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Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped off the value of Nvidia after the US chipmaker announced an independent investigation would be carried out into its chief executive’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy.

The tech firm saw its shares fall by about 6% on Monday after Jensen Huang admitted having an extramarital affair.

Nvidia’s probe came after reports that the US believed the Nvidia boss had been targeted in an espionage campaign by China.

However, China has rejected the claims, with its foreign ministry saying “allegations about Chinese spies were “entirely groundless, speculative and intended to smear and malign China”.

Nvidia said it had no reason to believe the company’s secrets or national security were compromised, but a statement by the firm’s board of directors said it would begin an investigation in “light of recent reporting that founder and chief executive Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort”.

US intelligence officials believe Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was a spy for Beijing, according to a New York Times report, external.

The report said Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to top officials in Washington last spring warning that the Nvidia boss was in a close relationship with a Chinese spy.

Alice Huang was managing director of Singaporean company Megaspeed, which has had dealings with Nvidia.

Huang admitted he was “unfaithful” to his wife and apologised for hurting her and their children. He added he was “committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security” and would cooperate with the investigation.

The Nvidia co-founder has also been requested to appear for a joint closed-door briefing for several Congressional committees next week.

Members of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee last week asked Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing on his interactions with Alice Huang, as well as Nvidia’s security protocols around espionage.

“Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC’s [China’s] access to sensitive US technology and information,” congressmen Brian Mast, John Moolenaar, and Rick Crawford wrote in a letter.

“It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which US national security has been placed at risk.”

After Nvidia’s investigation was announced, other big tech bosses, including Elon Musk, came out in support of Huang to continue leading the firm.

US President Donald Trump said the Nvidia boss was an “honourable guy”.

However, the news sparked a sell-off in Nvidia’s shares, with about $250bn (£190bn) wiped of the company’s market value.

WASHINGTON — Facing an expected impeachment resolution in Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he’s eager to litigate the policy choices that he and President Trump have made in Iran and Venezuela.

“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.

He also announced that he would hold a news conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership as momentum grows to hold Hegseth accountable for the Iran war, which many Republicans blame for the party’s midterm election wipeout.

Hegseth argued that starting the war with Iran was a “bold move” by Trump “and as the president points out so clearly — you can’t let crazy Islamists have a nuclear bomb.”

“The choice was don’t act and wish it away or take a bold move, which the president did with Midnight Hammer, which we’ve done with Epic Fury,” Hegseth said, referring to the names for the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and the larger war.

Hegseth’s public defense of the war comes after voters last week overwhelmingly showed the unpopularity of the conflict.

According to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters in the United States, about 6 in 10 said the U.S. made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, though the survey suggested the Iran war was not the top issue for most voters.

Only about one-third of voters said the war in Iran was “crucial” to shaping how they voted for Congress. That was well below the roughly half who said that about the cost of living or government corruption.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

Ali was an award-winning pioneer of animated political caricatures and Pakistan’s first court artist.

Shujaat Ali, cartoonist and founding member of Al Jazeera’s online teams, has died at the age of 54.

A pioneer of digital cartoons, Ali was credited with creating the first animated caricatures online. He also worked at a number of media outlets in his native Pakistan and abroad, receiving several awards for his work.

He died last week after suffering a heart attack as he returned home from work. He was buried in Qasimabad in Rawalpindi, where his parents are also buried.

Ali was Pakistan’s first court artist, documenting the course of a number of well-known cases using his pencil and skills.

He had recently been working with the Pakistan Air Force, his son-in-law, Waqar Saeed, told the Dawn newspaper.

Before returning to his homeland, he had worked at Al Jazeera for many years. He contributed as part of the founding team of Al Jazeera Arabic’s online services, developing cartooning to utilise the potential of the digital platform.

Ahmed El Amraoui, an editor at Aljazeera.com, said, “I had the privilege of working with Shujaat during the early days of Aljazeera.com. He was a very talented artist, but what made him stand out was how far ahead of his time he was.”

Awad Joumaa, manager of Digital Programs at Al Jazeera English, described Ali’s cartoons as “unlike anything we were used to seeing in a news organisation… He drew everyone from Arafat to George Bush to Osama bin Laden.

“I remember the pride in his voice when he told me that presidents, prime ministers and rebel fighters passing through the newsroom would always stop to look at the wall where his cartoons hung,” Joumaa said.

“We forget there is a whole tradition in journalism where a cartoon could make governments and world leaders shake. Naji al-Ali, the Palestinian cartoonist, was killed for his cartoons. That is how powerful they were. And Shujaat was an incredible voice in that genre.”

Unions slam the increase as insufficient, as the government seeks to defuse the unrest ahead of upcoming elections.

The French government has announced it will move a planned rise in the minimum wage forward by a month as it seeks to quell mass protests over the cost of living.

French ⁠Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Monday that the 1.6 percent increase in the minimum wage, originally planned for the start of 2027, will now take effect from December 1, 2026.

The move comes amid weeks of student-led demonstrations that started with calls for greater investment for the country’s underfunded schools but have morphed into broader protests and serious unrest – part of a wave across Europe.

The minimum monthly wage in France currently stands at 1,477.93 euros ($1,656); the increase raises it by 24 euros ($27) to 1,502 euros ($1,683).

“Regarding the SMIC [minimum wage], we have decided two things: to bring forward the increase to 1 December as opposed to 1 January, and to raise this increase to 1.6 per cent,” said Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou at a press conference.

This increase represents “the second-largest rise in 20 years; it should not be underestimated”, Lecornu told reporters, stressing that this boost is “not merely symbolic”.

“This increase has been carefully planned to ensure it does not lead to job losses,” the PM said.

The last rise came in June, when inflation levels triggered a 35-euro ($39) hike.

Despite the accelerated increases, the minimum wage still falls short of union demands. The CFDT, France’s largest union, has called for a 100-euro ($112) increase, while the left-wing CGT union is demanding a 10 percent rise, equivalent to around 150 euros ($168) a month.

CFDT head Marylise Leon said the increase was “insufficient”. ⁠CGT head Sophie Binet described it as “crumbs”.

Election tension

The government is concerned about mounting social tensions five months before presidential elections.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner in the polls. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon of the France Unbowed party, who has been accused of encouraging the unrest, unveiled his programme on Saturday to some 17,000 supporters.

He pledged to boost the economy by capitalising on consumer spending and “through billions [of euros] that already exist”, adding that these savings “must be channelled towards our country’s environmental and social needs”.

A California robotics company called Machina has been issued a $9 million award for a containerized system to robotically mass-produce Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) airframes close to the point of need. As TWZ has frequently noted, LUCAS drones, and one-way attack weapons like them, are playing an increasing role in U.S. combat operations and military planning.

The award to Machina is the latest example of the Pentagon’s push to use containerized 3D printing and other advanced fabricating systems closer to the front lines to shorten supply chains that could get severely degraded in a major conflict. Decentralizing production of drones also allows units to be more flexible and tailor their own production to their specific needs at any given moment. For instance, a unit can produce variations of multiple designs that are best suited to an upcoming mission instead of having to use whatever they are shipped.

This 18-month contract from the Defense Department’s Organic Industrial Base Modernization Challenge calls for Machina to prove it can build LUCAS drones at deployed locations with its RoboCraftsman system, Ed Mehr, founder and CEO of Machina, told TWZ Friday afternoon. A decision on producing them at scale in many other locales will come later.

Creating containerized production of drones and components using 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing techniques at the forward edge is a burgeoning industry. The Machina system is one of a rapidly growing number of capabilities built around this concept, although many focus on smaller drones.

RoboCraftsman was built to manufacture where it’s needed. It folds & ships in 2 ISO 668 containers.

Building Drones Near The Point Of Need

Initially, the plan calls for Machina to set up so-called “Edge Factories” at two locations in the continental United States, said Mehr. However, the ultimate goal is to be able to deploy them to forward locations in countries like Kuwait.

The Edge Factories consist of the company’s containerized RoboCraftsman manufacturing cells, Mehr told us. A 20-foot by 36-foot system that weighs 120,000 pounds fully installed, it is essentially two robotic arms that form the airframe out of metal using reductive manufacturing based on a variety of requirements. Payload weight, range and other factors are punched into a software system designed by the nTop company and the robotic arms then cut the metal into the desired form factor based on the required specifications.

Machina uses metal instead of composites that many drones are made out of because “not only it is cheaper, it is more widely available and now can be processed with an automated process like ours versus composites, which are all done by hand layup,” Mehr explained.

The following Machina video shows how the RoboCraftsman system, guided by the inputs, forms the metal to craft the airframe.

