distance himself from bad boy, lothario image and paint himself in a more wholesome light by claiming he was ready for lasting love.

He told the Mirror in 2006 about having sworn off sex and his master plan: “I’d like to settle down and have children.”

Yet at the same time, Brand – who claimed to have deleted 784 numbers from his phone to avoid temptation – ferociously flirted with his female interviewer.

When asked how long his abstinence, then at 22 days, would last, he replied: “Is that an offer? Because it’s incredibly indiscreet!”

Brand would later tell her: “You’re quite attractive and it’s making me think I should maybe face the other way a bit more.

“I think it’s the tights, your hair, the cleavage, the boots. And you’re all cute and blushy and Northern and sweet.”

Brand would tell her “blushing is an indication of sexual availability” and quizzed her about cheating multiple times, including asking: “Are you faithful at the minute?”

That was the same year, that Brand was accused of drugging and raping a 20-year-old student at an Edinburgh flat he was renting.

Brand denied any knowledge of the 2006 claims and, later, his friend Trevor Lock was charged with rape. The case was later dropped by police and prosecutors. 

He also started dating future wife Laura Gallagher – then a 19-year-old art student, while he was 31 – that same year. They broke up in 2007 after he cheated on her multiple times.

The next known relationship was with Perry, who he spent two years married to before dumping her and demanding a divorce via text message in 2012. 

A source, who knew the couple, claimed the split followed his struggles living stateside and dealing with “her star eclipsing his”.

They added: “He was becoming more disillusioned spending time in Hollywood and the failure of Arthur – a project he had been given full rein on.”

That year Brand returned to the UK and appeared to be attempting to reestablish himself as a British icon, with performances including at the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

He appeared in a BBC documentary about substance abuse and addiction – which drew heavily from heroin and sex addictions, made a comeback comedy tour called Only Joking and even briefly dated Spice Girl Geri Horner.

The romance was over in less than two weeks but was so intense that the singer and Brand apparently spent three days looking at houses together in North Devon, according to a source.

At the time of the split, Horner said: “It’s been a whirlwind. All I want is to be in a loving relationship. Is he my ideal man? I’m choosy. I want someone who’s trustworthy, sweet and kind.”

By 2014, Brand had reinvented himself again as an activist – following a scandal-hit relationship with Jemima Goldsmith, the then-editor of political magazine The Spectator.

Post Brand’s conviction, she claimed to have suffered “violence, coercive control and abuse” during their year-long romance. She has not reported those claims to the police.

Their split followed an alleged 2014 “violent incident”, which ended with her having to “call the police to have him removed from my house”. 

Prior to the break up, there was more trouble linked to a masseuse hired by Brand, who claimed she was treated “like a prostitute” and was “the victim of wrongful and criminal conduct” – which the couple denied. 

The case was investigated by police but no charges were brought. Masseuse Szilvia Berki was taken to the High Court, where she had no legal representation and would be bankrupted by the £50,000 legal costs she was forced to pay.

She was subjected to a type of gagging order called an anti-harassment injunction, which prevented her from speaking about the case.

While the case was all unfolding, Brand was painting himself as a man of the people and campaigner. 

He released a book titled Revolution, which criticised capitalism and claimed democracy was broken. 

He joined housing and anti-gentrification protests and a group of young mothers who refused to leave their homes after being issued with eviction notices after funding was cut at their hostels. 

Then in 2015, when the case with masseuse Berki was settled, he started dating future wife Laura for a second time – a woman he married two years later and had three kids with.

Recalling how Brand came back into her life, Laura told Grazia in 2020: “My ex had literally moved out of our flat that day, and I was heartbroken, with mascara running down my face

“A friend dragged me out on a walk to the canal in east London, where I’d never been in my life, and as we came on to the footpath, Russell was standing there, like he’d organised it.”

Laura would remain a bedrock who has stood by him through the claims of abuse in Channel 4’s Dispatches in September 2023 and the many police interviews that would follow. 

In the lead up to those years, Brand had already started to raise doubts about the government, police and media online.

He began sharing dangerous myths that the Covid-19 jabs posed a risk to health and peddled anti-establishment narratives.  

Six months after the documentary came out, Brand was baptised in the River Thames by TV adventurer Bear Grylls in a Christian rebrand that would endear him to religious worshippers in America and the UK. 

Since then Brand has peddled false theories about the ‘mainstream media’, claimed those who spoke out are often silenced and pushed extreme far right theories. 

It led to fans championing his cause outside of Southwark Crown Court throughout his trial – including one group with a banner that read: “Christ was crucified for telling the truth, Russell is the truth”.

Those worshippers will likely continue to cast doubt upon the three sexual assault and one rape convictions that a jury found Brand guilty of last week. 

But for all of the many faces adorned by Russell Brand, it was not enough to prevent his past from catching up with him. 

Yesterday, he was sentenced to nearly 11 years imprisonment and will have to serve at least seven years before he can be considered for parole.  

Upon his release, Brand will no doubt emerge as another new man and with another grand plan to rise to fame once more. 

Shortly after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Riyadh last week, reports emerged that Damascus was aiding Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen’s Houthis, an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) and backed by Iran.

Security and financial aid appeared to be the cornerstone of the meeting between al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which concluded with Riyadh pledging $403m in loans to help Syria rebuild infrastructure damaged by 13 years of its civil war.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates noted that cooperation between the two countries’ defence ministries was the “most notable” of the deals, but it did not elaborate.

Days after the visit concluded, media reports suggested Syria was sending fighters to Saudi Arabia to help fight the Houthis. The Reuters news agency reported that Syria was providing Riyadh with military advice and training inside the kingdom after Saudi cities were targeted in hundreds of Houthi missile attacks.

On Sunday, Syrian officials told The Associated Press news agency that Damascus has already sent Syrian military advisers to Saudi Arabia and 600 special forces were due to arrive in the kingdom next week.

Despite denying the initial reports, a Syrian government official told the state’s news agency SANA that Syrian soldiers were sent to Saudi Arabia in a “training, expertise exchange and military consultations” capacity.

“The Syrian role would probably count for more in Riyadh than on Yemen’s front lines because it would show that the new Syria can share a partner’s security burden,” Nanar Hawach, a Syrian analyst, told Al Jazeera, adding that even a training and support role from the Syrian government rather than a direct combat role would satisfy Riyadh.

“The reports and the denials can both be partly right since Syrian officers training Yemeni forces inside the kingdom is different from Syrian troops fighting in Yemen. If Syrian forces are involved, Damascus has good reasons to avoid acknowledging it, from avoiding retaliation to reassuring Syrians that rebuilding at home comes first,” Hawach explained.

Houthi threat

Yemen has been a central concern for Saudi Arabia since Houthi fighters captured the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. Saudi Arabia has led an Arab military coalition to support Yemen’s internationally recognised government since March 2015. It has provided material and air support to anti-Houthi forces.

Saudi Arabia has been eager to form a regional military alliance that would help counter the threats from the Houthis and their patron Iran.

Tehran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbours since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28 and recent Houthi missile strikes on Saudi cities have highlighted the need for a regional security umbrella.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, agreed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan in August, has been viewed as a mechanism for this collective defence by many in Riyadh.

Syria and its thousands of battle-hardened soldiers with some expertise in drone warfare would be considered a useful addition to this alliance. The Syrian official who spoke to SANA said the current military arrangement between Damascus and Riyadh could lead to Syria joining the Mecca Defence Alliance.

“Interest in the Mecca pact could reflect Syria’s wish to anchor its recovery in a regional security framework. Yemen is far enough away for Damascus to present any role as standing by an Arab partner while Lebanon is next door, and intervention would reopen its history there and risk destabilising Syria itself,” Hawach said.

“However, distance does not make it cost-free. Confronting Iran’s allies anywhere invites retaliation, and soldiers killed far from home would be hard to justify to a public that expects peace to bring recovery.”

Syrian expertise

Syria’s post-war government has already come under pressure to act militarily outside its borders. US President Donald Trump has spoken numerous times this year about trying to get Syria to intervene in Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group.

Syrian rebels have been deployed to other conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa during their attempts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government from 2011 to 2024. Syrian fighters allegedly took part in Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in 2020.

“Syrians are combat-experienced and -capable, and they’re cohesive, so there’s a potential tactical advantage there,” Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer on security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

“Overall, this is very much a common Saudi approach to strategy and security issues, basically leaning on partners they courted through diplomatic links.”

Since the fall of al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, Saudi Arabia is believed to have been instrumental in helping the US remove Assad-era sanctions on Syria, which has been critical in legitimising the post-war government in Damascus.

With Saudi Arabia now fully embroiled in the Yemen war by backing its internationally recognised government and being targeted by regular Houthi air attacks, the deployment of Syrian troops would provide it with additional expertise and guidance on how to confront the Houthis.

The AFP news agency reported that Syrians in Yemen are now leading drone operations against the Houthis although the Syrian government has denied these claims.

Samy Akil, senior programme adviser with The Syria Report website, said Syria’s cooperation gives Riyadh another ally in the region and potential partner in the Mecca Defence Alliance.

“Syria has so far tried to navigate different competing regional interests across several regional capitals. It tried to not align itself with a specific camp, but I think as time goes on, it needs to kind of start settling on [a] hierarchy in terms of regional partners, and obviously, Saudi Arabia is one of the top contenders to do so,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s basically signalling that Syria is willing to support and help with the limited resources and capabilities it has, but it also inadvertently legitimises the Syrian government’s foreign policy approach of supporting regional countries and kind of showcase that it is not only a country that is asking for support, but it is also a country willing to provide support.”

With Israeli raids and attacks on southwestern Syria continuing, Damascus could also benefit from having a regional power such as Saudi Arabia as an ally.

“The fact is that Syria recognises that it has little policy options to deter a further entrenchment of Israeli forces into southern Syria in [the] hope that the potential of joining the [Mecca] agreement would act somewhat of a deterrence to, at the very least, stop further encroachment of Israeli troops in Quneitra and Daraa.”

Az-Zawayda, Gaza Strip – On Saturday night, water began rushing into Jaber al-Kaseeh’s tent in central Gaza’s az-Zawayda area, waking him and his family as heavy rain swept across Gaza. Soon the tent’s floor was flooded, soaking mattresses, carpets, blankets and spoiling what little food the family had managed to keep.

“Everyone woke up and stayed awake, asking their neighbours about the extent of damage and inquiring about children,” Jaber, who is in his 70s, told Al Jazeera.

He described the area outside the displacement camp, where thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge, as a swimming pool.

More than 70,000 tents have been flooded since heavy rains began late on Friday, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in locations considered “highly vulnerable” to more flooding.

More than a year after the so-called “ceasefire” deal was signed between Israel and Hamas, Israel has continued to flout the terms of the agreement, blocking the entry of goods into Gaza, including 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents.

