fight

When Zyw was diagnosed with MND, he was working as a sommelier and wine buyer in London. His first symptom was his left thumb going numb.

Initially misdiagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome, Zyw “had no reason to think about this impossible, improbable diagnosis at the time”.

A third of those diagnosed with the devastating disease die within a year, half die within two. Zyw is one of the “lucky ones”.

While his disease has progressed slowly, he has now lost most of the functionality in his hands, and the muscles in his upper body are wasting away.

A return to snowboarding was one of the positives in the dark aftermath of his diagnosis.

Having learned to snowboard as a child on a dry slope in Edinburgh, he competed as a freestyler into his early 20s before a knee injury put paid to that.

“I learned very quickly that the only aspect of this diagnosis in my control is my attitude towards it,” he added.

“I couldn’t affect how quickly the disease was going to manifest itself, how quickly I was going to fall off a cliff, how quickly I was going to lose motor functions.

“When I held on to that positive message, every day became easier and that’s what I’ve done every day since.”

The Davy Zyw Fan Club has been out in full force at the Games, flying British and Scottish flags and donning blue beanies emblazoned with his surname to watch him in action.

On a bus up to the snowboard park, an impromptu chant of “No Davy, No Party” sounded out, renditions of which carried on throughout the day.

Among those singing course-side were Zyw’s wife Yvie and four-year-old son Aleksander, who was “shouting his head off in celebration and admiration” as his daddy whizzed past during the opening run.

That race, however, did not end as he had hoped – in hospital with two broken ribs after a heavy crash, having already injured his knee in official training.

Such is the pain from his broken ribs, he cannot laugh nor sneeze but nothing was going to stop him being back in the start gate for Friday’s banked slalom.

In that, he finished 19th – but that is irrelevant. This Paralympic experience was never about the medals or results.

“Two years ago I wouldn’t have been classifiable as a Para-athlete and in two years’ time I’m not going to be a competitive snowboarder,” he said.

“So I’m in this sort of tragic period of my diagnosis where I’m ill enough to be classified as a Para-athlete, but well enough to still be able to rip down on my snowboard.

“I’m grateful for the fact that the Games have come at this moment, because in a few years’ time it wouldn’t have been possible.”

Despite the miserable weather, it wasn’t quite a storm in Dublin on Thursday, but one is quietly brewing for Saturday night when James ‘Jazza’ Dickens puts his WBA super-featherweight world title on the line against Anthony Cacace in the city’s 3 Arena.

As is the way, there were no bold statements or gimmicks from either at Thursday’s final press conference as their no-frills approach to the fight game ensured the exchanges were complimentary rather than confrontational.

Described as Cinderella Man v Cinderella Man, the pair have travelled rough terrain to get here and that is what sets this up perfectly.

Both have had their setbacks in boxing, with 34-year-old Dickens falling short in world title fights at super-bantamweight and featherweight before getting his hands on the gold when upgraded from the ‘interim’ title he won against Albert Batyrgaziev last summer.

Cacace, 37, endured years of disappointment before stopping Joe Cordina for the IBF version in May 2024, opting to vacate in order to face Leigh Wood in Nottingham last year.

“Until that first bell, all of this [build-up] is just nonsense and we have to sit here and talk,” said Liverpool’s Dickens.

“We just like to fight, but this is part of the business. I think we both just want to get in there and get the respect, throw some punches and shake hands after.”

Cacace is cut from the same cloth, with the Belfast man fully aware of what it has taken the champion to get here considering he has travelled a similar road.

“There is no point sitting here and saying ‘I’m going to do this and that’ because we are fighters and one punch can change everything,” Cacace said.

“I know Jazza has a big heart, same as me. We’re pretty similar in terms of career, so I fully respect Jazza for what he’s done in his career. He’s here for the same reason as me – to put food on the table for his family and that’s the bottom line.”

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national public health leader by staking out science-backed policies in contrast with the Trump administration.

After Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez for refusing what her lawyers called “the dangerous politicization of science,” Newsom hired her to help modernize California’s public health system. He also gave a job to Debra Houry, the agency’s former chief science and medical officer, who had resigned in protest hours after Monarez’s firing.

Newsom also teamed up with fellow Democratic governors Tina Kotek of Oregon, Bob Ferguson of Washington and Josh Green of Hawaii to form the West Coast Health Alliance, a regional public health agency, whose guidance the governors said would “uphold scientific integrity in public health as Trump destroys” the CDC’s credibility. Newsom argued establishing the independent alliance was vital as Kennedy leads the Trump administration’s rollback of national vaccine recommendations.

More recently, California became the first state to join a global outbreak response network coordinated by the World Health Organization, followed by Illinois and New York. Colorado and Wisconsin signaled they plan to join. They did so after President Trump officially withdrew the United States from the agency on the grounds that it had “strayed from its core mission and has acted contrary to the U.S. interests in protecting the U.S. public on multiple occasions.” Newsom said joining the WHO-led consortium would enable California to respond faster to communicable disease outbreaks and other public health threats.

Although other Democratic governors and public health leaders have openly criticized the federal government, few have been as outspoken as Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028 and is in his second and final term as governor. Members of the scientific community have praised his effort to build a public health bulwark against the Trump administration’s slashing of funding and scaling back of vaccine recommendations.

What Newsom is doing “is a great idea,” said Paul Offit, an outspoken critic of Kennedy and a vaccine expert who formerly served on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee but was removed under Trump in 2025.

“Public health has been turned on its head,” Offit said. “We have an anti-vaccine activist and science denialist as the head of U.S. Health and Human Services. It’s dangerous.”

The White House did not respond to questions about Newsom’s stance and Health and Human Services declined requests to interview Kennedy. Instead, federal health officials criticized Democrats broadly, arguing that blue states are participating in fraud and mismanagement of federal funds in public health programs.

Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the administration is going after “Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era.” She said those moves have “completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies.”

Public health guided by science

Since Trump returned to office, Newsom has criticized the president and his administration for engineering policies that he sees as an affront to public health and safety, labeling federal leaders as “extremists” trying to “weaponize the CDC and spread misinformation.” He has excoriated federal officials for erroneously linking vaccines to autism, warning that the administration is endangering the lives of infants and young children in scaling back childhood vaccine recommendations. And he argued that the White House is unleashing “chaos” on America’s public health system in backing out of the WHO.

The governor declined an interview request, but Newsom spokesperson Marissa Saldivar said it’s a priority of the governor “to protect public health and provide communities with guidance rooted in science and evidence, not politics and conspiracies.”

The Trump administration’s moves have triggered financial uncertainty that local officials said has reduced morale within public health departments and left states unprepared for disease outbreaks and prevention efforts. The White House last year proposed cutting Health and Human Services spending by $33 billion, including $3.6 billion from the CDC. Congress largely rejected those cuts last month, although funding for programs focusing on social drivers of health, such as access to food, housing and education, were axed.

The Trump administration announced that it would claw back more than $600 million in public health funds from California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, arguing that the Democratic-led states were funding “woke” initiatives that didn’t reflect White House priorities. Within days, the states sued and a judge temporarily blocked the cut.

“They keep suddenly canceling grants and then it gets overturned in court,” said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Assn. of California. “A lot of the damage is already done because counties already stopped doing the work.”

Federal funding has accounted for more than half of state and local health department budgets nationwide, with money going toward fighting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, preventing chronic diseases, and boosting public health preparedness and communicable disease response, according to a 2025 analysis by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Federal funds account for $2.4 billion of California’s $5.3-billion public health budget, making it difficult for Newsom and state lawmakers to backfill potential cuts. That money helps fund state operations and is vital for local health departments.

Funding cuts hurt all

Los Angeles County public health director Barbara Ferrer said if the federal government is allowed to cut that $600 million, the county of nearly 10 million residents would lose an estimated $84 million over the next two years, in addition to other grants for prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Ferrer said the county depends on nearly $1 billion in federal funding annually to track and prevent communicable diseases and combat chronic health conditions, including diabetes and high blood pressure. Already, the county has announced the closure of seven public health clinics that provided vaccinations and disease testing, largely because of funding losses tied to federal grant cuts.

“It’s an ill-informed strategy,” Ferrer said. “Public health doesn’t care whether your political affiliation is Republican or Democrat. It doesn’t care about your immigration status or sexual orientation. Public health has to be available for everyone.”

A single case of measles requires public health workers to track down 200 potential contacts, Ferrer said.

The U.S. eliminated measles in 2000 but is close to losing that status as a result of vaccine skepticism and misinformation spread by vaccine critics. The U.S. had 2,281 confirmed cases last year, the most since 1991, with 93% in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. This year, the highly contagious disease has been reported at schools, airports and Disneyland.

Public health officials hope the West Coast Health Alliance can help counteract Trump by building trust through evidence-based public health guidance.

“What we’re seeing from the federal government is partisan politics at its worst and retaliation for policy differences, and it puts at extraordinary risk the health and well-being of the American people,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn., a coalition of public health professionals.

Robust vaccine schedule

Erica Pan, California’s top public health officer and director of the state Department of Public Health, said the West Coast Health Alliance is defending science by recommending a more robust vaccine schedule than the federal government. California is part of a coalition suing the Trump administration over its decision to rescind recommendations for seven childhood vaccines, including for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza and COVID-19.

Pan expressed deep concern about the state of public health, particularly the uptick in measles. “We’re sliding backwards,” Pan said of immunizations.

