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There have already been numerous flight delays as the FAA slows down or stops traffic when it is short of controllers.

United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that there could be chaos in the skies next week if the government shutdown drags on and air traffic controllers miss a second paycheck.

Duffy made his comments on Tuesday as the US government shutdown dragged into its 35th day, matching the shutdown in US President Donald Trump’s first term as president and which was the longest at the time.

There have already been numerous delays at airports across the country — sometimes hours long — because the Federal Aviation Administration slows down or stops traffic temporarily anytime it is short on controllers. Last weekend saw some of the worst staff shortages, and on Sunday, flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were delayed for several hours.

Duffy and the head of the air traffic controllers union have both warned that the situation will only get worse the longer the shutdown continues and the financial pressure continues to grow on people who are forced to work without pay. FAA employees already missed one paycheck on October 28. Their next payday is scheduled for next Tuesday.

“Many of the controllers said, ‘A lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks,’” Duffy said. “So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it, because we don’t have air traffic controllers.”

Most of the flight disruptions so far during the shutdown have been isolated and temporary. But if delays become more widespread and start to ripple throughout the system, the pressure will mount on US Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown.

Normally, airlines strive to have at least 80 percent of their flights depart and arrive within 15 minutes of when they are scheduled. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that since the shutdown began on October 1, the total number of delays overall has not fallen significantly below that goal because most of the disruptions so far have been no worse than what happens when a major thunderstorm moves across an airport.

But on Sunday, only about 56 percent of Newark’s departures were on time, and the Orlando airport reported that only about 70 percent of its flights were on time, according to Cirium.

As of midday Tuesday, there have been 1,932 flight delays reported across the US, according to www.FlightAware.com. That is lower than what is typical, although the FAA did say that flights in Phoenix were being delayed on Tuesday morning because of staffing shortages. Strong winds are also causing delays at the Newark and LaGuardia airports on Tuesday.

The US president called for Republicans to go for the ‘Nuclear Option’ in order to end the Democratic Senate roadblock.

United States President Donald Trump has called on the Senate to vote to scrap the filibuster custom so that Republicans can end a weeks-long federal government shutdown.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, the US leader chastised “Crazed Lunatics” in the Democratic Party.

“It is now time for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option – Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!” Trump wrote.

“WE are in power, and if we did what we should be doing [end the filibuster], it would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous, Country destroying ‘SHUT DOWN’,” he added.

The filibuster is a longstanding Senate tactic that delays or blocks votes on legislation by keeping debate open. The Senate requires a supermajority – 60 of the chamber’s 100 members – to overcome a filibuster and pass most legislation.

Senate rules, including the filibuster, can be changed by a simple majority vote at any time. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority.

Since October 1, when the new fiscal year began, Senate Democrats have voted against advancing a government bill extending funding to federal agencies.

Democrats have demanded that Republicans reverse planned sweeping cuts to Medicaid, which extends healthcare coverage to tens of millions of low-income Americans, and prevent health insurance premiums from going up.

The deadlock entered its 31st day on Friday. It is set to become the longest deadlock in history if it surpasses the 35-day lapse that took place in 2019 under the first Trump administration.

Federal employees categorised as “essential” continue to work without pay during government shutdowns until they can be reimbursed when it ends.

Most recently, on Tuesday, US air traffic controllers were told they would not receive their paychecks this month, raising concerns that mounting financial stress could take a toll on the already understaffed employees who guide thousands of flights each day.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that the federal government shutdown could cost the US economy between $7bn and $14bn.

Trump has just returned to the US from his Asia tour, in which he visited Qatar, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea – where he held a major summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In his Truth Social post, the US leader said that while the trip was a success, conversations had caused him to consider the filibuster issue.

“The one question that kept coming up, however, was how did the Democrats SHUT DOWN the United States of America, and why did the powerful Republicans allow them to do it? The fact is, in flying back, I thought a great deal about that question, WHY?” he wrote.

The US leader continued that he believed that should the Democrats come back into power, they would “exercise their rights” and end the filibuster on the “first day they take office”.

“Every single government shutdown, typically, the party in power is the party that gets blamed for the shutdown.”

US Republican commentator Chet Love explains what’s behind the latest federal government shutdown and how voters could change the course of what he calls “broken” US politics.

Lucknow, India – On the evening of September 4, an illuminated signboard lit up a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Kanpur, an industrial town in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The signboard said: “I love Muhammad” – with a red heart standing in for the word, love.

It was the first time the mainly working-class residents in Kanpur’s Syed Nagar had put up such a sign as part of the decorations as they joined millions of Muslims around the world to celebrate Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.

The day, marked as Eid Milad-un-Nabi across South Asia, involves the faithful organising religious gatherings, Quran recitations, and sermons about the prophet’s life and teachings. At some places, the celebrations include mass processions, with people carrying posters to express their love and reverence for the prophet.

In Syed Nagar, however, as soon as the words glowed, a group of Hindu men swooped in, objecting to the celebration. Police were called in, and following a ruckus that lasted hours, the signboard was removed late that night.

Charges related to promoting enmity between different religious groups, as well as deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of another community, were filed against nine Muslim men and 15 unidentified people from Syed Nagar. No arrests have been made so far.

Mohit Bajpayee, a Syed Nagar resident affiliated with a Hindu group named Sri Ramnavmi Samiti, said he had no objection to the text, ‘I love Muhammad’, but to the placement of the signboard at a place used by them for a Hindu festival.

“All religions have equal rights under the constitution,” he told Al Jazeera. “But the sign was put up at a location where our Ram Navami decorations are usually displayed. Everyone has a right to follow their religion, but new traditions should not be started in new locations.”

But the Muslim residents of Syed Nagar say the signboard was put up at a public place they converged at every year for the prophet’s birth anniversary.

“We had official permission for the decorations. Everyone has the right to practise their religion under the constitution,” said a 28-year-old resident who is one of those charged, unwilling to reveal his identity over fears of further action by the government.

MA Khan, the lawyer for the accused in Kanpur, told Al Jazeera that the Muslim men were also accused of tearing a banner of the Hindu community during the Eid Milad-un-Nabi procession on September 5.

“Many of those named were not even present in the procession,” he said.

‘Disturbing communal harmony’

Uttar Pradesh is home to 38 million Muslims – more than the entire population of Saudi Arabia – comprising nearly 20 percent of India’s most populous state. Since 2017, the politically crucial state has been governed by Yogi Adityanath, a hardline Hindu monk known for his anti-Muslim speech and policies, and a prominent politician from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Days later, the spark from Kanpur ignited a fire some 270km (168 miles) away, in another Uttar Pradesh town called Bareilly – headquarters of the Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims, who number between 200 million to 300 million across the world.