Only 20,000 tents have been allowed in, and mobile homes have remained parked on the Egyptian side of the border, many of them for more than two years.

Fourth winter in tents

This is the fourth winter for Jaber and his family living in a tent house in the az-Zawayda area. Originally from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, Jaber has been displaced several times, like most Palestinians since Israel launched its genocidal war on October 7, 2023.

More than 90 percent of Palestinians have been displaced, many of them multiple times, by the war that has attracted global condemnation.

Jaber says his camp was flooded three or four times last winter, forcing many families to leave. Around 40 tents still remain there, but the latest flooding has left them in even worse condition.

“All the tents are now damaged, torn and covered in mud,” Jaber told Al Jazeera.

“We urgently need tents, tarpaulins, plastic sheets, mattresses, blankets and carpets to protect us from the difficult days ahead.

“We keep hearing about tents and tarpaulins being distributed, but we have received nothing.

“We had hoped the mobile homes and temporary housing units promised under the ceasefire deal would allow us to rest and return to a life of safety and peace. But it was all just words in the air. We have seen nothing.”

Promised shelter, unmet needs

Jaber’s experience reflects the wider shelter crisis facing displaced Palestinians across Gaza. Despite the “ceasefire” agreement, which included provisions for temporary housing units, tents and heavy machinery to clear rubble, large numbers of families remain in makeshift shelters exposed to winter weather.

Under the first phase of the agreement, along with temporary housing units and tents, heavy equipment was also supposed to be allowed in to remove rubble and help restore damaged infrastructure.

But the arrival of mobile homes and heavy machinery has been delayed as Israel has found excuses to restrict their entry into the enclave of 2.3 million people.

Trucks carrying mobile homes and equipment have reportedly been waiting on the Egyptian side of the border while Palestinians live in misery in dilapidated tent camps.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Gaza requires approximately 121,000 tents and 561,000 tarpaulins, while available stocks remain far below what is needed.

For Om Hani Hamouda, a displaced woman from Beit Lahiya now sheltering in al-Zawayda, replacing her worn-out tent with a caravan has become a dream.

“We did not expect that the first rainfall would leave us in this condition,” she told Al Jazeera. “These tents do not protect us from the cold, storms or rain. Whenever winter comes, everyone holds their breath.”

Hamouda had hoped the ceasefire agreement would allow her family to return to northern Gaza or at least receive a caravan or building materials to secure better shelter. But she said there had been no sign of progress.

“We are asking for a dignified life. We want these tents to be replaced with caravans. Even a simple caravan would be better,” she told Al Jazeera.

Hamouda’s family has been displaced around 15 times during the war. She spent more than 15 years living and working in the United Arab Emirates before returning to Gaza nearly two years before the war began.

“My children cry because they miss the life we had there,” she said. “Life here is so difficult. There is no life in any sense.”

Families left exposed to the rain

Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera that large quantities of tents, caravans, prefabricated housing units and shelter equipment remain stranded at Gaza’s borders because of Israeli restrictions.

He said that while more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians were facing another winter in worn-out tents, even people living in houses and apartments remained exposed to the elements because of the extensive damage to homes and infrastructure.

“Today, we cannot even say that those living in houses and apartments are safe from extreme weather because, with around 85 percent of homes destroyed or damaged, every family is exposed to some degree of harsh weather conditions,” Abdu said, adding that Israel continues to reject shipments containing timber and emergency shelter kits, depriving families of the ability to repair homes that could otherwise accommodate them.

Abdu said Israel, as the occupying power, was legally obligated under the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure essential supplies reached civilians and to facilitate humanitarian relief.

Jihad Dawwas, 51, says he felt helpless as he could not do anything as his children had nowhere dry to sleep amid the rains.

Water poured into the tents at the displacement camp where he is sheltering, while strong winds blew away many of the surrounding tents. His children ended up sleeping while standing, he said, after rainwater soaked their mattresses and the plastic sheets covering their shelter.

“They slept standing up. By morning, some of my children had become ill because of the cold and the storm,” he told Al Jazeera.

Dawwas, who was displaced from northern Gaza, is sheltering with seven of his own children and three orphaned children of his brother. He said he had bought the family’s tent with his own money and had received no tent from any charity or aid initiative.

“A tent cannot replace a home, not even by one percent,” he said. “We are living in what is left of our lives.”

He said he had seen no caravans or temporary housing units arrive to help displaced families, despite the expectations raised by the ceasefire agreement.

“Our lives are a daily hell. We are completely forgotten. There is no fair distribution of aid, and no one is really asking about us,” Dawwas said.

He questioned why even basic shelter supplies had become so difficult to obtain.

“Do tents and tarpaulins really need all this pressure and effort just to become something we can ask for?” he asked. “They should provide us with tents and tarpaulins, and give us at least a dignified life.”

DARE to bare was the theme of the night for the planet’s sexiest women as they stunned in these eye-popping dresses.

A-listers left little to the imagination at the LACMA Art+Film Gala, where the biggest surprise of the evening was Kim Kardashian arriving in a Gucci gown which was uncharacteristically modest by comparison.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who last month parted ways with M&S lingerie after 14 years, chose a look that needed no undies at all.

The 39-year-old British model made a big impact in a backless, black Gucci gown with an ultra-high leg slit.

The raised collar gave the appearance of a demure floor-length dress from the front, but when she turned round, Rosie revealed her bum.

Never one to miss an opportunity to flash some flesh, model Emily Ratajkowski, 35, sizzled in a white halter-neck Gucci number, which was slashed on the thigh and across her chest.

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Also on the red carpet at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was actress Amber Valetta, 52, in a backless gown complete with yet another thigh slit and a silver Gucci insignia.

Models Iris Law and Candice Swanepoel and US influencer Alix Earle all shimmered in silver at the charity gala on Saturday, which was sponsored by Gucci and co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Iris, 26, was the boldest in a metallic mesh Amaramara dress, which had a thin strip covering her chest but had her rear end in full view.

Alix, 25, wore a Gucci thong halter bodysuit, draped in floor-length crystal tassels, to show off her bottom, back and sideboob.

And Candice, 38, went commando in a crystal Gucci design, which had two front slits so high that she was one gust of wind away from a paparazzi catastrophe.

Another head-turner — though not because of the amount of skin on show — was actress Anya Taylor-Joy, 30.

The Dune: Part Three star wore an off-white vintage Pierre Cardin gown with an extravagantly layered organza shawl.

Anya’s Style Queen

By Emily Regan Sun Stylist

AFTER a summer of near-naked fashion dividing critics, it seems the cut-out trend isn’t going anywhere despite the drop in temperature.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley proved she can push the boundaries in attention-grabbing Gucci.

With an almost entirely open back that revealed her toned physique and bottom, Rosie’s floral M&S collections suddenly seem a distant memory.

Fellow Victoria’s Secret Angel Candice Swanepoel also got the balance right. Her sparkly gown featured dramatic shoulder pads, which balanced out the plunging neckline and thigh-high slits.

A daring but sophisticated look.

Meanwhile, Alix Earle and Iris Law played a risque game in barely-there silver dresses.

But for me, the standout looks of the night came from the celebrities who chose to keep things a little more under wraps.

Anya Taylor-Joy brought the drama in a vintage floor-length column gown, by Pierre Cardin, which had a ruffled organza shawl.

The Queen’s Gambit actress made a big statement without a bum in sight.

Meanwhile, Nicole Kindman, 59, embraced the ballet-core trend, wearing a voluminous Chanel tulle dress with a taupe long-sleeved, open-back bodice.

Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro, 36, kept things tasteful in a white sequin Dior gown with a circular cutout back.

Proof you can still turn heads on the red carpet without flashing your flesh.

New Delhi, India – Both daughters of S Budhiraja live in the United States. Yet, when he and his wife head out to the market in Gurugram, a bustling business district on the outskirts of India’s capital, a young man walks beside them.

It is 26-year-old Roney Raju, their “hired grandson”.

Across Indian cities, a small but growing number of companies are now selling what families once took for granted: someone to take care of ageing people. Chores include taking them to the temple, sitting with them during a hospital visit, playing cards, or simply listening to them.

Some firms call such workers “children for hire”; others call them a “grandchild for rent”.

India, the world’s most populous country, is growing older quickly.

People over 60 made up 10.5 percent of its population in 2022, a demographic projected to nearly double to 21 percent by 2050, according to the India Ageing Report 2023 by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Institute for Population Sciences.

That means about 347 million elderly Indians – a number almost equal to the entire population of the US, the world’s third most populous nation – will need specialised care by 2050.

Several Indian startups see the opportunity, with the Indian government estimating the senior care industry at about $7bn.

Raju, holding a master’s degree in social work, works for one such company in Gurugram. He has been looking after the Budhirajas for the last few months.

“I was comfortable with him from the get-go,” Budhiraja, who is in his 80s, told Al Jazeera. “I feel he understands me 200 percent.”

Raju describes the bond in the same vein. “Right now, he is family to me,” he said. The couple, he said, see him as “their proxy child, and much more than a service companion”.

The bond has deepened over the past months. When Budhiraja was admitted for surgery, Raju kept track of the doctors and the medicines. He would even call to check on them after his shift had ended.

Growing industry

Raju’s boss Gaurav Mittal says many clients actually come to treat their companions “like their own grandchildren”.

He charges 450 rupees ($5) an hour for 10 hours of service in a month, or 400 rupees ($4.5) per hour if it is 25 hours. Like a mobile phone recharge, unused hours are rolled over to the next month.

In a country with an average per capita income of about 220,000 rupees ($2,750) a year, Mittal’s service caters to a small minority of urban, financially secure families.

Mittal said the idea for his company came from home. After his father died four years ago, his mother had to leave their hometown and move in with him. She was sociable and had money to spend, but depended on family members to go anywhere.

“The world is not designed keeping the senior citizens as the central pillar,” Mittal said.

The idea for such startups, however, is not entirely new.

A 2017 report counted at least five startups offering young companions to seniors. In 2022, the late Ratan Tata of the Tata Group promoted a Mumbai-based startup whose tagline says: “Everything Grandkids Do!”

The companions who work for these companies undergo police verification before they start working for a senior person. Before working alone, they often shadow a senior staff member on home visits.

Most companions are trained in psychology, social work or hospitality.

Vinay Kumar works as a companion for a firm based in the southern city of Hyderabad.

“We are not just taskmasters, but we develop a relationship with our clients. We support them and spend quality time with them so that they don’t miss their close ones,” he told Al Jazeera. “They may still do, but we try.”

Lonely seniors

The 2023 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report projects that older Indians will outnumber the country’s children by 2046. And many of these seniors are lonely.

In 2022, India conducted the Longitudinal Ageing Study, a national survey of more than 72,000 people. It found that 20.5 percent of middle-aged and older adults reported moderate loneliness, while 13.3 percent categorised their loneliness as severe.