Sarah Kemble, Hawaii’s state epidemiologist, said Hawaii joined the alliance after hearing from pro-vaccine residents who wanted assurance that they would have access to vaccines.

“We were getting a lot of questions and anxiety from people who did understand science-based recommendations but were wondering, ‘Am I still going to be able to go get my shot?’” Kemble said.

Other states led mostly by Democrats have also formed alliances, with Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and several other East Coast states banding together to create the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.

Hilliard, of Health and Human Services, said that even as Democratic governors establish vaccine advisory coalitions, the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and gold standard science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”

Influencing red states

Newsom, for his part, has approved a recurring annual infusion of nearly $300 million to support the state Department of Public Health, as well as the 61 local public health agencies across California, and last year signed a bill authorizing the state to issue its own immunization guidance. It requires health insurers in California to provide patient coverage for vaccinations the state recommends even if the federal government doesn’t.

Jeffrey Singer, a doctor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said decentralization can be beneficial. That’s because local media campaigns that reflect different political ideologies and community priorities may have a better chance of influencing the public.

A KFF analysis found some red states are joining blue states in decoupling their vaccine recommendations from the federal government’s. Singer said some doctors in his home state of Arizona are looking to more liberal California for vaccine recommendations.

“Science is never settled, and there are a lot of areas of this country where there are differences of opinion,” Singer said. “This can help us challenge our assumptions and learn.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

Chief support will see Dublin’s Pierce O’Leary fight in his home city for the first time as a pro when he takes on replacement Maxi Hughes with the vacant IBO light-welterweight belt up for grabs.

Portsmouth’s Mark Chamberlain was due to face O’Leary, but he was forced to withdraw because of an infection with Yorkshire’s Hughes stepping up in weight for the challenge.

The vacant IBO super-featherweight title is also on offer as Dubliner Jono Carroll and Belfast’s Colm Murphy lock horns, while an interesting addition to the card is Southampton’s undefeated super-featherweight Ryan Garner, who will be keen to earn a crack at the winner of the main event.

James Dickens v Anthony Cacace – WBA world super-featherweight title

Pierce O’Leary v Maxi Hughes – vacant IBO light-welterweight title

Jono Carroll v Colm Murphy – vacant IBO super-featherweight title

Steven Cairns v Arnie Dawson – lightweight

Eoghan Lavin v Liam Walsh – middleweight

Ryan Garner v TBA – super-featherweight

Barry McReynolds v Jonatas Rodrigo Gomes de Oliveira – light-welterweight

Davey Joyce v TBA – super-featherweight

Adam Olaniyan v TBA – heavyweight

Gary Cully v Benito Sanchez Garcia – light-welterweight

Thomas Carty v German Skobenko – heavyweight

Bobbi Flood v Bela Istvan Orban – middleweight

Eugene McKeever v TBA – light-middleweight

Running order and times to be confirmed

Iran has launched operations targeting Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in neighbouring Iraq as the regional war ignited by the United States and Israel entered its sixth day, with more than 1,000 people killed across the country.

State television, Press TV, reported early on Thursday that Tehran was striking “anti-Iran separatist forces”, referring to Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups believed to be based in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas near the Iran-Iraq border.

Iranian missiles hit Sulaimaniyah city in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, according to local reports.

“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on Thursday, quoting a military statement. The Iranian military said earlier on Tuesday it used “30 drones” on Kurdish positions.

The attack comes just days after multiple publications reported that US President Donald Trump was in active talks with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups, and that Washington hopes to use them to spur a popular uprising.

Various Iranian Kurdish groups, which share close ties with Iraqi Kurds, have long opposed Tehran from their bases in northern Iraq and along the Iraq-Iran border. These groups reportedly have thousands of fighters between them.

Here’s what we know so far:

Why are Kurdish groups cooperating with the US?

US officials said the aim is to stretch Iranian forces and take out the remains of the military-dominated Iranian government, according to reporting by CNN.

There is also speculation that the groups could be supported to take control of northern Iran to create a ground buffer for Israeli forces, possibly streaming in from Iraq.

US-Israeli bombings have heavily targeted areas along the Iraq-Iran border since the start of the war on Saturday, possibly to degrade Iranian defences and allow Kurdish opposition groups to cross fully into Iran, according to a briefing by US-based think tank, the Soufan Center.

The US has not ruled out sending ground forces, although analysts told Al Jazeera Iran’s rugged territory would make that very difficult.

If the US does support these groups against Tehran, it would mean that Washington is treating them like armed “players on a board,” Winthrop Rodgers, associate fellow at the UK think tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

Which Kurdish groups are there?

Neither the US nor Kurdish groups had confirmed any agreements by Thursday.

However, it is known that Trump has spoken to the leaders of two Kurdish groups in Iraq: Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), according to US publication, Axios. Talabani confirmed the call on Wednesday.

Trump also spoke to Mustafa Hijri, head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), on Tuesday, CNN reported, quoting a Kurdish official.

Meanwhile, Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which have thousands of fighters along the Iraq-Iran border, formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK) alliance one week before the war broke out.

The group issued statements at the start of the conflict, signalling imminent intervention and urging Iranian military members to defect. According to Israel’s I24News, thousands of its fighters were in Iran by Wednesday.

Here are the different groups:

Kurdistan Democratic Party: The ruling party in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The party controls the capital city of Erbil as well as Duhok. It has historical ties with Iranian Kurdish groups.

However, the KRG is not eager to be seen as supporting attacks on Iran, even as Iranian drones have hit US assets in Erbil. On Wednesday, Kurdistan region President Nechirvan Barzani spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and told him his region “will not be part of conflicts” targeting Tehran.

In 2023, the two countries signed a security deal that saw Iraq promise to disarm and relocate Iranian opposition groups on its territory, although it appears many groups are still based there, reflecting the limited influence the government wields over them.

Iraqi Kurds, who have close ties with both the US and Iran, are in a “difficult position”, said Rodgers.

“They are under tremendous pressure from a wide range of forces, including (pro-Iran) Iraqi militias. They will try to stay out of the conflict as much as they can, but that will likely prove impossible,” he said.

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK): The PUK is the official opposition in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and also nationally relevant as Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid is a member. In a statement on Sunday, Rashid urged dialogue and an end to the war. Iraq declared three days of mourning following the killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday.

Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK): Formed on February 22, 2026, the group includes six Iranian Kurdish opposition groups seeking an independent state.

Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) – Based in the Kurdistan region, the group has about 1,200 members and is proscribed as a “terror” group by Iran.

Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) – Also based in Kurdistan, it has an estimated 1,000 members.

Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) – A close ally of the Turkish opposition armed group, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), PJAK is proscribed as a “terror” group by Ankara. PJAK’s armed wing, the Eastern Kurdistan Units (YRK), is believed to have between 1,000 and 3,000 members, many of them women. It is based in the rugged Qandil Mountains near the Iran-Iraq border and in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. It has launched numerous attacks on Iranian forces in the past decade. A recent Iranian strike reportedly killed one fighter.

Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat) – It has an unknown number of fighters.

Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan – Based in Iraq’s KRG, it has an unknown number of fighters.

Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KPIK) – Also headquartered in the Kurdistan region, it has an estimated 1,000 fighters in 2017.

What is the history of US involvement with Kurdish resistance groups in the Middle East?

Kurds are an ethnic minority spread across the Middle East with a shared language and culture. They do not have a state of their own and have historically been marginalised across countries – mainly Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkiye.

For decades, several armed Kurdish groups have sought self-governance in Turkiye, Syria and Iran.

In Iraq, Kurdish nationalist groups gained some success during the 1991 Gulf War by working with the US, which helped establish the self-governing Kurdistan region of Iraq. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also trained and armed its army, known as the Peshmerga, after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. In 2005, the semiautonomous region was officially recognised in Iraq’s constitution.

Since 2017, Washington has also armed and trained the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkiye lists as a “terror” group because of its links with the proscribed PKK. The group, which successfully resisted ISIL (ISIS), now forms the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It controlled Raqqa and other ISIL strongholds.

However, when it began military clashes with Syrian forces under the President Ahmed al-Sharaa-led government last August, Washington turned away from the group and backed Damascus instead. In January this year, the SDF signed an agreement with the Syrian government to integrate into the government forces. In return, the Syrian government recognised Kurdish rights.

In Turkiye, meanwhile, the PKK, whose presence in northern Iraq has long been a source of tension with Ankara, declared a ceasefire in March 2025, after a call from its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to disarm.

How does Kurdish resistance in Iran compare with others?

Iranian Kurds opposed the Iranian government even before the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Rodgers said, and Tehran’s current weakness provides an opportunity for them to advance their political aims in the country.

However, the new coalition of multiple diverse groups is unprecedented, the analyst added, and their internal dynamics will be a key decisive factor in what role Kurdish groups will play in this war.

“Support from the US is helpful, especially in terms of targeting security forces’ infrastructure with air strikes, but they will likely be cautious about relying too much on Washington, especially from an administration as capricious and disorganised as Trump’s,” Rodgers said, noting how Washington abandoned the Kurds in Syria.

Unlike the split Iranian movements, Iraqi Kurds have long united to form a devolved government enshrined in the Iraqi constitution, built an advanced economy, and secured substantive relations with a wide range of foreign countries. That’s something Kurdish groups will also be hoping to establish in a democratic Iran, he said.

“I think it is unlikely that the Trump administration has made any commitments to the Iranian Kurds about supporting their political goals,” Rodgers said, adding that the US’s plan “does not look fully thought through at all”.