On September 10, the state police registered a first information report (FIR) against nine Muslims in Bareilly, including a religious scholar, accusing them of “disturbing communal harmony” and starting a “new tradition” that threatened public order.

On September 21, Maulana Tauqeer Raza Khan, chief of a Muslim group called Ittehad-e-Millat Council (IMC) and descendant of Imam Ahmed Raza Khan, the founder of the Barelvi sect, announced a protest over the FIRs filed in Bareilly and Kanpur, and urged his supporters to gather at a ground after Friday prayers on September 26 to denounce the police action.

The district administration denied Khan permission for the rally.

On September 25, the IMC issued a statement asking people not to gather for the protest. But hours later, Khan’s supporters allegedly circulated a social media message, claiming the IMC statement was fake and aimed at defaming the Muslim body.

The next day, thousands of Muslims assembled near a famous Muslim shrine in Bareilly after the Friday prayers, holding “I love Muhammad” posters and raising slogans against the police for their action in Kanpur.

District authorities alleged that the march was unauthorised and accused some participants of pelting stones at the police and vandalising public property. The police responded with a baton charge, and arrested Khan and dozens of others, as authorities shut down the internet in the town.

In a video message recorded before his arrest, Khan said the crackdown was a targeted suppression of religious expression. “Attempts to suppress our religious sentiments will backfire,” he warned.

A day later, while speaking at an event in the state capital, Lucknow, Chief Minister Adityanath condemned the Bareilly unrest as a “well-orchestrated attempt” to disturb social harmony.

“Sometimes, people are not able to shun their bad habits easily. For that, some denting-painting is required … You saw that in Bareilly yesterday. A maulana [Muslim scholar] forgot who is in power,” he said in Hindi, without naming anyone.

The “denting-painting” soon followed, as has been the pattern with Adityanath’s crackdown on Muslims accused of disrupting public order. A banquet hall belonging to one of the accused was bulldozed by the authorities in Bareilly.

‘Government wants to instil fear’

Demolition of homes and commercial properties belonging to Muslims accused of a range of crimes has become a common practice in Uttar Pradesh and other BJP-ruled states, despite India’s top court recently banning what it called the “bulldozer justice”. Rights groups say such demolitions are a form of extralegal punishment that bypasses judicial processes and devastates families economically.

While the Uttar Pradesh government claimed the demolitions in Bareilly targeted illegally-constructed buildings, the timing and targets suggest a clear strategy of intimidation.

“Police are registering cases against Muslims across the nation to suppress their legitimate protests … The BJP government wants to instil fear so Muslims lose the courage to speak for their religious and fundamental rights,” Sumaiya Rana, daughter of the famous Urdu poet late Munawwar Rana, told Al Jazeera.

Rana herself organised a protest outside the state assembly building in Lucknow, where more than a dozen demonstrators holding “I love Muhammad” placards were briefly detained by the police.

The Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), a rights group, says at least 22 FIRs have been filed across India in connection with the Muslim campaign, naming more than 2,500 individuals, with at least 89 arrested in Bareilly so far.

“Authorities have treated a slogan expressing love for the prophet as a criminal act and described it as provocative,” APCR secretary Nadeem Khan told Al Jazeera. “In many cases, the administration violated due process in registering cases and demolishing the properties of the accused, which has severe social and economic impacts on Muslim communities.”

SQR Ilyasi, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a prominent Muslim body, stressed that peaceful protest is not illegal for any community in India. “Expressing love for the prophet is our right,” he told Al Jazeera.

Activist Vandana Mishra of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, a rights group, said the authorities frequently allow the Hindu community to “raise religious slogans freely, while the minority faces arrest for expressing love for the prophet”.

“This contravenes the secular and democratic ethos of our constitution,” she told Al Jazeera.

Opposition parties have also criticised the Uttar Pradesh government’s actions.

The Samajwadi Party, one of the state’s biggest political forces, said it attempted to send a delegation to Bareilly to meet the victims of the police crackdown, but claimed its members were prevented. “The government talks of democracy but acts in complete disregard of it,” the leader of the opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, Mata Prasad Pandey, told reporters in Lucknow.

Lawyer Zia Jillani, who recently visited Bareilly and is representing some of the accused, told Al Jazeera that most of those arrested or facing charges “belong to the marginalised sections of society and earn on a daily wage basis”.

“For them, due to their financial incapability, pursuing and fighting legal cases against the injustices inflicted upon them is an unbearable task,” he said.

“This kind of hate politics preys on the poor, taking advantage of their vulnerability while ignoring justice and accountability.”

A federal judge said the layoffs by the administration of US President Donald Trump seem politically motivated and ‘you can’t do that in a nation of laws’.

A United States federal judge in California has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to halt mass layoffs during a partial government shutdown while she considers claims by unions that the job cuts are illegal.

During a hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday, US District Judge Susan Illston granted a request by two unions to block layoffs at more than 30 agencies pending further litigation.

Her ruling came shortly after White House Budget Director Russell Vought said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that more than 10,000 federal workers could lose their jobs because of the shutdown, which entered its 15th day on Wednesday.

Illston at the hearing cited a series of public statements by Trump and Vought that she said showed explicit political motivations for the layoffs, such as Trump saying that cuts would target “Democrat agencies”.

“You can’t do that in a nation of laws. And we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law,” said Illston, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, adding that the cuts were being carried out without much thought.

“It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost,” she said. “It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston said she agreed with the unions that the administration was unlawfully using the lapse in government funding that began October 1 to carry out its agenda of downsizing the federal government.

A US Department of Justice lawyer, Elizabeth Hedges, said she was not prepared to address Illston’s concerns about the legality of the layoffs. She instead argued that the unions must bring their claims to a federal labour board before going to court.

‘Won’t negotiate’

The judge’s decision came after federal agencies on Friday started issuing layoff notices aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. The layoff notices are part of an effort by Trump’s Republican administration to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding that any deal to reopen the federal government address their healthcare demands. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on those demands and reopen.

Democrats have demanded that healthcare subsidies, first put in place in 2021 and extended a year later, be extended again. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill that was passed earlier this year.

About 4,100 workers at eight agencies have been notified that they are being laid off so far, according to a Tuesday court filing by the administration.

The Trump administration has been paying the military and pursuing its crackdown on immigration while slashing jobs in health and education, including in special education and after-school programmes. Trump said programmes favoured by Democrats are being targeted and “they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”

The American Federation of Government Employees and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees claim that implementing layoffs is not an essential service that can be performed during a lapse in government funding, and that the shutdown does not justify mass job cuts because most federal workers have been furloughed without pay.