Among people over 60 who lived alone, more than a third (37 percent) reported feeling lonely, the study found.

Globally, a study commissioned by the World Health Organization in 2025 found that loneliness affects one in six people and is linked to about 871,000 deaths a year.

Santosh Abraham, CEO of a Bengaluru-based startup founded in 2015, says while the children of elderly people are worried about medical emergencies or market errands, their parents mostly had a different concern.

“I am lonely, I don’t have anyone to talk to,” Abraham recalled one of his clients as saying. “I have done so much for my family and society; there is no recognition for it.”

Abraham said the most common request he gets is one that “nobody says out loud”.

“A senior calls us claiming to feel unwell. A care manager arrives, finds nothing wrong, and is then asked to sit and talk for an hour,” he said. “They just want company.”

Kumar said companions like him have to “understand their pain”.

“Most of the seniors who are living alone are very lonely. They want someone to play cards or indoor games with. Someone wants to go to a movie, or a temple, or parks, or attend local programmes,” he said.

Abraham said some seniors find a stranger easier to confide in. “With a companion, there is no baggage,” he told Al Jazeera.

For the young people doing the work, the line between their job and a relationship blurs quickly.

Raju says the visits to the Budhirajas are harder than office work. “Forming an emotional connection is never easy and is different each and every time,” he said.

Kumar, in Hyderabad, agrees. He said his clients often tell him about health problems that they hide from their children living in another city or abroad so as not to worry them.

He recalled a client who went from shutting the door on his face because he did not know English or Hindi to paying for his driving lessons and introducing him to people as his “god-gifted son”. When the man died in 2023, his son asked Kumar to perform the final rites alongside him.

Kumar once even cut short his 12-day marriage leave because one of his clients kept calling, asking him to come. “I genuinely feel these seniors are my own parents and grandparents,” he said.

‘Older person feels seen, heard, safe’

Others are more cautious about what the job demands.

Prashanth Reddy, founder of the Hyderabad-based company that Kumar works for, said companions must understand boundaries.

“Companions are there to provide support, not to replace doctors or mental health professionals,” he said.

Abraham agreed. He said he underlines one golden rule during his training sessions with aspiring companions: “Talk less and listen more.”

The children of such elderly people who buy the services of these companies say paying takes out the awkwardness of asking neighbours or relatives for help.

“When you pay for a service, you don’t have to feel like you’re asking someone for a favour,” says Vinnay K, a US-based software professional, who has been hiring a companion for his ageing mother for five years.

Shilpa Bandyopadhyay, assistant professor at Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences near New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that hiring a companion “should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that their families have failed”.

She said a growing demand for professional elderly care raises harder questions about a family-centric society like India’s.

“Do we recognise ‘companionship’ as a legitimate and continuing need of our older family members or see eldercare mainly as food, shelter, healthcare and physical help?” she asked.

She argued for “a more balanced ecosystem of ageing” that brings together families, community networks, accessible public spaces and affordable professional services, without romanticising traditional family structures or dismissing new ones.

“At the end of the day, the question isn’t who lives with an older person,” she said, but “rather whether the older person feels seen, heard, safe, valued, and meaningfully connected”.

Back in Gurugram, Budhiraja is asked how he would feel if Raju did not show up for work tomorrow.

“I will make sure he comes after finding out why he couldn’t come,” he said. “I need him. As you grow older, the needs are more.”

Ahmed Abed (a pseudonym due to ongoing threats of arrest) still feels like a prisoner despite being released from an Israeli jail to the occupied West Bank nearly two years ago.

Despite being technically “free”, Abed, 43, is still often rearrested by Israeli forces or summoned by intelligence for interrogation.

Hundreds of other Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face similar ordeals after being released from Israeli prisons. Their homes are sometimes raided twice a week; they can be detained, assaulted and interrogated on the spot before being released.

Every day, organisations dedicated to prisoners’ affairs document the arrests of dozens of Palestinians across the West Bank as part of large-scale operations that frequently target former detainees. Most of those detained are released after hours of interrogation, in what appears to be a campaign of intimidation by Israel against former Palestinian prisoners.

Frequent detentions

Abed was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel in January 2025, having served 22 years of a life sentence. Since his release, he has faced persistent harassment by the Israeli military.

Just days after Abed’s release, he was summoned by Israeli intelligence for questioning. They informed him that they were unhappy with the political decision to carry out the exchange deal and warned they would rearrest him if he made the “slightest mistake”.

Since his release, he has been arrested six times and summoned for interrogation five times. Each time, his home has been raided and his family terrorised by Israeli soldiers. His father was once arrested simply because Abed happened to be outside his house at night.

“Whenever there are reports of Israeli military activity in the city, my family goes into a state of high alert; no one sleeps all night,” he told Al Jazeera. “Some neighbours even leave their homes, fearing they might be raided as part of the collective intimidation campaign imposed because of me.”

When Abed is arrested, he is often forced to walk for several kilometres handcuffed and blindfolded, accompanied by soldiers. He is then placed in a detention centre under dire conditions, deprived of food and water, subjected to beatings and verbal abuse, and then the threats begin.

“Every time, they threaten to send me back to prison to the point where I feel as though two-thirds of my body are still in captivity, with only one-third outside,” he said. “The threats vary, but the underlying message is always the same: I am not permitted to do anything ordinary or live a normal life like everyone else.”

Abed avoids family gatherings, fearing his presence may bring them harm, and so limits his interactions to his immediate family. An Israeli officer warned him that if he were to go to the mosque to pray, he would be arrested.

“The Israeli officer told me, ‘We have zero patience for you. Any behaviour we deem inappropriate, or any movement we find suspicious, we will rearrest you immediately,’” Abed added.

Although he managed to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate during his time in prison, he has been unable to secure a job. When employers learn about his repeated arrests, they refuse to hire him. Instead, he has to rely on day-labour work to cover his basic costs.

Loss of livelihood

A former prisoner from Qalqilya says he is arrested on average twice a week during the frequent Israeli military sweeps of the city, where former detainees are targeted. He was recently warned during one interrogation that if he ever set foot on a football pitch, he would be arrested. This puts his job as a referee in jeopardy.

Abdullah, another former prisoner from the city who also requested not to use his real name, told Al Jazeera that he has been arrested so many times since his release in 2000 that he has lost count. But he says he has spent a total of 17 years in custody since his “release”.

He was recently held under “administrative detention”, lasting from November 2023 to February 2025, during which he was subject to physical and psychological torture. By the time he was released, he had lost 60kg (132 pounds).

Abdullah, who supports a family of seven, is repeatedly arrested and released after a few hours, but only after his children have been terrorised and his home ransacked.

His employer grew frustrated with his repeated detentions and found a replacement for him.

“After losing my job, I began working on a piece of land I inherited from my father. However, due to arrests and threats, I can never find the right time to tend to it,” he said. “I often fall behind in irrigating, applying pesticides, or tilling the soil, all of which have taken a toll on my seasonal yields, leaving me with more losses than profits.”

‘Normalising fear’

Since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a wave of Israeli arrest campaigns and pogroms. Israeli troops now make regular incursions into towns, refugee camps, and homes, as well as arrests at military checkpoints to detain former prisoners.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisations have documented approximately 26,000 arrests in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, and early October 2026. This figure includes more than 800 women and nearly 2,000 minors. The total encompasses individuals who were subsequently released, not just those who remain in custody.

Amani Sarahneh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, told Al Jazeera that Israeli operations in the West Bank have evolved into a continuous, round-the-clock wave of detentions. On average, between 10 and 15 Palestinians are arrested and remain in Israeli custody every day.

These arrests not only take place at night, as they did before, but also during daylight hours, at military checkpoints, and through field interrogations.

“The persistence of these campaigns has led to a ‘normalisation of fear’ among the citizens, which has significantly impacted social relations, particularly in villages where residents live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing that occupation forces might storm their towns or public spaces and arrest groups of people at any moment,” she told Al Jazeera.

These arrests are frequently accompanied by physical assaults and abuse, with detainees held for long hours while handcuffed and blindfolded. The victims’ family homes are frequently ransacked and possessions taken away during the Israeli raids.

“These policies also include using family members of those targeted, such as wives and sisters, as hostages to exert pressure,” Sarahneh said.

“The impact of these campaigns has extended beyond the detainees and their families, deepening a sense of fear and apprehension among the general public, who now worry that the arrests could reach a much wider segment of the population,” Sarahneh said.

Port Sudan, Sudan – After a two-and-a-half-hour journey from the village of al-Lalouba, Layla Ali arrived in Port Sudan to get help for her five-year-old son, Adam. His severe malnutrition had left his ribs visibly protruding beneath his skin.

He had begun to lose his appetite two weeks earlier and became too sick to move. The distance to the hospital and Ali’s fears about the cost of treatment stopped her from rushing Adam for medical treatment. But when his condition deteriorated further, Ali had no choice but to rush him to hospital.

“We spent five days in hospital while my son received treatment. He suffers from recurring bouts of malnutrition, but this time we brought him to hospital because I was afraid he might die,” Ali told Al Jazeera.

“When Adam became ill, he would stop eating. I used to give him the usual meals we prepared at home, mostly porridge and milk. But the doctors have now helped me understand which foods are appropriate for his age and the nutrients he needs.”

Adam’s condition reflects a wider crisis facing children across Sudan, where a civil war has continued since April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates that 825,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2026, a 7 percent increase from 2025.

In the first six months of this year, UNICEF and its partners treated 174,700 children with severe acute malnutrition nationwide. The Port Sudan Teaching Hospital has recorded 433 cases between January and August this year.

Maryam Gadalsid, a nutrition counsellor at the hospital, said the number of children admitted with malnutrition continues to rise, forcing medical staff to accommodate as many as possible.

But this has led to overcrowding, with three children to a single bed in the hospital’s 17-bed malnutrition unit, Gadalsid told Al Jazeera, increasing the risk of disease spreading among patients.

“Medical staff assess each child’s condition before providing essential supplies, including therapeutic milk and other nutritional supplies free of charge, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF,” Gadalsid said. “However, intravenous fluids and medication remain a significant financial burden for many families, struggling with the economic crisis caused by the war.”

Gadalsid added that inadequate nutrition among pregnant women, driven by displacement and economic hardship, was also putting their babies at risk of poor growth and malnutrition.

An increase in the numbers of flies, which can contaminate food and water, and mosquitoes, which transmit malaria, was worrying, she said. Malnourished children, in particular, are at risk of these diseases and viruses.

“With the onset of winter, malnutrition cases increase [and] … the number of flies rises, contributing to the spread of diseases that cause malnutrition,” she said.

Displaced children face worsening malnutrition

The situation is particularly bad in western Sudan’s Darfur region, which had already faced two decades of war before the 2023 nationwide conflict broke out.