Minnesota’s governor and attorney general on Wednesday defended their efforts to combat fraud and told a U.S. House committee that their efforts have been hampered by President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused Gov. Tim Walz and Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison of stalling to fight fraud in government programs, saying they put politics ahead of rooting out abuse instead of pausing payments.

“You have not been good stewards of the taxpayer dollars,” said Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the committee. “And the Democratic position is keep the money flowing. The American taxpayers have had enough.”

Walz said he wanted to work with the federal government to help with fraud investigations, but the immigration surge was making that more difficult.

“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” Walz said. “We’re going to prosecute, as we have, every single person that’s involved in fraud, but we can’t do it alone.”

Walz and Ellison defended their efforts on fraud, while also trying to turn the focus of the hearing to the surge of 3,000 federal agents in Minnesota that began in December. The Trump administration cited fraud as one justification for its enforcement action. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified Tuesday that about 650 investigators remain in Minnesota as part of a broader fraud probe.

“Operation Metro Surge did nothing to address fraud in our state,” Ellison said. “It harmed our economy and it scarred our people and it dealt a devastating blow to fraud enforcement in Minnesota.”

Ellison noted the series of resignations of lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, leaving those who remain “drowning in immigration-related petitions” instead of prosecuting fraud. On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota appeared before a judge for a contempt hearing related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement not returning personal property of detainees.

Ellison said his office has “punched above our weight” in winning 300 Medicaid fraud convictions and recovering more than $80 million for taxpayers.

Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana called on Ellison to resign, accusing him of not leading investigations into criminal fraud activity.

Last week, Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns, as part of what he described as an aggressive crackdown on misuse of public funds. Minnesota sued on Monday to stop the money from being withheld, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families if the money is held back.

Comer on Wednesday accused Walz of not stopping Medicaid payments despite knowledge of fraud because he “didn’t want to rock the boat.”

Comer and other Republicans accused Walz of lying about when he first found out about fraud in a $250-million scheme known as Feeding Our Future and stalling to act in order to protect the Somali American community. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio asked Walz if he know how many of those who had been indicted were Somali Americans.

“Their ethnicity is not my concern,” Walz said.

Somali Americans make up 82 of the 92 defendants charged so far in the Feeding Our Future case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, as part of the effort to focus the hearing on the immigration crackdown, held up images of children detained by federal officers and a picture of the blood-stained car seat of Renee Good who was killed by an officer. Federal officers also killed another Minnesota resident, Alex Pretti, who had been filming enforcement operations.

“This violence does not make us safer,” Garcia said. “It does not address fraud, waste and abuse.”

Bauer writes for the Associated Press.

Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.

Whether it’s stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn’t like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family’s fortune, Trump’s guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What’s in it for me?

Trump is no student of history. He’s famously allergic to books. But he knows enough to know that midterm elections like the one in November have, with few exceptions, been ugly for the party holding the presidency.

With control of the House — and Trump’s virtually unchecked authority — dangling by a gossamer thread, he reckoned correctly that Republicans were all but certain to lose power this fall unless something unusual happened.

So he effectively broke the rules.

Normally, the redrawing of the country’s congressional districts takes place once every 10 years, following the census and accounting for population changes over the previous decade. Instead, Trump prevailed upon the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to throw out the state’s political map and refashion congressional lines to wipe out Democrats and boost GOP chances of winning as many as five additional House seats.

The intention was to create a bit of breathing room, as Democrats need a gain of just three seats to seize control of the House.

In relatively short order, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with his own partisan gerrymander. He rallied voters to pass a tit-for-tat ballot measure, Proposition 50, which revised the state’s political map to wipe out Republicans and boost Democratic prospects of winning as many as five additional seats.

Then came the deluge.

In more than a dozen states, lawmakers looked at ways to tinker with their congressional maps to lift their candidates, stick it to the other party and gain House seats in November.

Some of those efforts continue, including in Virginia where, as in California, voters are being asked to amend the state Constitution to let majority Democrats redraw political lines ahead of the midterm. A special election is set for April 21.

But as the first ballots of 2026 are cast on Tuesday — in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas — the broad contours of the House map have become clearer, along with the result of all those partisan machinations. The likely upshot is a nationwide partisan shift of fewer than a handful of seats.

The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which has a sterling decades-long record of election forecasting, said the most probable outcome is a wash. “At the end of the day,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, “this doesn’t really benefit either party in a real way.”

Well.

That was a lot of wasted time and energy.

Let’s take a quick spin through the map and the math, knowing that, of course, there are no election guarantees.

In Texas, for instance, new House districts were drawn assuming Latinos would back Republican candidates by the same large percentage they supported Trump in 2024. But that’s become much less certain, given the backlash against his draconian immigration enforcement policies; numerous polls show a significant falloff in Latino support for the president, which could hurt GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

But suppose Texas Republicans gain five seats as hoped for and California Democrats pick up the five seats they’ve hand-crafted. The result would be no net change.

Elsewhere, under the best case for each party, a gain of four Democratic House seats in Virginia would be offset by a gain of four Republican House seats in Florida.

That leaves a smattering of partisan gains here and there. A combined pickup of four or so Republican seats in Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri could be mostly offset by Democratic gains of a seat apiece in New York, Maryland and Utah.

(The latter is not a result of legislative high jinks, but rather a judge throwing out the gerrymandered map passed by Utah Republicans, who ignored a voter-approved ballot measure intended to prevent such heavy-handed partisanship. A newly created district, contained entirely within Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, seems certain to go Democrats’ way in November.)

In short, it’s easy to characterize the political exertions of Trump, Abbott, Newsom and others as so much sound and fury producing, at bottom, little to nothing.

But that’s not necessarily so.

The campaign surrounding Proposition 50 delivered a huge political boost to Newsom, shoring up his standing with Democrats, significantly raising his profile across the country and, not least for his 2028 presidential hopes, helping the governor build a significant nationwide fundraising base.

In crimson-colored Indiana, Republicans refused to buckle under tremendous pressure from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other party leaders, rejecting an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map and give the GOP a hold on all nine House seats. That showed even Trump’s Svengali-like hold on his party has its limits.

But the biggest impact is also the most corrosive.

By redrawing political lines to predetermine the outcome of House races, politicians rendered many of their voters irrelevant and obsolete. Millions of Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California and partisans in other states have been effectively disenfranchised, their voices rendered mute. Their ballots spindled and nullified.

In short, the politicians — starting with Trump — extended a big middle finger to a large portion of the American electorate.

Is it any wonder, then, so many voters hold politicians and our political system in contempt?

Arrest in town near the Ethiopian border follows Kenyan intelligence report revealing more than 1,000 citizens were trafficked for war.

Police in Kenya have arrested a man accused of being a member of a human trafficking scheme that lured Kenyans to Russia with false promises of work, only for them to end up fighting on the front lines of Ukrainian battlefields.

In a statement released late on Wednesday, Kenyan officials said Festus Arasa Omwamba was being detained in Moyale, a town in the country’s north bordering Ethiopia.

The 33-year-old “is believed to be a key player in a more extensive human trafficking syndicate that exploits vulnerable individuals by promising them legitimate employment opportunities in European countries”, read a statement from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations on X. “However, upon arrival, these unsuspecting victims find themselves trapped in illegal and perilous jobs, stripping them of their dignity and safety.”

The suspect was in police custody, undergoing preparation for his “impending” court appearance, it added.

Quoting police spokesperson Michael Muchiri, NTV Kenya reported that Omwamba was arrested after arriving from Russia. He was detained for allegedly recruiting Kenyans into the Russian military, Muchiri said.

The arrest comes after Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) last week unveiled a report which said more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited “to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war”, with 89 currently on the front line, 39 hospitalised, and 28 missing in action.

A day after the NIS released its report, dozens of families protested in Nairobi, demanding the government take action against the network of officials and syndicates tricking locals into joining the war. Many are still awaiting news about their loved ones’ whereabouts and when they might return.

Meanwhile, other families are grieving the deaths of their sons and brothers.

The Russian embassy in Nairobi denies the allegations, calling them in a statement last week “misleading propaganda”. It added that it never issued visas to Kenyan citizens who sought to travel to Russia with the aim to fight in Ukraine. However, the embassy added that Moscow does not preclude citizens of foreign countries from voluntarily enlisting in its armed forces.

Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi said he would travel to Russia in March to engage directly with the authorities and secure a safe return of Kenyans believed to be stranded there.

Fraudulent ‘schemes’ to lure foreign fighters

Reports of African men being fraudulently recruited and wilfully duped for work abroad to end up on the front lines in Ukraine have also surfaced from South Africa, Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa.

Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of using deception to recruit more than 1,700 Africans to join its war effort as the conflict drags into a fifth year.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made the allegation during a news conference in Kyiv with his visiting Ghanaian counterpart, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. He accused Moscow of using fraudulent “schemes” to lure the foreign fighters.

A day earlier, South Africa’s presidency announced it had secured the return home of 11 of its nationals who were “lured” into fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The presidency had already repatriated four others.

The Trump administration has directed U.S. diplomats to actively oppose foreign laws that restrict how American tech companies handle citizens’ data abroad. An internal State Department cable, dated February 18 and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, described such measures as threats to artificial intelligence services, global data flows, and civil liberties.

Experts say the move signals a return to a more confrontational approach after previous efforts focused on building goodwill with European customers. The administration warned that data sovereignty rules could increase costs, introduce cybersecurity risks, and expand government control in ways that enable censorship.