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Members of the U.S. Coast Guard will continue to get paid despite the government shutdown, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said they had found “an innovative solution” to ensure no paychecks are owed to those protecting America’s seas.

Noem did not explain the solution to pay the Coast Guard amid the political stalemate that has seen hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed.

“The brave men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard will not miss a paycheck this week as they continue to carry out their critical homeland security and military missions,” Noem said in a Monday statement.

The federal government shut down on Oct. 1 as Congress failed to pass an appropriations bill to keep it funded into the new year.

Democrats said they will only support a bill that extends and restores Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, arguing that failing to do so would raise healthcare costs for some 20 million Americans.

Republicans, who control the House, Senate and the presidency, are seeking a so-called clean funding bill that includes no changes. They argue that the Democrats are fighting to provide undocumented migrants with taxpayer-funded healthcare, even though federal law does not permit them from receiving Medicaid or ACA premium tax credits.

Coast Guard paychecks are paid by the Department of Homeland Security, while military troops are paid by the Department of Defense.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on time.

“We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social platform, while blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown.

“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” he said.

The Department of Defense will reportedly use about $8 billion of research and development funding from last year to pay service members on Wednesday if the government does not reopen by then.

The legality of shifting the Congress-approved funds was unclear.

Asked about the appropriation of the funds on Sunday during CBS News’ Face the Nation, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., replied, “probably not.”

“I think to pay the military during a shutdown would require legislation,” he said.

Dutch humanitarian organisation INSO rejected the allegations and called for the release of its eight staff members.

Burkina Faso’s military government says it has arrested eight people working for a humanitarian organisation, accusing them of “spying and treason”, allegations the Dutch nonprofit “categorically” rejected.

Burkina Faso’s Security Minister Mahamadou Sana said the eight people arrested worked for the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), a Netherlands-based group specialising in humanitarian safety.

Those detained included a French man, a French-Senegalese woman, a Czech man, a Malian and four Burkinabe nationals, Sana said, alleging the staff members had continued working for the organisation after it was banned for three months, for allegedly “collecting sensitive data without authorisation”.

The security minister claimed some of INSO’s staff had “continued to clandestinely or covertly conduct activities such as information collection and meetings in person or online” following the ban, including its country director, who had also previously been arrested when the suspension came into effect at the end of July.

Sana said the INSO staff members had “collected and passed on sensitive security information that could be detrimental to national security and the interests of Burkina Faso, to foreign powers”.

The Hague-based humanitarian organisation issued a statement on Tuesday saying it “categorically” rejected the allegations about its activities in Burkina Faso.

“[We] remain committed to doing everything in our power to secure the safe release of all our colleagues,” INSO said in the statement.

INSO also said it collects information “exclusively for the purpose of keeping humanitarians safe,” and that the information it gathers “is not confidential and is largely already known to the public.”

Burkina Faso’s military government has turned away from the West and, in particular, its former colonial ruler, France, since seizing power in a September 2022 coup.

Together with neighbouring Mali and Niger, which are also ruled by military governments, it has also withdrawn from regional and international organisations in recent months, with the three countries forming their own bloc known as the Alliance of Sahel States.

The three West African countries have also wound back defence cooperation with Western powers, most notably their former colonial ruler, France, in favour of closer ties with Russia, including Niger nationalising a uranium mine operated by French nuclear firm Orano.

Within the three countries, the military governments are fighting armed groups linked to al-Qaeda that control territory and have staged attacks on army posts.

Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups have accused the fighters, the military and partner forces of Burkina Faso and Mali of possible atrocities.

The White House has dialled back US President Donald Trump’s claim that federal workers were already being fired amid the ongoing United States government shutdown.

The backtrack on Monday came as the government shutdown stretched into its sixth day, with Republicans and Democrats failing to reach a breakthrough to pass a budget that would fund an array of government agencies and services.

Democrats have taken a hard line in the negotiations, seeking to undo healthcare cuts in tax legislation recently passed by Republicans.

Both parties have blamed the other for the impasse, while the Trump administration has taken the atypical step of threatening to fire, not just furlough, some of the estimated 750,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown.

On Sunday, Trump appeared to suggest that those layoffs were “taking place right now”. He blamed Democrats for the firings.

But on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump was referring to the “hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed”, not yet fired, amid the shutdown.

Still, she added, “the Office of Management and Budget is continuing to work with agencies on who, unfortunately, is going to have to be laid off if this shutdown continues”.

House Speaker blames Democrats, halts negotiations on funding

As salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees were set to be withheld starting Friday, lawmakers indicated there had been little progress.

In the US Senate, another set of long-shot votes to fund the government were scheduled for late Monday.

Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told members of his party not to come to Congress unless the Democrats give way. He told reporters on Monday they should stop asking him about negotiations, saying it was up to the opposing party to “stop the madness”.

“There’s nothing for us to negotiate. The House has done its job,” Johnson said, referring to a funding bill passed by the chamber that has proved a non-starter in the Senate.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, continued to portray Republicans as derelict.

“House Republicans think protecting the healthcare of everyday Americans is less important than their vacation,” he said. “We strongly disagree.”

With Republicans controlling the White House and holding slight majorities in both the House and the Senate, the funding bill is one of Democrats’ few points of leverage. In the Senate, Republicans hold 53 seats, but need 60 votes to pass the legislation.

They are using the position to push for the reversal of a tax law passed earlier this year that strips 11 million Americans of healthcare coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid programme for low-income families, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats have said another four million US citizens will lose healthcare next year if Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies are not extended, with another 24 million Americans seeing their premiums double.

Since the shutdown began on October 1, several services have been suspended as agency funding has run out. Others face a funding cliff. That includes the $8bn Special Supplemental Nutrition Programme for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which could run out of funding to provide vouchers to buy infant formula and other essentials to low-income families within two weeks.

Federal workers deemed “essential” have remained on the job, but face working without pay until a resolution is reached. Military personnel could begin missing their paycheques after mid-October, advocacy groups have warned.

The agencies hit hardest by furloughs include the Environmental Protection Agency, the space agency NASA , and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments.

On Monday, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the government has seen “a slight tick up in sick calls” from air traffic controllers in certain areas since the shutdown began. That could lead to disruptions in air travel, he said.

“Then you’ll see delays that come from that,” he said. “If we have additional sick calls, we will reduce the flow consistent with a rate that’s safe for the American people.”

The US Transportation Department has also said that funds from a US government programme that subsidises commercial air service to rural airports were also set to expire as soon as Sunday.

Irakli Kobakhidze calls on EU ambassador to condemn Tbilisi protests, saying he bears ‘special responsibility’ for the unrest.