Darfur has been an epicentre of the current conflict and is currently an RSF stronghold. Fighting there, combined with hunger and disease, has created an increasingly desperate situation for millions of civilians, particularly women and children.

In North Darfur alone, there were at least 40,000 cases of malnutrition between January and May 2025, according to UNICEF, when the RSF imposed a siege on the state’s capital, el-Fasher. The city was later taken by the RSF in October, and the paramilitary group is accused of killing thousands of civilians there.

Meanwhile, in Blue Nile State, southeastern Sudan, malnutrition is also taking a growing toll on displaced children.

Sabri Adam, deputy head of the committee overseeing al-Karama 3 displacement camp, which is located in the state capital al-Damazin, told Al Jazeera that cases of malnutrition had risen from 1,800 in September to 2,116 in November, accounting for more than a quarter of the camp’s children. Of those affected, 1,760 are under the age of five.

According to Adam, al-Karama 3 is home to more than 7,600 children under the age of 10, among almost 4,000 displaced families. They had fled areas in western Blue Nile State, including al-Tadamon, Bau and Kurmuk, where military operations between the SAF and the RSF have intensified.

“These families arrived at the camp in extremely difficult humanitarian conditions, amid limited funding and humanitarian assistance from organisations, and a lack of health monitoring despite the growing needs of displaced people,” he said to Al Jazeera.

Adam said the camp received cash assistance from the Red Crescent earlier this month to support people affected by malnutrition and pregnant women. Each eligible household received 620,000 Sudanese pounds (about $60 at the parallel market rate).

The situation is unfolding as the IPC warns of a growing risk of famine across parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan. Conflict, mass displacement, severe drought and inadequate humanitarian funding are driving a further deterioration in food security.

The El Nino climate phenomenon has led to reduced rainfall in Sudan during the rainy season, leading to drought that is affecting roughly half of the country.

According to the IPC, nearly two-thirds of farmland in North Darfur and roughly half in South Darfur and Kordofan states have had poor vegetation growth, threatening harvests and leaving families facing higher prices and worsening hunger.

War and poverty deepen Sudan’s malnutrition crisis

Back at the Port Sudan Teaching Hospital, Dr Ahmed Youssef, the medical director of the paediatric department, said increasing malnutrition was driven not only by the effects of war and displacement but also by limited nutrition awareness or accessibility among families, particularly in rural communities.

Many families in smaller villages across Sudan rely heavily on flour and milk as staple foods, with meat largely absent from their daily diets.

“We are working to provide families of children with malnutrition with basic nutrition education as a first step towards tackling the problem. However, we face difficulties reaching villages to deliver healthcare and raise awareness,” he told Al Jazeera.

Food contamination, particularly amid unreliable electricity supplies and a lack of refrigerators in many households, makes it difficult for families to store food safely and is also a major issue.

“Families often bring their children to hospital only when malnutrition has reached an advanced stage, either because of financial hardship and fears about treatment costs or because of limited education,” he said.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel – On election day, Lama Yassin, 31, drove to polling stations in her hometown of Arrabeh, where Palestinian citizens of Israel make up an overwhelming majority, inspired by what she was witnessing.

“You would see families coming to the polls together, grandparents and grandchildren,” she said. “It was the first time in a really long time that I felt there is hope – hope of a change.”

The overwhelming Arab turnout in the October 27 Israeli election won the Arab parties a record 19 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Thabet Abu Rass, an expert on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, had predicted the Arab parties would be impossible for Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc to ignore: Their seats push it past the 61-seat threshold for a ruling coalition.

Instead, Yassin and others saw Israeli channels invite “Jews to talk about Arabs and Arab voter turnout”, she recalled, with almost no Arab guests.

“The whole conversation was about how dangerous these Arab voters are.” The “most disgusting term” she saw online, however, was the repeated refrain of “election terrorism” on Channel 14, the hard-right, pro-Netanyahu station.

Within a day of the vote, Likud and figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir accused the Arab parties of stealing the election through “bribery, threats, violence, forgeries”. The accusations have continued even after the Central Elections Committee and the Israeli police said they found no sign of organised tampering.

Distraught, Yassin posted an Instagram video that went viral among Palestinians, capturing the doublespeak of Israelis they so often hear:

“Eating hummus with us? ‘Brothers and friends’.

Seeking political power? ‘Terror supporters’.

Helping someone in distress? ‘Brothers and friends’.

Voting in large numbers? ‘Terror at the ballot box’.”

“When it suits you, we are brothers and friends. When it suits you, we are a symbol of coexistence. When it suits you, you go around the world boasting about our integration into Israeli society.

“But the moment we demand to have influence, to shape policy, and to take part in decision-making – suddenly, our very presence becomes a threat.”

When voting becomes ‘a danger to the state’

More than a week after the election, Jaffa’s Ajami neighbourhood offers both the history leading up to – and the fraught circumstances of – this moment that Abu Rass calls Israel’s “political crossroads”.

Faded Arabic signs on abandoned buildings hint at the Palestinian community that thrived in Ajami before 1948. On Ajami’s streets, posters of children killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza hang metres away from campaign posters for Ra’am and the Joint List.

From the back office of his cluttered hardware shop, Omar Siksik, once a Tel Aviv-Jaffa city councilman who now co-chairs Kulna Yaffa, a grassroots, Arab-Jewish civic initiative in the city, weighs this moment of unprecedented representation – met by renewed delegitimisation efforts – against Ajami’s own history. It is a struggle, he says, for basic existence.

Before 1948, Jaffa had about 100,000 Palestinians. After the Nakba, fewer than 4,000 remained – with those left fenced inside Ajami under military rule. “We called it the Ajami ghetto,” explained Siksik. Born there in 1957, he grew up sharing a toilet and kitchen with newly arrived Jewish immigrants who took the homes of expelled Palestinian neighbours.

Over time, the fence surrounding Ajami was torn down, martial law ended, and the Palestinians who remained there were granted Israeli citizenship. But later, when Siksik became the head of the Rabita Association, a nonprofit for the Palestinian residents of Jaffa, he remembered “sleeping under the bulldozers” that were razing the houses of Palestinians in the area, a practice that Rabita had fought in court.

For Siksik and others, election day is the only occasion that’s different for Palestinian citizens of Israel. “This is a democratic election,” he said. “It’s the only thing where we’re equal with the Jews. The only thing.

“When we came and expressed our dissatisfaction with this government, the Arab vote became a danger to the state,” said Siksik. “It’s not normal.”

Many Palestinian citizens of Israel believe they’ve been allowed to remain out of necessity, not equality. “The bus drivers are Arabs, the doctors in the hospitals are Arabs, the construction workers are Arabs,” Siksik notes.

But even those “essential worker” roles are being stripped away. After October 7, Israel revoked tens of thousands of work permits for Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to enter Israel, and the essential jobs they filled are being replaced by short-term labourers brought from abroad. Yassin notes fabricated stories over the summer on Israeli social media that Arab doctors were poisoning Jewish patients at Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

“If they could give up on anything Arab, they would,” says Yassin. “It’s not because they like us [that they let us remain]… It’s not because they want to; it’s because they have to.”

Facing ‘the whole Israeli system’

Yassin herself went through that struggle for acceptance in Israeli society. After growing up in Arrabeh, she learned Hebrew so well at Ben-Gurion University that “no one knew I was an Arab any more.” She took a job at a regional council near Jerusalem, in an entirely Jewish workplace, to prove she was “fully Israeli”.

“I did not speak Arabic in public. I even voted for [left-wing Zionist party] Meretz and favoured them over Arab parties,” said Yassin. “I wanted to be ‘the good Israeli’.”

But she could never escape that sense of otherness. At the council, colleagues asked if they could call Yassin – whose first name, Lama, means “why” in Hebrew – “Yasmine” instead, because she reminded them of Jasmine from the movie Aladdin. She was Yasmine for a year and a half. “It was another demand of giving up on another part of my identity – one that defines me literally.”

And then, the Sunday after the October 7 attacks, her colleagues would not say hello back to her.

She came to realise that “shared society cannot be built over inequality.”

After becoming director of public policy at the Abraham Initiatives, which advances the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel, Yassin testified at Knesset committee meetings regarding unchecked crime and violence affecting their communities. She describes being dismissed or silenced outright, despite prior approval to speak. “If you say one more word,” she recalled the National Security committee chairman saying, “I will ask you to leave.”

Yassin sees that derision of a Palestinian political voice carrying over into the rhetoric – and investigations – surrounding the post-election talks. In Jaffa, that wider climate was felt on November 3, when, about midnight, about 15 security officers, a few of them masked, raided the Jaffa home of Abed Abou Shehadeh, a journalist and activist, arresting him in front of his two children. Accused of having “contacts with a foreign agent”, a court has ordered him held until November 8.

The ‘loyalty test’

In the south, meanwhile, police arrested seven Bedouin men on suspicion of planning to pay people to vote for Ra’am, which calls them party activists and denies the allegations. Arab political leader Ayman Odeh now faces investigations as well by the Shin Bet intelligence service, which is run by the Netanyahu-aligned David Zini, over allegations that he received money from foreign sources to influence voter turnout. Odeh denies the allegations, calling them “political persecution”.

“We are now facing the whole Israeli system,” says Abu Rass. “I think we are facing the deep state also.”

Before the election, Abu Rass had predicted to Al Jazeera that 15 to 17 seats would have Israeli party leaders knocking on the Arab parties’ doors. But despite the Arab parties exceeding even those high expectations, that success has not yet borne such fruit.

With 67 members of the Knesset, including those from the Arab parties, recommending Eisenkot to the president to form a government, the anti-Netanyahu bloc has signalled agreement to remove Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and halt the judicial overhaul legislation. The Arab parties also plan to back a state inquiry into the October 7 security failures. But Abu Rass does not mistake this for a lasting partnership.

“[Eisenkot is] counting on us only for the coming months,” he says, “to help him stabilise his government, to pass this stage of removing the government and Netanyahu.”

And while Eisenkot campaigned on two pillars – removing Netanyahu, and mandating military service for ultra-Orthodox Haredim who largely do not serve – even Avigdor Liberman, long a fierce opponent of Haredi draft-dodging, now signals he would work with the Haredi parties to form an anti-Netanyahu government without the Arabs, who have repeatedly offered to support Eisenkot from outside the coalition to unseat Netanyahu.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, tasked with choosing a leader to try to form a government, this week condemned “the coarseness and racist expressions that we have heard recently”. But according to Israeli media, during meetings with party leaders, he asked Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas whether he considers Hamas a terrorist organisation. “You cannot constantly put us to this test,” said Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the October 7 attacks, according to Israeli media.

Yassin has felt and seen these loyalty tests play out before in Israel. “Even if the two million Arabs who live here … say ‘we condemn Hamas,’ the day after, we will have another loyalty test,” she says. “It’s never-ending, and whoever wants to deny our rights in this country does not really need a reason to.”