Data Sovereignty in Focus

Data sovereignty or localization initiatives have accelerated, especially in Europe, amid ongoing tensions over U.S. trade policies and concerns about privacy and surveillance. European regulators, wary of American tech giants, have tightened rules on how data is stored and shared. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) remains the most prominent example, restricting cross-border data transfers and imposing stiff fines on companies that fail to comply.

The State Department cable cited GDPR as “unnecessarily burdensome” and highlighted China’s restrictive data policies as an example of how technology rules can expand geopolitical influence. Beijing, it noted, bundles infrastructure projects with policies that provide access to international data for surveillance and strategic leverage.

Diplomatic Action Plan

The cable, labeled as an “action request,” instructed diplomats to track proposals that could limit cross-border data flows and to counter regulations deemed excessive. Talking points included promotion of the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Forum, a multinational initiative launched in 2022 by the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and Japan to support free flow of data while ensuring privacy protections.

This directive follows a pattern of U.S. opposition to European digital regulation. Last year, diplomats were ordered to challenge the EU’s Digital Services Act, aimed at making the internet safer by forcing social media firms to remove illegal content. The U.S. is also reportedly planning an online portal to help users bypass content moderation, including restrictions on material flagged as hate speech or terrorist propaganda.

Analysis: A More Assertive U.S. Digital Strategy

The cable reflects a strategic shift toward actively protecting the interests of U.S. tech companies globally. While previous administrations attempted to engage Europe diplomatically, the current approach pressures foreign governments to loosen privacy and data storage regulations that could hinder U.S. business.

By framing data sovereignty laws as a threat to AI development, cybersecurity, and civil liberties, the administration is positioning the free flow of data as a cornerstone of U.S. economic and technological influence. At the same time, rising competition from China in digital infrastructure and AI adds urgency, highlighting the geopolitical stakes of controlling international data flows.

The broader implication is a growing clash between national data policies and global digital commerce. As countries enact stricter rules to protect citizens’ data, U.S. tech firms and policymakers are increasingly asserting that global interoperability and AI innovation must take priority, signaling potential tensions in transatlantic and international digital governance for years to come.

With information from Reuters.

Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris have long circled one another.

The two moved in the same political slipstream, wooed the same set of Democratic donors and, for a time, even shared the same group of campaign advisors.

Harris rose from San Francisco district attorney to elected positions in Sacramento and Washington before twice running unsuccessfully for president.

Newsom climbed from San Francisco mayor to lieutenant governor to California’s governorship, where he quietly stewed as Harris leapfrogged past him into the vice presidency. While she served in the White House, Newsom tried any number of ways to insinuate himself into the national spotlight.

Now both have at least one eye on the Oval Office, setting up a potential clash of egos and ambition that’s been decades in the making.

Newsom, whose term as governor expires in January, has been auditioning for president from practically the moment the polls closed in 2024 and horrified Democrats realized Harris had lost to Donald Trump.

Harris, who’s mostly focused on writing and promoting her campaign autobiography — while giving a political speech here and there — hasn’t publicly declared she’ll seek the White House a third time. But, notably, she has yet to rule out the possibility.

In a CNN interview aired Sunday, Newsom was asked about the prospect of facing his longtime frenemy in a fight for the Democratic nomination. (California’s gallivanting governor is embarked on his own national book tour, promoting both the “memoir of discovery” that was published Tuesday and his all-but-declared presidential bid.)

“Well, I’m San Francisco now, she’s L.A.,” Newsom joked, referring to Harris’ post-Washington residency in Brentwood. “So there’s a little distance between the two of us.”

He then turned zen-like, saying fate would determine if the two face off in the 2028 primary contest. “You can only control what you can control,” Newsom told CNN host Dana Bash.

A decade ago, Newsom and Harris swerved to keep their careers from colliding.

In 2015, Barbara Boxer said she would step down once she finished her fourth term in the U.S. Senate. The opening presented a rare opportunity for political advancement after years in which a clutch of aging incumbents held California’s top elected offices. Between Lt. Gov. Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Harris, there was no lack of pent-up ambition.

After a weekend of intensive deliberations, Newsom passed on the Senate race and Harris jumped in, establishing herself as the front-runner for Boxer’s seat, which she won in 2016. Newsom waited and was elected governor in 2018, succeeding Jerry Brown.

Once in their preferred roles, the two got along reasonably well. Each campaigned on the other’s behalf. But, privately, there has never been a great deal of mutual regard or affection.

Come 2028, there will doubtless be many Democrats seeking to replace President Trump. The party’s last wide-open contest, in 2020, drew more than two dozen major contestants. So it’s not as though Harris and Newsom would face each other in a one-on-one fight.

But dueling on the national stage, with the country’s top political prize at stake, is something that Hollywood might have scripted for Newsom and Harris as the way to settle, once and for all, their long-standing rivalry.

The two Californians would start out closely matched in good looks and charisma.

Those who know them well, having observed Newsom and Harris up close, cite other strengths and weaknesses.

Harris has thicker skin, they suggested, and is more disciplined. Her forte is set-piece events, like debates and big speeches.

Newsom is more of a policy wonk, a greater risk-taker and is more willing to venture into challenging and even hostile settings.

Newson is more fluent in the ecosphere of social media, podcasts and the like. Harris has the advantage of performing longer on the national stage and bears nothing like the personal scandals that have plagued Newsom.

But Harris’ problem, it was widely agreed, is that she has run twice before and, worse, lost the last time to Trump.

“To a lot of voters, she’s yesterday’s news,” said one campaign strategist.

“She had her shot,” said another, channeling the perceived way Democratic primary voters would react to another Harris run. “You didn’t make it, so why should we give you another shot?”

(Those half-dozen kibbitzers who agreed to candidly assess the prospects of Newsom and Harris asked not to be identified, so they could preserve their relationships with the two.)

Most of the handicappers gave the edge to Newsom in a prospective match-up; one political operative familiar with both would have placed their wager on Harris had she not run before.

“I think her demographic appeal to Black women and coming up the ranks as a Black woman working in criminal justice is a very strong card,” said the campaign strategist. “The white guy from California, the pretty boy, is not as much of a primary draw.”

That said, this strategist, too, suggested that “being tagged as someone who not only lost but lost in this situation that has set the world on fire … is too big a cross to bear.”

The consensus among these cognoscenti is that Harris will not run again and that Newsom — notwithstanding any demurrals — will.

Of course, the only two who know for sure are those principals, and it’s quite possible neither Harris nor Newsom have entirely made up their minds.

Those who enjoy their politics cut with a dash of soap opera will just have to wait.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao made boxing history in 2015. More than a decade later, the two legends are hoping to do it again.

The aging greats will have their rematch Sept. 19 live on Netflix in the first boxing match held at the Las Vegas Sphere.

Mayweather defeated Pacquiao by unanimous decision on May 2, 2015 in the “Fight of the Century” at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. That fight generated 4.6 million pay-per-view buys and a live gate of $72 million, both of which are records.

It was a long-awaited matchup between two of the biggest names in the boxing world that ultimately earned Mayweather the World Boxing Council, World Boxing Assn. and World Boxing Organization welterweight titles.

“I already fought and beat Manny once,” Mayweather said in a statement released by Netflix. “This time will be the same result.”

The backdrop to this bout is a bit different. Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) will be 49 on Tuesday. He has retired and unretired multiple times but has not fought in a bout that counts since his 10-round technical knockout of UFC star Conor McGregor in 2017.

Although he still has an exhibition against Mike Tyson coming up this spring, Mayweather announced last week he is resuming his professional career.

Pacquiao, 47, is 62-9-2 (39 KOs) and fought for a belt last July, losing by majority draw to then-WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios in an attempt to break his own record for oldest welterweight champion. Pacquiao was 40 when he defeated Keith Thurman for the title in 2019.

Pacquiao recently announced a a 10-round welterweight exhibition against former junior welterweight world champion Ruslan Provodnikov on April 18 at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas.

“Floyd and I gave the world what remains the biggest fight in boxing history,” Pacquiao said in a statement by Netflix. “The fans have waited long enough — they deserve this rematch, and it will be even bigger now that it will be streamed live globally on Netflix. I want Floyd to live with the one loss on his professional record and always remember who gave it to him.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi declared a triumph against California on Friday, touting an appellate court ruling that she said blocked a state ban on immigration agents and other law enforcement officers wearing masks.

“The 9th Circuit has now issued a FULL stay blocking California’s ban on masks for federal law enforcement agents,” Bondi posted on the social media site X, calling the Feb. 19 decision a “key victory.”

Bondi, however, appeared confused about which case the court was ruling on this week.

A federal judge in Los Angeles blocked California’s first-in-the-nation mask ban 10 days earlier, on Feb. 9.

At the time, U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said she was “constrained” to block the law because it included only local and federal officers, while exempting state law enforcement.

The state did not appeal that decision.

Instead, on Wednesday, the law’s author Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced a new mask bill without the problematic carve-out for state officers.

With the initial legal challenge already decided and the new bill still pending in the legislature, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has no reason to revisit the mask ban.

The ruling that Bondi appeared to reference involves a separate California law requiring law enforcement officers to display identification while on duty.

Snyder had previously ruled the “No Vigilantes Act” could take effect because it did not exempt state police, a decision the Justice Department appealed to the 9th Circuit.