Metal Drone Skins, Robotic Forming & the Future of Defense Manufacturing | Machina is the Factory

This avoids having to use equipment like dies and rolls, dramatically speeding the process and allowing production at scale, Mehr stated.

“Basically, the agentic AI agents can explore and generate whole different versions of an airframe with different parameters,” Mehr proffered. “Because now it’s parameterized, you can just change the parameters and you get another airframe, and then evaluate if that airframe is good for the requirement they want.”

This way, the RoboCraftsman system “can easily generate 20, 30, 40, 50 different designs just in software, and then put it through simulations to figure out which one actually meets the requirement for that,” the Machina CEO added.

“The concept is that we’re going to bring this capability closer to the point of need, so that you can build a different requirement for let’s say PACOM versus U.S. CENTCOM versus in Ukraine,” Mehr said. “They can easily switch and build a drone that they need.”

Under this contract, each Edge Factory will consist of one or two RoboCraftsman cells and each cell can make a LUCAS airframe in two to five days, depending on the size, Mehr said. A scaled deployment of 10 or more cells would take place under a new contract, he added.

The systems can make “anywhere from a one-off all the way to the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands,” Mehr said. It all depends on the number of RoboCraftsman systems that are ordered.

At the moment, Mehr envisions that each 12-foot airframe will cost “somewhere around $15,000 to $40,000,” depending on the complexity. This range is a relatively common price point for Russian Shahed-136 variants and U.S. knockoffs under the LUCAS program.

The company has already produced a six-foot, half-scale airframe that was recently tested at Edwards Air Force Base, said Mehr. However, that initial test proved problematic.

“The first design had some challenges with crosswind mitigation,” Mehr told us. “Since then, we have moved the location of the engine slightly to enable better crosswind mitigation, and now we’re running again. And the beauty is for us to go from one design to the next is just like a couple of months, a maximum of three months. Like we can just then try it again.”

Mehr said that Machina is not working with SpektreWorks, which designed and made the LUCAS drones previously supplied to the U.S. military and already used in combat. SpektreWorks declined to comment.

The Edge Factory contract is one of several Machina has been awarded to use these systems to help build and repair military hardware.

In July, Machina was issued a qualification contract by Lockheed Martin to produce fuel tanks for AGM-158 Joint Air-To-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM).

That plan called for the creation of a 200,000-square-foot facility “designed to house up to 50 RoboCraftsman cells and support high-rate production of mission-critical metal structures for defense programs including JASSM,” according to a media release at the time. “By integrating forming, machining, welding, and assembly under one roof, Machina Factory 3 compresses production timelines from months to days.”

“Lockheed Martin Ventures invested in Machina Labs for its powerful combination of speed, flexibility, and scalability, and our teams have worked closely to transition key capabilities to production,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Ventures. “Machina’s work advances capacity, reduces risk, and helps ensure we can deliver mission-critical capabilities at scale. We congratulate Machina on this milestone as a supplier, which further strengthens an innovative and resilient American Defense Industrial Base.”

Earlier this year, a Machina RoboCraftsman platform helped repair a C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet that was damaged during a tornado, Mehr told us.

The system “fabricated a first-of-its-kind replacement part for the damaged C-17 without the need for dedicated tooling,” the company noted. “Machina deployed a RoboCraftsman at the RSO [Rapid Sustainment Office], where production for a left nose panel began in March 2026 and was completed in May 2026. The aircraft returned to flight on July 30, 2026 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.”

We asked the Pentagon for information about why they selected Machina and their metrics for success, but we have not heard back yet.

Pentagon Pushing For Deployable Manufacturing

The U.S. military has been pushing for several years for the employment of mobile additive and other forms of advanced manufacturing “to produce unmanned aircraft components in remote or austere environments and reduce dependence on traditional supply chains,” the Air Force’s innovation arm, AFWERX, noted last month.

The idea is to place these systems in a wide array of locations, produce the quantity needed and tailor the airframe for the mission.

In one such case, the Air National Guard and Air Force Special Operations Command partnered with the San Diego-based Firestorm company in 2023 “to create an expeditionary assembly unit capable of mass-producing unmanned aerial systems,” according to the Pentagon.

The result was called an Expeditionary Manufacturing Cell or xCell.

“It’s basically an expeditionary 3D printer,” Master Sgt. Richard Stone, 194th Air Support Operations Group innovation officer, explained at the time. “The basis of the technology is … it’s about the size of a [shipping container] and it can print out, for this specific use case, drones.”

“Inside this [shipping container], it’ll print out all the components,” said Stone “But then you have what’s called RPA, which is robotic process [automation.]”

The xCell “prints the individual pieces and then uses RPA to assemble the major components of the drone,” the Pentagon added.

“The user can take these components and, almost like Legos, put them together,” said Stone. “So if you want a longer drone with a specific payload, you can take those components and put them together and the computer will tell you, ‘This is where the wings go and this is where the center of gravity should be.”

The company went on to produce Tempest drones that were flying with 3rd Littoral Combat Team, 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, during Exercise Balikatan 2026 at Cagayan North International Airport in the Philippines, AFWERX noted.

Our own Jamie Hunter recently interviewed Craig Anders, senior vice president of growth at Aevex, about the company’s ForgeX containerized 3D drone printing system.

The ForgeX system “represents being able to take the fight further forward, print drones on demand, print them out towards the front of the lines, cut down the logistics trail, and absolutely revolutionize the battlefield,” said Anders. 

The goal is to be “able to kick these planes out the door on short timelines to go out and get the missions done, work within the local area to make sure that the mission can be accomplished by any means necessary,” he added.

Anders said the ForgeX printers fabricate three types of drones, the Vandal, Onyx and Raker. He added that the system can produce up to 880 a year.

AEVEX’s ForgeX containerized 3D printed drone mini factory

Growing U.S. Reliance On LUCAS

The U.S. military first announced it had begun fielding LUCAS, which was reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in December 2025. This came just months after TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should start acquiring Shahed-136 clones in large volumes. LUCAS made its official combat debut in the opening phases of major combat operations against Iran earlier this year. The pusher-propeller, combustion-engine-powered kamikaze drones were first launched from the ground, a U.S. official told us at the time. They can also be fired from ships. In March, CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper told us the LUCAS drones were “indispensable.”

The following video shows Cooper answering our question about the LUCAS drones.

Now the Army is looking to expand the use of these weapons to the Pacific, Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, head of the 7th Infantry Division, told us during the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) conference last month.

“So we see that playing a key role in order to be able to achieve that effect at mass, … [and] in an affordable manner, while also being able potentially to preserve something that’s more exquisite for something that requires an exquisite munition.”

“So as we start modeling out what it looks like to be able to penetrate a portion of the anti-access/area denial network in support of the joint task force in the PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] area of operations, we started looking at, well, how do I bend – how do I achieve mass at a cost curve?” the 7th Infantry and MDC-PAC commander explained. “What effect am I really trying to achieve on a system in order to provide that window of opportunity for that joint force commander?”

“So maybe I don’t necessarily need to sink a ship, but if I take out certain systems on that vessel, well then it creates this temporal window opportunity,” he continued. “Then that joint force commander can surge in that carrier strike group or bomber task force.”

While the exact details of the LUCAS program requirements have been hard to pin down, it’s likely that multiple drone types from multiple manufacturers could become part of the program as time goes on. Ed Mehr gave us an idea of what that could look like:

“Shahed clearly inspired LUCAS, which stands for Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System. But we shouldn’t confuse the inspiration with the destination. The future isn’t about mass-producing replicas of one drone. Different theaters and missions demand different performance, and therefore different designs. That could mean a LUCAS-style drone or a wide variety of Group 2 and Group 3 unmanned aircraft. The real breakthrough is making that diversity affordable. We’re developing flexible manufacturing technologies that can produce many different designs cost-effectively using one of the cheapest and most proven aerospace materials: sheet metal. It’s what aircraft have been built from for generations. We’re bringing it into an era where manufacturing can adapt as quickly as the mission.”

We won’t know how the Machina contract ultimately pans out until sometime in mid-2028. Regardless, given the importance of both the LUCAS drones and deployable, additive and advanced manufacturing are becoming, this is likely a first step in what could be a whole new logistics concept that could underpin a significant portion of the growing LUCAS program.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

UCLA coach Bob Chesney dismisses the soap opera.

Forget about the weekly Associated Press top 25 poll. Forget about the College Football Playoff rankings. Forget about everything until the confetti is swept away after all the conference championship games are played. Forget about all of it until Selection Sunday when your ranking finally counts and determines your bowl fate.

“We don’t watch,” Chesney told reporters when asked about the College Football Playoff rankings after his team’s 34-20 statement win at Minnesota on Saturday.