Georgia’s prime minister says protesters who tried to storm the presidential palace were trying to overthrow the government as he accuses the European Union of meddling in his country’s politics.

Irakli Kobakhidze said on Sunday that the demonstrators aimed to “overthrow the constitutional order” and added that EU Ambassador Pawel Herczynski, whom he accused of supporting the rally, bore “special responsibility” and called on him to “distance himself and strictly condemn everything that is happening on the streets of Tbilisi”, the Georgian news agency Interpress reported.

Georgian riot police used pepper spray and water cannon on Saturday to drive demonstrators away from the presidential palace in Tbilisi’s city centre and detained five activists as the opposition staged a large demonstration on a day of local elections.

Georgia’s Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs said 21 security personnel and six protesters were injured in the confrontations, according to local media.

Kobakhidze said nearly 7,000 people participated in the protest in the capital of the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people.

“They moved to action, began the overthrow attempt. It failed, and then they started distancing themselves from it,” Kobakhidze said. “No one will escape responsibility. This includes political responsibility.”

The protests erupted as the ruling Georgian Dream party, which critics said is close to Russia, won majorities in all municipalities, claiming 80 percent of the vote. Former AC Milan footballer Kakha Kaladze retained the mayorship of the capital city.

Opposition groups boycotted the poll and rallied supporters for a “peaceful revolution” against the Georgian Dream party. Thousands massed in Freedom Square and Rustaveli Avenue in central Tbilisi, waving Georgian and EU flags in what organisers characterised as an act of resistance, before some protesters blocked adjacent streets, started fires and confronted the riot police.

Senior Georgian Dream party officials have repeatedly denied Kremlin links. In an opinion piece for Euronews last week, Kobakhidze said the country’s aspiration to join the EU was “steady and irreversible”.

“Georgia’s path is European, peaceful, and principled. We are doing our part. We remain steadfast in reform, committed to our obligations, and focused on delivering results,” Kobakhidze wrote.

The country has been locked in a political crisis since October last year when Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections, which the opposition alleged were “rigged”. Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, said at the time: “This was a total rigging, a total robbery of your votes,” adding that the country had been swept up in a “Russian special operation”.

Opposition figures have been organising protests since then, prompting strong responses from the government, with police frequently clashing with the demonstrators and making many arrests.

The Georgian Dream party was founded by billionaire businessman and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s wealthiest person. The United States imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili at the end of 2024 for undermining the “democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation”, said then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across Italy as part of a general strike in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla that was intercepted by Israel this week while trying to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

More than two million people attended Friday’s protests after the strike was called by a number of trade unions “in defence of the flotilla”, which was carrying a total of 40 Italians, and to “stop the genocide”, the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) wrote on X.

Turin-based daily La Stampa reported that the mobilisation involved the public and private sectors, “halting rail, air, metro, and bus transport, healthcare and schools. Among the many acts of dissent, protesters blocked highways near Pisa, Pescara, Bologna and Milan and shut down access to the port of Livorno, said the newspaper.

Police told the news agency AFP that more than 80,000 people demonstrated in Milan, where a sea of people clapped and waved the Palestinian flag as they made their way through the streets, carrying a massive banner reading: “Free Palestine, Stop the War Machine”.

“This is not just any strike. We’re here today to defend brotherhood among individuals, among peoples, to put humanity back at the centre, to say no to genocide, to a policy of rearmament,” CGIL leader Maurizio Landini was cited by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Reporting from Rome, Al Jazeera’s Milena Veselinovic said the turnout across the country included “so many people from various walks of life. You’ve got students, you’ve got retired people, many people with their small children also coming out”.

Major turnout expected in Rome on Saturday

Massive protests are planned for tomorrow in Rome, where the CGIL reported 300,000 participants on Friday, with crowds set to depart from the town square, Piazzale Ostiense, at 2:30pm (12:30 GMT).

“Today, we were hundreds of thousands. Tomorrow for Palestine we must be a million,” said Maya Issa, leader of the Palestinian Student Movement, cited by Rome-based daily La Repubblica.

Andrea Dessi, an assistant professor of international relations and global politics at the American University of Rome, told Al Jazeera that the Italian government had been “caught on its back foot”.

While Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni this week announced Italy would recognise a Palestinian state if Israeli captives were freed and Hamas was shut out of future governance, protesters believed Meloni’s support for a Palestinian state should have been unconditional, Dessi said.

“I believe that the pressure will continue to mount,” said Dessi. “We expect a major, major march tomorrow, Saturday, here in Rome, with activists and members, citizens coming to Rome from all of Italy,” he said.

Their demands include the release of remaining Italians from the Sumud Flotilla, unconditional support for a Palestinian state and “more serious sanctions” on Israel over its war on Gaza, he said.

Al Jazeera’s Veselinovic said that Italy’s right-wing government was unlikely to succumb to pressure. “That is probably unlikely to happen, considering that Italy is a major ally of Israel in the European Union. However, in the past few months, the government did adopt a slightly harsher tone towards Israeli officials, specifically because of actions like this protest,” she said.

The Italian government has criticised the strike, with Meloni suggesting that people were using the protests as an excuse to have a longer weekend break.

As the protests took place, Italy’s foreign ministry announced that Israel had released four Italian parliamentarians out of the 40 Italians detained from the flotilla. The two members of parliament and two members of the European Parliament were due to arrive back in Rome on Friday, the ministry said.

Worldwide reaction

Protests in solidarity with the humanitarian convoy, which included prominent figures like climate activist Greta Thunberg and a number of politicians, spread across continents on Thursday, from Europe to Australia and South America.

In Barcelona, where the flotilla began its voyage, about 15,000 demonstrators marched, chanting “Gaza, you are not alone,” “Boycott Israel,” and “Freedom for Palestine”. Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau was among those intercepted at sea and now faces potential deportation along with fellow activists, including Nelson Mandela’s grandson.

The flotilla organisers said on Telegram on Friday that Israeli naval forces had “illegally intercepted all 42 of our vessels – each carrying humanitarian aid, volunteers, and the determination to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza”. Marinette, the last remaining boat, was intercepted at 10:29am (07:29 GMT) that morning, they said.

More than 470 flotilla participants were “taken into custody by the military police, subjected to rigorous screening, and transferred to the prison administration”, according to Israeli police cited by AFP.

Among those detained from the flotilla were more than 20 journalists, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), including reporters from Al Jazeera, Spain’s El Pais and Italy’s public broadcaster RAI.

Israel’s military applauded its naval forces for intercepting the flotilla, claiming the humanitarian mission attempted to breach its “maritime security blockade”.