The appellate court is set to review the matter early next month. Until then, the court issued an injunction that pauses the state law from taking effect.

Issuing a temporary administrative injunction is a common procedural move, allowing judges to freeze things in the status quo until the court has a chance to weigh the law and come to a decision.

Thursday’s order set a hearing in the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena for March 3, indicating the case is far from over.

Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, also celebrated with a post on X, calling Thursday’s order “another key win for the Justice Department.” He too suggested the injunction somehow involved the mask case.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The law requiring officers to show ID is less controversial than the mask ban. But it may still face an uphill battle in the appellate court. A three-judge panel is set to hear the case, comprising two judges nominated to the bench by President Trump and one by President Obama. One of the Trump appointees, Judge Mark Bennett of Hawaii, has previously signaled skepticism over the administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

At issue in the ID case is whether California’s law interferes with or controls the operations of the federal government, actions prohibited by the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. Snyder ruled that the identification law was more akin to speed limits on the highway, which apply equally to everyone, a decision the appellate court could reject.

A ruling is not expected before mid-March, and would not directly affect the push by state lawmakers to pass a revised mask ban.

Recent polls show more than 60% of Americans want U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agents unmasked. More than a dozen states are pursuing laws similar to California’s.

In Washington, congressional Democrats have made a mask ban for ICE a key issue in the ongoing partial government shutdown, vowing not to fund the Department of Homeland Security until one is enacted.

Legal experts have said the issue likely will not be resolved until it reaches the Supreme Court.

Private adversary air company Top Aces has now begun flying its F-16 Vipers, the only ones currently in the hands of a private operator, with the ubiquitous military data link capability known as Link-16. The addition of Link-16 completes a vision started years ago for an adversary aircraft that truly represents the current 4th-generation-plus fighter threat. Equipped with Top Aces’ open architecture Advanced Aggressor Mission System (AAMS), these aircraft can now replicate the high-end threats that U.S. military pilots may soon face in the Pacific and elsewhere.

Top Aces began receiving its F-16s, which are early block ex-Israeli Air Force F-16A/B Netz variants, in 2021 and subsequently began upgrading them with a host of new capabilities. The AAMS is the core of that upgrade package and includes an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, an infrared-search-and-track (IRST) pod, the Thales Visionix Gen III Scorpion helmet-mounted display system, and, with a recent provisional approval to operate Link-16, now has a fully integrated datalink. AAMS permits the rapid integration of new sensors and functions that a customer wishes to use to improve the threat representations to their fleet pilots, such as IRST and advanced jamming pods like the ALQ-188.

The War Zone was on hand as the newly integrated aircraft (N854TA) performed adversary missions with other Top Aces F-16s during a large force exercise known as Sentry South 26.1. The private aggressor support firm actually led the entire ‘red air’ operation for the exercise, which is a unique arrangement that puts immense trust on an entity that exists outside of the Department of War.

Sentry South 26.1 and the Air Dominance Center (ADC), which acts as a hub for the exercise, were created to help Air National Guard (ANG) pilots have the best fighter training available. Located in Savannah, Georgia, at the southern end of the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, the ADC’s footprint is small, but its training impact is huge for both ANG pilots and their active-duty counterparts. The exercise was developed by fighter pilots to provide 5th-generation fighter integration through a focused, tailored, cost-effective approach. The airspace they have, just 30 miles off the coast, runs 200 miles north to south and 120 miles east to west. That box is among the best military flying areas anywhere in the country, and it’s ideally suited for fighter training. 

This iteration of Sentry South involved over 75 aircraft from the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. It was a mix of both 4th and 5th-generation fighters. Over 700 sorties were flown over the two-week exercise, focusing on both offensive and defensive counter-air missions. For many of the pilots, it was their capstone exercise for their initial training on the F-22. It is a multi-day, high-intensity scenario designed to test trainees or validate operational concepts in simulated, contested environments. Its goal is to validate the combat readiness of student pilots while improving their tactical decision making.

Matthew ‘Bang’ Belle is the adversary air program manager for Top Aces. He is in charge of all Top Aces operations in the United States, as well as for any foreign partners trained here on U.S. soil. He has been with the company for about 18 months after retiring from the USAF, where he flew the F-16 as an aggressor, accumulating over 2,000 hours during his career. 

Belle told The War Zone, “We got some great reviews from all of the forces that participated in Sentry South 26.1. They really enjoyed having us take over the red air lead and run the mission commander spot from the aggressor side. It was the culmination of everything we have been doing to the aircraft over the last few years. The exercise is all about challenging blue air’s thinking in the air-to-air domain. It is meant to complicate things that they do not see at their home station.”

“The vision when we first started was that we were going to be the legacy bearers from the aggressors. Russ ‘Puck’ Quinn (former Top Aces president) saw a niche that needed to be filled. He knew there were a bunch of 3rd-generation fighters throughout the market and believed there was a place for 4th-generation fighters. So he made that happen, and so we got this 1978 jet (early block F-16A/B), and we saw that we could provide the Air Force and allies a good representation of what our adversaries are doing right now. It’s not just a jet with wings and a cool motor that makes it go really fast and really high. These current 4th-generation fighters are fully integrated, so they have near-5th-generation avionics but in a 4th-generation body. Puck saw that is where we needed to go.”

The AAMS and the AESA radar, along with the Scorpion helmet and Link-16, have really upped the game in terms of quality adversary support in a crowded adversary air services provider (ADAIR) market. The Scorpion helmet allows the pilot to avoid turning the aircraft’s nose towards the enemy aircraft to target it when employing certain weapons and sensors. This is especially true when employing simulated heat-seeking missile shots. The helmet also displays basic flight and navigational data and can also project objects from the aircraft’s new Link 16 datalink system out into the visual space all around the aircraft. In other words, if a friendly is 30 miles away at 10 o’clock high, it can shoot that in augmented reality to the pilot.

Top Aces is also using the Air Force’s AN/ALQ-188 jamming pod. The AN/ALQ-188 is a common sight at U.S. air combat exercises and can simulate certain types of hostile electronic countermeasures systems. Top Aces F-16s have controls inside their aircraft that allow the pilots to scale the electronic attack to whatever the blue air wants, whether it be just a nuisance or a full scale ‘melt your face off’ EW attack. Top Aces is also the only ADAIR company that is authorized to refuel from USAF KC-135 tankers, which helps them stay in the fight longer and provides more presentations for blue forces.

Belle states, “The key that has unlocked everything in the past month was that our engineering section here at Top Aces and our chief test pilot were able to get a provisional approval (from the Federal Aviation Administration) to operate Link-16 on our AAMS aircraft. That was the missing key we now have that ties it all together, so we can present this integrated solution that we think closely resembles a 4th-gen-plus adversary aircraft. It’s a real game-changer. The fact that I can be well outside of normal influence ranges on blue air, have them on my scope with Link-16, where they don’t know that I have that situational awareness (SA), and then transition that SA to the IRST pod, and they still don’t know they are being targeted. So they are making decisions like they are not targeted and not vulnerable. As they get closer, I have all of my weapon solutions cued up and ready to shoot with the AESA radar. Link-16 enables all of that to happen.”

 “It also allows us to fly red air tactics with the F-35. It is just like we are one of them. We are replicating 5th and 4th gen packages. It gives blue air not just reps in the gym for blocking and tackling, it affects training outcomes completely and that is what we are really excited about. Link-16 ties it all together.”

What the pilot sees on his center pedestal display showing the Link 16 data is also totally customizable, which is critical for achieving highly-tailored training goals. For instance, the system can easily filter out information that would give the red air team too big of advantage or that would not accurately reflect the capabilities of an enemy. This scalability based on the training objectives makes it far more than just a datalink system for the red air force, it can dramatically boost the fidelity of the threat being presented.

Chris ‘Bluce’ Wee is Top Aces chief test pilot and flew several missions with the upgraded jet during Sentry South 26.1. Wee was a former test pilot in the USAF and was in charge of a host of modernization projects for both the F-16 and all variants of the F-15, including the F-15EX.

Wee told The War Zone, “I’ve been doing modernization and development, making fighters better for the better part of the past 12 or 13 years, and so it was really cool to jump in at Top Aces and look at what we’ve got and look at where we wanted to be and find things that we can improve on. A couple of things that I jumped into right away was really the optimization of our systems together. The idea that we could take old Israeli airplanes and make them high-end aggressors was really fascinating to me.” 

“I first learned of Top Aces sometime in 2022. I was out at Black Flag at the 442 (422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron), the OT test organization out there at Nellis, when I came around the corner and saw some old pilots I knew from my aggressor days. I had no idea what they were doing, but when I got talking to them, I was amazed. There is nothing as maneuverable as this airplane (the F-16A, the agility of which you can read about here), and then you stack on top of that modern equipment, it’s amazing. There are limitations; no company in the world is, from a regulatory standpoint or even a monetary standpoint, able to go out there and buy an APG-83 or APG-82 (AESA radar) or any frontline fighter radar or some of, you know, ‘exquisite’ technologies that are protected by classified information. The fact that we’re doing that to the best of our ability was really intriguing to me.”

Wee was able to jump into the chief test pilot position and immediately review the systems and begin providing recommendations to improve integration. 

Wee added, “We were able to tweak some things here in the software and really go out and develop that to the point where you know it’s really optimized. You get in this airplane and you know the between the helmet, the Link-16, the AESA radar, the IRST, you just have all these tools available to you to do this really important mission that is training the next generation of fighter pilots that are going to be out there, you know, protecting the nation for the rest of my life, at least, which is [a] pretty neat thing to be a part of.”