“I told our guys, don’t worry about watching this four-week drama series. That’s gonna be this show that they’re gonna put out there. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to focus on getting the work and being the best that we possibly can be. No way slighted, no way honored. Just totally neutral on whatever they might say. We gotta win our football games.”

Sure, it’s essential that you all do that. Focusing on the process has worked for generations in Westwood.

But the rest of us can ask the obvious question: Why isn’t UCLA ranked higher?

The Bruins moved up from No. 5 to No. 4 in the latest Associated Press top 25 poll Sunday. They were No. 8 in the first College Football Playoff rankings revealed last week and are sure to move up at least a little bit when the next round is revealed Tuesday as others lost and the Bruins tacked on a quality Big Ten road win.

But it’s unlikely to be a leap up and it’s definitely not going to be No. 1, no matter how passionately Bill Plaschke argues that’s where the mighty Bruins belong.

A weak schedule generally has been the excuse for an undefeated Power Four team sitting on the middle to lower end of the top 10 of the polls this late in the season.

The Bruins improved to 9-0 with their win at Minnesota, but their strength of schedule ranks No. 67 nationally, according to ESPN analytics.

But then someone needs to explain Utah.

The Utes, who are led by a first-year coach just like the Bruins, are the only other undefeated team in the country and improved to 9-0 after a 28-20 win over No. 9 BYU on Saturday.

They were ranked No. 3 in the first College Football Playoff rankings without the benefit of that win over the Cougars and moved up to No. 2 in the AP poll with that rivalry victory in hand.

However, that BYU win is a bit of an outlier. The Utes’ strength of schedule ranks No. 81 nationally, according to ESPN analytics, 14 spots below UCLA.

UCLA linebacker Sammy Omosigho (10) celebrates earn a defensive against Minnesota Saturday in Minneapolis.

(Abbie Parr / Associated Press)

At this point, critics typically cite the eye test. UCLA lost its starting quarterback to a season-ending injury and its offense and defense haven’t performed well at the same time most of this season. The run game looked unbeatable against weaker non-conference opponents and then slowed down significantly against Big Ten defenses. The Bruins didn’t look or feel dominant.

Chesney has noted the coaches have had a lot of mistakes to address after every win this season. And the coaching staff has dialed back on the creativity during some games that seemed to be in hand, but that allowed the Bruins to stun Minnesota with back-to-back 75-yard touchdown passes they never previously saw on tape.

And whether observers choose to believe it, his team has consistently exceeded expectations all season.

UCLA improved to 9-0 against the spread after entering the Minnesota game as a 3.5-point road favorite, according to Yahoo! Sports.

Even the bettors in Las Vegas and around the country are sleeping on the Bruins, but they probably won’t for much longer.

The final reason that fans haven’t packed the Rose Bowl and poll voters have been more skeptical of UCLA’s success than they have of other teams is probably because it’s been a long time since anyone could believe the Bruins were this good.

UCLA football has, during the last 25 years, trained fans and national audiences to expect a bit of a letdown when the calendar turns to November.

The Bruins have never won more than 10 games in a season in school history. The last time UCLA was ranked No. 4 in the AP poll was the 2001 season. The team’s final record that year was 7-4 overall and 4-4 in the Pac-12.

But it is getting harder for cynics to deny this year’s UCLA team is, in fact, for real.

Minnesota was a team that is tough to beat at home, has a record of keeping pace with the top Big Ten teams and embraces an ethos very similar to Chesney’s Bruins. UCLA’s decisive win over the Golden Gophers helped, as did Oregon’s win over Ohio State.

UCLA will be favored to win at home against Illinois on Friday and at Michigan Nov. 21 before what could be a massively important Thanksgiving week rivalry game against No. 20 USC at the Rose Bowl.

Chesney has his team focused on the first task, completing a strong week of practice while preparing to play the Illini. The Bruins are sticking to the same daily routine he has been preaching since January.

And regardless of whether everyone has hopped on the UCLA bandwagon, the Bruins are confident they everyone will eventually catch up.

“I just feel like the whole team is just keeping the belief and the faith that we could beat anybody that we play against,” UCLA linebacker Jalen Woods said.

A secret passing attack

Chesney didn’t want to answer the question.

He was asked about Ty Dieffenbach’s back-to-back 75-yard touchdown passes to Aidan Mizell after a win over Minnesota and responded with a bit of verbal dancing.

“Yeah, just I don’t want to get into it too much, to be honest with you, but there were some things we were doing early that were setting up this next thing that we could do, and that’s ultimately what we felt like we saw, and we were able to attack it just a little bit,” Chesney said.

He added a bit more description, but the coach generally made it clear that his staff saw some things on tape, exploited them on game and absolutely did not want to give away any other hints to future opponents.

The Bruins unveiled a previously dormant passing attack that shredded the Golden Gophers’ secondary and Dieffenbach’s ability to pass the ball is impossible to hide at this point.

He said he connected on deep passes with Mizell during preseason camp and they’ve continued to work on their connection this season, making it pretty natural to pick apart gaps in the Minnesota defense on Saturday.

They both took great pride in delivering daggers that seemed to crush Minnesota’s spirit.

“We hit a lull for a little bit there late in the second quarter and in the start of the second half. So it felt really good to do that and just hit some explosive plays,” Dieffenbach said.

“It felt great. I was tweaking out,” Mizell said. “I don’t really remember the second one, but, yeah, it was an amazing feeling.”

Mizell said Dieffenbach has steadily improved since taking over the starting job and their connection was strong all week in practice.

“He’s more confident, he’s more consistent in practice,” Mizell said. “I feel like how we practice is how we play. And we knew the way we practiced this week it was over with.”

Dodd sets water polo record

UCLA junior Ryder Dodd scored 12 goals during the No. 3 Bruins’ 19-9 win over No. 7 UC San Diego on Saturday at Spieker Aquatics Center, shattering the school and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation single-game goals records.

Dodd previously held a share of the school record with eight goals. The previous conference record was 10.

“Obviously, it felt really good. I think coming off of last weekend where physically and mentally I don’t think I played my best at all,” Dodd said. “Coming off a good week of training, I think that led me to have a good game, but also the teammates doing a good job of pulling each other and pulling the other guys to them, making it really easy on me.”

Bruins on deck

Here is this week’s UCLA athletics schedule. All Times are PST.

Wednesday

Men’s basketball vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 6 p.m.

Thursday

Swimming and diving at Trojan Diving Invite, All Day

Women’s volleyball vs. Washington, 11 a.m.

Women’s basketball vs. Arizona, 7:30 p.m.

Friday

Swimming and diving at Trojan Diving Invite, All Day

Cross country at NCAA regional, TBA

Football vs. Illinois, 6 p.m.

Saturday

Swimming and diving at Trojan Diving Invite, All Day

Men’s water polo vs. USC, 1 p.m.

Women’s volleyball vs. Oregon, 2 p.m.

Sunday

Women’s basketball vs. Princeton (National title banner to be raised), 3 p.m.

In case you missed it

UCLA moves up to No. 4 in latest AP top 25 poll; USC climbs to No. 15

Plaschke: Undefeated UCLA proves why it should be ranked No. 1

Bob Chesney’s Bruins keep rolling as No. 8 UCLA earns statement win at Minnesota

Nikola Kusturica shines in No. 22 UCLA’s blowout victory over North Florida

UCLA focuses on winning turnover battle, edge in trenches during key Minnesota matchup

Sienna Betts helps lead No. 11 UCLA women to victory over UC Irvine

UCLA is No. 8 in the first College Football Playoff rankings; USC is No. 20

No. 22 UCLA men open season with big upset of No. 5 Arizona

No. 11 UCLA women begin their NCAA title defense with win over Lehigh

Swanson: Championship blueprint: Why Cori Close’s people-first approach is what college sports needs

UCLA Unlocked: Mick Cronin rebuilt roster with an eye on defense

Have something Bruin?

Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email newsletters editor Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Netanyahu and Zini’s interference claims lack evidence, according to law enforcement officials quoted by Haaretz.

Israel’s Shin Bet has failed to find evidence of foreign interference in last month’s elections, despite claims from the domestic security agency’s chief, David Zini, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the newspaper Haaretz has reported.

Two senior Israeli law enforcement officials said that the investigation, which is still ongoing, has found no evidence that several hundred thousand shekels had been transferred from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to Arab-led parties in Israel, Haaretz reported on Monday.

There were no transfers from Qatar or any other Arab country being investigated. That’s despite allegations from Netanyahu’s party, Likud, that money had been transferred to boost turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, without the party providing any tangible evidence to support its claims.

The allegations continue a long-running anti-Qatar campaign in Israel that predates the election. Haaretz has previously reported that a secret campaign involving Israeli influence expets and political advisers targeted Qatar in the weeks after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks.