A Jewish-only coalition, she says, would mean “we went a few stairs down in the whole democracy approach, the so-called democracy in Israel.”

‘We don’t have the privilege of giving up’

Most people in working-class Ajami have swiftly come down from their election-night highs. “I am not optimistic,” said Nadia, a middle-aged woman sitting behind the counter of a clothing store. “If we raise our voice in the streets, we are arrested. If we raise our voice in the ballot, we are dismissed.”

Siksik fears: “I see catastrophic things coming here.”

But Nadia noted she would vote again if it means keeping Ben-Gvir and Smotrich out of government.

As Yassin puts it: “We don’t have the privilege of giving up. If we don’t do this work, no one will.”

After the sense of power the 19 seats gave people, she says, “it’s going to be hard to give it away.”

Sitting in a liberal Tel Aviv cafe, Yassin overheard a conversation at the adjacent table turn to Gaza and “how they killed the children” – apparently in reaction to what she had been saying.

As the opposition bloc appears to be pursuing every avenue to avoid including Arab parties in any position of power, she finds herself looking at even “liberal” Israelis differently.

“I was looking at every one of them and wondering if they would support an Arab or Arab parties being part of the coalition,” she said.

“Because if they don’t want my representatives, it also means that they don’t want me.”

Ten years ago, as parts of Diyarbakir in southeast Turkiye were reduced to rubble in battles between the military and Kurdish fighters, the city’s main football club, Amedspor, became a target.

Diyarbakir is the biggest Kurdish-majority city in Turkiye, and Amedspor, then in the third tier, had become a standard bearer of Kurdish identity.

As fighting raged between the state and groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the club was hit with fines and bans on away supporters and outspoken players. Its premises were raided by antiterrorism police, and its fans, players and officials were attacked by rival supporters. In the years that followed, its survival looked uncertain.

A decade on, a peace process is under way between the government and the PKK, and Amedspor – in their first season in the top-flight after successive promotions – are second in the Super Lig after 10 games. A win at league leaders Galatasaray on Saturday would take them to the top.

“Amedspor have achieved a level of success that nobody expected,” said Vahap Coskun, an academic from Diyarbakir who has written a book about the club.

Coskun told Al Jazeera there are several factors behind the success this season; an experienced and canny coach in Besnik Hasi, and a mostly new squad of players performing above expectations, including the 24-year-old Nigerian striker Gift Orban, who has scored nine goals in 10 games so far.

Then there are the passionate, sellout crowds of more than 30,000 that have helped the side win its six home games so far.

But he also said the “softening political climate” was key as it “affects everything from the treatment Amedspor receive in away matches to the refereeing, and it allows Amedspor to compete in fairer conditions”.

Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Kurdish Studies Center (KSC) and a former member of the club’s advisory board, told Al Jazeera Amedspor’s matches have become a “weekly barometer” of whether Turkish society and state can accept the club as part of the country “with its own colours, culture, language and identity”.

From obscurity to the Super Lig

Amedspor was formed as Melikahmet Turanspor in 1972 and later passed through various name changes and was taken over by Diyarbakir’s municipality in 1990. They spent much of their history toiling in the lower leagues.

The club gained promotion to the third tier for the first time in 2013, and the following year caused a stir after renaming themselves with the Kurdish word for Diyarbakir – “Amed” – and adopting the red, green and yellow of the Kurdish tricolour.

Expressions of Kurdish culture and language have long been suppressed in Turkiye, especially after the separatist PKK launched an armed uprising against the Turkish state in 1984. But the club were allowed to use the name Amed and their green and red colours at least, if not the full tricolour.

They were clearly on the up. In January 2015, they claimed a 2-0 victory away at Galatasaray in the Turkish Cup. In 2015-16, as conflict raged in Turkiye’s southeast, they reached the quarterfinals of the Turkish Cup, beating Super Lig sides Basaksehir and Bursaspor along the way.

In the following years, the club was bailed out by local businesses after its funding was cut by government appointees to the municipality. It continued to face significant hostility from rival fans, frequent punishment from the federation and verbal attacks from politicians.

But it was becoming increasingly popular among Kurds across the country, not only in Diyarbakir.

Research published by the KSC in March 2026 found that Amedspor’s support had quadrupled to four million among Kurdish adults in Turkiye over four years – even before the promotion to the Super Lig – and that the club had become the best supported among Kurds in the country.

Meanwhile, a new peace process between the state and the PKK had begun in late 2024, and in May 2025 the PKK formally announced its dissolution and the end of its armed struggle.

When Amedspor were promoted to the Super Lig in May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ultranationalist ally Devlet Bahceli congratulated the club. Erdogan later received Amedspor officials and players at the presidential palace along with those from other promoted clubs.

Bagis Erten, a sports journalist with Oksijen newspaper, said that now the political winds have shifted, the club is not being held back or excessively punished by footballing authorities.

“Especially when we talk about the football federation and referees, [Amedspor] were always treated very badly in previous years. Their penalties were not given, their red cards were not fair,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But now this system at least is not stopping them.”

‘Fragile progress’

At Amedspor’s Diyarbakir Stadium, the crowd in one stand calls out in Kurdish: “Ki ne em?” (Who are we?). Another stand thunders in response: “Kurd in em!” (We are Kurds!) At a recent game against Istanbul giants Besiktas, which Amedspor won 3-2, a tifo featured the words “EM HATIN” (We are here).

Turkish society is now encountering the Kurdish language and other expressions of Kurdish identity more regularly because of Amedspor’s promotion to the Super Lig.

There has been hostility shown by rival fans this season, with some provocatively displaying yellow body bags and images of F16s in reference to the darkest days of the conflict with the PKK.

But Ruhavioglu says that, despite incidents like this, the “barometer” is generally looking positive and that football can help to “normalise” Kurdish identity in Turkiye, as several teams and their fans have now visited the city without incident.

“When you see the bigger picture, it is going well,” he said.

Ruhavioglu says his centre’s research has also challenged some misconceptions around the club and its fans.

“Amedspor’s stands are really not homogenous,” he said, adding that while many fans support the left-wing, pro-Kurdish DEM Party, others are “close to other parties and ideologies. The Kurdish political movement is [generally] a secular movement, but many fans are praying in the stadium.”

And although the research found that a sense of Kurdishness and speaking Kurdish were strongly tied to fandom of Amedspor, he said the club should not be seen as “a national team for Kurds”, but rather more like “the representative of Kurdish identity” in Turkiye. Indeed, 61 percent of Kurds in the survey said they support the Turkish national team when it plays.

Unlike when the club was playing in the lower tiers, Amedspor now rarely features Kurdish or local players in the starting XI – it is mostly comprised of foreign players and some non-Kurdish Turks.

Coskun denied this undermines the club’s sense of Kurdishness.

“I think the fact that few of the players are Kurdish is not of vital importance to the fans, because it is the club that carries the identity, not the players,” he said. “Of course, fans would like to see many more Kurdish players in the team, but what matters most here is success.”

But Erten says the club may end up seeking to dilute its political identity to pursue footballing success or at least avoid trouble.

“Of course, it’s the symbol of Kurdish movement … [but] they are trying to convince Turkish society that it’s a good football project as well.”

Erten says attitudes towards Amedspor show how Turkiye’s state and society have become more tolerant of prominent expressions of Kurdishness on a national level, something that was unthinkable in previous decades.

“It’s progress, but it depends only on the approach of government,” he said. “It’s very fragile progress.”

Flights across Europe have been diverted, grounded and escorted by fighter jets in response to a wave of bomb threats, marking a second major outbreak of false alerts in less than a week.

On Thursday, planes departing from 16 countries, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain and Denmark, were affected. Flights have either been forced to divert to alternate locations or undergo additional security checks. On Friday, the threats continued.

Authorities have deployed bomb disposal teams and military fighter jets in several countries. So far, security inspections following threats have yielded no evidence of explosives or suspicious materials on board aircraft, and no passenger has reported being harmed.

What happened?

On Friday, a Ryanair flight landed in Lisbon, Portugal at 8am after a bomb threat was made by phone to the authorities, Italian media has reported. A security operation was mounted as soon as the plane landed. Separately, the control tower in Fiumicino, Italy, received an alert about a device aboard a Wizzair flight to Rome from Paris. The Wizzair flight was diverted to Venice where police were clearing the area around the plane.

On Thursday, there were numerous threats, including the following:

• In Poland, authorities received a warning about a potentially dangerous object on board a Polish Airlines flight already taxiing on the runway at Warsaw Chopin Airport. The flight to Paris was prevented from taking off and passengers disembarked, but a search by security services found nothing dangerous on board, an airline spokesman told local media.
• In Warsaw, a LOT flight to Paris was also halted and passengers were transferred to another ‌aircraft.
• A LOT flight from London Heathrow to Warsaw-Chopin Airport was forced to land at the Polish capital’s other airport, Warsaw-Modlin, following a threat. Nothing was found on board.
• The Italian Air Force escorted a Finnair plane into Rome after an anonymous bomb-threat email was sent to Aeroporti di Roma (ADR) and other companies at Fiumicino. The plane arrived safely.
• In Bulgaria, a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was diverted to make an emergency landing in Plovdiv, the country’s second city, following a bomb threat.
• In the space of just 20 minutes, Spanish authorities reported receiving three emailed bomb threats regarding two Air Europa departures from Madrid to Paris and four inbound Iberia flights from Rome and Milan, Spain’s Guardia Civil said.
• A flight ⁠from Cork in Ireland was delayed for 90 minutes when the airport received a threat, the airport operator said.
• A Ryanair flight from Pescara in Italy to Charleroi in Belgium was subject to a false bomb alarm, state news agency Ansa reported. Local media in Belgium reported that security protocols were triggered after the word “bomb” was found written in one of the aircraft’s restrooms.

What happens when a threat is received?

When an airline is notified of a threat to an aircraft, it is passed to a team of assessors, said Joji Waites, director of flight safety, policy and regulation at BALPA, the British Airlines Pilots’ Association.

“These assessors use standard processes to grade the threat and decide whether the threat is red (credible), amber (partially credible) or green (not credible). Amber is not considered an appropriate assessment if the plane is airborne,” said Waites.

After receiving a threat, an aircraft is directed to an area well away from the airport buildings. Passengers are disembarked and screened while border police with sniffer dogs inspect the plane, according to an airport official.

Is this the first time threats like this have been made?

No.

The incidents follow a series of hoax bomb threats earlier this week. On Monday, a flight from the UK to Bulgaria was diverted after a threat that turned out to be without substance. On Tuesday, seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted because of malicious hoax bomb alerts.

And also this week, there have also been cyberattacks on supermarkets in several European cities, with hackers changing the temperature on refrigeration in an apparent attempt to spoil food.