During Sentry South 26.1, Wee flew four missions in the updated AAMS jet, accumulating over 10 hours, and conducted several aerial refuelings from KC-135s.

Speaking about the new Link-16 capability, Wee explained:

“Datalink, from a very basic standpoint, is when you can look at the picture in your jet and immediately see what everyone’s doing and where they are; you don’t have to be looking outside necessarily to do that. In fact, I would really prefer my wingman to be like miles away from me because we’re probably not gonna hit each other if he’s miles away from me, and I don’t have to worry about him as much. I can just look at my screen, and I know where my wingman is, and what he’s doing. I can see that he’s targeting something because I can see data being passed between our airplanes, which is really helpful to know, not only within our own airplanes but also with the joint force airplanes. We were flying with Marines, F-35s, and guard F-16s. Being able to see where people are and what they’re doing and if they’re doing what I’ve told them to do, just by looking at the link, is a huge capability.”

Top Aces flew twice a day for four days during the exercise. During the first and last day, they focused on defensive-counter-air missions. Blue air students were tasked with defending the target area during a 90-minute vulnerability period (vul), and so they wanted to maximize the number of red forces across the ‘lane,’ so they could challenge their ability to defend a geographical area. 

Wee explained, “As red air, we were trying to get in and protect the strikers. We were using the T-38 as strikers and were trying to help them get into the target area. If we could get to the target band, that would drive the debrief focus points on why the blue forces did not properly protect the lane for the period of time required. Were they allocating their radars to the right spot, and were they looking with the right modes on their radars? We were operating as MiG-1 (lead aggressor) for all sorties, which was really cool for us because we were able to lead the red package in all eight vuls we supported. We were able to manage our forces to align with the blue forces’ learning objectives. We worked very closely with the mission commanders as to what kind of threat they wanted and when they wanted to see it.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, the roles reversed to offensive counter air (OCA), and blue forces were trying to fight their way into the target band and hit targets on land and then fight their way out. Wee led a red force presentation that fought the blue air on the way in, then regenerated from pretend airfields to fight the blue forces on the way out of the target area. 

Lt. Col. Joseph ‘Stone’ Walz, who flew F-16s and F-35s and is now part of the Georgia Air National Guard, is the exercise director for Sentry South. Speaking about the value of having aircraft like Top Aces F-16s in his exercise, he told us, “I had the opportunity to bring in Top Aces to Sentry South 26.1. They normally support the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin. I like to build something that represents what pilots would expect if they were to go out and fly an operational plan. It’s about honing and shaping our pilots into the most combat-ready force we could be if we had to go to war. How Top Aces factors into that is if we get real aircraft and actual fighter jets that can prosecute errors and punish errors in the training environment, and now when my pilots have those errors, they get shot and can now go into the debrief and learn those lessons in a training environment so they don’t make the same mistakes in war. We can do that with other aircraft, but every aircraft I bring here, if I have to put them as red air, that is one less person who can fly blue air. Red air is a tax we all have to pay, but having these guys gets us more training, and you never know the lesson that someone will learn that will save their life someday.”

Being asked to lead red air forces as ‘MiG-1’ during Sentry South 26.1, Top Aces is proving that experience matters, which is their motto. 

Belle explained, “We are mostly all former aggressor pilots who have done the really big exercises at Nellis and in Alaska. We have handled 100 aircraft LFEs (large force exercises) and know how to build scenarios that really stress blue air’s weak points. We know where their change-outs are going to be, so we are a thinking adversary that brings in all the other red air like the F-35s and F-22s and puts it all together and says what would the Chinese do? We replicate that. We put the 4th and 5th-gen packages together, led by an experienced aggressor who knows how to exploit weaknesses. I can tell you from being on the blue side that when your bulletproof game plan is completely exploited and torn apart, you leave humbled, knowing you have to up your game. We are not there just to win, we are there to teach. We are there to have you leave the debrief with an outcome that says, I have to go back to the drawing board because what I thought works against my normal red air at Langley or Eglin didn’t work today. Why not?”

Top Aces has recently done much more software development to optimize what’s presented to the pilot and how the pilot interacts with the radar, the link, and the IRST pod, along with the helmet. It is all about placing information in the right place to make the pilot safer and more effective. Looking at human factors optimization, Top Aces is looking to make an even more threatening aggressor.

The IRST system that Top Aces flew during Sentry South 26.1 consists of a Northrop Grumman OpenPod, a modular, open-architecture design, equipped with Leonardo’s SkyWard, a long-wave IRST sensor. It is a scannable IRST pod, which means it has the ability to identify multiple contacts inside of a very large search area. 

Wee explained, “IRST is difficult for everyone. It is very susceptible to the conditions of the day whether it be humidity or clouds. We have some longer-range goals to improve our IRST system and achieve more accurate tracks through exquisite means. Right now, we only have one pod but we are actively seeking more. You can imagine having azimuth and elevation from one pod is pretty good, but having azimuth and elevation from more than one pod makes the solutions get better, especially if you leverage Link-16 and are able to pass some of that data between airplanes (triangulating range). These are all things we want to do to better replicate the threat.”

Another major training capability that Top Aces Link-16-enabled aircraft are now providing is called Constructive Wingman. This gives the upgraded aircraft the ability to lay out synthetic tracks of non-existent aircraft. 

Belle explained, “When the blue air looks at us, no longer do they see just one contact. They may now see two or three contacts and that is just complicating the training and driving better outcomes for their learning. The pilot pushes a few buttons to place an aircraft on my right at two miles and one on my left at two miles. I have a series of 10 commands that I can give it. I can tell it to go 50 miles from blue air and then reform behind me at 20 miles. Or better yet, I am going to turn around as the live fighter and these two contacts will continue going so blue air now thinks he has a bigger problem. But really, he/she is concentrating on synthetic tracks.”

This capability will help new F-35 student pilots as they will now see a more complicated tactical picture during their training. Currently, Top Aces provides aggressor training through the Air Force’s Combat Air Force Contracted Air Support (CAFCAS) program to F-35 pilots going through Formal Training Units (FTUs) at both Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and at Luke AFB in Arizona. The basic course lasts eight months and provides pilots with the training to accomplish a variety of missions.

The last few months have been extremely busy for Top Aces. Last summer, they went to Nellis AFB to participate in a large-force exercise at the end of weapons school, called Weapons School Integration (WSINT). WSINT is a series of complex, large-force employment missions that serve as the capstone portion of Weapons School classes. With their ability to air refuel, they participated in three- to four- hour missions. They also participated in Sentry North at Volk Field before flying to Mountain Home AFB to support training for the Dutch F-35As and the resident F-15E Strike Eagles.

We will be sure to keep you updated as Top Aces continues to add new capabilities to its unique AAMS F-16s.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

GORDON Ramsay is seen fighting back tears during his daughter Holly Ramsay’s engagement party in scenes from his new Netflix show.

The emotional moment came just hours before a bitter family fallout broke out between Holly’s now-husband Adam Peaty’s parents and the Ramsay clan.

In the six-part series, Being Gordon Ramsay, swimming champ Adam and his fiancée Holly are seen throwing a lavish bash with Adam’s mum Caroline in attendance.

Holly and Adam’s engagement party is caught on film – with both the Ramsay and Peaty families in attendance.

During the evening, Holly thanks her fiancé Adam for his constant love and support.

And while she gives the speech, Gordon is seen holding back tears while watching on with his wife Tana.

MOVING ON

Brooklyn Beckham unfollows another Ramsay family member after being sent warning

PEATY’S PREDICTION

Adam Peaty ‘predicts’ family feud without realising in Gordon Ramsay doc

Elsewhere during the evening, Gordon was filmed saying: “The most important family is the one you create and she [Holly] comes from an incredible family so its now her time to create her own family. It is quite a moment.”

The party marked one of the last times that the Ramsay family were with the Peaty clan before their public feud imploded.

Despite Gordon having a close relationship with his son-in-law, Adam’s parents have publicly blasted the family after they weren’t invited to Holly’s hen do and were later uninvited to the wedding.

Holly’s mum Tana and close family friend Victoria Beckham were invited on the hen do, but Caroline was left off the guest list.

The family have since been in a war of words during their very bitter feud.

Gordon addressed the fallout for the first time earlier this month ahead of his Netflix show launching, saying: “It’s just upsetting.

“It’s all self-inflicted from their side, because we’ve done nothing – none of what you’ve read: no rudeness, no ignorance – we welcomed them.”

He added to the MailOnline: “We sent a chauffeur-driven car for them to come to the engagement party and treated them like royalty.

“So to get that barrage of press was very hurtful. Tana took it very seriously.”

All episodes of Being Gordon Ramsay are available now on Netflix.

Rousey will return to MMA for the first time in nearly a decade when she challenges ⁠Carano on ⁠May 16 in California.

Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano will end their lengthy retirements from mixed martial arts (MMA) to fight each other on May 16 at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.

The two pioneering fighters announced their returns on Tuesday for a bout that will be staged by Most Valuable Promotions, the combat sports promotion established by influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul and his business partner, Nakisa Bidarian. The show will be broadcast on Netflix.

The 39-year-old Rousey hasn’t fought since 2016, while the 43-year-old Carano’s eight-bout MMA career ended in 2009. They’ll fight at 145lb (66kg) for five five-minute rounds.