“During Yom Kippur, in an operation that lasted approximately 12 hours, Israeli Navy personnel foiled a large-scale incursion attempt by hundreds of individuals aboard 42 naval vessels that declared their intention to break the lawful maritime security blockade adjacent to the Gaza Strip,” the military statement said.

Rights groups, several politicians and the UN’s Francesca Albanese have suggested Israel’s interception of the flotilla’s boats was illegal.

Protests in Israel

In Israel on Friday, protesters blocked a route into Gaza, staging a sit-in demanding that aid seized from the flotilla be allowed to enter the Palestinian territory. Dozens of protesters also tried to stop soldiers from entering the Strip, some carrying banners calling for an end to the genocide and for sanctions to be imposed on Israel.

Reporting from Amman, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said, “These are Israeli peace activists who say that they are not part of any larger organisation, but from branches of different organisations coming from all walks of life in solidarity with the … flotilla.”

Salhut reported that “more than 40 vessels” seized by the Israeli Navy were now sitting in the port of Ashdod, just north of the Gaza Strip.

“What these demonstrators are saying is that this flotilla should have been allowed to go to the Gaza Strip, but that the siege on the Palestinian territory needs to end and there needs to be other ways of ensuring that happens, whether it’s by air, land, or sea,” she said.

Second order this year focuses on UK users; earlier attempt included US user data, but was withdrawn under US pressure.

The British government has ordered Apple to hand over personal data uploaded by its customers to the cloud for the second time this year in an ongoing privacy row that has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners.

The Home Office issued a demand in early September for the tech behemoth to create a so-called back door that would allow the authorities access to private data uploaded by United Kingdom Apple customers after a previous attempt that included customers in the United States failed, according to a report published on Wednesday by The Financial Times.

A previous technical capability notice (TCN) issued early this year led to a major backlash from the US, which frowns upon foreign entities seeking to regulate Silicon Valley. The administration of US President Donald Trump eventually forced the UK to back down.

US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said in August that the administration had wanted to “ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected”.

Civil liberties campaigners in the UK reacted with alarm to the latest order for access to encrypted data. “If this new order isn’t stopped, the UK Government will likely issue similar orders to other companies, too,” said London-based group Privacy International.

It said the UK government, which would be deploying the measure to protect national security, risked “everyone’s security, while claiming to ‘protect’ people”.

If this new order isn’t stopped, the UK Government will likely issue similar orders to other companies, too.

— Privacy International (@privacyint) October 1, 2025

The Home Office was cited by the FT as saying: “We do not comment on operational matters, including, for example, confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”

Privacy through encryption is a major selling point for tech platforms, which have long seen providing access to law enforcement as a red line.

On Wednesday, Apple said it had “never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will”. The company had appealed against the earlier TCN at the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body confirmed in April.

However, it withdrew full end-to-end encryption, known as Advanced Data Protection, for UK users in February. The feature allows iPhone and Mac users to ensure that only they – and not even Apple – can unlock data stored on its cloud.

“Apple is still unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users, and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” the California-based company said on Wednesday.

The company said it was committed to offering users the highest level of security, and it was hopeful it would be able to do so in Britain in the future.

The controversy over official attempts to snoop on Apple users comes amid a growing furore over government plans to issue digital identity cards to curb undocumented immigration and ward off threats from the right-wing Reform UK party.

The move raised hackles among civil liberties groups and citizens in the UK, where the concept of national identity cards has traditionally been unpopular.

Oct. 1 (UPI) — The U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday after the Trump administration and Democrats failed to agree on a funding resolution, trigging a blame game and creating uncertainty over the future of federal programs and employees.

Over Tuesday, both sides failed to pass legislation to keep the government open — a stalemate the product of Republicans trying to pass a funding resolution that holds spending flat for the rest of the year, while Democrats are adamant that the resolution protect and expand medical coverage for millions of Americans who could lose their insurance by the end 2025.

After the deadline passed, each side was quick to blame the other.

“It’s midnight. The Republican shutdown has just begun because Republicans wouldn’t protect America’s healthcare,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate minority leader, said in a recorded statement posted to X.

“We are going to keep fighting for the American people.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in turn, blamed the Democrats.

“Democrats have officially voted to CLOSE the government,” he said on X.

“The only question now: How long will Chuck Schumer let this pain go on — for his own selfish reasons?”

It’s the fourth government shutdown under a President Donald Trump administration, and the first since late 2018, when the government closed for 35 days. The fight was over billions in border-wall funding Trump wanted that the Democrats resisted.

According to a Congressional Budget Office report, some 75,000 federal workers are at risk of furloughed, though the Trump administration has threatened to fire them and slash government programs.

Last week, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum threatening mass firings of federal employees if “congressional Democrats” do not agree to the Trump administration’s proposal.

During a press conference in the White House earlier Tuesday as the shutdown loomed, Trump said if the government closes, they could cut programs, the federal budget and benefits.

“The last person who wants it shut down is us. Now, with that being said, we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” Trump said.

“So, they’re taking a big risk by having a shutdown.”

The threat of mass firings was swiftly met Tuesday by a lawsuit from federal worker unions, challenging it as an unlawful abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Democrats.

“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal — it’s immoral and unconscionable, American Federation of Government Employees President Lee Saunders told UPI in an emailed statement.

“If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure and our communities protected will lose their jobs.”

Republicans have attempted to frame the Democrats’ healthcare demands as support for undocumented migrants, while Democrats lambasted their GOP counterparts for lying.

“This is a lie,” Schumer said on X in response to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller accusing the Democrats of not supporting the GOP’s spending resolution “because it doesn’t give free healthcare to illegals.”

“Not a single federal dollar goes to providing health insurance for undocumented immigrants. NOT. ONE. PENNY,” Schumer responded to the pair on X.

“Republicans would rather lie and shut down the government down than protect your healthcare.”

The US government faces a partial shutdown from Wednesday unless Republicans and Democrats can agree on a spending bill.

United States President Donald Trump is set to meet with top Republicans and Democrats in Congress amid a looming deadline to keep funding the federal government.

Trump’s scheduled meeting with congressional leaders on Monday comes as the US government is facing a partial shutdown from midnight on Wednesday unless lawmakers can agree on a spending bill.

The standoff comes after Democrats in the US Senate earlier this month rejected a Republican-drafted stopgap spending bill to keep the government running until November 21.

Democrats have argued that any spending bill should include provisions to expand healthcare coverage, including by reversing cuts to Medicaid that were included in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Republicans argue that healthcare-related provisions should be addressed separately as part of negotiations for a comprehensive spending package.

While Republicans hold 53 seats in the 100-member Senate, at least 60 lawmakers must approve spending bills in the upper chamber.