How unusual is this?

Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said the scale and coordinated nature of these latest incidents are unusual.

“There are indeed individual airlines that experience a bomb threat every day, but most of those are very quickly evaluated and determined to be non-specific, and the aircraft do not divert,” said Baum.

What sets the latest incidents apart, he said, is that authorities across several European countries appear to be treating the threats as credible enough to require planes to land and undergo security inspections. Baum noted that each flight disruption could cost airlines as much as $250,000.

The UK’s government called the latest disruption “malicious hoax threats”. London Heathrow, the busiest airport for passenger traffic in Europe, was also targeted. It says it has one of the most robust aviation safety systems in the world, but countries still have to take the threats seriously and figure out how to stop any actors from creating further disruptions to air travel across Europe.

Who is behind this?

The European Commissioner for Transport said it is too early to say who’s behind these attacks or whether the incidents are even connected.

European governments have so far refrained from blaming anyone. But those which have supported Ukraine are wary of hybrid attacks. Germany has directly pointed the finger at Russia for recent drone incursions at Leipzig-Halle Airport. Moscow rejected the accusations.

EU officials are aware of the possibility that Russia would step up its hybrid campaign. In September, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service warned that this could happen to pressure adversaries in the West and NATO.

However, Moscow has denied being involved in the threats to aviation in Europe and there is no evidence of any involvement by Russia, Iran or any proxy groups linked to them.

Ritu Pant always made sure that her merchant navy officer husband told her two things before departing on an assignment.

“I always noted the details and the name of his ship and his emergency contact details in case of a crisis,” says Ritu, who is based in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

That’s what she did on April 25, when her husband Ajay left Paradip Port in the state of Odisha on board the MT Smyrtos, a crude oil tanker. Her husband had been a sailor for 18 years, and spent six or seven months a year at sea. But growing threats to seamen – amid the wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, and from pirates roaming the high seas – had increased her jitters in recent years.

Yet it was through a social media post that she learned in mid-June that the ship had been captured. Not by pirates, but by the British armed forces, because the MT Smyrtos is under Western sanctions for allegedly working as part of Russia’s shadow fleet, a network of vessels that help Moscow evade United States and European economic restrictions to continue to sell oil and gas, amid the war on Ukraine.

Now Ajay Pant faces charges of flouting United Kingdom sanctions against Russia by commandeering the ship. It’s the first known instance when a European nation has kept a ship captain under arrest on such grounds, and could set a worrying precedent, say lawyers and groups advocating for the rights of seafarers. “This is a unique case,” said Tony Patten, the UK representative at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), an organisation that works for the rights of seafarers.

Other European countries have also taken over ships that they accuse of violating sanctions against Russia, but while they’ve kept the vessels, they have so far let the sailors go. In March this year, a captain of a suspected Russian shadow fleet was prosecuted in absentia by a French court. In another case from Finland, a court dismissed charges against the captain of a Russian oil tanker accused of damaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on account of lack of jurisdiction. In other cases, European nations have set commercial sailors free with fines.

By contrast, Ajay faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The case has also underlined a growing tension between maritime traffic through international waters – the Smyrtos was not in British territorial waters when it was captured – and the enforcement by countries of sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations.

‘Situation of the sea was very bad’

The open seas have always been dangerous, but the risks have mounted as wars and piracy have turned ships and their crew into active targets for militaries and mercenaries alike.

At least 24 seafarers have been killed in the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. More than 120 commercial ships and tankers have been attacked in this period in the waterway, which used to transport a fifth of the world’s energy supplies before the start of the war.

The death toll in the Black Sea is even grimmer: At least 40 sailors have been killed in more than 570 attacks on vessels there. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has resurged, too.

For Ritu Pant, all of that meant increased insecurity each time her husband went on a ship.“I was quite worried,” she said, describing her thoughts while Ajay was at sea. “When I talked to Ajay, I would tell him that you need to keep in touch always; you need to tell me that you’re fine and everything is safe around because the situation of the sea was very bad.”

But it was not uncommon for her to not hear from her husband for days, due to network disruptions at sea. So Ritu would track updates of her husband’s ship online, a practice that has become increasingly common among families of sailors at sea.

On June 14, the MT Smyrtos was chugging through the English Channel when the Royal Marines Commandos intercepted it, in what was a first-of-its-kind operation authorised by then British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

At the time, the ship was in international waters, outside the territorial jurisdiction of the UK. Yet Chinook, Merlin Mk4 and Wildcat helicopters from the Maritime Air Group; a Royal Air Force P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft; a frigate; and a mine countermeasures ship participated in the military operation to take control of the vessel, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

The ship was carrying oil from Russia and was on track to pass through the Suez Canal on its way to India, its destination.

“This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide,” Starmer said in a post on X.

What followed was equally unprecedented; charges of allegedly breaching Russian sanctions were brought against Ajay, who has since been in detention in the UK. After an initial court hearing, his bail was denied.

‘Criminalisation of seafarers’

Enforcement of maritime sanctions brought against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been tenuous at best, which makes the Smyrtos case “very unique”, said David Hammond, a lawyer and founder of Human Rights At Sea, a nonprofit and UN-accredited organisation advocating for the rights of people living, working, transiting and operating at sea.

“It is unique in terms of the interception and the interdiction of a vessel that had been sanctioned, having passed through the English Channel as an international transit corridor. It’s, in my understanding, not happened before,” he said.

On the one hand, Hammond explained, the outcome of the case will determine how coastal states enforce sanctions against vessels. But, he said, it also underscores the risks of “criminalisation of seafarers”.

Hammond said Ajay Pant’s case was part of a broader pattern of “shipping crews finding themselves in a position where they are arrested for many crimes, such as trafficking or movement of drugs that they’re not even aware of having been put on board the ship”.

He cited the example of Ali Albokhari, a Finnish-Syrian chief mate on a cargo ship, who was detained by Turkish authorities in 2023 after 137kg (302lb) of cocaine was found on board.

Patten of the ITF echoed similar sentiments. “Our stance is that seafarers being penalised automatically when something like this happens isn’t fair. We would always uphold the right of the seafarer,” he said.

Hammond said Ajay’s case was especially without parallel. “In the case of the Smyrtos,  it could be argued that Captain Pant is being criminalised for simply doing his job,” he said, adding that the direction in which the British courts rule will set a new precedent for masters’ accountability over movement of sanctioned goods.

The case, Hammond added, “is a perfect storm in a global storm of impunity; who is accountable and who enforces accountability”.

“And the unintended consequences of which are yet to be seen,” he warned.

‘Horrible year at sea’

The case also raises wider concerns, Hammond said, about how shipping companies and the countries vessels traverse often treat seafarers. “Undeniably, seafarers are seen as disposable assets,” he said, “disposable because they can be easily replaced but concurrently, as assets for assuring continuous global movement of goods by sea.”

The killings in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea have underscored that sense among sailors and their families – that the lives of those who keep the global economy moving are seen as disposable by those in power.

In a statement shared with Al Jazeera, the International Maritime Organization confirmed at least 66 sailors were killed in various conflicts this year, and hundreds of others injured. Many sailors are also still missing and feared to be dead. “It has been a horrible year for people at sea,” Patten said. “Problems have always existed, but conflicts and geopolitical change have certainly heightened them.”

Ajay Pant’s case also shines new light on a growing number of instances where navies have gone outside their territorial waters to seize tankers that they claim are violating their domestic sanctions regimes.

Since February, when the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, US forces have intercepted and captured several cargo ships in the Indian Ocean. These vessels were seized not just far from US territorial waters but also far from the theatre of their war, on accusations that they were helping Iran evade US sanctions.

The US and the UK argue that they are acting within the bounds of international law.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permits a warship to visit a cargo ship to verify its flag where there are reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is without nationality. The British Defence Ministry, in its statement after the seizure of the Smyrtos, said that if a vessel is determined to be stateless, the UK can exercise criminal and maritime enforcement powers under its domestic Policing and Crime Act.

The Smyrtos, like many ships that are accused of belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet”, has frequently changed its flag. The ship had once previously been registered in The Gambia, and then adopted a Cameroon flag in December 2025. When it departed from a Russian port, it had a Cameroonian flag, but Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that the ship had been removed from Cameroon’s register earlier, in June. It is owned by a Chinese company.

According to the British Defence Ministry, Russia sells about 75 percent of its oil using such shadow tankers.

But whether militaries have the right to enforce their domestic sanctions and laws in international waters against individuals and vessels that are not registered in their territory remains a contested question in international law.

The capture of such vessels raises “a much bigger issue” of “the freedom of navigation at sea”, said Hammond.

To Ajay’s family and those advocating for him, it also raises a more human question: If a cargo ship captain passing through international waters can be captured and tried by nations for allegedly violating their domestic laws, is any sailor safe?

Anchored with hope

That’s a question that Ritu has lived with in the past few months, forcing the former school principal into advocacy not just for her husband’s release, but for seafarer rights globally.

“Ajay’s case goes beyond just our family, and could be a landmark judgement for seafarers worldwide,” she said. “It raises the fundamental question of whether a master of a ship can be criminalised for decisions that are beyond his authority, knowledge or control.”

The journey has been a difficult one, she said.

“Ajay was the primary breadwinner of his family, and I have also been forced to give up my work to focus on this case,” the mother of an eight-year-old and a one-year-old said.

“He has also been a caregiver to his elderly parents,” she added, saying that for the first few days after the arrest, she kept the news from them, worried for their health. “I wouldn’t allow the daily newspaper in the house and stopped sending my older daughter to school, afraid that someone would say something hurtful to her.”

Eventually, Ritu informed the family and prepared them for the struggles ahead.

“The hardest part is having to do this across continents. We have only spoken to him over short calls, and he has had no personal visitors since I went to meet him in August,” she said. “I don’t want him to feel that he has been forgotten.”

But despite the hardships, she remains hopeful, as support has poured in from the global seafarers community. “When I started posting on social media, I received so many messages from families and wives of sailors,” she said. “Every seafarer’s family I’ve talked to relates to this. So many sailors are getting targeted right now in conflict at sea; they are being made scapegoats.”

Now, she’s preparing for Ajay’s upcoming trial. “I have to bring him back home,” she said. “For his family, but also because no seafarer should be treated in this way.”

IN the summer of 1970, Tom Petty met one of his future Heartbreakers – and made a friend for life. 

He was 19 when he invited guitarist Mike Campbell, then 20, to join his band Mudcrutch, named after the rundown Florida farm where they practised. 

“Tom was instantly unforgettable,” says Campbell today. “Of course, he had the long blond hair but he also had a swagger. 

“He had this vibe around him of knowing where he was going — and he was smarter than anybody else in the room.”