Qatar has denied all the allegations of interference, and called them unsubstantiated.

The latest claims from Zini and Netanyahu intensified in the wake of the strong electoral performance by the parties, led by Palestinian citizens of Israel, in the October 27 elections. Their 19 seats, confirmed by Israel’s election authorities, mean that Jewish parties opposed to Netanyahu have enough seats in parliament to force the prime minister out, if they are willing to work with the Arab-led parties.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has tasked opposition politician Gadi Eisenkot with making the first attempt to form a government, possibly spelling the end of Netanyahu’s time as prime minister.

‘Not a criminal matter’

“[It is] certainly not a security matter, and it is highly doubtful that it is even a criminal one,” one of the officials quoted by Haaretz said.

“All there is is intelligence information without any real substantiation,” another quote attributed to one of the officials said.

Dozens of people have been questioned, but no evidence has so far been found of money being transferred. Haaretz also found that major fuel companies in Israel found no unusual activity involving fuel cards, undermining the allegation that Arab voters had been bribed with fuel cards in exchange for their votes.

Zini, who was selected by Netanyahu to lead Shin Bet last year and is regarded as an ally of the Israeli leader, has sought to investigate several leading politicians who are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Netanyahu also questioned why Ahmad Tibi, a leading Arab politician in Israel, visited Qatar a few days ahead of the election.

Tibi explained that his trip to Doha was to appear on Al Jazeera.

Qatar has denied the unsubstantiated allegations of interference or funding of any activities aimed at influencing the Israeli election results.

“We reject the accusations made by certain Israeli politicians and their contacts in the media, who have launched yet another disinformation campaign aiming to drag Qatar into Israeli political disputes following this week’s elections,” Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Majed al-Ansari said in a social media post on October 29.

Israel’s attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara said on Sunday that she had seen no evidence from the investigation of anything that would have influenced the election results “or substantiate a claim of influence that could lead to a change in the election results”.

Israeli police and Shin Bet are expected to submit their assessments to Baharav-Miara in the next few days, the report said.

France has opened an investigation and accused Iran of being behind recent cyberattacks targeting refrigeration units in supermarkets.

French authorities said on Monday that it is probing a cyber unit affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over the attacks, which caused fires and food waste.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that the Iranian ambassador had been summoned and that sanctions would be brought against Iran at a “European level”.

The Paris prosecutor’s ⁠office said ⁠it has requested international arrest warrants against ⁠the leader ⁠of Shahid Kaveh, ⁠an offensive cyber unit affiliated with the Revolutionary ‌Guards, and his two ‌deputies.

More to come…

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. I’m Eric Sondheimer. Remember when Kobe Bryant said, “I’m a girl dad” in 2018? If only he could see how far everyone has come. JSerra’s unbeaten flag football team, led by sophomore Tessa Russell and many others, is an example. Let’s explain.

The rise of a phenom

Standout JSerra receiver Tessa Russell.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

In 2018, when Hall of Fame basketball player Kobe Bryant said, “I’m a girl dad,” it helped ignite a movement that continues today. Female athletes are gaining attention aided by dads who were great athletes themselves.

Tessa Russell, the daughter of former NFL safety Brian Russell, is on a journey in flag football that could take her to unprecedented success in a high school sport that is only four years old as an official sport in the Southern Section.

There are few better receivers in the nation.

“I’d say nobody,” JSerra coach Brian Ong said. “I think it’s her dedication. When you are dedicated to something and practice it over and over and you constantly challenge yourself, it appears to look easy.”

Russell has spent countless hours catching passes under the watchful eyes of her father. She started playing flag football with boys in a youth league at 8, about the time of Bryant’s comment.

“I definitely heard a lot about how much Kobe Bryant put into women’s sports and how much he tried to make it something we could do as we got older,” Tessa said. “And I’m really grateful he was able to make it bigger for us and make it at a bigger stage.

“I think it was really important, because looking where we are today, I think it’s been such a big improvement from then to now. Flag football is on a big stage, too, and hopefully it will keep growing as the Olympics come here.”

She also had 10 interceptions for a 28-0 JSerra team that ended its season Saturday with another Southern Section championship and a 56-game winning streak. The Lions defeated Newport Harbor 40-14.

Imagine what she might look like over two more years of high school flag football. She’s hoping she can inspire others to join the sport and help teach lessons to younger girls.

“It’s definitely cool to see the sport grow,” she said.

Damir Peraza (50) starts the Sun Valley Poly victory celebration after 20-0 Division I playoff win over Marshall.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

The opening week of playoff action had only three No. 1 seeds out of 14 divisions go down to defeat in the Southern Section and none in the four City Section divisions. In other words, most of the favorites won, which should lead to great quarterfinal games Friday.

One of the major City upsets was No. 12-seeded Sun Valley Poly defeating No. 5 Marshall 20-0 behind King Exusdus’ 174 yards rushing. Here’s the report.

The City Open Division playoffs begin, with No. 1 Carson a huge favorite. The best opening matchup could be No. 3 Cleveland hosting No. 6 Crenshaw in a rematch of a nonleague game won by Cleveland.

The Southern Section Division 1 playoffs begin, with Mater Dei playing Corona Centennial at Santa Ana Stadium in another rematch that the Monarchs won earlier this season.

The most drama of the week occurred at Chaparral, where the death of 16-year-old linebacker Connor Rios on Wednesday tested coaches, players, friends and family members. They were in mourning and trying to figure out how to honor Rios. Chaparral decided to play its Division 2 playoff game against Orange and advanced.

Quarterback Ryan Rakowski runs for a first down during Palos Verdes’ 38-20 playoff win over Gardena Serra on Nov. 6, 2026.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

One of the best Division 2 games on Friday is another rematch matching Bay League rivals Palos Verdes and Inglewood. Palos Verdes opened with a win over Gardena Serra. Here’s the report. Inglewood advanced by eliminating unbeaten Huntington Beach.

Here’s a look at top individual performances from the opening week of playoff action.

Here’s a look at possible game changers during the playoffs.

Here’s this week’s playoff schedule.

QBs are being loaned

San Pedro quarterback Seth Solorio.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

Only one player gets to play quarterback, which leads to the backups looking for more playing time at other schools. It happens every year, and the schools that end up starting sophomores or taking in transfers can really see an exodus of backups.

St. John Bosco and Mater Dei have successful programs, and it’s been tough to keep their backups from leaving.

Among the former Mater Dei quarterbacks who left are Trevor Scott (Long Beach Poly), Furian Inferrera (Mission Hills), Reagan Toki (Orange Lutheran) and Ayden Edwards (Tustin).

Former St. John Bosco quarterbacks include Seth Solorio (San Pedro), Brodie Scheinberg (Newbury Park) and Gharam Lunzer (Valley Christian).

If you take a look who’s starting on the freshman and JV teams, it’s tough to keep them waiting their turn on varsity.

San Juan Hills has two former San Clemente quarterbacks in Eiler King and Preston Getz.

Two former Sierra Canyon quarterbacks, Kris Carranza and Delvin Young, are starting at Agoura and Birmingham, respectively.

Chaparral’s Dane Weber was a roadblock, so Alexander Doucette (Etiwanda), Trent Lux (Great Oak) and Julian Gallardo (Winchester Liberty) are at other schools.

Two former Sherman Oaks Notre Dame quarterbacks, Cooper Berry and Donovan Shirley, have been starting at Cathedral and Salesian, respectively. Two former Chaminade quarterbacks, Cameron Pooley and Tahj Skinner, are at Mater Dei and Notre Dame.

It’s one of the toughest challenges for coaches convincing backups to stick around because they are one injury away from playing, but few are willing to stick out, which is why one solution is to play multiple quarterbacks.

The ringer at Cleveland

Shiloh Wickliffe was a late edition to Cleveland’s unbeaten football team.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Cleveland is 10-0 and seeded No. 3 in the City Section Open Division playoffs. And let’s just say Shiloh Wickliffe deciding to come out for the football team in the middle of the season was great timing.

Calll him Cleveland’s ringer. He was a second baseman for the baseball team but had played football his freshman year at Sierra Canyon. His arrival has been big for the Cavaliers. Here’s the report.

Girls volleyball

Mater Dei players celebrate after beating Sierra Canyon in four sets to win the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship on Nov. 7, 2026.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

It was No. 1 vs. No. 2 to decide the Southern Section Division 1 girls’ volleyball championship, and Mater Dei prevailed over Sierra Canyon in four games.

Here’s the report.

Making its fourth finals appearance in five seasons, Taft defeated West Valley League rival Cleveland in five thrilling sets at Birmingham High to claim the City Section Open Division championship — its seventh City title under coach Arman Mercado since he took over the program in 2000.