In interviews on Sunday, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer traded blame for the impasse.

“The ball is in their court,” Thune told NBC News’s Meet the Press. “There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now, we could pick it up today and pass it.”

Speaking on the same programme, Schumer described the meeting with Trump and his Republican counterparts as “only a first step” to resolving the issue.

“We need a serious negotiation,” Schumer said.

“Now, if the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done. But my hope is it’ll be a serious negotiation.”

The planned gathering comes after Trump last week called off a meeting with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, citing what he described as “unserious and ridiculous demands” by Democrats.

If Democrats and Republicans fail to pass a spending bill by the deadline, federal government employees will not receive pay during the shutdown period – though they will be eligible for backpay – and those who are not considered essential will be furloughed.

There have been 14 government shutdowns since 1980, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Most of those only lasted a few days. The longest shutdown in US history, which took place in late 2018 and early 2019, lasted 34 days.

A federal judge ruled that terminating Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans violates laws on government conduct.

The United States government has, for a second time, asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order allowing it to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The Department of Justice on Friday submitted an emergency application asking the nation’s top court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the authority to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the migrants.

“So long as the district court’s order is in effect, the Secretary must permit over 300,000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so even temporarily is ‘contrary to the national interest’,” the Justice Department argued in its filing to the court.

In May, the Supreme Court sided with the Donald Trump White House, overturning a temporary order from US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that had blocked the termination of TPS while the case moved through the courts.

On September 5, Chen issued his final ruling, concluding that Secretary Noem’s decision violated a federal law regulating the conduct of government agencies.

“This case is familiar to the court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this court’s orders on the emergency docket,” the Justice Department told the Supreme Court.

“This court’s orders are binding on litigants and lower courts. Whether those orders span one sentence or many pages, disregarding them – as the lower courts did here – is unacceptable.”

Millions of people have fled Venezuela in recent years due to political repression and a crippling economic crisis spurred in part by US sanctions against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Before leaving office, the administration of former US President Joe Biden had extended TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026.

TPS, created by the US Congress in 1990, grants people living in the US relief from deportation if their home country is affected by extraordinary circumstances such as armed conflict or environmental disasters.

An individual who is granted TPS cannot be deported, can obtain an employment authorisation document and may be given travel authorisation. A TPS holder cannot be detained by the US over their immigration status.

THOUSANDS of records related to notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been unleashed on the public by the US Government.

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday posted a staggering 33,295 pages of material handed over by the Justice Department after a subpoena from chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).

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The files cover Epstein’s sprawling sex-trafficking network and his partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell.

The trove includes old court filings, police bodycam footage of searches, and interviews with victims — their faces blurred to protect identities.

Much of it has been seen before, but the sheer scale of the release is unprecedented.

Pressure is now mounting on Congress to go further.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a bill that would force the DOJ to release the full Epstein files — minus victims’ personal details.

Speaker Mike Johnson is under fire for trying to stall the move, even as he and other members met with survivors this week.

The Oversight Committee said it’s still digging through the files and more could follow.

“The Department of Justice has indicated it will continue producing those records while ensuring the redaction of victim identities and any child sexual abuse material,” the panel confirmed.

The explosive dump is already stoking speculation over who and what might be exposed as fresh eyes comb through Epstein’s secret world.

It comes as fresh claims are emerging from the cache.

One revelation reportedly points to Prince Andrew keeping in touch with Epstein five years longer than he has publicly admitted.

The Duke of York has long insisted he cut ties with Epstein after visiting him in New York in December 2010.

But according to messages dated December 2015, allegedly between Epstein and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Andrew was named as the source of information about a potential business opportunity in China.

Royal watchers believe the new twist could sink any faint hopes of rehabilitation.

Author Phil Dampier said: “I believe Andrew thought he could make a comeback.

“But this is the nail in the coffin.”

The emails were in Mr Barak’s hacked inbox, put online by file sharing site Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The Sunday Times separately verified dozens of contact details such as addresses and phone numbers.

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Andrew, 65, has always denied any wrongdoing. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Ghislaine Maxwell has reportedly told US officials that Prince Andrew did not sleep with Virginia Giuffre, according to newly released transcripts.

Epstein’s convicted accomplice made the remarks during a two-day interview with the Justice Department in Tallahassee, Florida, last month.

She was questioned by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The disclosures surfaced after transcripts and audio recordings of the exchange were made public today.

Blanche pressed Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking — on what she knew about allegations involving Giuffre.

Although the woman’s name was redacted in the documents, the context of the questioning, including timelines and reference to the infamous photograph, makes it highly likely that the discussion was about Giuffre.

Residents accuse officials of not warning them to evacuate as torrential rain, cloudbursts trigger deadly flooding.

Climate change-induced flash floods have killed at least 337 people in northwestern Pakistan, according to the National Disaster Management Authority, while dozens remain missing after the area was hit by flash floods in recent days.

In Kishtwar district, emergency teams continued rescue efforts on Sunday in the remote village of Chositi. At least 60 were killed and some 150 injured, about 50 of them critically.

Mohammad Suhail, a spokesman for the emergency service, said 54 bodies were found after hours-long efforts in Buner, a mountainous district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and cloudbursts triggered massive flooding on Friday.

Suhail said several villagers remained missing. Search efforts focused on areas where homes were flattened by torrents of water that swept down from the mountains, carrying massive boulders that smashed into houses like explosions.

Cloudbursts also caused devastation in Indian-administered Kashmir. Flash floods were reported in two villages in the Kathua district, killing at least seven people and injuring five others overnight, officials said.

Authorities have warned of more deluges and possible landslides between now and Tuesday, urging local administrations to remain on alert. Higher-than-normal monsoon rains have lashed the country since June 26 and killed more than 600.

Government criticism

Angry residents in Buner accused officials of failing to warn them to evacuate after torrential rain and cloudbursts triggered deadly flooding and landslides. There was no warning broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, a traditional method in remote areas.

Mohammad Iqbal, a schoolteacher in Pir Baba village, told the Associated Press that the lack of a timely warning system caused casualties and forced many to flee their homes at the last moment.

“Survivors escaped with nothing,” he said. “If people had been informed earlier, lives could have been saved and residents could have moved to safer places.”

The government said that while an early warning system was in place, the sudden downpour in Buner was so intense that the deluge struck before residents could be alerted.

Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, told a news conference in Islamabad that Pakistan was experiencing shifting weather patterns because of climate change.

Since the monsoon season began in June, Pakistan has already received 50 percent more rainfall than in the same period last year, he added. He warned that more intense weather could follow, with heavy rains forecast to continue this month.