Despite their lengthy absences, Rousey and Carano remain two of the most iconic fighters in MMA history for their trailblazing careers. Carano led their once-outlawed sport into the mainstream of broadcast television, while Rousey secured the enthusiastic acceptance of women’s MMA by Dana White and the UFC.

Rousey (12-2) rose to become arguably the biggest athlete in all of MMA after winning an Olympic medal in judo in 2008. Her armbar finishes and cage charisma single-handedly prompted White to begin the promotion of women’s MMA, with Rousey at the centre of his plans.

Rousey won the UFC’s first-ever women’s bout in 2013 to claim the bantamweight title belt, and she still holds the promotion’s record with six title defences.

After ending 11 of her first 12 fights in the first round, her career abruptly stalled when she lost back-to-back bouts to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes, prompting her to move on to acting, professional wrestling and motherhood.

“Been waiting so long to announce this: Me and Gina Carano are gonna throw down in the biggest super fight in women’s combat sport history!” Rousey said. “This is for all MMA fans past, present and future.”

Carano (7-1) fought in the first Nevada-sanctioned MMA bout between women in 2006, and she won a series of fights that made her a network television draw in the sport’s early days. She was stopped by Cris “Cyborg” Justino in her most recent fight in August 2009, and she moved on to an acting career despite repeated rumours of a return to the cage.

“Ronda came to me and said there is only one person she would make a comeback for, and it has been her dream to make this fight happen between us,” Carano said.

“She thanked me for opening up doors for her in her career and was respectful in asking for this fight to happen. This is an honour. I believe I will walk out of this fight with the win, and I anticipate it will not come easy, which I welcome. This is as much for Ronda and me as it is for the fans and mixed martial arts community.”

Carano, who turns 44 in April, landed several prominent film roles and became a cast member of Disney’s “The Mandalorian” before her contract failed to be renewed in 2021, after she expressed controversial right-wing views in a series of social media posts.

Carano settled a lawsuit last year against Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company over her claim that she was fired for the posts.

Published on
17/02/2026 – 8:00 GMT+1

Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union is still importing Russian steel – and not everyone is happy about it.

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Next week, MEPs and EU member states will begin negotiations on whether to ban Russian steel outright. What began as a sanctions debate has morphed into a high-stakes political fight.

Swedish lawmaker Karin Karlsbro is preparing to take on the EU council, which represents the member states, with Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic and Denmark all arguing that they still need imports of unfinished steel for major construction projects.

“It is a big provocation that we haven’t done everything possible to limit Putin’s war chest,” Karlsbro told Euronews. “The Russian steel industry is a backbone of Russian war, it is the Russian war machinery.”

Finished Russian steel was banned in 2022, but semi-finished steel, a key input for further processing, was spared after a number of countries secured an exemption until 2028 to cushion the blow to their industries.

“Unfinished steel can’t be produced anywhere in the EU,” a European diplomat from one of those countries told Euronews, “while it is required for big infrastructures.”

Three million tonnes

Karlsbro says she was astonished to learn that EU imports of Russian steel amount to nearly 3 million tonnes a year, roughly equivalent to Sweden’s entire annual output and worth around €1.7 billion.

For her, the type of steel is beside the point.

“There is absolutely no argument that this is special steel or highly qualified steel with any essential quality. There is simply no additional reason to buy this steel,” she said.

To bypass the unanimity required for the adoption of EU sanctions by the member states, Karlsbro inserted a ban on Russian steel into a separate European Commission proposal aimed at shielding the bloc from global steel overcapacity, as US tariffs divert excess supply toward Europe.

The European Parliament’s trade committee approved the move on 27 January.

The procedural shift is crucial. Unlike sanctions, the trade file requires onlythe support ofa qualified majority of EU countries, potentially sidelining governments that might otherwise veto a full ban.

“The Parliament is playing politics on this,” an industry source familiar with the file told Euronews.

Another diplomat from a country dependent on Russian semi-finished steel said the ban was important for his government, which is why the 2028 deadline has been set – highlighting the dilemma the EU faces as it balances industrial needs with the need to confront the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The talks are beginning as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion approaches, and the clock is ticking. By June, the EU must adopt the Commission’s plan to shield its market from a glut of global steel.

One diplomat insisted the two files – banning Russian steel and protecting the EU market from overcapacity – pursue “totally different goals”.

Still, the same diplomat acknowledged the ban could pass, as there are not enough member states pushing to maintain a phase-out only by 2028.

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — World-class athletes, thrilling events, stirring medal ceremonies, I will remember all of those from the Winter Olympics. But what I experienced Sunday on my 45-minute bus ride from my hotel to Cortina will stay with me longer.

There was a young woman sitting across the aisle. She looked to be in her mid-20s, about the age of my daughter, and was wearing a knit cap with a Switzerland logo. Her dark hair was in long, thin braids and framed her friendly face.

“How’s it going?” I asked, setting down my backpack.

“Nervous,” she said with a faint smile.

That started the conversation, one that would have me repeatedly wiping my eyes with my sleeve.

Her name was Michelle Gloor. She’s 25 and from a small town outside of Zurich. Her boyfriend, Cedric Follador, is pilot of the Swiss bobsled team and has races throughout the week. She was heading to watch him practice.

Michelle knows all about the sport. In fact, she had been the brake woman on the Swiss national team and had hoped to be competing in these Olympics herself. She grew up as a track-and-field athlete, a sprinter, and only took up bobsled in 2022.

Women’s bobsled — or bobsleigh, as Europeans call it — is a two-person operation with a pilot in front and brake woman in back.

“The first responsibility is pushing the sled as fast as I can, together with my pilot,” she said in a German accent and near-flawless English. “I have to sit still and count the curves until we reach the finish line, when I have to pull the brakes. I’m responsible that the sled won’t crash into something.”

Her best friend had made the transition from track to bobsled, was looking for a brake woman, and convinced Michelle to give it a try.

“My first bobsleigh ride was in St. Moritz and I was so nervous,” said Gloor, a third-year law student at the University of Zurich. “I think I was crying in the back of the sled because I’d never felt anything like that, all the G-forces and you don’t have any cushion in the sled. It all hurts.

“But after the second run, I felt the adrenaline and it was great. It caught me from then. It took me two runs.”

She was 22 and the future was bright. They entered the Swiss championships and won. Michelle got serious about her new sport, training every day, eating right, building muscle.

Immersed in that world, she met Cedric but for the first 1½ years they were just casual friends. Their conversations were all bobsled-related.

“Then in spring 2024 he texted me and asked, ‘How are you?’” she said. “More personal stuff.”

They had been dating for about six months when a discovery would dramatically change their lives.

In November 2024, during a routine check-up, a gynecologist found evidence of cancer in Michelle’s ovaries. If there were signs she was ill, Michelle hadn’t noticed them. She had been tired the prior summer, yes, but she attributed that to her training.

“It was pretty advanced,” she said of the cancer. “I went to the women’s doctor every year and they couldn’t explain why they couldn’t see it earlier. I don’t know. I’m not questioning that anymore. It’s just … yeah.”

There was no time to wait. By December, she was in surgery. Doctors opened her abdomen from her breast bone down, looking for more growths. They deemed the operation a success, and six months of chemotherapy began in February.

“I lost my hair,” she said. “I had long, black hair. Losing that wasn’t bad. But I lost the hair on my face — my eyebrows, my eyelashes — that was hard. But I always knew it just had to be.”

Her doctor told her her cancer was Stage 3.

“That means it’s on the other organs too,” she said. “But the difference between Stage 3 and Stage 4 is it’s not in my lungs. It’s in my tummy area but not more upwards.”

Cedric was by her side.

“I asked him after the diagnosis if he wants to join me in this journey or not,” she said. “I can understand if he won’t because we were together not even half a year, and I can understand if he said, ‘Hey, it’s too much for me. I can’t do that.’

“Then he took time for himself, and he came back and said he wants to stay with me. He wants to support me in every imaginable way.

“He drove me to therapy when he was in town because he had a bobsleigh season going on from November until March, in my toughest time. Every time he was home, he was there for me. When he wasn’t there, we were phoning every day. He was there all the time, even when he wasn’t there physically.”

Her parents and younger brother were there for her too, of course, but she wanted to give them some time to themselves. Cedric was her rock.

There are elements in his job as a driver that both help him in his sport, and her in her disease.

“As a driver, you really need to focus on what’s going on straight ahead of you,” she explained. “You can’t really switch away your thoughts. You have one minute of full concentration. I think you can compare it to Formula One because you only see the next curve in front of you.

“He’s very calm and I think that helps him in a sporting way to not overreact emotionally and stuff like that. But also for me as a partner, I’m very emotional. When I’m too excited or too sad or too angry, he can calm me down to a normal level. On a stress-less level, and to be stress-free is very important for someone who has cancer.”

Switzerland’s Cedric Follador, right, and Luca Rolli compete in two-man bobsled at the Milan-Cortina Olympics on Monday.

(Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)

Michelle, petite and pale, has lost about 40 pounds over the past year. Mostly muscle.

“I was avoiding sugar in the beginning of the illness,” she said. “You read so much stuff. But after losing so much weight, doctors told me just eat what you want to eat. Because having energy is more important than eating too much sugar.”

In August, doctors discovered more cancer in her. Another surgery to open her abdomen.