Here are the pairings for the Southern California regionals that begin this week.

Sophomore wins City title

Harbor Teacher sophomore Layla Phillips watches her tee shot soar down the fairway at the CIF City Section Championships at Balboa Golf Course in Encino on Nov. 5, 2026.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

Sophomore Layla Phillips of Harbor Teacher defended her City Section individual golf championship last week. Granada Hills won the team title.

Here’s the report.

Water polo

Orange County powers Newport Harbor and JSerra have advanced to Saturday’s Southern Section Open Division finals.

In the semifinals, Newport Harbor defeated Oaks Christian 13-8. JSerra defeated Harvard-Westlake 11.

The finals will be at Mt. SAC.

Notes . . .

Cherif Millogo of St. Francis has committed to Kentucky.

(Craig Weston)

Cherif Millogo, a 7-foot-5 senior at St. Francis, has committed to Kentucky….

Addison Archer, the state girls’ basketball freshman player of the year last season by CalHiSports.com when she played for Rancho Christian, will be eligible at Mater Dei as a sit-out period transfer student. Mater Dei has also been waiting to see if Ontario Christian transfer Tatianna Griffin becomes eligible. She has been “under review” for weeks in the Southern Section transfer portal. Griffin is one of the top juniors in the state…

Girls basketball standout Charis Rainey of Windward has committed to USC…

Junior pitcher Steven Genovese III of Valencia has committed to UC Santa Barbara….

Ron Jones, who guided Pasadena to a Southern Section football title in 2024, has been dismissed as head coach after the team was forced to discontinue this season because of lack of players….

Ken Holsenbeck has resigned as football coach at Canyon Country Canyon after five years as head coach….

Mario Morales has stepped down as football coach at Lakewood….

Coley Candaele is stepping down as football coach at Vista Murrieta after his second stint as head coach. He’s been at Vista Murrieta for 32 years, 17 in football. Alex Rosenblum, who joined the staff this year from Murrieta Valley, is expected to be a candidate to be promoted….

Lance Neal has retired as football coach at Century….

Jarid Allchin has resigned as football coach at Santa Ana….

Frank Sanchez, who was head baseball coach at Hart, an assistant coach for USC’s 1995 national championship team and head coach at Pepperdine, died on Nov. 4. He was 73….

Loyola High, the all-boys school near downtown Los Angeles, has added a 13th sport to its program: wrestling….

After concerns from schools whether baseball and football fields would be reseeded, a Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman said, “The District is committed to providing safe, well-maintained athletic facilities for students, families, and the community. Reseeding of LAUSD baseball and football fields is underway. At some campuses, the work began about a month later than planned. The District’s Maintenance and Operations teams maintain the fields and carry out the reseeding.”

From the archives: Steven Perez

Former Banning safety Steven Perez in 2024 when he was a 16-year-old senior the first month of the season.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Former Wilmington Banning football standout Steven Perez has become a star in his freshman season at Wyoming.

After redshirting last season, Perez ranks second on the team in solo tackles with 28 and 54 overall playing linebacker. He’s grown to 6 feet 1, 231 pounds.

At Banning, he could play any position, including quarterback. He was All-City and expected to keep getting better because of his work ethic and the fact he played the first month of his senior year at the age of 16.

Here’s a profile of Perez and his versatility in 2024.

Here’s an interview from 2024.

Recommendations

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on how two 0-10 teams made the City Section football playoffs.

From FrontOffice, a story on the changing roles for high school athletic directors.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story of a football hazing incident has rocked a Northern California school.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latsondheimer.

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Moyale, Kenya – When Hawa Hassan fled her home in Ethiopia’s Moyale area, she left almost everything behind. Her house was burned during the violence, she said. But one memory has stayed with her: a 13-year-old girl shot while sitting near a wall.

Hassan said the girl had not touched a flag, a detail she raised while describing tensions over flag displays in the disputed border area. Her account of the killing could not be independently verified.

The journey into Kenya was brutal. Hassan told Al Jazeera that some women gave birth while fleeing, and that families arrived without food, cooking utensils or bedding. Newborn babies were sleeping on bare floors. Diarrhoea was spreading, while families feared malaria as mosquitoes multiplied.

For many, crossing the border has meant escaping gunfire only to face another struggle: finding food and shelter. The arrivals are also stretching Kenyan communities. Families that opened their homes are sharing scarce supplies, even as some worry the violence could reach their own neighbourhoods.

A crisis growing by the day

A government-led assessment conducted on October 29 and 30 estimated that 35,950 people had been displaced as of October 24. About 25,000 were staying with host families and nearly 11,000 in temporary displacement sites.

The number has since risen. During a meeting, Kenya Red Cross regional head Malik Adan said the number of people displaced by the conflict had increased from an estimated 36,000 to more than 50,000. The figure includes people living in temporary settlements as well as those staying with relatives and host families.

The overall number of displaced people has yet to be independently established, and no final figure has been confirmed.

The assessment covered 758 households and involved government authorities, United Nations agencies, the Kenya Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations. The figures reflect different reporting periods.

The fighting is rooted in a long-standing dispute over land and administrative control between Ethiopia’s Oromia and Somali regional administrations. Tensions escalated around October 18 over the raising of the Somali regional flag in the disputed Moyale area, reflecting competing claims over territory and authority.

For those arriving in Kenya, the politics are secondary to the immediate question of where they will sleep and what they will feed their children.

Aid stretched on both sides

Mwasaru Mercy, Kenya’s acting commissioner for refugee affairs, told Al Jazeera that a multi-agency government team had been deployed to Moyale. The Department of Refugee Services is coordinating with local authorities and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

But gunfire could still be heard, Mercy said, raising fears of further displacement. Many arrivals need food, shelter, bedding and mosquito nets.

“There are no contingency food stocks specifically for this incident because it happened abruptly,” Mercy said.

Authorities are trying to mobilise humanitarian organisations and donors. A refugee camp has not been established because the security situation must improve first. The government is working with UNHCR to register arrivals and assess their needs.

Those affected include Ethiopians fleeing violence, traders, and Kenyans forced from their homes by stray ammunition, Mercy said.

Fatima Mohammed Cole, UNHCR’s representative in Kenya, said many arrivals were women and children. Families are spread across several locations, including six sites hosting Ethiopians. They need shelter, food and healthcare, while crowded conditions raise concerns about the spread of disease.

Cole said gunfire was still being heard in Moyale and appealed for a ceasefire that would allow families to return home.

The response is also under way inside Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Red Cross Society said it had provided emergency shelter and household items worth about 30 million Ethiopian birr ($182,970) to 1,000 households displaced from Moyale town and surrounding areas.

The supplies included 2,000 tarpaulins, blankets and sleeping mats, as well as dignity kits, jerrycans, kitchen sets, soap and solar lamps. Distribution was under way, the organisation said. The operation is separate from assistance in Kenya.

Host communities under pressure

In Kenya, residents who initially opened their doors are finding it harder to keep going.

Abdi Maalim, a member of the Moyale Cross-Border Peace Committee, told Al Jazeera that some Kenyan families had moved further inland after bullets and heavy weapons landed close to their homes. He called for more border patrols to prevent armed groups from crossing into Kenya.

Families that once cooked for five or six people are now feeding 20 or 30.

Moyale’s role as a trading point between Kenya and Ethiopia has added to the strain. Maalim said trucks carrying goods between Mombasa and Addis Ababa had been stranded near the border for almost two weeks. Kenyan trucks were also stuck in Ethiopia, and businesses in Moyale had slowed sharply.

Bank closures have disrupted the circulation of the Ethiopian birr. Traders reported price rises of about 20 percent as supplies became harder to move.

Fears of wider instability

Security analyst Dr Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad told Al Jazeera that the clashes had grown beyond a local dispute over territory, exposing deeper ethnic divisions and political competition between Ethiopia’s regional administrations.

He said perceptions of Oromo expansionism and allegations of federal government support for Oromia’s regional leadership risked deepening mistrust. He warned that armed fighters crossing the border, stray bullets and further displacement made this a Kenyan security concern as well as a refugee emergency.

Kenya’s Inspector General of Police, Douglas Kanja, said additional officers would be deployed along the border to strengthen security. During a visit to Moyale on November 5, he said Kenya was engaging Ethiopia’s federal government to help end the conflict.

Kanja said about 10,000 people were staying in temporary shelters and public institutions, while others had been taken in by host families. He said one Kenyan had died after being hit by a stray bullet, while a police report indicated that an Ethiopian man had also died from gunshot wounds sustained in Kenya.

The 10,000 figure refers to people in temporary shelters and public institutions, not the total number displaced. It is not directly comparable with the Red Cross estimate of more than 50,000, which includes people staying with host families.