Asfandyar Khan Khattak, director-general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said there was “no forecasting system anywhere in the world” that could predict the exact time and location of a cloudburst.

Idrees Mahsud, a disaster management official, said Pakistan’s early warning system used satellite imagery and meteorological data to send alerts to local authorities. These were shared through the media and community leaders. He said monsoon rains that once only swelled rivers now also triggered urban flooding.

Pakistan suffers regular flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season, which runs from June to September, particularly in the rugged northwest, where villages are often perched on steep slopes and riverbanks.

Experts say climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of such extreme weather events in South Asia. While Pakistan is estimated to produce less than one percent of planet-warming emissions, it faces heatwaves, heavy rains, glacial outburst floods, and cloudbursts that devastate local communities within hours.

Aug. 11 (UPI) — U.S. chip makers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices inked an “unprecedented” deal in which they will pay 15% of their sales to China to the U.S. treasury in exchange for export licenses to ship their advanced H20 and MI308 semiconductors.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has begun issuing licenses to both companies to supply the AI chips to China, sources and officials told the BBC and the Financial Times on Sunday, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump last week.

The arrangements came two months after Trump reversed an earlier decision banning Nvidia from exporting its H20 chip to China, with the Santa Clara, Calif., firm moving to cut the deal because the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security had not issued the expected licenses.

Nvidia developed the H20 chip specifically for the Chinese market after the administration of President Joe Biden imposed sweeping export controls on advanced chips for AI in 2023. Before Trump’s ban, analysts estimated Nvidia would ship 1.5 million H20s this year, worth $23 billion.

AMD, which is also headquartered in Santa Clara, did not immediately comment on the development, but Nvidia said it always adhered to U.S. regulations when it came to exporting and warned of the risk of the U.S. losing its first-mover advantage.

“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide.”

Saying the development was without precedent, Forrester Vice President Charlie Dai said it demonstrated very elevated market access costs in a climate of rising tensions in global trade, generating “substantial financial pressure and strategic uncertainty for tech vendors.”

The deal, which takes to a new level Trump’s tactic of using trade restrictions to pressure multinationals to invest in the United States or shift manufacturing there, has attracted criticism from security experts who called the H20, in particular, a “potent accelerator” of Chinese AI that would help its military and erode the United States’ lead in the technology.

“If you have a 15% payment, it doesn’t somehow eliminate the national security issue. You either have a national security problem or you don’t,” said Deborah Elms, trade policy head at the Hinrich Foundation, a think tank.

BIS officials have also raised concerns along with 20 security experts who wrote Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking him not to authorize licenses to export the H20.

“Chips optimized for AI inference will not simply power consumer products or factory logistics; they will enable autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms and rapid advances in battlefield decision-making,” the letter said.

Nvidia earlier dismissed the claims regarding China’s military and that the H20 would help Chinese AI to leap forward.

But Liza Tobin, China expert and National Security Council member in the first Trump administration, warned against monetizing the transfer of dual-use technology.

“Being must be gloating to see Washington turn export licenses into revenue streams. What’s next — letting Lockheed Martin sell F-35s to China for a 15% commission,” she told the FT.

Japan’s shaky minority government looks poised for another setback in a crucial upper house vote this weekend, in the first national election since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office last year.

Half of the 248 seats in Japan’s Upper House of Parliament will be contested on Sunday. Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), along with its longtime junior coalition partner Komeito, need to win 50 of its 66 seats up for re-election to hold on to its majority.

But polling suggests the coalition will fail to do so, in a potential repeat of October’s disastrous election, when the LDP-Komeito coalition lost its parliamentary majority in Japan’s more powerful lower house – the worst result since briefly losing power in 2009.

The LDP has ruled Japan for almost all of the country’s post-war history.

Inflation has been a killer issue for Ishiba, with the price of rice – which has doubled since last year due to poor harvests and government policies – becoming a lightning rod for voter discontent.

In response, opposition parties have promised tax cuts and welfare spending to soften the blow of Japan’s long-running economic stagnation.

While locals face a rising cost of living, the country’s weak Yen has attracted significant numbers of foreign tourists. Concerns about over-tourism and a lack of respect for local customs have fed local discontent, which has been capitalised on by upstart populist party Sanseito.

Initially launched on YouTube by streamer Kazuya Kyoumoto, politician Sohei Kamiya, and political analyst Yuuya Watase in 2019, the party rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as it peddled conspiracy theories and far-right talking points.

In the years since, Sanseito has successfully appealed to a small but growing section of Japan’s electorate with its “Japanese First” campaign and anti-immigration stance, rallying against what it describes as a “silent invasion” of immigrants.

While foreigners still only make up a small fraction of Japan’s population, at about 3 percent, the country has taken in about a million immigrant workers over the past three years to fill jobs left vacant by its ageing population.

Kamiya, the party’s 47-year-old leader, said Sanseito is forcing the government to address growing concerns about foreigners in Japan, as it drags rhetoric once confined to the political fringe into the mainstream.

“In the past, anyone who brought up immigration would be attacked by the left. We are getting bashed too, but are also gaining support,” Kamiya told the Reuters news agency this week.

“The LDP and Komeito can’t stay silent if they want to keep their support,” Kamiya added.

While polls show Sanseito may only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs in this vote, each loss is crucial for Prime Minister Ishiba’s shaky minority government – increasingly beholden to opposition parties to cling to power.

Should the LDP’s seat share be eroded, as expected, Ishiba will almost certainly seek to broaden his coalition or strike informal deals with opposition parties.

But doing so with Sanseito could prove problematic for the LDP, which owes much of its longevity to its broad appeal and centrist image.

“If the party [LDP] goes too far right, it loses the centrists,” Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation think tank in Tokyo, told Reuters.

In a worst-case election outcome for the LDP, David Boling, director for Japan and Asian trade at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, says he believes Ishiba may be forced out of office.

“If he had an overwhelming loss, I think he would have to resign,” Boling said.

But a move such as that would unleash political turmoil, at a time when Japan is frantically seeking to secure a reprieve from Donald Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariffs before an August 1 deadline touted by the US president.

Illustrating the urgency of the issue, on Friday Ishiba took a break from campaigning to urge Washington’s chief tariff negotiator and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to continue talks with Japan’s top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa.

Following his meeting with Ishiba, Bessent said “a good deal is more important than a rushed deal.

“A mutually beneficial trade agreement between the United States and Japan remains within the realm of possibility,” he added.

Human rights activists fear the move approved by lawmakers could be used to target political opponents.

Lawmakers in Cambodia have amended the country’s constitution to allow legislation that would see citizenship stripped from those deemed to have colluded with foreign powers.