“They said it’s still there,” she said. “Those microcells which they couldn’t remove because they couldn’t see them, they grew. But once all those microcells have grown up and been removed, or have been killed by therapy and medication, there won’t be any new cells because the ovaries have been removed, so they don’t produce any more.”

She tries not to Google her illness anymore. It doesn’t help her frame of mind. She’s changed in other ways, too.

“I was a very direct person before my illness,” she said. “Now I’m even more direct and straight-forward. I say no, and I don’t explain myself. If I don’t want to do something, I don’t have to. I just say no.

“Before that, I had a bad feeling about myself and explained myself just because I say no. I don’t do that anymore.”

In December, she began radiation. She has another scan after the Olympics.

There are times she just can’t believe this is happening.

“Women or even men my age, you live in your world, you are following your dreams,” she said. “And you don’t think about something happening in your life. I only know young people in Switzerland, so I can only speak for them. But they don’t talk about that.

“They are not sensible about what can happen, and that’s why it’s important for me to speak out about it. For example, with a women’s doctor, you have to go. It can happen to anyone.

“I’m a young woman. I do sports since I’m 10 years old. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. But it still can happen.”

Her illness has shined a spotlight on her friendships. Lots of her old friends showed concern at first, then went on with their lives. A handful checked in on her frequently. Some are new.

“I got in touch with a woman during chemotherapy, she was there too,” Michelle said. “She has breast cancer. She saw my cross necklace, and we were talking about faith and how it helped in those hard times.

“We are still in contact now. We are writing letters to each other. We’re not texting or phoning, just writing letters and sending postcards. She’s as old as my mom, but it’s very cool to have someone with almost the same story.”

How will that story end? Michelle has her hopes, this fearless young woman who took to bobsledding on her second time down the track.

“My goal is to be in the Olympics in four years,” she said. “I’ll be 29 by then. The age is still good — even better than now for a bobsleigh athlete. And I have a great team. My bobsleigh pilot is very supportive and she said she always has a place for me in the sled.”

This week, Michelle is supporting Cedric — just a sliver, she said, of the way he has supported her. They got engaged in December. It happened at sunset in his little hometown in the Swiss Alps.

“He was talking about himself and us, and then he proposed to me,” she said. “I said yes. Of course.”

One afternoon late August in a quiet Irish seaside town, a supermarket worker decided he could no longer separate his job from what he was seeing on his phone.

Images from Gaza, with neighbourhoods flattened and families buried, had followed him to the checkout counter.

At the time, Israel’s genocidal onslaught had killed more than 60,000 Palestinians.

His first act of protest was to quietly warn customers that some of the fruit and vegetables were sourced from Israel. Later, as people in Gaza starved, he refused to scan or sell Israeli-grown produce.

He could not, he said, “have that on my conscience”.

Within weeks, Tesco supermarket suspended him.

He requested anonymity following advice from his trade union.

In Newcastle, County Down, a town better known for its summer tourists than political protest, customers protested outside the store.

The local dispute became a test case: Can individual employees turn their moral outrage into workplace action?

Facing mounting backlash, Tesco reinstated him in January, moving him to a role where he no longer has to handle Israeli goods.

“I would encourage them to do it,” he said about other workers. “They have the backing of the unions and there’s a precedent set. They didn’t sack me; they shouldn’t be able to sack anyone else.

“And then, if we get enough people to do it, they can’t sell Israeli goods.”

“A genocide is still going on, they are slowly killing and starving people – we still need to be out, doing what we can.”

From shop floors to state policy

Across Europe, there is labour-led pressure to cease trade with Israel.

Unions in Ireland, the UK and Norway have passed motions stating that workers should not be compelled to handle Israeli goods.

Retail cooperatives, including Co-op UK and Italy’s Coop Alleanza 3.0, have removed some Israeli products in protest against the war in Gaza.

The campaigns raise questions about whether worker-led refusals can lead to state-level boycotts.

Activists say the strategy is rooted in history.

In 1984, workers at the Dunnes Stores retail chain in Ireland refused to handle goods from apartheid South Africa. The action lasted nearly three years and contributed to Ireland becoming the first country in Western Europe to ban trade with South Africa.

“The same can be done against the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel today,” said Damian Quinn, 33, of BDS Belfast.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a Palestinian-led campaign launched in 2005 that calls for economic and cultural boycotts of Israel until it complies with international law, including ending its occupation of Palestine.

“Where the state has failed in its obligation to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, citizens and workers across the world must refuse Israel and apply pressure on their governments to introduce legislation,” said Quinn.

That pressure, he said, takes the form of boycotting “complicit Israeli sporting, academic and cultural institutions”, as well as Israeli and international companies “engaged in violations of Palestinian human rights”.

The movement also seeks to “apply pressure on banks, local councils, universities, churches, pension funds and governments to do the same through divestment and sanctions”, he added.

Supporters argue that such pressure is beginning to shape state policy across Europe.

Spain and Slovenia have moved to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank following sustained public protests and mounting political pressure. In August 2025, Slovenia’s government banned imports of goods produced in Israeli-occupied territories, becoming one of the first European states to adopt such a measure.

Spain followed suit later that year, with a decree banning the import of products from illegal Israeli settlements. The measure was formally enforced at the start of 2026.

Both countries’ centre-left governments have been outspoken critics of Israel’s conduct during the war, helping create the political conditions for legislative action.

In the Netherlands, a wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests and public demonstrations in 2025 shifted political discourse. Student demands for academic and trade disengagement became part of broader calls for national policy change.

Later that year, members of the Dutch parliament urged the government to ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements.

Meanwhile, Ireland is attempting to advance its Occupied Territories Bill, first introduced in 2018, which would prohibit trade in goods and services from illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, including the West Bank.

Progress, however, has stalled despite unanimous backing in the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, the Dail.

Paul Murphy, an Irish pro-Palestine member of parliament who, in June, attempted to cross into Gaza, told Al Jazeera the delay amounts to “indirect pressure from Israel routed through the US”. He accused the government of “kicking the can down the road” as it seeks further legal advice.

Pro-Israel organisations are working to oppose initiatives that aim to pressure Israel economically.

B’nai B’rith International, a US-based group that says it strengthens “global Jewish life”, combats anti-Semitism and stands “unequivocally with the State of Israel”, decries the BDS movement. In July 2025, it submitted an 18-page memorandum to Irish lawmakers, warning the bill could pose risks for US companies operating in Ireland.

The memorandum argued that, if enacted, the bill could create conflicts with US federal anti-boycott laws, which prohibit US companies from participating in certain foreign-led boycotts – particularly those targeting Israel.

B’nai B’rith International also “vehemently condemns” the United Kingdom’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and has donated 200 softshell jackets to Israeli military personnel.

Critics say interventions of this kind go beyond advocacy and reflect coordinated efforts to influence European policymaking on Israel and Palestine from abroad.

While lobby groups publicly press their case, leaked documents, based on material from whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets, suggest the Israeli state has also been directly involved in countering BDS campaigns across Europe.

A covert programme, jointly funded by the Israeli Ministries of Justice and of Strategic Affairs, reportedly hired law firms for 130,000 euros ($154,200) on assignments aimed at monitoring boycott-related movements.

Former Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson, who supports the BDS movement, previously accused Israeli advocacy organisations of attempting to silence critics of Israel through legal and political pressure.

According to the leaked documents cited by The Ditch, an Irish outlet, Israel hired a law firm to “investigate the steps open to Israel against Martina Anderson”.

She told Al Jazeera she stood by her criticism.

“As the chair of the Palestinian delegation in the European Parliament, I did my work diligently, as people who know me would expect me to do.

“I am proud to have been a thorn in the side of the Israeli state and its extensive lobbying machine, which works relentlessly to undermine Palestinian voices and to justify a brutal and oppressive rogue state.”

Pushback across Europe

In 2019, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, adopted a non-binding resolution condemning the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, calling for the withdrawal of public funding from groups that support it.

Observers say the vote has since been used to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

The European Leadership Network (ELNET), a prominent pro-Israel advocacy organisation active across the continent, welcomed the move and said its German branch had urged further legislative steps.

Meanwhile, in the UK, ELNET has funded trips to Israel for Labour politicians and their staff.

Bridget Phillipson, now secretary of state for education, declared a 3,000-pound ($4,087) visit funded by ELNET for a member of her team.

A coworker of Wes Streeting named Anna Wilson also accepted a trip funded by ELNET. Streeting himself has visited Israel on a mission organised by the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) group.

ELNET’s UK branch is directed by Joan Ryan, an ex-Labour MP and former LFI chair.

During the passage of a bill designed to prevent public bodies from pursuing their own boycotts, divestment or sanctions policies – the Labour Party imposed a three-line whip instructing MPs to vote against it. Phillipson and Streeting abstained.

The Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill was widely seen as an attempt to block local councils and public institutions from adopting BDS-style measures.

A vocal supporter of the legislation was Luke Akehurst, then director of the pro-Israel advocacy group, We Believe in Israel. In a statement carried by ELNET, he said it was “absurd” that local councils could “undermine the excellent relationship between the UK and Israel” through boycotts or divestment.

“We need the law changed to close this loophole,” he said, arguing that BDS initiatives by local authorities risked “importing the conflict into communities in the UK”.

The legislation was ultimately shelved when a general election was called in 2024. It formed part of broader legislative efforts in parts of Europe to limit BDS-linked boycotts.

Akehurst has since been elected as Labour MP for North Durham, having previously served on the party’s National Executive Committee.