Hassan wants to return home, but only when it is safe. Until then, she and thousands of others depend on host communities and humanitarian agencies. The longer the fighting continues, the harder it will be for those communities to keep absorbing the cost.

Maalim said residents had already stretched their resources to accommodate the new arrivals.

“Previously, we were supplying this town alone. Now we are literally taking care of two towns together,” he told Al Jazeera.

Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has reported more strikes by the United States but insists this pressure will not impact its demands to end the war.

Ahmad Nafisi, deputy governor for Hormozgan, where the overnight US strikes hit, confirmed on Monday morning that the southern island of Qeshm was targeted but no residential and commercial areas or vital infrastructure were damaged.

The US did not directly acknowledge the air strikes, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated Washington’s characterisation of similar recent strikes on Qeshm as “defensive”. Previous attacks, the latest of which was acknowledged by President Donald Trump on Friday, have targeted Iranian air defences and radar installations.

Mediators are trying to prevent large-scale US attacks on Iran, which Trump has repeatedly threatened, with talks continuing. But Washington appears unwilling to accept Iran’s seven demands to end the war, which include the lifting of the US blockade on Iran’s southern ports and lifting sanctions on Tehran.

Seven demands

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday rejected Rubio’s remarks that some of these seven demands were “ridiculous and really not realistic”.

“Iran’s plan is still the most logical plan on the table. I think it can lead to security returning to the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, and create the grounds for a process,” Baghaei said during a news conference in Tehran.

The terms mostly amount to a return to the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in June between Iran and the US. But Tehran now has additional stipulations regarding the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

Baghaei said the US announcement of a reward of up to $20m for information on Iran’s nuclear programme is a ploy by the Trump administration to “convey the sense that the Iranian nuclear issue is still a threat”, after the Republican Party’s heavy defeats in midterm elections.

Tehran says it will not part with its highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under the rubble of facilities bombed by the US and Israel last year. But it is open to downblending the material, which would be needed to build a nuclear bomb.

International inspectors have no access to Iranian nuclear sites, except for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, where the Foreign Ministry said there was a recent visit.

Iran has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, Rafael Grossi, of stepping out of their technical mandate and creating the grounds for attacks on nuclear facilities during last year’s 12-day war and the current war.

There have been signs of a positive breakthrough in mediation efforts, with reports that Trump and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani will meet in the White House on Monday.

But Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Washington’s biggest objection to the ongoing mediated talks is that Iran is essentially demanding the rewards of an agreement before providing the concessions to justify one.

“Reopening Hormuz within two days sounds accommodating, but it changes the timetable rather than the substance of the bargain,” he told Al Jazeera about the Iranian proposal.

Both the US and Iran’s Arab neighbours would not accept long-term Iranian-approved shipping corridors in the Strait of Hormuz.

Rubio and other officials are also against Iran’s demand for an end to hostilities across the region, as it would restrict Israel’s military freedom of action.

“Iran is going beyond a ceasefire, trying to translate its wartime leverage into a new regional security arrangement on its own terms,” Krieg said.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the country’s military mission in Iran remained unfinished, and threatened Lebanon’s Hezbollah with further territorial losses if it joined an Iranian attack.

Tankers and navigation systems targeted

Iranian authorities continue to warn ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz to refrain from taking “unauthorised” routes or face potential attacks.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman Hossein Mohebbi rejected the claim by the US that all naval mines have been cleared from the Strait of Hormuz.

“Nobody dares enter the Strait of Hormuz to remove the mines,” he said on Sunday.

Iranian state television reported on Monday that 11 tankers have been attacked over the past 10 days, with four unable to continue transit.

IRGC-affiliated media cited an unnamed IRGC Navy source as claiming on Monday that maritime navigation systems were targeted in the southern areas of the waterway overnight, preventing tankers from transiting as part of the US-coordinated oil shuttle system.

Trump played down the prospects of a return to all-out war with Iran on Sunday, but added that the US military had marked civilian infrastructure like 38 bridges as targets if the war restarts at scale.

Krieg said he expects Tehran to continue its strategy of “controlled escalation” rather than immediate all-out retaliation against the US strikes.

“The new American effort to disrupt Iran’s overland trade will reinforce this strategy. Tehran will increasingly seek to make the Gulf states bear the economic consequences of Washington’s decisions, hoping they will pressure Trump towards compromise,” Krieg said.

“Washington may believe it is conducting a limited campaign of coercion, while Tehran increasingly sees an unrestricted economic war against its survival. At some point, Iran may decide that the costs of continued restraint exceed the risks of escalation.”

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

A British court has sentenced comedian and actor Russell Brand to 10 years and six months in prison for rape and sexual assault.

London’s Southwark Crown Court handed down the sentence on Monday. Brand was convicted last week of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three more between 2004 and 2009.

The British media personality, known for outrageous stand-up routines and battles with drugs and alcohol, asserted that he was innocent and all his encounters were consensual.

However, a jury of eight men and four women on Thursday convicted him attacking four of six accusers. He was cleared of two counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.

His victims delivered powerful statements during the sentencing hearing, describing the trauma his attacks had caused.

More to come…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Houthi threat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syrian expertise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four children and a woman were killed after heavy rain caused a sandbank to collapse on their tent.

Palestinian authorities have criticised global “indifference and inaction” after a landslide killed five displaced people sheltering in tents in the central Gaza Strip following heavy rains.

“This is a scene that should shame the conscience of humanity and reflects the extent of the complicity and abandonment to which our […] people are subjected,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement on Monday.

Four children and a woman were killed and two people remain missing after a sandbank collapsed onto their tent in Deir el-Balah on Sunday. The landslide happened after heavy rains brought by the first winter storm of the year hit the besieged territory on Friday, causing widespread flooding.

Floodwaters have inundated displacement camps and weakened buildings already damaged by Israeli air raids.

Restrictions imposed by the Israeli military mean specialist search and rescue equipment is in short supply, and Gaza residents were forced to dig using their bare hands to try and reach survivors.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the victims were living in flimsy tents, on exposed ground, with no protection from the heavy rain.

“When the embankment collapsed, those people had no chance to escape or protect themselves, and this raises difficult conditions about what people on the ground are left to endure,” he said.

About 70,000 tents were flooded when the storm hit Gaza at the weekend. According to data from Save the Children, more than half a million children are living in “critical or catastrophic” shelter conditions.

In a statement, Save the Children said, “While the so-called ceasefire announced over a year ago stipulated the entry of caravans as a more durable alternative to tents, Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked their entry into Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of children exposed to another winter of hardship.”

The Government Media Office held Israel, the United States and the international community “fully and directly responsible”, citing their “absolute silence regarding the occupation’s crimes and their complicity in preventing the entry of shelter supplies, construction materials, caravans, fuel, and spare parts required to operate municipal and Civil Defence machinery and equipment”.

“We strongly condemn and denounce the state of inaction and the complete absence of the Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, as though this catastrophe were of no concern to them. Their complete failure to act and their flagrant abdication of the responsibilities entrusted to them raise serious questions about the very purpose of these bodies, which remain passive observers in the face of the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

More than 74,600 people have been killed since Israel’s genocidal war began on October 7, 2023, in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Since a “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025, Israel has killed more than 1,600 Palestinians.

Usman Khawaja is “100% accurate” in his recounting of the Australia ball-tampering scandal in 2018, says former team-mate David Warner.

Ex-opener Warner also said Cricket Australia’s investigation process following the incident was “rushed and botched”.

Australia were found to have used sandpaper to alter the condition of the ball during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town.

Warner and captain Steve Smith were banned for a year and fellow batter Cameron Bancroft for nine months.

Khawaja last week said the entire Australia team knew about the use of sandpaper, despite consistent denials from the bowlers that they had knowledge of the plan.

Warner, who retired from international cricket in 2024, said in a video statement on Instagram:, external “It’s been eight years since I spoke on this topic. And Ussie, I throw my full support behind you.

“I thank you for what you’ve done. It’s 100% accurate what you’ve said. Now everyone knows the truth.”

Former batter Khawaja has said he was shocked not to be asked to provide evidence during Cricket Australia’s investigation.

“In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be the one who comes out and talks about the truth,” he wrote.

“The issue is that I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now.”

In response, Warner said: “This is Usman’s story. This is what Usman believes. Ussie wrote down every single thing from that day on.

“This whole interview process was rushed and botched. Ussie was sitting next to Cameron Bancroft. Ussie was not interviewed.

“How is that a thorough investigation? It baffles me. We’re not here to point fingers and we’re not opening old wounds. It’s about accountability, transparency, ensuring that the truth is properly examined.

“Perhaps it’s time people stop scrutinising the person asking for accountability and start asking those responsible for the investigation to provide it.”