The constitutional change, which was unanimously supported by 125 politicians in the National Assembly on Friday, has drawn criticism from rights groups, which have expressed concern that it could be used to target political opponents.

The government said it will soon make use of the amendment.

Justice Minister Koeut Rith confirmed that a new citizenship revocation bill would be swiftly brought before parliament.

“If you betray the nation, the nation will not keep you,” he said before dismissing critics’ unease about the move.

The justice minister claimed that those who have not harmed the national interests will not be stripped of their citizenship, adding that they might still “face other charges”.

Before Friday’s vote, the constitution specified that Khmer citizens could lose their citizenship only “through mutual agreement”.

However, after being revised, Article 33 of the constitution now states that “receiving, losing and revoking Khmer nationality shall be determined by law”.

Amnesty International condemned the change on Friday, urging the international community to criticise Cambodia over the decision.

“As the proposal moves closer to becoming reality, anyone who speaks out against or opposes the ruling party will be at risk of having their citizenship revoked,” the NGO’s regional research director, Montse Ferrer, said.

“We are deeply concerned that the Cambodian government, given the power to strip people of their citizenship, will misuse it to crack down on its critics and make them stateless.”

Last month, Hun Sen, the influential former Cambodian prime minister, called for the constitution to be changed so Cambodians could be stripped of their citizenship.

This came after exiled opposition figures condemned the government over its ongoing border dispute with Thailand.

Former opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile to avoid being sent to prison, was among those Hun Sen accused of speaking against the interests of the nation.

Questions are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents.

The hope of finding survivors of the catastrophic flooding in the US state of Texas continues to dim a day after the death toll surpassed 100, and crews kept up the search for people missing in the aftermath.

As the storms that had battered the Hill Country for the past four days began to subside, more attention was being paid to the government’s response.

Questions are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were spending the July Fourth holiday weekend in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley”.

At public briefings, officials in hard-hit Kerr County have deflected questions about what preparations and warnings were made as forecasters warned of life-threatening conditions.

“We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said on Monday. “We’re looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete.”

Some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods. But many were caught by surprise.

Debate has also intensified over how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster.

On Monday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick promised that the state would “step up” to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments “can’t afford it”.

“There should have been sirens,” Patrick said in a Fox News interview on Monday. “Had we had sirens here along this area … it’s possible that we would have saved some lives.”

The Houston Chronicle and New York Times reported that Kerr County officials had considered installing a flood-warning system about eight years ago, but dropped the effort as too costly after failing to secure a $1m grant to fund the project.

In San Antonio and in Washington, Democrats are questioning whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency’s response to catastrophic and deadly flooding in Central Texas.

The White House and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have denied the allegations and accused them of “politicising” the disaster.

The NWS’s San Antonio office is responsible for forecasting the area’s weather, collecting climate data and warning the public about dangerous conditions. Texas officials criticised the NWS over the weekend, arguing it failed to warn the public about impending danger.

The office issued a stream of flash flood warnings on Thursday and Friday across its digital and radio services, which are used to communicate with public safety professionals, according to alert records.

The messages grew increasingly urgent in the early hours of Friday morning. The team sent an emergency text message to area mobile phones at about 1:14 am, calling it a “dangerous and life-threatening situation”.

Phones must have reception or be near a cell tower to receive that message, said Antwane Johnson, former director of the Public Alert Team for the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Mobile coverage is spotty in areas around the Guadalupe River, according to Federal Communications Commission records last updated in December.

“Even though those messages were issued, it does not mean it got to the people who needed them,” said Erik Nielsen, who studies extreme rain at Texas A&M University.

Here’s a closer look at the timeline of how the floods hit Texas and what warnings were sent when:

July 2

• The Texas Division of Emergency Management announces that the agency “activated state emergency response resources in anticipation of increased threats of flooding in parts of West and Central Texas heading into the holiday weekend”.
• In a statement, the agency urges Texans to “monitor local forecasts and avoid driving or walking into flooded areas”.

July 3

• 9:47am (14:47 GMT) – The Texas Division of Emergency Management posts warnings on social media of “the flood threat in West & Central TX”. These urge drivers to check road conditions before heading out and to turn around upon seeing water.
• 3:35pm (20:35 GMT)- The NWS Austin/San Antonio office issues a flood watch for portions of the western Hill Country.
• 11:14pm (04:14 GMT) – NWS issues a flash flood warning for Bandera County, marking the first official warning to go out.

July 4 

• 1:14am (06:14 GMT) – A flash flood watch is issued for Bandera and Kerr counties. More than a dozen flash flood warnings for counties across the affected areas will be issued by mid-morning. A mobile alert goes out to all mobile phones with reception in the area. Three more warnings are sent in the next few hours, according to the New York Times.
• 3:30am (08:30 GMT) – The level of the Guadalupe River at Hunt in Kerr County has grown from 2.3 to 5.1 metres (7.7 to 16.8 feet), according to the New York Times. With the water so high, the gauge goes offline for an estimated three hours.
• 4:35am (09:35 GMT) – The river level hits 8.8m (29 feet) in Hunt County, according to meteorologists at San Antonio TV station KSAT. The water makes its way rapidly downriver. Ten minutes later, it crests at 7m (23 feet) in Kerrville.
• 5-7am (10-12:00 GMT)- According to CBS, NWS sends out three mobile phone messages in Kerr County reading: “This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!” News reports have noted that mobile service can be patchy in the more rural parts of Kerr County, and that some residents, accustomed to seeing flood warnings, were inclined to ignore them.
• 5:15am (10:15 GMT) – NWS reports “record high” water in Hunt.
• 6:29am (11:29 GMT) – The City of Kerrville Police Department (KPD) urges all residents who live near the Guadalupe to evacuate. “This is a life threatening event,” the KPD writes in a Facebook post. “Do not wait.”
• 7am (12:00 GMT) – The KPD and firefighters begin evacuating residents. Reunification sites and shelters are set up across town, including at a church and Walmart.
• 9:30am (14:30 GMT) – The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office announces fatalities, saying it will not release details until the next of kin have been notified. “This is a catastrophic flooding event,” reads a Facebook post. “The entire county is an extremely active scene. Residents are encouraged to shelter in place and not attempt travel. Those near creeks, streams, and the Guadalupe River should immediately move to higher ground.”
• Throughout the morning and afternoon, news of fatalities trickles out. Officials announce that around 20 children are unaccounted for at Camp Mystic. The camp later confirmed that 27 campers and counsellors died.
• 3:45pm (20:45 GMT) – The river gauge begins recording again, according to the New York Times. By now, the level at Hunt has dipped back to 9 feet. Although rains continue to lash the region, the river reaches extreme heights as it moves further downstream.