The pair hit it off from the get-go, resulting in Campbell being by Petty’s side throughout his career — playing lead guitar in The Heartbreakers, joining Tom on his solo albums and taking part in the Mudcrutch revival in 2007. 

“We immediately connected as musicians,” continues Campbell. “We had a similar dream — not to be rock stars, just to be professional and successful. 

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“The whole rock star thing came later. Tom lived at home [with his parents Earl and Kitty] and was a hippie dude like me.” 

The first incarnation of Mudcrutch “paid their dues” in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida, known for its vast university campus. 

Campbell recalls: “I’d come down from Jacksonville and was pretty much homeless. I was sleeping on couches and giving guitar lessons. It was a meagre existence.” 

Things began to fall into place when he hooked up with two Toms — Tom Petty and Tom Leadon (brother of Eagles’ guitarist Bernie) — and drummer Randall Marsh to form Mudcrutch. 

He says: “Gainesville was a great place to be. There was a thriving artistic community around the university, lots of parks for us to play for free and little bars to play in around town.  

“We even got a gig in a topless bar for a while but it kept us in money for a few months. 

“We mostly played covers but Tom was beginning to write and I was dabbling around with ideas.” 

I ask Campbell what kind of music and which artists were his and Petty’s chief inspirations.  

“Florida was a hotbed for all kinds of music, from blues and country to rock ’n’ roll,” he replies. 

“But the strongest influence on both of us was the whole British Invasion — The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks, The Animals.  

“We would draw on them our whole lives.” 

I’m speaking to Campbell, 76, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band that Mudcrutch eventually morphed into, all-American icons Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. 

Campbell is in Memphis, Tennessee, for the last stop on his tour with his post-Heartbreakers band, The Dirty Knobs.  

He notes that he is in the music-loving Southern city where Elvis Presley started out at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. 

“The tour is coming to a close and everybody has picked up the flu,” he sighs when we’re connected via video call from his hotel room.  

“Sorry if I sound a little under the weather but I’ll be OK.” 

The main hook for our chat is a new boxset documenting the earliest recorded forays of Mudcrutch, Petty’s solo excursions as he searched for his direct yet melodic sound, his first two albums with The Heartbreakers, an incendiary 1977 Heartbreakers gig and footage from BBC Two’s cult late-night show, The Old Grey Whistle Test. 

It is nine years since Petty’s death, aged 66, from an accidental overdose of prescription meds a week after his final show with The Heartbreakers, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.  

Campbell is still coming to terms with his loss. Before returning to memories of their early years together, he reflects on the man he was proud to call his “best friend”. 

“It was like losing your right arm,” he affirms. “Very hard — and a surprise — and I’m still grieving. 

“Tom and I were close, not necessarily to hang out all the time, but our musical and spiritual connection was about as strong as anybody can have.” 

When touring with The Dirty Knobs, Campbell makes sure to include Heartbreakers songs in the set, featuring some of his co-writes with Petty such as Runnin’ Down The Dream and You Got Lucky. 

“I can’t believe it’s nine years,” he says. “But, as time goes on, I’ve dealt with the grief better. 

“I like to perform Heartbreakers songs to keep them alive, to remember and revisit my time with Tom.  

“It is bittersweet but there are moments when I feel his spirit. He’s right behind me, saying, ‘Go man, go!’ ” 

Campbell concludes: “You might never get over the loss of your brother or your father or your mother or your best friend but you learn to cope. That’s what grief is. 

“Memories seem to have a life of their own and I have very good memories. I treasure them.” 

This is a cue for more of Campbell’s precious recollections of the Seventies, beginning with Mudcrutch’s first attempts at recording.  

On the first disc of the new boxset, No Sleep Till LA, there is an unpolished but promising song from 1971 called Up In Mississippi Tonight — a self-financed single — and later efforts including Depot Street and Wild Eyes. 

So what does Campbell make of those initial studio forays all these years later? 

“I hear immaturity and I don’t hear any big hit singles,” he decides. “But I do hear dedicated dudes trying to learn their craft. 

“We drove down to Miami to cut a couple of demos and were intimidated because we only knew how to play live. 

“We were ducks out of water so it was quite an education. 

“The looseness of it all is shocking to me now but you sense the germ of something special is about to show itself.” 

Their chastening early studio endeavours meant that Petty, Campbell and the rest of Mudcrutch decided they needed “to get smarter and get out of Gainesville”. 

By this time, another future Heartbreaker, keyboardist Benmont Tench, had joined the fold, bringing an extra level of sophistication to the group’s music. 

Campbell says: “We had done everything we could do as a local band. We had played everywhere, we had a following, but there was nowhere else to go.  

“So we thought either New York or LA was our best shot at getting into the rat race.” 

He adds that they chose the West Coast because “we already had a friend in Bernie Leadon, who came back to Florida and said, ‘It’s all going on in LA — record companies and musicians everywhere’. 

“He encouraged us to get our asses out there, take our hard knocks, and get into it.” 

Mudcrutch arrived in LA in 1974 but things didn’t go well. Although famed musician Leon Russell signed them to Shelter Records, their first single, Depot Street, flopped and they were dropped soon afterwards. 

Petty, however, still had a solo deal with Shelter and his next efforts are represented on the No Sleep Till LA disc by a gorgeous acoustic demo, Unheard Kind Of Hero. 

Campbell remembers the period like this: “After a couple of years of Mudcrutch struggle and the band falling apart, then Tom trying to go solo, The Heartbreakers showed up like magic one night — and boom!” 

He explains: “Benmont had put together a demo session [in 1976] to work on songs and he called us all down. 

“It was as if a light went on — this is who we are, this is what we do. 

“Tom immediately said he was fed up with trying to make a solo record. He wanted to be in a band and said, ‘I’ve still got a deal and this is my band!’ ” It consisted of Petty, Campbell, Tench and new recruits Stan Lynch on drums and Ron Blair on bass.  

“And we started that first Heartbreakers record almost overnight,” continues Campbell. 

As for calling themselves Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, he says: “I never had any issues with that. Tom was a great leader and frontman.” 

Producer Denny Cordell gave them “unlimited studio time and nice equipment” and soon songs flowed thick and fast. 

“They just started exploding out of Tom like they were waiting for an outlet,” says Campbell. “He’d come in and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a song, it’s called Breakdown. And here’s another called I Need To Know’.” 

The self-titled debut album kicks off in thrilling fashion with Petty/Campbell’s Rockin’ Around (With You). 

“I wasn’t even trying to write a song,” says the guitarist. “I was sitting in the studio playing the riff and Tom walked by and goes, ‘What’s that?’  

“He took it home and came back the next day with Rockin’ Around (With You). But the real lightbulb moment was on the 4th of July, 1976, when we recorded American Girl.” 

Campbell watched Petty demo the first Heartbreakers stone-cold classic on acoustic guitar and decided it would benefit from a 12-string.  

“But we couldn’t afford a 12-string so I tried to emulate it with my six-string by playing octaves,” he says. 

“When we finished that song, we realised something had happened. We had found our sound — and nobody else sounded like that.  

“From then on, it was smooth sailing. Tom was finding his persona and his voice. He was getting confident and he was proud of the band.” 

The self-titled debut album, released on November 9, 1976, failed to make an impact in the States but, as Campbell points out: “The British press loved us. They thought we were a punk band.” 

A brief UK tour in May and June, 1977, brings back fond memories for Campbell. 

He says: “Our first show was in Cardiff supporting Nils Lofgren. We drove there in a little bread truck, facing each other on wooden benches. 

“For the last song, Tom and I were running around in circles and got our guitar cords tangled up. We were literally hog-tied to each other and everyone was laughing. 

“After that it was Heartbreaker mania for a while. We played places like Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds.” 

On returning to the States, the Heartbreakers set about trying to break through. 

“But we couldn’t get arrested,” laughs Campbell. “The first album came and went so it was back to the grind. The second [1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!] picked up a little traction with songs Listen To Her Heart and I Need To Know but the response was still pretty meagre.  

“We were opening for Bob Seger if we were lucky or the J. Geils Band, going from city to city in a minivan.”  

Everything changed with the fabulous third album, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), which reached No2 on the Billboard charts despite what Campbell calls “a difficult birth”. 

It opened with two of his co-writes, Refugee and Here Comes My Girl, but the story behind that album is for another time. 

Before I let him go, I ask Campbell about playing not just with Petty but many great artists during his career. 

“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world,” he says. “My path has landed me in the presence of my heroes — and they always tripped me out.  

“I’d think, ‘Wow, I’m just this little kid from Florida and there’s George Harrison or Bob Dylan or Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash. How did I get here?’  

“People like that can overwhelm you. You get a gush of confusion but it soon settles down.” 

As for Petty, it was never like that. He just wanted to be one of the boys. 

Campbell says: “Tom could have gone solo and could have been like Rod Stewart or whoever but he grew up in a band and he wanted to keep it that way. 

“It’s why we stayed together for so long. I always liked that about him.” 

On a personal note, he adds: “If Tom was working on a record, he could always look at me and say, ‘Should I go this way or that?’ 

“He trusted me and we loved each other.” 

TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS 

Origins 1971- 1978 

★★★★★

Khan Younis, Gaza – A few metres from the sea, near al-Qarara port on Gaza’s coast, Anas al-Shami, 33, is trying to keep his family of six warm and dry in a dilapidated tent. It offers little protection from wind and rain, while the damp seeps into their bedding and belongings at every moment. The swelling waves in the sea also pose a constant threat as winter approaches.

The beach was not al-Shami’s choice of place to live, but the refuge his family took shelter in after being displaced from their home quickly became overcrowded. They can’t afford anything safer than this tent.

Now, he and his family are living in constant fear of a repeat of last winter’s flooding.

Al-Shami and his family were forced to leave Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, when it became part of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Zone” beyond which Palestinians are not permitted to go.

“I searched for land in displacement areas where I could pitch a tent, but overcrowding and high rental costs made that impossible,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I was therefore forced to stay on the beach, despite the dangers facing my family and me.”

Al-Shami recalls last winter, when seawater and rain flooded his tent while the family was asleep. He would wake to find his children lying in water. Their bedding and belongings were repeatedly soaked, leaving him unable to protect them from the cold as the tent turned into a pond.

Despite trying all year, the family has been unable to find anywhere else to go, leaving them facing another winter on the beach.

“My children’s repeated exposure to water, cold and damp caused serious illness which threatened their lives,” he says.

‘I feel helpless in front of my children’

It’s a familiar story along this stretch of coastline.

Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, whose family has also been displaced from eastern Khan Younis, is sharing a cramped tent with his seven children on the port’s shoreline. The dilapidated shelter lacks any basic necessities and offers little protection from the cold, rain and wind.

“What hurts me most is feeling helpless in front of my children,” he says. “I cannot provide winter clothes to protect them from the cold or even a dry mattress for them to sleep on.”