While Smith, Warner and Bancroft – all batters – were punished, there was never an explanation of how bowlers Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon did not notice a change in the state of the ball.

Cummins has been Test captain since 2021 and all four players remain fixtures in the Australia red-ball side.

The quartet released a joint statement in 2021 which said they “did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field”.

Warner said in his video that there were “a lot of statements and inaccuracies over the last eight years that were out in the media by people. And there was a lot of people who stayed silent.”

The 40-year-old, who scored 8,786 runs in 112 Tests, said he delayed his reponse to Khawaja’s comments so he could explain the incident to his daughters.

“I had to tell them exactly what had happened,” said Warner. “My 12-year-old, Ivy, wanted to know why we were holding her, why there were so many cameras, why we were all crying on TV. That was a hard thing to do.

“But one thing I did say is, ‘Girls, tell the truth, because lies will eventually get out’.

“It’s a very tough time. This is for everyone in Australia. It’s been the question everyone’s been asking.

“It’s been a tough time for my family, Steven and Cameron, no doubt. But this is what needed to come out. I fully support that, Ussie.”

With a large area of high pressure across the UK, conditions are ideal for the formation of dense fog.

Temperatures overnight into Monday morning dropped to around 3 to 5C across England and Wales which meant moisture at ground level condensed into water droplets, creating cloud – which is essentially fog.

Light winds then meant fog was able to get denser through the night, leading to visibilities less than 100 meters on Monday morning.

Fog has been particularly dense and widespread on Monday morning because there has also been a lot of fireworks and bonfires over the last few days.

Tiny smoke particules act as extra cloud condensation nuclei which allows more water vapour being able to turn into droplets.

Patchy fog could also develop outside the warning area in northern parts of the UK wherever skies remain clear for long enough.

Mist forms in the same way but is less dense, with visibility generally greater than 1,000 metres (1km).

Trump concedes some voters were unhappy with his administration’s controversial deportation drive.

United States President Donald Trump has said his immigration policy may have been too extreme for voters, conceding that his deportation policy had damaged his Republican Party’s performance in the last week’s midterm elections.

During his first television interview since his party lost control of the US House of Representatives and the Senate last week, Trump said some voters were unhappy with his administration’s controversial deportation drive, which led to widespread protests.

“I think it might be too tough,” he told CBS’s 60 Minutes programme, which aired on Sunday.

He said he may be able to work with the new Democratic-controlled Congress on some kind of immigration agreement.

“The deal would be we would work something out,” he said, adding, “I think that’s something that’s actually doable.”

The interview was aired after he appointed Stephen Miller, the chief architect of his hardline immigration policy, to replace Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, prompting questions about the direction of his immigration policy.

In a post on X, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “Trump says his immigration crackdown went too far”, adding, “Apparently, his solution was to put the man responsible for it in charge of the White House. That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion.”

Trump had promised an immigration crackdown during his campaign to return to office, blaming undocumented migrant “killers” and “drug dealers” for soaring crime.

Extensive operations to detain and deport immigrants were launched in multiple US cities, causing arrests to soar.

Two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – were killed by federal officers during protests against the operations.

Democrats have said oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security is a priority for the new Congress.

During his interview, Trump said a moderate immigration deal would still deport criminals, but allow “good people” who had lived and worked in the country “paying taxes” to stay.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The assailant was shot by police officers and arrested minutes ‌after he ​opened fire at people in central Krakow.

The gunman who killed six people in central Krakow last week has died in hospital, police have said.

Police announced early Monday morning that the 24-year-old attacker had died.

The assailant was shot by police officers and arrested minutes ‌after he opened fire at people at Krakow’s historic main square from his car on Saturday.

The government said the attacker may ⁠have been inspired by far-right ideology, without providing further details.

This is a developing story.

World leaders and delegates are gathering in Antalya, Turkiye, for COP31, the annual climate summit of the United Nations, which runs from November 9 to 20.

They meet as global emissions continue to climb. The world emitted 54.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2025, 0.7 percent more than the year before and 68.5 percent more than in 1990, according to the latest figures from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures and fuelling heatwaves, droughts, floods and other extreme weather conditions.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera breaks down which gases are warming the planet, which industries and countries emit the most, and how their emissions have changed over time.

Which gases are warming the planet?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) made up 73.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025. It is released mainly when fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are burned, while deforestation removes trees that would otherwise absorb it.

Methane (CH4) accounted for 17.6 percent of emissions that year, followed by nitrous oxide (N2O) at 5.3 percent and fluorinated gases (F-gases) at 3.3 percent.

Global CO2 emissions have risen by 76.3 percent since 1990, according to the JRC.

How is a warming planet affecting the world?

As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they trap more heat. In 2025, the heat stored in the world’s oceans reached its highest level on record, and the rate of ocean warming has increased sharply over the past two decades, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Extreme weather has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions from their homes in 2026, according to the WMO.

In Europe, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires between May and August caused more than 30,000 excess deaths, and 220,000 people were evacuated in France alone.

On August 26, a glacier collapse and the resulting flash flood in the Himalayas killed more than 1,500 people in Nepal along its border with China, while about 5,600 remain missing, according to the UN.

In June and July, Typhoon Bavi forced three million people to evacuate in China and killed 26 in the Philippines. Weeks later, severe Tropical Storm Maysak killed 171 people and caused more than $3bn in losses in China.

Earlier in the year, floods and windstorms across the western Mediterranean displaced more than 180,000 people in Morocco, while extreme cold and snow in North America killed 174 people.

The map below shows some of the most extreme weather events of 2026.

Where do the world’s emissions come from?

The world’s greenhouse gas emissions have more than doubled since 1970, rising from about 23 billion tonnes to 54.1 billion tonnes in 2025, according to the JRC.

The power industry, which generates electricity, is the largest source, producing nearly 30 percent of global emissions in 2025. Its emissions have roughly quadrupled since 1970, driven by soaring demand for electricity in fast-growing economies such as China and India.

Industry, including manufacturing and mining, is the second-largest source at 21 percent. This covers fuel burned in factories as well as gases released when producing cement, metals and chemicals. Industrial emissions climbed steeply in the 2000s as China’s manufacturing boomed.

Transport, including cars, shipping and aviation, is third at 16 percent.

Together, these three sectors produce about two-thirds of the world’s emissions. The rest comes from agriculture (12 percent), the extraction of coal, oil and gas (11 percent), buildings (6.6 percent) and waste (3.6 percent).

Global emissions have fallen only a handful of times since 1970, including in the early 1980s, after the 2008 financial crisis and during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Each time, they rebounded.

Who are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases?

In 2025, the three largest emitters produced almost half of the world’s greenhouse gases. China emitted almost 16 billion tonnes (29.5 percent), the United States 6.02 billion tonnes (11.1 percent) and India 4.51 billion tonnes (8.3 percent).

The 27 countries of the European Union together accounted for 5.8 percent, followed by Russia (4.8 percent), Indonesia (2.5 percent), Brazil (2.4 percent) and Iran (2.1 percent).

International shipping and aviation, which fall outside any single country’s total, together produced 2.6 percent of global emissions, more than most countries.

It was not always this way. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries drove up emissions first in the West, particularly in the United Kingdom and the US, as they built factories and moved to mass manufacturing. Global emissions then rose sharply after World War II and have more than doubled since 1970.

China’s emissions surged in the early 2000s as its economy boomed, and it overtook the US as the world’s largest emitter in the mid-2000s.

But measured over time, the picture changes. Since the mid-18th century, the US has produced 23.5 percent of all CO2 emissions, compared with 15.4 percent from China, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

Which industries drive each country’s emissions?

In China, the power sector is the largest source, producing 42 percent of the country’s almost 16 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. Industry accounts for 31 percent and fuel production for 9.5 percent.

In September 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping, for the first time, pledged to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10 percent from their peak by 2035.

In the US, transport is the largest source at 29 percent, mostly from cars and trucks. The power sector accounts for 26 percent and industry for 14 percent.

In India, which still relies heavily on coal for electricity, the power sector produces 35 percent of emissions, followed by industry at 24 percent and agriculture at 19 percent.

Explore the table below to see which sectors produce the most greenhouse gas emissions in each country.

In the occupied West Bank, a barrier of concrete and fencing cuts Palestinians off from their land, their families and nearby towns.

Israel began building its separation wall in 2002. Planned to stretch 712km (442 miles), it runs deep inside Palestinian territory rather than along the boundary with Israel. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled it illegal.

Today’s date carries extra weight. Thirty-seven years ago on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.

Built by East Germany in 1961 to stop its citizens fleeing to the West, it encircled West Berlin for 155km (96 miles), dividing the city and its people for 28 years.