The strong wind and the sound of the rising waves keep him awake at night, he says, and he is terrified of another flood like last year’s, when water inundated the tent and forced the family to endure the cold in the open. His greatest wish is to find safe shelter where his children can sleep without fear.

Some families have found a makeshift solution to keep the water at bay.

By filling damaged cooking pots with earth, they have forged a barrier against encroaching seawater alongside the tents.

Mayasem Association, an aid organisation which works in cooperation with World Central Kitchen, has seized on this innovation and is now producing these pot-barriers for families in this area close to al-Qarara port.

The initiative reuses large pots rendered unusable by repeated exposure to flames, corrosion and holes. Three pots, donated by World Central Kitchen, are filled with soil and stacked on top of one another, reaching approximately 150 centimetres in height to form barriers that hold back the incoming water and prevent waves from reaching shelter sites.

“The initiative initially involved building barriers to protect the association’s safe space, which hosts its education programmes, school, cultural activities, arts and heritage programmes,” Khalil Abu Lahia, the association’s emergency response coordinator, tells Al Jazeera. “The idea later developed into an attempt to protect the displaced families’ tents along the coastal strip.”

A winter fraught with risk

While this is an example of the innovative thinking which can help families who are destitute and at risk in Gaza, it is nevertheless only a temporary measure which cannot make up for the widespread lack of safe shelter.

The initiative comes amid a warning from Gaza’s Winter Emergency Committee of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as tents and caravans remain in critically short supply as Israeli authorities continue to prevent their entry into the Gaza Strip, alongside the delivery of critical construction materials and fuel.

The committee has reported that Israeli forces have also destroyed about 70 percent of municipalities’ essential operational equipment and 90 percent of civil defence rescue equipment. The fuel crisis means machinery and generators will soon stop functioning altogether, further limiting the ability to respond to floods, carry out rescue operations and clear roads.

In all, there are about 200,000 dilapidated tents sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children, women and people with disabilities.

Some 7,800 of them are located in extremely hazardous areas, the committee has warned, including on dry riverbeds which may now flood, rainwater collection ponds and beaches exposed to crashing winter waves. These need to be urgently relocated to safer locations.

About 2,000 cracked buildings are also at risk of collapse, threatening families who have sought refuge inside them. Building materials, caravans, shelter and fuel are all urgently needed, the committee says.

In a small house in Omdurman, Hassan Saber Jumaa, a senior administrator at the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan, sat on a simple wooden chair. He scrolled through his phone, looking for any photograph he might have of Zamzam, which is near el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and once sheltered hundreds of thousands.

He found nothing. Jumaa explained that his old phone was looted during last year’s attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces on the camp. Pointing to the bare walls around him, Jumaa said that all he has left are his memories of the camp, and the people who once called it home.

Zamzam, established in 2004, was home to generations of people displaced by western Sudan’s Darfur war, which began in 2003 and continued for nearly two decades. Alongside Abu Shouk camp and al-Salam camp, Zamzam formed part of one of Darfur’s largest concentrations of displaced people.

Jumaa recalled a bustling community, with its market open every day, and children walking to school.

Zamzam memories

Zamzam continued as a refuge for civilians until Sudan’s current war, which began in 2023. The RSF, fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces and its allies, captured the camp in April 2025, after months of attacks. Famine had been confirmed in the camp in August 2024.

Mukhtar Musa, a survivor of the assault, watched the community he knew descend into starvation and violence. He said restrictions on the movement of goods had exhausted food supplies, leaving some residents with little choice but to eat animal feed and peanut shells.

Umm Kulthum Ali Saleh described the months before the final attack as the hardest of her life. The RSF siege on Zamzam stopped goods from entering. She searched for food every morning, and recalled seeing women cooking grass and mixing mud with flour to bake bread.

Saleh believes the blockade was not merely a military measure, but a deliberate way to weaken the camp’s residents in advance of the final offensive, and Zamzam’s fall.

Brutal military offensive

On April 11, the RSF launched a three-day assault using cars, camels, and horses, burning straw homes and health facilities.

A United Nations Human Rights Office report documented at least 1,013 civilians killed, including 319 who were summarily executed in homes, markets, schools, clinics, and mosques. The report documented other abuses, including rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence, particularly targeting the Zaghawa community.

Musa was a witness to some of those mass killings, and said he saw RSF fighters kill civilians while chanting religious slogans. He described seeing bodies scattered around the main market and near schools, and said fighters continued pursuing civilians along roads leading out of the camp.

Saleh also recalled seeing bodies littering the roads, with only chickens, donkeys, and sheep wandering among the abandoned buildings.

The attack forced tens of thousands to flee Zamzam, with many remaining in the el-Fasher area, and others fleeing south to Tawila and Dar al-Salam.

The violence continued to engulf el-Fasher and its surrounding displacement camps over the following months.

With Zamzam under its control, the RSF launched an attack on el-Fasher in August 2025, and soon captured the Abu Shouk camp.

The UN Human Rights Office said at least 40 displaced people were killed inside Abu Shouk, while 19 others were injured. The International Organization for Migration reported that at least 500 residents fled the camp that day.

The RSF captured el-Fasher itself on October 26, 2025. More than 6,000 people are believed to have been killed in the attack, in el-Fasher as well as on escape routes out of the city. The UN found that RSF fighters targeted civilians, including members of non-Arab communities, and committed acts amounting to war crimes.

The RSF has previously denied targeting civilians in Zamzam and el-Fasher, while acknowledging that some fighters committed abuses.

The survivors of Zamzam, al-Shouk, and el-Fasher focus on bearing witness to the tragedy they faced.

Jumaa said the destruction of Zamzam marked not the end of the violence, but the beginning of another wave of displacement.

For him, the camp survives in the memories of those who once lived there – even as they are now displaced elsewhere.

Musa, meanwhile, said he cannot forget the first days of the siege, and the bodies he saw on the streets.

“Whoever survives must tell the story of what happened,” Musa said.

Supermarket refrigerators and freezers across Europe have been targeted by a cyberattack that raised the temperature of internet-linked units, destroying and damaging large quantities of food.

On Monday, fridges and freezers at more than 100 shops in several European countries ran hot. Cyberattacks on supermarkets began last month, when hundreds of French supermarkets were left with spoiled food and damage to units which had overheated, costing millions of euros.

So far, it remains unclear why hackers targeted the supermarkets, but attacks have spread across the continent and even to the United States.

Here’s what we know:

Which countries in Europe have been targeted?

On Monday, several supermarkets in Europe were affected, including the following:

• Dutch supermarket operator Delhaize said dozens of its shops in Belgium and Luxembourg were hit by an “IT incident”.
• French retailer Carrefour said about 15 of its 700 Belgian locations were hit by refrigeration problems.
• The Colruyt group, which runs Spar stores in Belgium as franchises, said five of its shops were affected.
• Swedish Coop said cooling systems at seven of its 800 stores were affected, with disruptions ranging from complete shutdowns to partial operation.
• Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, which also operates restaurants at its stores, said one site in Mons, Belgium, had been affected by a cyberattack.
• De Laet & Van Haver, the Belgian butchery chain, said the temperature in its fridges at its store in Hove, south of Antwerp, was raised as high as 18 degrees Celsius, ruining meat worth about 15,000 euros ($16,764).
• The food wholesaler Musgrave said a cyber-incident affected refrigeration systems in 13 of its SuperValu stores in Ireland.
• In October, hundreds of French supermarkets suffered cyberattacks, spoiling tonnes of food, causing fires and melting parts of refrigeration units.

What has happened in the US?

In August, freezers at a market in Fort Huachuca, an Army base in Arizona, went into defrost mode, spoiling all the frozen food they contained, according to a post on Facebook by the base.

The same month, the naval station in Newport, Rhode Island, reported on Facebook that its refrigeration system was affected, leaving only dry goods were available for purchase.

The Pentagon considered the freezer malfunctions on the military bases to be a suspected hack, the Reuters news agency reported late last month, citing four officials close to the matter.

One official said Pentagon investigators were communicating with the French authorities about the issue.

How are cyberattackers targeting fridges and freezers?

Hackers can access the controls of fridges and freezers which use internet software and raise their temperature in order to spoil frozen food.

In some cases, hackers have increased the temperature of appliances to as high as 50C (122F) in European supermarkets, causing them to melt or even catch fire.

Awais Rashid, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Bristol in the UK, explained that many supermarket refrigeration systems which are remotely managed and, often by third parties, have not been given necessary software updates to prevent hackers.

“In line with established cyber security practices, these systems should be managed via secure networks. However, this is not the case in these incidents and they are accessible on the Internet,” Rashid told Al Jazeera.

“A remote managing party can access a web server on the controller to configure the system including temperature changes and maintenance. There are known vulnerabilities in several controllers (many of which are past their end of life),” he said.

Rashid added that vulnerabilities include “easily guessable” passwords, which would mean anyone could gain access.

Why are hackers doing this?

The motive behind the attacks is unclear, but authorities believe it may be a deliberate attempt to disrupt food supplies.

On Monday, the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, said the attacks on fridges were a “deliberate attempt to disrupt” the bloc’s food supply and to undermine consumer confidence.

He added that while “food security is not currently at risk … the food waste and impact on businesses are real”.

Rashid said that while there are few details about who may be behind the attacks or what their motives are, it is likely that these are “the motive here is likely disruption”.

“This has financial impacts on the supermarkets but also societal impacts in terms of security of the food supply chain. Critically, this risks undermining trust in infrastructures on which people rely daily,” he said.

Who is behind the attacks?

On Monday, Belgium’s prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened a criminal investigation into the latest fridge cyberattacks. But so far, no one has taken responsibility.

Theories have emerged linking state actors to cyberattacks generally, with North Korea most recently accused of being behind last week’s $6.3bn Binance cryptocurrency heist, which forced the crypto group to freeze accounts.

European intelligence officials have also warned that Russia is escalating its shadow war on the continent amid the ongoing conflict with Ukraine, with cyberattacks among the methods it uses.

On Tuesday, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre warned that Britain needs to be prepared for an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cyberattack on its critical national infrastructure within the next two years.

“By 2028, it is highly likely that Russia, China and other nation states will routinely use AI-cyber to achieve their geopolitical goals, with the UK facing an increase in scale and speed of sophisticated cyberattacks,” the NCSC said in a report.

The report comes shortly after the UK launched its “Be Ready” campaign, calling on citizens to stockpile enough tinned food, bottled water and cash to last three days in the event of a cyberattack or national emergency.

Rashid said that as our infrastructure becomes increasingly digitised, the risk of disruption from cyberattacks, especially “cyber-physical infrastructures such as refrigeration systems”, has risen.

“However, we should also note that a lot of our digital infrastructures operate safely everyday because good security practices enable that. The world works because cyber security works effectively. So it is important that all businesses follow good cyber security practices,” he said.