Since 2003, Palestinians have marked the same date as an international day of action against Israel’s wall, which is more than four times as long and still being built. In urban areas, its concrete rises to about 9 metres (30ft), more than twice the height of Berlin’s.

But the wall is more than a physical structure. It operates alongside a wider network of checkpoints, roadblocks, gates and permits that restricts Palestinian movement across the occupied territory.

Where does the wall run?

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 456km (283 miles), or 64 percent, of the planned route had been built by April.

About 85 percent of it runs inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line separating Israel from the West Bank. That route determines which communities, roads and farmland are cut off from their surroundings.

In some urban areas, the barrier is a concrete wall. Elsewhere, it is made up of fences, patrol roads, ditches and other security infrastructure.

For Palestinians, the comparison with Berlin carries a message. “It doesn’t matter how high the barriers will be, they will fall,” a Palestinian activist in Bir Nabala told Al Jazeera. “Like the Berlin Wall fell, the Palestinian wall will fall.”

How many people are cut off from their land?

The wall’s impact reaches far beyond the structure itself. Its route cuts Palestinian communities off from neighbouring towns, workplaces and farmland, disrupting livelihoods and everyday life.

More than 14,000 Palestinians live between the wall and the Green Line in an area known as the Seam Zone. To reach basic services, markets and relatives on the other side, they must pass through checkpoints.

Farmers are among the hardest hit. According to OCHA, about 150 Palestinian communities have land in this area. Reaching it depends on permits, prior coordination with Israeli authorities and access through designated agricultural gates.

There are about 62 such gates along the wall, and most stay closed for much of the year. During the 2025 olive harvest, 74 percent opened only on a limited number of days.

In Qalqiliya, the wall wraps around much of the city, cutting it off from nearby Palestinian communities and the land around it. Journeys to neighbouring towns that were once short can now mean passing through checkpoints or taking long detours.

The wall restricts more than movement. It reshapes how communities relate to their land and places that are part of their everyday lives.

Israel’s wider system of control

The wall is only one part of a much wider network restricting Palestinian movement across the West Bank.

As of December, OCHA documented 925 checkpoints, road gates, earth mounds and other obstacles across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. They restrict the movement of about 3.4 million Palestinians, often forcing long detours to reach work, school, hospitals and other services.

The network includes 89 permanently staffed checkpoints, 218 partial checkpoints, 232 road gates, 167 earth mounds, 114 linear closures and 105 roadblocks.

Checkpoints and road gates now make up nearly 60 percent of these obstacles, up from 15 percent two decades ago when temporary blockages, such as earth mounds and roadblocks, were far more common.

Crossing the wall itself requires permits. Of its 13 checkpoints, only three can be used by Palestinians with West Bank IDs and Israeli-issued permits to enter East Jerusalem and Israel. OCHA said these permits are hard to get and many have been revoked or suspended since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

The wall stretches for hundreds of kilometres, but its impact cannot be measured by distance alone. It is measured in the farmland farmers struggle to reach, the communities cut off from nearby towns and the checkpoints between people and the places they need to go.

There are two ways to read the results of the Israeli elections. One way would be to see them as a defeat for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From holding a solid majority in the 120-member Knesset, the Netanyahu bloc has been reduced to a minority of 53 members. Anti-Netanyahu lawmakers, by contrast, hold 67 seats.

Had Israel been a democracy, we would have seen scenes of celebration similar to the ones we saw this year in Hungary, Brazil and Serbia, where political forces with undemocratic tendencies were defeated. But Israel is not a democracy, and Netanyahu was not necessarily defeated.

The second, more relevant way of reading the results of the Israeli election would necessitate accepting the apartheid nature of Israel and seeing the electoral arithmetic through that prism. In this case, Netanyahu won because he secured 53 seats in the Knesset – five more than the anti-Netanyahu Jewish bloc.

To form a government, a bloc needs to have the support of at least 61 members of the Knesset. The only way Netanyahu can do it is by enticing parties or lawmakers from the anti-Netanyahu bloc to join his bloc, as he has succeeded in doing many times in the past. Working with Palestinian parties, which secured 19 seats, is out of the question for him.

The obvious path for government formation for the anti-Netanyahu bloc would be to form a coalition – one that would include the two Palestinian parties. But to do so would mean to challenge Israeli apartheid. The main leaders of the Jewish anti-Netanyahu bloc, including Gadi Eisenkot, have promised not to do so under any circumstances.

There is another option: seeking the support of the religious Orthodox parties, which have so far been part of the Netanyahu bloc. To secure their backing, the anti-Netanyahu bloc would have to promise to exempt religious Orthodox youth from military service and guarantee funding for their learning centres.

However, Eisenkot’s main election promise was forcing young Haredi Jews into the army. So this is not a very likely scenario, but in politics, never say never.

There is also the option of a “unity government” led by some sort of rotation between the leading figures of the anti-Netanyahu bloc and Netanyahu. The problem here is that, according to a law passed a few years ago, as long as Netanyahu is still a defendant in an ongoing trial, he cannot serve as a minister; his coalition made sure that the legislation ridiculously would not apply to a prime minister.

Given that Netanyahu’s corruption trial is destined to go on for a very long time, the rotation would make it impossible for Netanyahu to be part of a government under Eisenkot as prime minister. That means he would demand to hold the rotating premiership first and leave open the option to collapse the government once his rotation is over.

Netanyahu has already done that before. In 2020, without any hesitation, he broke a rotation agreement with Benny Gantz, who had naively believed that after two years he would be the prime minister. This resulted in new elections, which Netanyahu won.

Finally, a very possible scenario is that neither of the two blocs would be able to form a government, which would mean new elections in six months. Netanyahu and his government would remain in office until the new polls, albeit with more limited authority.

This would give them the opportunity to reignite a war with Iran and Hezbollah and continue with their violent policies in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in an attempt to attract more public support and win the elections.

This is the preferred option for Netanyahu because his relative defeat in the October 27 elections had a lot to do with the unprecedented galvanisation among the Palestinian voters in Israel and the more liberal Jewish Israelis living abroad who came back home in huge numbers to vote.

These possible scenarios tell only part of the story and are not enough to fully understand what the election results mean for Israel, the Palestinians and the region. Here are the more important conclusions one should draw from the results:

The first pertains to the future of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. They still could turn out to vote in large numbers if new elections are held soon. But if they are once more ignored and sidelined by the other political parties, they will never try it again.

In this case, it would be difficult for the leadership of this community to continue to delay a strategic decision: choosing which political space Palestinian citizens of Israel belong to – the Israeli or the Palestinian one?

Until today, they have given a chance to the Israeli political system despite its racism, apartheid tendencies and criminal policies towards Palestinians. Palestinian parties recommended Eisenkot for the premiership to President Isaac Herzog, who has now tasked him with forming a government.

If I can venture a prediction – and it is only a prediction – the anti-Netanyahu bloc would not engage meaningfully with the Palestinian parties. Its message, therefore, will be that the Palestinians of Israel are not legitimate players in the Israeli political field.

If I am wrong, this would be an incredible and transformative moment in the history of both Israel and Palestine, but there seems to be very little hope for such a development.

There are other lessons we can learn from where we are now with the knowledge that this is a very volatile moment in the history of Israel.

The first and most important one is that whoever forms the next government of Israel will continue the incremental genocide in Gaza, the intensified ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the aggressive policies towards the region. These policies as before can only be stopped or tamed by the region and the international community sending a clear message to Israel that there will be a price tag attached to such policies.

The second lesson is that the Israeli Jewish society is as deeply divided as ever, to the point that it is impossible for it to maintain a stable political system, a thriving economy and a positive strategy towards the region and the world.

The third lesson is that Israel’s international isolation will increase as a result of this trajectory, including the continued dissociation from Zionism among young Jews around the world, including in the United States.

Finally and most importantly, this can have an impact on the global discussion about Zionism. The move by the Green Party in Britain to define Zionism as racism – despite being currently an exception and widely condemned – will gain validity with time.

These elections and future developments are making clear that Zionism in the current Israeli politics means the exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from politics – first by ignoring them and quite possibly in the future by denying them the right to vote

Moreover, many in the international community will associate the term Zionism with a consensual Israeli policy of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

The outlook in the short term is worrying. The overall message from the Israeli elections is that the future policies of the state will continue to threaten the lives of the Palestinians in occupied territory, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the people of southern Lebanon and Syria. There will be more instability in the region.

In the long run, however, as bad as it is, the fundamental cracks in the Zionist project will widen, which might lead to its demise. One can only hope this will also lead to the beginning of a political reality that would benefit everyone who lives in historical Palestine and the region.

A version of this oped was first published by Al Jazeera Arabic.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.